Free The Mammoth Book of Hollywood Scandals by Michelle Morgan

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