As covered in the first chapter, in 1921, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was accused of raping and killing a young actress called Virginia Rappe at one of his infamous parties. The court case that followed is still talked about nearly a hundred years later, yet another huge Hollywood court case that took place just six years later has long since been forgotten. Until now.
In 1927, Paul Kelly was an up-and-coming actor, described by the media as “dashing” and “debonair”. Born on 9 August 1899 in Brooklyn, his career began as a child actor aged seven, and he quickly became a big star at the Vitagraph Studios. Unlike many actors since then, Kelly made the transition from child actor to leading man very successfully and went on to star on the New York stage in plays such as Seventeen and Whispering Wires. Still, as a result of his looks and talent, Hollywood came knocking on his door and it was not long before he was working at Paramount, making something of a splash in The New Klondike (1926) and Special Delivery (1927).
By March 1927, the gossip columnists were announcing the news that the hot young actor was destined for huge success and that Warner Brothers were anxious to sign him for their next picture. He was about to become one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, but sadly nobody could have predicted just what atrocities were going to happen next . . .
Ray Raymond was a stage actor and singer, who by 1927 had been married to actress Dorothy Mackaye for seven years, having met her in New York when they were both appearing in a production called Blue Eyes. Together they lived and worked in New York and Hollywood, and welcomed the arrival of their daughter Valeria who by 1927 was four years old. However, by all accounts the marriage was not a happy one, and this was confirmed by Mackaye herself who later declared: “I know it’s not right for me to say, but he was unkind to me. He was always accusing me about Paul Kelly, but his accusations were untrue.”
The accusations involving the actor stemmed from a friendship they had began in New York long before Dorothy had met Raymond. The two had kept in touch for many years, but while she claimed it was purely platonic, Raymond was convinced she was having a passionate affair and forbade his wife from seeing the actor any more. He was shocked by her response, however, when not only did Dorothy refuse to give up her friendship, but also blatantly continued seeing him in the full knowledge of her husband. “Paul was my friend,” she later told police. “Our friendship was so clean, lovely and beautiful that I didn’t want to give him up.”
This refusal to cool her association with Kelly (which she described as “a sort of sisterly love”) did not go down well with Raymond, particularly when it was rumoured that the actor had asked Dorothy to divorce her husband and marry him instead. Mackaye later laughed off the whispers by declaring that if there had been any talk of marriage with Kelly, it was purely a joke, although she did admit that her marriage to Raymond had been under strain but that they had been unable to divorce because of financial problems.
While Dorothy dismissed any marriage talk between Kelly and herself as a joke, Ray Raymond did not see the funny side. Once again he told Dorothy that under no circumstances must she ever see him again, though in the end this seems to have been a great mistake, because instead of deterring her, it only succeeded in making Mackaye even more determined to keep the relationship going. If she enjoyed humiliating her stressed husband in a very public way, she was certainly making a good job of it.
Although Dorothy later claimed that she and Kelly would always have chaperones when together, it was obvious to everyone that the two were spending more than enough time alone, going on motorcycle rides together, visiting his apartment and attending parties. One of the said parties was actually at her marital home on Holly Drive, where Raymond became so angry to see Paul Kelly there that he threw him out in front of the other guests. “He took a violent dislike to Kelly from the start . . . He was so silly, ridiculous and absurd about our friendship, and insanely jealous,” Mackaye later said.
Raymond obviously had a temper and a drink problem to go with it – Mackaye’s flaunting her “friendship” with Kelly was like playing with fire. “He wasn’t in his right mind,” Dorothy later said, which made her decision to keep the relationship with Kelly going in such a high-profile way even more questionable. But go on she did, and several months before the fateful last encounter between the two men, Paul Kelly was at the house when Raymond unexpectedly came home. Disturbed and furious to find his love rival sitting in his own living room, the upset man took no time in throwing out the young actor once again.
“I know exactly what your problem is,” Kelly shouted at his rival as he hit the sidewalk. “You think I’m in love with your wife.”
“That is exactly the reason,” replied an angry Raymond, to which Kelly boldly said: “Well, you’re exactly right.”
