Gene Zonarich wrote:salus wrote:he also believed it was Mary's mother who killed Taylor At the time of the interview he was over 100 but very lucid
Of course he was lucid -- you have to be to tell a coherent lie (or be interviewed by tv news celebrity).
Lucidity is not a synonym for accuracy. Take 10 lucid witnesses to an event an ask them to describe what they saw -- result is likely close to 10 variations on the event, whether they are 21 or a 101.
I remember reading an account in "American Film" magazine about director King Vidor who apparently spent much spare time investigating the matter, but I don't recall hearing anything since,and that had to be 20-plus years ago . . .
Well, you must have buried your head in the sand those twenty years ago, or more . . .
Perhaps you might remember a little book called "Cast of Killers"that reportedly used the Vidor research as its starting point and "solved" the mystery . . . naming MMM's mother as the culprit. The author made a fortune, it was widely rrported that the case had been solved, though there have been several books since that have offered differing explanations, with little or no more credibility than Sidney Kirpatrick's (author of CoK) version.
Vidor was writing a screenplay--not investigating the murder. All that claptrap about the background of Vidor's investigation was likely made up. Vidor's solution was Adela Rogers St. Johns's solution (little wonder. . . they were close friends). St. Johns said: "We all KNEW that Mary's mother did it, but that she would never be prosecuted because no jury would convict a mother for protecting the virtue of her daughter."
One of the inconveniences of the "mother" theory is that even though MMM may have had a crush on Taylor and may have written him notes, it is equally true that she seemed to have crushes on many of her directors--a girl in search of a father figure-- and MMM & Taylor had not worked togther for two years at the time of his killing. Making it less likely that the mother would have had any motivation to go a gunning for the director.
The story of the gun-toting mother has some validity. Mama was known to go around Santa Barbara, pictol in hand, looking to dissaude director James Kirkwood from carrying on secret asignations with Mary. Kirkwood would be the father of MMM's aborted child--though she claimed to be a virgin at the time of her marriage to Brandon O'Hildebrandt ca. 1957 to anyone who cared to listen--and many who didn't.
But even though the mother MIGHT have done-in Taylor, there was scant evidence on which to make an arrest. let alone bring charges.
Then there's that other little inconvenience--the tales that Taylor was gay, and therefore not likely to be carrying on with the crem of Hollywood's maidenhood (or young womanhood, if you will).
The case foir Taylor's homosexuality is at best circumstantial--actreses who knew him claimed otherwise--but there is certainly enough of a trail to suggest that it was possible.
But then, there is enough to suggest that several of the "solutions" to the murder are possible--but nothing that conclusively holds water. Perhaps, though this is just a gues, that is why the case remains unsolved to the day.
Once again we come back to Margaret Gibson/Patricia Palmer--deathbed confession. Voila! Case solved.
