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Articles by Hannah Howe
The Golden Age of Hollywood: a Hollywood murder, part two
On the evening of 1 February 1922, former actor and movie director William Desmond Taylor was murdered at his residence, 404-B South Alvarado Street, Westlake, Los Angeles. This was an affluent neighbourhood, home to a number of prominent people in the Hollywood film community. Who murdered William Desmond Taylor? These were the prime suspects. Sands worked as Taylor’s valet prior to his valet at the time of the murder, Henry Peavey.
William Desmond Taylor
At 7:30am on Thursday 2 February 1922, valet Henry Peavey walked through the affluent neighbourhood of Westlake, Los Angeles, towards a bungalow in the Alvarado Court Apartments. His destination was 404-B South Alvarado Street, the home of his employer, movie director William Desmond Taylor. Peavey opened the front door, and screamed. At some point during the previous 12 hours, someone had shot Taylor. The movie director was very evidently dead. The murderer had shot Taylor with a .38 calibre pistol.
a story fit for the silver screen
Screen comedy began as short, knockabout improvisations. A pie in the face was a favourite, blackberry proving more effective on camera than custard. In the 1910s, the likes of Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, and Buster Keaton brought hilarity to cinema audiences, aided and abetted by female co-stars. Chaplin was in the habit of choosing unknown actresses to appear in his movies. He often had affairs with them; few went on to further film success.
The Golden Age of Hollywood: the movie family
Early cinema developed around a formula based on ‘the movie family’. This concept was made up of the heroine, the hero, the mother, the villain, and the vamp. While these are obviously reductive archetypes, they worked well enough for the simple storytelling purposes of early motion pictures. The actors who succeeded back then were those who fit those moulds, and even made them. Sweetness was the heroine’s main characteristic. Children and animals loved her. Her face was a picture of innocence.
tragedy and triumph for three women
In the early days of moviemaking, Thomas Edison and others tried to block independent filmmakers. They hired thugs to pose as cameramen and destroy independent cameras. When someone yelled “Shoot!” back then, it meant, “Put a bullet hole in the camera.” This became the favoured method of disruption. Filmmakers like Al Christie, a Canadian, realised that to make progress they needed to escape the obstacles imposed on them in the Northeastern states of America and make movies in pastures new.
Women pioneered the Golden Age of Hollywood
Women gave birth to Hollywood. During the silent movie era, women virtually controlled the industry. For example, female screenwriters outnumbered males by a ratio of ten to one. These mothers of filmic creativity included writers, directors, producers, and, of course, actresses. Alice, Francelia, Anita To start at the beginning, Alice Guy-Blaché, (1873–1968) was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film.
The Golden Age of Hollywood: The Hays Code
The Motion Picture Production Code, commonly known as the Hays Code, was a set of guidelines designed to regulate the content of motion pictures produced in America between 1934 and 1968. The Code gained its name from Will H. Hays, the president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America from 1922 to 1945. From the beginning, many people felt that the film industry possessed questionable morals. The ‘trouble’ started in 1896 with The Kiss, a short feature by Edison Studios.
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