This information did not sit well with Raymond, though at this point Dorothy was still denying to everyone that the pair were anything but good friends. Still, Raymond and his wife continued to live together and even moved house, this time to 2261 Cheremoya Avenue, Los Angeles, before Raymond went on tour with his play, Castles in the Air. This, of course, left Dorothy free to conduct her “friendship” with Kelly and the family maid later said that the actor was often at the house during parties and on his own in the company of Mackaye.
Whether or not Raymond knew anything about these get-togethers is not known but what is certain is that at the time he returned to Hollywood on 15 April 1927, he was still convinced his wife was in love with Paul Kelly and had begun to share his suspicions with friends. On the afternoon of his coming back from tour, there was an obvious strain between the couple and Raymond was in no mood for talking. Instead, he spent time drinking heavily before dramatically breaking a glass over his head, cutting his scalp in the process. He then left the house in a state of despair.
The next day, Dorothy Mackaye visited Paul Kelly and apparently told him that his love rival was spreading rumours about their affair all over town. Furious, Kelly telephoned Raymond to demand if it was true.
“I understand you have been saying things about me,” he said.
“You’re damn right I have and I wish you were here now so that I could give you what you deserve,” Raymond screamed into the telephone.
“I’ll be right over,” Kelly boldly told him. Leaving Dorothy in his apartment, Paul Kelly arrived at the Cheremoya house around 7 p.m. Once there, he was greeted by the family maid, Ethel Lee, and asked her to go and get Raymond so that they could talk. The concerned maid immediately smelled trouble and relayed a message that if he wanted to see Raymond, he must enter the home himself, which Kelly did. He sat down next to the man in the dining room in order to have it out with him once and for all.
“What do you mean by talking about me?” Kelly asked, to which Raymond replied once again that he knew the actor had feelings for his wife. In scenes that could have come straight from a 1920s movie, the six-foot tall Kelly then punched Raymond on the jaw before challenging him to a fight. The smaller man refused the offer, saying, “No, I have just spent twenty-four hours on a train and I’m tired out. I’m in no condition to fight.”
“You’re not tired, just yellow clear through,” replied Kelly, before Raymond then changed the subject and began questioning the actor on the whereabouts of Dorothy Mackaye. The official line was that the actress was out shopping for Easter eggs and visiting her dressmaker, but Raymond was in no position to believe this.
“I don’t know where she is,” lied Kelly.
“Yes, you do,” answered Raymond, and at this point Kelly leaned over and struck the singer on the jaw once again. He then calmly got up and went to the kitchen where he proceeded to ask the maid for a cigarette. Raymond followed him, screaming, “I’ll get you! I’ll get you!” before Kelly turned and hit him several times.
According to the maid, Ethel, Raymond begged Kelly to stop, saying that he was a sick man and wasn’t fit to fight as he had been drinking.
“That’s just your alibi,” shouted the actor and, according to Ethel, it was at this point that Paul Kelly really started to beat his rival severely, knocking him down several times in the process. “Mr Raymond got up and Kelly grabbed him and put one hand behind his neck and beat him with the other,” the maid later explained. “He then threw him on the couch and he fell to the floor.”
Watching from the door was Raymond’s four-year-old daughter Valeria, who shouted for her dad to come to her. “Poor little Valeria wept and wept,” the maid later told police. “The poor little thing was frightened to death by the noise.”
Despite being totally aware that there was a child in the house, Kelly continued the beating and he ignored Ethel’s cries for him to stop. “Raymond’s face was cut and bleeding,” the maid later described. While Mackaye’s husband did try desperately to fight back he was no match for the younger Paul Kelly and finally, after taking a blow to his left eye, the singer fell on to a table, while Kelly hit him again and again until he was forced to the floor. Once there, the ailing man put both hands to his bloodied face.
“Oh my God!” he sighed, as Ethel finally told Kelly to leave.
“You have done enough,” she said. “Go on home, this is his house.”
Kelly shook his head and then quite bizarrely told the maid that he hadn’t believed it to be Raymond’s house. It was only after Ethel explained that Raymond was the one paying the rent that Kelly seemed to pull himself together and apologized to his adversary.
“Will you shake hands with me, Ray?” Kelly asked. The singer understandably refused and ordered him out of the house. “I turned around and took my hat and got in the car and went home,” Kelly later said.
