Getting schooled by Smithee

Oh, Glorious Smithee! I teach a day of dramatics at a middle school and want to thank you for your insightful stories, comments and lists that educate and entertain. I use your column to help teach my class.

My students love your stories, especially the one that has come to be known in my class as "The Girl Who Took a Header Off the Hollywood Sign."

The kids yearn each week for another Hollywood story. Could you accommodate?

MICHAEL J. COPPOLA, PALM SPRINGS, FLA.

Oh, Officious Orator: I already knew I was a giver. But I had not yet envisioned myself as the chronicler of school curriculum. Safe to say, I could always use another stipend. So thank you. I'll be checking the mail for checks from a return address in Palm Springs. Here's your next lesson plan (read it aloud with verve to the almost-wee ones):

Dear Poppets,

Once upon a time, in the hallowed history of Hollywood, way back in the dark days when people led pitiful lives without iPods and Guitar Hero, there was a healthy Irishman named William Desmond Taylor.

Notable movie director John Ford's "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" touted, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

So here's the legend of William Desmond Taylor:

Around 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 2, 1922, Taylor's valet Henry Peavey arrived at the filmmaker's upscale Alvarado Court bungalow with a bottle of Milk of Magnesia (it is a substance that, let's be honest here, helps one discharge poo; Taylor had requested it).

Upon entering the bungalow, Peavey let out a frightening scream.

There on the floor was a fully clothed 49-year-old Taylor, his leg straddling a chair. He had been shot once in the back the previous night and was as concrete dead as "The Sixth Sense" kid's career is today.

Hollywood, being the upstanding entity it is, sought to quash any overt media rumblings in the Taylor case. Studio execs reportedly ordered the mess cleaned up before police arrived. Someone lifted potentially scandalous letters from the home.

Taylor was known to be a leader in Hollywood's antidrug movement (several stars were becoming involved in mind-altering substances; one, the well-known Mabel Normand, had been helped by Taylor and was one of the last people to see him alive) and that could have brought him enemies. There was a quite-young starlet aggressively pursuing him, which apparently made her mother not too happy. Some of his staff had had previous run-ins with the law.

In other words, there were potential suspects, but the case was never solved.

In 1964, former silent film star Patricia Palmer (aka Ella Margaret Gibson), who was not among any of the original potential suspects, confessed on her deathbed after a heart attack that she had been involved in Taylor's murder.

A film about the Taylor case, titled "Silent Star," was to be made by director Kimberly Peirce ("Boys Don't Cry" and the new "Stop-Loss" opening March 28).

So consider that film kaput for now.

ALAN

P.S. You get a "10,000 B.C." T-shirt and an "Ask Alan Smithee" T-shirt.

Hardly legendary Dear Mr. Smithee: Might I suggest, under the category of "Robbed of an Oscar: the '90s," Anthony Hopkins in "Legends of the Fall"?

DON MAESS, BEAVERCREEK, OHIO

ALAN

P.S. You get a "Bee Movie" bee and an "Ask Alan Smithee" T-shirt.