Margaret Shelby
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Margaret Shelby, born Margaret Reilly, and also known as Alma M. Fillmore, (June 16, 1900 – December 21, 1939) was an American stage and motion picture actress, older sister of Mary Miles Minter, former star of silent films, and central figure in the William Desmond Taylor murder case.
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[edit] Career
Her first Broadway appearance was in Grace Livingston Furniss's play, The Fibber, and In 1916, Shelby and sister Mary Miles Minter were playing together for the first time in Director James Kirkwood's picture, Faith. Although pretty [1] and having some talent as an actress, her film career had been limited to supporting roles in some of her sister's films, due to her sisters career overshadowing her own.
[edit] Connection to the Murder of William Desmond Taylor
By the advent of talkies in the late 1920s, her career was over. She had not had any success to any great degree as a leading star prior to the 1922 murder of her sisters lover, director William Desmond Taylor, and following the murder she had mostly small bit roles due to the alleged murder involvement of her sister and her mother. [2]
On September 13, 1938, she virtually accused her mother of having killed film director William Desmond Taylor. Her mother did have motive, due to her sister Mary Miles Minter's lengthy affair with the victim, and her mothers threats against the victim about that. However, a 1964 death bed confession, released in 1999, seem to indicate that actress Ella Margaret Gibson, also a former lover of Taylor, was the actually killer.
[edit] Personal life, life after the murder
She was once briefly married to President Millard Fillmore's grandson, and later to Emmett J. Flynn. [3]
On June 5, 1937, with their acting careers completely over, the two sisters sued their mother, Charlotte Shelby, over mismanagement of their money in the late 1920s, and won substantial financial settlements. However, she was haunted by depression and chronic alcoholism, and died in 1939.
[edit] Filmography
- Billie (1912)
- Faith (1916)
- Peggy Leads the Way (1917)
- Her Country's Call (1917)
- Environment (1917)
- Wives and Other Wives (1918)
- Rosemary Climbs the Heights (1918)
- A Bachelor's Wife (1919)
- The Intrusion of Isabel (1919)
- The Amazing Impostor (1919)
- Jenny Be Good (1920)
- Clothes Make the Woman (1928)