Tinseltown : Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

Love the flickers? Know that Roscoe Arbuckle hated being called "Fatty"? Can you name the three men who formed MGM? Well, then this is the book for you, the true cinephile.

By now, we movie fans all know that the early years of Hollywood were as scandal rocked as they are today. Sex and drugs have always been part of the Hollywood lifestyle.

In Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood, William J. Mann has written a fast-paced murder mystery that reads like fiction but is all fact.

In the book, Mann writes about all the heavyweight studio bosses--Zukor, Loew, the three men/companies that formed MGM; William Hayes, who, it turns out, was a nice guy and had no plans of gutting movies with racy themes; of course Mabel Normand and Mr. Arbuckle are here and several other big stars of the silent era. Want handsome? Look up Wallace Reid, well-known morphine addict but still beloved by audiences. At the heart of the book is the story of the unsolved mystery of who murdered elegant actor/director William Desmond Taylor--a murder that STILL has not been formally solved, although this book provides plenty of proof of "who (might have) dunnit."

Three actresses, Mable Normand, Mary Miles Minter and Margaret Gibson (who changed her name to Patricia Palmer to hide an arrest for prostitution), are the leading ladies who form the nucleus of the story and had all been considered as Taylor's murderer.

If Hollywood Babylon and Day of the Locust are on your bookshelf, Tinseltown belongs right next to them.