The shocked maid helped her boss up and took him to the bathroom where she put a wet towel on his head and tried to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, Kelly went back to his apartment, although it is claimed that Dorothy had left by then. She arrived back at her own house around 9 p.m., accompanied by her friend, Helen Wilkinson. By this time Ray Raymond was wearing dark glasses and tried to brush off the whole, humiliating episode, but the same cannot be said for four-year-old Valeria, who was visibly upset by the scene she had witnessed that afternoon. “I picked her up and comforted her,” Dorothy later told the court.
Dorothy stayed at the house for an hour or so before heading back out to see Paul Kelly and get his version of what had gone on that afternoon. She returned at midnight to find that Valeria had cried herself to sleep and Raymond was still in great pain from his beating. He eventually went to bed at 1 a.m. but by 3 a.m. he was up and, according to Ethel Lee, he seemed disorientated, “as he didn’t seem able to see and had his hands out as though he were feeling his way”.
Then by 7 a.m. the next morning, the severity of Raymond’s injuries were becoming more pronounced when he collapsed on the bedroom floor and bent double with the pain before finally falling into a coma. Dorothy was witness to this disturbing scene and screamed for Ethel, who came running into the room and was shocked by what she found.
There was Raymond, lying on the floor, frothing at the mouth and shaking all over. The maid tried desperately to wake him up but it was no use. “I knew he was unconscious,” she later said, and she helped Dorothy put him back on to the bed before running to call a doctor.
When Dr W. J. Sullivan eventually came to the house, he saw straight away that the man was in a serious condition.
“What happened to him?” he asked Dorothy.
“He’s been drinking heavily and was in a fight.”
“With who?” asked the doctor.
“I don’t know,” lied Dorothy.
The actress requested that Dr Sullivan look after the patient at home, but he could see that this was not a possibility. Despite Mackaye’s protests, Ray Raymond was taken to hospital where it was hoped he would eventually recover. According to Dorothy, later that day she visited Paul Kelly at his apartment on North Gower Street in order to “bawl him out” over the beating he had given her husband.
“He said he was terribly, terribly sorry. I told him that could not make amends, that he shouldn’t be so hot-tempered.” Interestingly, when later questioned by the court, Paul Kelly denied all knowledge of having any visits from Mackaye after the fight, and maid Ethel Lee further confused proceedings by claiming that Kelly had actually visited the Raymond household after the singer had been taken to hospital. There, according to Ethel, Kelly, Mackaye and Helen Wilkinson all had dinner together.
Meanwhile, Ray Raymond’s condition became worse and worse until finally, on 19 April, the singer sadly passed away. It was at this point that things became even hazier than they already were. Despite Raymond being beaten to a pulp, his doctor, Dr W. J. Sullivan, quickly declared that the death was natural, caused by “nephritic coma as a condition of neuritis”. Dorothy Mackaye was right there to uphold his decision, saying “I have absolute faith in Dr Sullivan’s statement that Ray’s death was due to natural causes. He hadn’t been well for some time and we had been afraid of a nervous breakdown.” A funeral was quickly arranged and things were all going rather smoothly until Coroner Nance got wind that something was going on.
Up until that point, Nance had no idea that the singer had even died, and it was not until newspaper reporters began knocking on his door that he eventually found out. Not happy with the decision that the death was “natural”, Nance ordered the body to be removed from the undertakers immediately, and an autopsy was performed which revealed that Raymond had actually died as a result of a brain haemorrhage.
The police then heard that Kelly had fought with the singer shortly before his death, and so travelled to his home in order to arrest the actor on suspicion of causing Raymond’s death. The previously tough man actually swooned on being told of his arrest, before being hauled off to face questioning and being held on suspicion of murdering his love rival. Strangely, Kelly then stifled a sob before smiling and telling officers, “Gee, I hope I can have somebody come and visit me. This is the first time I’ve ever been in the jug.”
This attitude did not impress officers, who were sure the death was unnecessary and had been caused by a cad who was trying to seduce an innocent man’s wife. Meanwhile, an inquest began which did not go well for Dorothy when she claimed that under no circumstances did four-year-old Valeria see the fight, before bizarrely adding – as if to make everything okay – that in any case, the child had always been keener on her than on Raymond.
This won the woman no fans, especially when Ethel Lee stood up to tell the court that, “The baby was crazy about her father. I have never seen a more beautiful affection between father and child.” The maid also said that her boss had been a punching bag for the much stronger Kelly and disputed Dorothy’s claims that the child had not seen the beating. She told the court that Valeria had said, “Kelly’s a bad man to hit my daddy,” and broke her heart crying for at least an hour afterwards.
