The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals (8 page)

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.”