Monday Glamour Starter --- Mary Miles Minter

Mary Miles Minter was cursed from the day her evil mother committed an unholy act that consigned both to eternal damnation (thought I'd begin subtle, but more about that in a minute). First, I’d address why an actress who disappeared from the screen in 1923 should qualify as a Greenbriar Glamour Starter. Was she good? Nobody really knows. They probably never will, because most of the films have gone to nitrate heaven. Where we hear of Mary Miles Minter is in connection with an unsolved Hollywood murder she was involved with. Minter's life ran a gamut from Hell to stardom, then back to Hell, a Norma Desmond/Baby Jane route to old age spent ducking press or odd-duck fans who'd seek her out. 
















Juliet Reilly was her real name. That got changed when diabolical Mom packed off Juliet and her sister for New York and the stage. There was a father once, jettisoned after raising objection over Charlotte’s plan for their daughters. Even among ultra-aggressive stage mothers, Charlotte was a bitter pill. She once advised Juliet to "be powerful, even if you have to walk across the graves of others to get it!," pretty much what they did when the Gerry Society (a group set up to enforce child labor laws) expelled ten year old Juliet from the title role in stage hit The Littlest Rebel. Seems Charlotte had a sister and a niece who had died seven years previous, mother and daughter having drank apple cider laced with lethal snake venom. I'll not let that last go without comment, like, how the deuce would snake venom wind up in a barrel of apple cider? Was this someone’s idea of flavor enhancement? But back to Charlotte’s niece. Her name was Marie Miles Minter. She was only ten when she died. In days before Social Security numbers, it was easy to purloin a fresh identity. Charlotte stole the dead child’s birth certificate and did just that, assigning Marie’s name to Juliet ("Marie" now "Mary"), then "introducing" the now seventeen-year old Mary Miles Minter as the new star of The Littlest Rebel. Surely there is pay-off in perdition for someone who would do a thing like this. Movie offers followed, and the pair prospered. Paramount dangled $1.3 million for a twenty-picture commitment. Charlotte spent the money as fast as Mary could earn it. The sister, Margaret, seethed with jealousy. Mother clearly missed her calling as a white slaver, for she had Mary down to a minute schedule efficient as any streetcar company, so much so as to make the teenager loathe her star status and obligations. Was this, then, the dead girl’s curse? Had the real Marie Miles Minter, whose name they’d stolen, come back to collect? If so, she had a large account, because Mary, her mother, and her sister, would pay … and pay … and pay.





William Desmond Taylor was a bon vivant fifty-year old director with a cultured manner and apparent pedigree. Truth is he was a rotter who had abandoned his family back in New York years before (men did that a lot back then) and had since barnstormed the country as gold prospector, hotel night clerk, and finally, a berth for which he was ideally suited, acting. The grass widow back home spotted him on a Nickelodeon screen and the jig was up. By then, Taylor (his seventh adopted alias) had taken up the megaphone and was now directing Mary Miles Minter, who missed her own daddy what got left behind and tagged Bill for a surrogate. Contemporary accounts in defense of the old fox vowed her advances were rebuffed, but methinks his "Go away, little girl" entreaties were half-hearted at best, because pretty soon twenty-year old Mary was pitching camp in front of Bill’s fire. Charlotte saw red in any case. She had already threatened leading man James Kirkwood with a firearm after the actor conducted an impromptu, and very private "wedding" ceremony with Mary deep in the woodland location of their recent co-starring film. Jimmy had convinced Minter they were "married in the eyes of God," and squared away the consummation before the two were missed by an inattentive camera crew. Charlotte was, if anything, more determined to keep her investment away from Taylor. By February 1922, the thing had come to a boil, and on the night of the eleventh, Bill was found on his bungalow floor with a bullet in the back. Police dicks found Mary’s love letters hidden in the deceased’s riding boots, so the star was brought in for questioning. Charlotte should have been grilled, and indeed they'd get round to her, but Mary took the brunt of bad publicity, was waiting out her twenty-first birthday in any case so she could dump Mom and the whole dirty star racket. Myth has it that Taylor’s death wrecked her career, but Paramount used Minter in six features following the incident (several of them solid hits), and wanted her for The Covered Wagon, but instead bought out the contract at Charlotte’s insistence. After 1923, Mary Miles Minter would never stand in front of a camera again.




The longer the Taylor case went unsolved, the worse it smelled. Mary stayed on headlines by foolishly brandishing her romantic obsession with the dead man, boasting of how she went by the morgue to give him a goodbye kiss. Rumors were rife, suspects plentiful. Had Bill been offed by drug pushers? Each wild speculation beget more, as Mary, Charlotte, and Margaret sued and counter-sued one another through decades of bitter exchange. Mary said Charlotte had looted the million she’d made in movies. Charlotte tried to have Margaret put into a mental institution. Margaret was for pinning the Taylor murder on Charlotte. Charlotte sued a guy for stealing the money she had stolen from Mary. Round and round it went. Mary got round too, ballooning up to 300 pounds in an effort to make up for a starvation diet imposed when she was a star. Sister Margaret died a hopeless alcoholic in 1939, and sainted mother Charlotte departed in 1957 --- or did she? Neighbors reported sightings into the 60's, and swore a now reclusive Mary had the old woman hid upstairs. Not likely though, as Mary actually wed later in that same year, in fact had a lucrative second career in real estate. Film historian David Bradley took some of Mary’s old films to her house for a show, but she was largely indifferent to them. A few times she threatened to sue producers and writers of would-be Taylor exposes and dramatizations (one of them Rod Serling), but those fizzled after obligatory "Where Is She Now" stories ran their course. Silent director King Vidor tried to get a coherent interview out of Mary in the late sixties, but she was way around the bend by then. Fans could still get autographs by mail, however, Mary having outlived most who could care about her or the Taylor case. Anyone film buff enough to inquire could hear rail over a career she disdained and the long gone mother who wrecked her life. Mary Miles Minter died in 1984 at age 82 (but how trustworthy was that birth date?).