Dorothy Mackaye tried to repair the damage by sending a telegram to her mother-in-law, Lottie Cedarbloom, offering to fly her from New York to Hollywood for the funeral. However, this ultimately backfired when reporters became inspired to track down not only Mackaye’s mother-in-law, but also Matt Kelly, Paul’s brother, who just happened to be a police lieutenant based at the Forty-First Precinct in Brooklyn. He told reporters that Kelly had always been a wild kid, while Cedarbloom declared that she just could not understand anything about the episode at all. “Dorothy and Ray were always so happy . . . I never heard of this Paul Kelly; they never mentioned him here.”
Meanwhile, the newspaper columnists showed no concern for either Kelly or Mackaye and proceeded to tear them to pieces, much to the embarrassment of both. They were amused that while Paul had declared Raymond “yellow” when he wouldn’t fight, he had cried like a baby and collapsed when locked in a cell; they also poked fun at Mackaye for saving a fainting spell until she just happened to be in front of the world’s press.
The inquest into the passing of Ray Raymond was quickly wrapped up, and the reason for his death explained as hypostatic pneumonia following an extensive brain haemorrhage with acute alcoholism being a contributory factor. The overall conclusion was that Paul Kelly was most certainly responsible for the man’s death: “This is the most brutal [murder] that has ever come under my notice as Coroner of Los Angeles county,” Coroner Nance told reporters. “The evidence shows that Kelly is devoid of all sense of decency and ethics.”
Another interesting development came when Nance added, “I am also informed that Mrs Raymond was in Kelly’s apartment when he left his home for the purpose of going to her home to beat up Raymond,” before adding that it was his belief that she had influenced Kelly’s decision to beat up her ailing husband. Not only that, but he also added his belief that despite claims to the contrary, when Kelly had returned to his apartment after the fatal beating, the besotted Mackaye had been waiting for him.
Questions arose about the credibility of Raymond’s doctor, W. J. Sullivan, who had attended the patient and declared his death “natural” despite the fact that the man had quite obviously sustained a terrible attack. The coroner was keen to know if Dorothy had promised to pay him well if he could ensure there was no publicity surrounding the death.
“Absolutely not,” replied Dr Sullivan.
“How much did you receive for your services?” asked the coroner.
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Do you think five hundred dollars’ worth of services were rendered?” asked the coroner.
“Yes, sir,” replied Dr Sullivan.
The coroner was not quite convinced, however, and asked the doctor if he thought that sum of money was perhaps an unusual charge. The doctor then argued that he had received more in other cases, and that at no time did he cover anything up, and was offered no extra money by Dorothy Mackaye in an attempt to falsify the death certificate. The doctor was adamant that what he was saying was correct, but Coroner Nance was not so sure.
His suspicions became even more profound when it was discovered that when the doctor visited Deputy Coroner Frank H. Schoeffle, he had not told him that Raymond had been in a fight and instead claimed during the autopsy that the bruises present must have been caused by a fall when he was drunk. This had been an unusual move on the part of the doctor and one that raised concerns throughout the department. Further concerns came when stories reached the coroner that before the department had heard of Raymond’s death, Mackaye had busied herself trying to organize a quick cremation in order to destroy the evidence forever.
Nance was horrified that such a cover-up was going on right in front of his nose and ordered a thorough investigation into the entire matter, stating, “I am satisfied that Dr Sullivan has not given us all of the facts of the case and appropriate steps will be taken.” The media were quick to declare that Paul Kelly, Dorothy Mackaye and the doctor were all involved in something rather distasteful, and rushed to the home of Dr Sullivan for an explanation. However, if they thought he would admit any wrongdoing, they were mistaken.
“Everything and every phase of the case was above board,” he told them. “There was absolutely nothing to hide and nothing was hidden.”
