City Confidential (TV Series) Old Hollywood: Silent Stars, Deadly Secrets (2007) User Reviews

"Old Hollywood" not premiered on Biography Channel...

[dpmccauley1 · 8/10 · 18 March 2008]

The original production of "Old Hollywood" aired on the A&E Network within a few months of principal photography in the Fall of 2000. It was not premiered on Biography as previously suggested. This show was a two-hour City Confidential special, therefore it looks and feels like the other CC shows. The late Paul Winfield narrated all of the City Confidential programs until his death in 2004. This episode was particularly difficult to produce due to the time since the murder occurred. Many documents were misplaced or had been destroyed. Most people with any first hand knowledge had passed away and the majority of relevant locations had been remodeled or demolished so that they were unusable for photographic purposes. In my humble opinion, this show turned out very well considering all of the obstacles which had to be overcome by the production staff and very informative as well as entertaining. On a final note; If you want the extreme factual detail typically associated with a book on subjects like these, then you should buy a book. If you are looking for something entertaining and informative with a historical slant to watch on TV (or video), then you may have just found what you are looking for.

A Documentary about a Mystery that is Itself a Mystery!

[tbrittreid · 5/10 · 2 February 2007]

The murder of silent movie director William Desmond Taylor is one of those enduring real-life mysteries that continues to pique interest even eighty years later. This documentary, however, does not do it justice. It is by no means worthless, but it is severely flawed. There is absolutely no mention whatsoever of the revelation during the original, official investigation that Taylor was an alias, and that this man had walked out on his wife and children back east and disappeared before resurfacing in California under his new name. Furthermore, late in the program, it is asserted that Taylor was secretly gay, and that this undercut almost every theory about the case. This claim is followed not by the least little shred of supporting evidence, but by a description of how the publicizing of this "fact" would have been devastating to the Hollywood film industry at that time, and so it was consequently suppressed. This contention is in fact flatly contradicted by much evidence in the case, one piece of which is shortly thereafter repeated! One would be much better off finding and reading a copy of the book, "A Cast of Killers," whose author, Sidney Kirkpatrick, is one of the interview subjects here. A strange fact of this production is that it was in fact several years old at the time of its apparent premiere, on the Biography Channel. Its copyright notice bears the year 2000, and it is narrated by Paul Winfield, of "City Confidential" fame, who passed away in early 2004. In fact, several members of this production's staff and crew worked on that A&E series, and the presentation style here bears a marked resemblance to the other's. Given its extended running time, were it not for the fact that no such subject can be found in the "CC" episode guide on A&E's official website, one would think that this was a special edition of that series. Was it intended as such and shelved due to the inaccuracies in the content described above, finally getting "thrown away" on a channel available to a much smaller audience than the parent? We may never know.

UPDATE: I stand by everything that I said about this. No CC episode guide that I can find, not just A&E's own, includes it, which would not be the case if it had been aired as one. I fully intend to submit to the IMDb that the presences of both the series title and 2007 as "year of release" are incompatible, which they are. To deal with dpmccauley1's counter-claims to my criticisms of the program on its own terms: The amount of time that had passed since the murder and official investigation happened does not justify either failing to mention Taylor's original identity and family, or flatly asserting that he was homosexual in direct opposition to evidence that is even presented in the program. Too much of this was too well documented for that oversight and the factual error to be defensible.

Good Look at the Death of Taylor

[Michael_Elliott · 23 October 2011]

Old Hollywood: Silent Stars, Deadly Secrets (2007)

*** (out of 4)

This episode of the "City Confidential" series takes a look at the silent era of Hollywood and the various troubles they tried to keep their stars from getting into. The documentary starts off talking about how the movies ended up moving from New York to Hollywood and we get a brief history of some of the stars and the problems they were facing. The documentary also goes into detail how certain groups in America were getting fed up with the sex, drugs and violence in the city. All of this leads to the main story, which was the death of director William Desmond Taylor. He was found murdered in his home, shot to death, and just minutes after actress Mabel Normand had left. Many people thought it might have been her but others pointed the finger at an ex-friend while the most possible person was either Mary Miles Minter or her mother. The documentary, for the most part at least, is pretty good at giving people the basic details of the story. I thought the most interesting parts of the film were the things dealing with the death of the director and why it might have possibly happened. The weakest aspect of the film is how much time it spends talking about how dark Hollywood is. I don't mind a little of this being thrown it but it just takes up too much space when the more interesting story was the death of Taylor. If you're unfamiliar with the story then there's some nice information here but it still could have been much better.