At his death in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1930 newspapers around the nation reported the passing of a man whose life sounded almost mythical. William H. Taylor, known in movie colony circles as “Billy the Scout,” had been reported age 103. He was said to have been a veteran of both the Civil War and the westward Indian campaigns and had been one of the oldest people associated with motion pictures in their earliest years. Taylor's life had spanned the bloody violence of the nineteenth century frontier and the development of the motion picture industry which would in turn dramatize that era.
By Allan R. Ellenberger
William "Billy the Scout" at 94 years of age
Taylor was born in Brownsville, Texas on July 9, 1827, when it was still considered the territory of Mexico. Taylor's parents and childhood are shrouded in mystery; so much of his past was unknown that friends conceded during his lifetime that much of his story was based on nothing more than the old scout's reminiscences of days on the frontier. It is known that Taylor grew up during the years where Texas and the surrounding territory was wild and lawless, consisting of little more than military forts, cattle drives, and conflict between settlers, soldiers, and Native Americans.
It is said that he began his military career in 1856 when he joined the United States Regular Army. He spent time with army units in the Southwest before the Civil War and fought in campaigns against the Indians living in the frontier areas. From these times, Taylor developed into one of the many plains' scouts portrayed in western lore.
When the Civil War erupted in 1861, Taylor cast his lot with the Confederacy. Contemporary accounts described him as serving in the Seventy-eighth Virginia Regiment under General George Pickett. After the collapse of the Confederacy, he returned to federal service, joining the United States Army during the long Indian campaigns that followed the Civil War. Newspapers later described him as a scout under General Nelson A. Miles during the conflicts with Plains tribes, including campaigns directed against the forces of Sitting Bull.
Taylor’s stories of these years made him something of a minor celebrity in later life. At a reunion of Indian War veterans held in Los Angeles, the aging scout entertained fellow soldiers with tales of the frontier and the cavalry. In one story he claimed that during the Civil War he and several companions had briefly captured a young cavalry officer named George Armstrong Custer in the Virginia woods. According to Taylor, they chose not to take the prisoner, and years later he found himself serving under the same officer as a dispatch rider during the Indian campaigns. Whether the story was embroidered by time or not, it became part of the legend surrounding the old scout.
By the closing years of the nineteenth century Taylor had drifted westward and eventually settled in Los Angeles. When the motion-picture industry began to flourish there in the early twentieth century, he found himself unexpectedly drawn into the new business. Around 1910, long past the age when most men retire, Taylor began working before the movie camera.
His appearance made him perfect for the burgeoning western film genre. With his long beard and weather-lined face, he embodied the image of the frontier scout. For roughly fifteen years he appeared in dozens of western pictures, usually as a white-bearded Indian fighter or plainsman. Though his roles were small and seldom credited, he became a familiar presence in the studios and among the cowboy performers who specialized in frontier dramas.
For a brief period, he even stepped behind the camera. A trade item from the period noted that veteran scout William H. Taylor had directed frontier scenes for Universal productions, and Morosco, drawing upon his own experiences of the West to stage realistic action sequences. The old plainsman thus became, however briefly, one of the earliest directors of western motion-picture scenes.
William H. Taylor (right) preparing to leave on a cross-country horseback ride.
Taylor also delighted in living the adventurous life that had defined his youth. In 1913, when he was eighty-six years old, newspapers reported that the former scout and soldier planned to leave Los Angeles on horseback and ride across the United States. The proposed journey—nearly three thousand miles—was to take him eastward through Denver and Kansas City on his way to Portland, Maine. Before he set out, he was given a reception at the Alexandria Hotel by the Los Angeles Rotary Club. Accompanied by two pack burros and his trusted saddle horse, the old frontiersman intended to lecture at local Universal theaters in towns along the way about the making of western films while promoting the pictures he had helped produce.
Taylor was a bachelor. “If I weren’t,” he once said with a chuckle, “I’d have been dead long ago.” Even as he approached his nineties, Taylor retained the vigor of a much younger man. A newspaper feature written when he was ninety-four described him as still hale and hearty, a capable horseman and dancer who credited his longevity to simple living and wholesome food. The only thing he claimed to fear, he joked, was ice cream served at the end of a heavy meal. Such indulgences, he insisted, were dangerous to a man who hoped to reach the extraordinary age of 135.
Taylor’s connection with Hollywood endured long after his days of active work before the camera. Until his 102nd birthday he continued to earn a modest living appearing as a scout in motion pictures or participating in prologue performances staged before western films. These elaborate presentations recreated frontier scenes for audiences and relied upon authentic figures like Taylor to lend them credibility.
Age eventually slowed the old veteran, though he remained a colorful figure within the film colony. In one curious episode reported late in his life, Taylor—then 103 years old—briefly came under court supervision after authorities determined he needed assistance managing the $1,370 he had saved in a local bank. Even so, friends remarked that he remained physically robust and mentally alert despite the extraordinary span of his years.
William H. Taylor at 100 years old
Taylor’s final illness came late in 1930. He was admitted to St. Erne’s Sanitarium in Los Angeles, where physicians diagnosed lobar pneumonia with senile dementia as a contributing factor. The old scout died there at 3:30 a.m. on December 25, 1930. His age was 103.
News of his passing was widely reported. Headlines described him as “Billy the Scout,” the Civil War veteran and Indian fighter who had later become a bit player in western films. To Hollywood’s early pioneers he represented a living relic of the frontier whose stories had inspired the very films that made the West legendary.
Funeral services were conducted on December 29, 1930, under the auspices of the Indian War Veterans and the Motion Picture Relief Fund. The ceremony took place at LeRoy Bagley Mortuary on Hollywood Boulevard, attended by friends from the motion-picture community and fellow veterans who had known him during the final years of his life.
He was buried soon afterward in Hollywood Cemetery in Section 20B, Grave 393, in an unmarked grave, among the early pioneers of the film industry whose stories he had helped bring to life on the screen.
The white arrow shows the general location of William H. Taylors unmarked grave, next to the original Beth Olam Mausoleum
William H. Taylor’s life defies easy categorization. Born when Texas was still a Mexican territory, he lived through the Civil War, the closing of the frontier, and the birth of Hollywood. His stories—part history, part legend—linked the raw realities of nineteenth-century warfare with the mythic West recreated in silent films.
By the time of his death, the cavalry scouts and frontier fighters of his youth had already become figures of folklore. Yet in the studios of early Hollywood, where cowboys rode before painted backdrops and legends were recreated for the camera, Billy the Scout had once been there to say he remembered when it was all real.
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