Dorothy Mackaye, meanwhile, was too ill to attend the inquest or make any statements to the police. Instead, she stayed at home with her best friend, Helen Wilkinson; they were both said to be so upset over the death of Ray Raymond that they were under the care of a doctor and on constant medication. With Mackaye’s father by her bedside and friends declaring she had suffered a nervous breakdown, she made sure the media knew she was in no condition to comment about the case. But if the woman believed that by feigning illness she could just fade into the background, she was very wrong. The shock announcement came that both she and Dr W. G. Sullivan were being indicted as “accessories after the fact”. Not only that, but the police believed that both she and the doctor had been paid by Paul Kelly himself to keep quiet about what he had done to the singer, and that Dorothy was even at Kelly’s apartment at the time Raymond eventually died, drinking gin with her lover.
This announcement caused a sensation in the media, especially when Raymond’s mother seemed to agree that Mackaye was in some way responsible for what had happened the week before. “Dorothy could have prevented the fight that took my son’s life,” Mrs Cedarbloom declared. “I feel that she didn’t do it.”
The grieving woman then travelled to her son’s former home – where he had been beaten just days before – and had a meeting with her daughter-in-law. The official reason for her attendance was to discuss funeral plans, and later Mrs Cedarbloom denied that there had been any talk about the circumstances surrounding her son’s death. A statement from Mackaye’s nurse, declaring that the woman was in a state of utter collapse after the meeting and surrounded by doctors, seemed to suggest otherwise.
The animosity between the pair became evident a few days later at the funeral of Ray Raymond, which took place at Forest Lawn on 26 April and was attended by both women. At no time did either of the two even look in the other’s direction, and each caused a sensation when they collapsed at separate times, weeping loudly and becoming hysterical after viewing the body.
The rumours of Mackaye’s whereabouts during the beating, coupled with gossip about her affair with Kelly, were so humiliating for the actress that she decided to release an official statement once and for all, through her attorney, Roger Marchetti. In the speech he denied that his client had been drinking gin fizzes with Paul Kelly as her husband lay dying, and that:
“She will not try to delay her case in the least and if anything, will insist upon an immediate trial to prove her innocence of the charges against her.” The attorney then added that all his client was asking for was fair play, and that the public should withhold any judgement “until she can tell her side of the story and deny all these false accusations.”
He then went on to say that Mackaye had not been at all well and that, “Mrs Raymond’s prominence on the stage has made her the unmerciful victim of a lot of things which would not have been discussed had she been an ordinary person.”
The cases against Kelly, Mackaye and Sullivan were all being prepared when suddenly a new twist occurred as two witnesses came forward to tell their version of the death of Ray Raymond. Mr and Mrs Perry Askom – friends and colleagues of the deceased – told police that on the day of the beating they had called in to see Raymond and were shocked to discover that the man had been physically assaulted.
“Raymond told me that Kelly came over and beat him up and that he never had a chance,” Mr Askom told police, before adding that Mackaye had arrived home right before they were about to leave, saying she had been to the dressmaker, drinking gin and was in a “pugnacious mood”. At that point, as if to predict his fate, the singer had turned to Askom and said, “Take me home with you, Perry. I’m all washed up.”
By the time the trial of Paul Kelly began, the press, the public and friends and family of Ray Raymond were on tenterhooks. The first day got off slowly, with Kelly’s attorney announcing that anyone hoping for scandal was in for a great disappointment. “The trial will turn out to be very humdrum,” he announced, though anyone who saw Dorothy Mackaye pass by the back of her lover and touch him gently on the shoulder would not have been so sure.
The next day things became even less humdrum when the jurors and Kelly himself were escorted to 2261 Cheremoya Avenue where the scene of the crime took place. Kelly was visibly uneasy at being back in the house, silently following the jurors from room to room, with who-knows-what going on in his mind. At one point he encountered the maid Ethel Lee with the family dog, although his attempts to speak to her were thwarted when he was moved on by his accompanying attorney. By the time he left, spectators outside described him as “pale” and “glad to be out” as he was led back into the waiting police car.
Back in the courtroom, Wagner, the surgeon who had performed the autopsy on the body of Ray Raymond, was called to the stand. There he gave the crushing evidence that not only did he see two injuries on the victim’s forehead, but also a black eye, a haemorrhage on the left side of his head and bruises all over his right shoulder, left arm, legs and chest. Gasps were heard when it was also declared that he had found both fractured and cracked ribs on the body, and the defence shuffled uncomfortably when the doctor proclaimed that the bruises and broken ribs could have been caused by crashing blows or kicks.
Questioning the doctor, Kelly’s attorneys tried to determine whether the cause of death could in fact have just been Raymond’s apparent alcoholism and, in particular, a problem with his heart.
“No,” replied the doctor. “His heart and other organs were normal, with the exception of the kidneys which were fatty.”
The defence team, however, were not prepared to accept that Kelly had been in any way responsible for the singer’s death, and in their jury statement declared, “There was no murderous assault and young Kelly struck him just enough to end things and then went on his way. No blows were struck sufficient to produce death and Kelly used no more force than was necessary.”
Still, in spite of the defence team’s efforts, it became more and more apparent as the days went on that Kelly was not the innocent young man they were trying to portray him to be. Despite Mackaye’s denial of an affair, love letters between the actor and herself were reported to be in the hands of the district attorney and whispers that the two had been conducting a passionate affair were flying around the media. Things were made no better when Ethel Lee took to the stand and said once again that when Raymond was out of town, Kelly was often at the house, and that if Mackaye ever failed to come home from work, she could always be found by telephoning Kelly’s apartment.
The defence team were incensed that such information had come to light, and Kelly blushed and sweated his way through the damning evidence, while women in the gallery were seen dramatically wiping tears from their faces.
“How many times did she fail to come home at all during Raymond’s absence with his theatrical company?” the maid was asked.
“There were many times,” she replied, before adding that even when her employer did come home, it was almost always in the company of Paul Kelly. Furthermore, on the evening of the fight, just prior to Kelly’s arrival at the house, she had seen Raymond crying and his daughter was sitting next to him, wiping tears from his eyes with her handkerchief. “He appeared mentally ill,” she said.
Excitement came to the courtroom when Dorothy Mackaye took to the stand and explained that on the afternoon of 16 April, she had indeed been at Paul Kelly’s apartment, but she had not been alone. Instead, she said, she was with her friend Helen Wilkinson and Kelly’s flatmate, Max Wagner. They spent time together and enjoyed drinking gin and water before Kelly made a phone call and then left for an appointment.
“Isn’t it a fact that you knew Kelly was going over to your place?” she was asked.
“No sir. The first thing I knew that he had had a telephone conversation with anyone was when Miss Wilkinson told me she thought she had heard him mention Ray’s name. I said to her, ‘You’re silly.’”
Interestingly, Mackaye admitted that Wilkinson had jokingly told Kelly that Raymond wished to see the actor, though she was adamant that the whole thing had been said in jest and that Kelly did not really believe it to be so. However, she did admit to speaking about her husband with Kelly that day, telling him that things were “the same as usual” and that they had agreed to separate, but she denied that he had become angry with anything she had told him.
“Mr Kelly never discussed my husband or my affairs in the presence of others or my friends,” she answered, clearly irritated, even though she had just described that they had been discussing her marriage in front of Helen Wilkinson. She then denied that she had waited for Kelly to come home from his “appointment”, saying that she and Helen Wilkinson had instead gone shopping for Easter eggs before heading back to the Raymond family home.
Then came a bombshell, when love letters between Kelly and Mackaye were presented to the court. Despite Dorothy’s claims that the two were just friends, the letters showed that Kelly’s version of events was closer to the truth. In several letters Paul told the actress that he loved her, while in others he remarked how much he missed her, how he was miserable without her and how he was being awful to everyone because all he could think about was her. “I thought I’d die,” he dramatically declared. Meanwhile other letters were disclosed: “Darling Mine,” began one, while another included a row of kisses and a note which said, “Count them and that’s not enough.” Dorothy had responded during a trip to San Francisco with a wire which read, “Crazy to get home, our home. Love and everything that goes with it.” And she signed it Mrs K.
The love between the two was further proven when Kelly’s “house boy”, Yobu, confirmed to the court that there were frequent visits by Mackaye to the house, and that the two shared a “love language” that he had been unable to understand. Gasps were heard when he then described taking water to the couple in Kelly’s bedroom, and confirming that Mackaye had stayed overnight on several occasions.
Then it was time for Kelly to take the stand, which he did with great fanfare in the newspapers. During the testimony it became clear that Paul Kelly truly believed he had been provoked by the drunk Raymond, who was described as the aggressor and the one eager to fight. Kelly did admit, however, that he had swung the first punch. “He said, ‘Where is my wife? You ought to know, she has been living with you.’ I slapped him in the mouth. I said, ‘That is a nice way to talk about your wife, isn’t it?’” He then went on to explain how he had asked for the child to be taken out of the room, and had refused an invitation from Raymond to come back to the house later on, for fear that he planned to get friends to come there and beat him up.
The trial of Paul Kelly continued in a rambling way, with testimony repeated and incidents described time and time again. Even the newspapers grew tired of the case and started filling their columns with comment about Kelly’s lawyer falling asleep, lady flappers in the audience who were giving the accused “the eye” and popping chewing-gum bubbles in his direction.
Finally, however, the case was wrapped up and it was time for the jury to give its verdict. Kelly was found guilty of causing the death of Ray Raymond, though he quickly announced that an appeal would be made. Meanwhile, the trial of Dorothy Mackaye began, though that too followed the route of the Kelly trial, with an added element of drama when she announced that she had reconciled with her husband on his deathbed.
Eventually Mackaye was found guilty of concealing the facts after her husband’s death and the case against Dr Walter J. Sullivan was dropped for lack of evidence. The actress announced that she would appeal, though in the end both she and Kelly resigned themselves to their fate and lived out their sentences quietly at San Quentin Prison. In January 1929, Dorothy was released from prison. On her departure, she spoke to reporters and declared, “I’m leaving immediately for Denver to look after my baby daughter. I bear no ill will to anyone but I am determined to clear my name of the stigma that has been attached to it since the death of my husband of which I am, and Paul Kelly is, innocent.”
Meanwhile, Kelly followed just seven months later and said, “I’m going straight to New York. I’m headed straight for the comeback trail. I’ve got a job with the New Century Play Company and I’m going to hit it hard.”
For the next few years, both Kelly and Mackaye declined to speak about each other in the press, though by January 1931 they could hide their love no longer. The two were rumoured to be very much together and finally in February of that year they were married. Quite amazingly, Kelly then successfully adopted Valeria, Dorothy’s daughter by the man her new husband had slain just a few years before. He then concentrated on his acting career while his wife wrote a play about her experiences in prison, which became a 1933 film entitled Ladies They Talk About, starring Barbara Stanwyck.
Dorothy Mackaye then decided to leave her Hollywood days behind in order to concentrate on being a mother. This seems to have been a decision she had come to back in 1927, just after the tragedy had unfolded. At the time she had announced, “I am willing to sacrifice everything for my daughter’s sake. There is no excuse whatsoever of my baby being dragged into this mess and I don’t want her ever to hear of the tragedy that has wrecked her home.”
With the hopes of a happy life in front of them, the new family moved to a ranch in the San Fernando Valley which they named “Kellymae”. Together they lived a quiet life away from the spotlight, although the marriage that Kelly had literally fought for lasted only nine years before disaster struck. On the evening of 2 January 1940, Dorothy was driving her car towards the ranch when she encountered another vehicle coming towards her. It was a foggy night and, as she swerved to miss the oncoming vehicle, Mackaye hit the edge of the pavement and her car overturned. Passers-by ran immediately to her aid and the former actress was able to drag herself from the vehicle. She was taken home by a neighbour.
While it seemed that initially she was going to be okay, the day after the accident she began to feel unwell and was taken to hospital, where the doctors predicted her injuries were not life-threatening. Sadly they were wrong, as internally there were problems with Dorothy’s bladder and on 5 January 1940, after speaking breezily to her husband and doctor, it ruptured and the former actress collapsed and died, leaving Paul Kelly absolutely devastated.
After the initial period of bereavement, Paul Kelly returned to New York where he starred in several plays such as Country Girl, Command Decision and Bad Girl. He also met a former actress called Zona Mardelle and together they moved to California, where they made their home at 1448 Club View Drive, Los Angeles. It was here, on 6 November 1956, that the actor collapsed and died suddenly, shortly after returning from casting his vote in the 1956 presidential election. He was fifty-seven years old.
The story of Paul Kelly and Dorothy Mackaye is one of scandal, intrigue, murder and love but, above all, tragedy. A man died in order for them to be together, but in the end it was something as simple as a car journey that would keep them apart forever. Was it karma that made sure they were never able to live out their lives happily together, or just a tragic case of coincidence? Alas, we will never know for sure.