Estelle Taylor

Who was Estelle Taylor?

Estelle Taylor was an American Hollywood actress whose career was most prominent during the silent film era of the 1920s.

Born Ida Estelle Taylor to a Jewish family in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Harry D Taylor and Ida LaBertha Taylor, Estelle married three times. Her first husband was banker Kenneth Malcolm Peacock, her second husband was "Jack" Dempsey, the world heavyweight boxing champion, and her third husband was a theatrical producer, Paul Smith. She had no children.

After relocating to Hollywood, she began taking bit parts in films. One of Taylor's earliest successes was in 1920 in Fox's While New York Sleeps with Marc McDermott. She and McDermott play three sets of characters in different time periods. This film was lost for decades, but has been recently discovered and screened at a film festival in Los Angeles. Taylor is possibly best recalled for her roles in the 1922 drama Monte Cristo, opposite John Gilbert; the enormously successful 1923 Cecil B. DeMille directed The Ten Commandments as Miriam, the sister of Moses; as Lucrezia Borgia in the 1926 Warner Bros.' first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical soundtrack Don Juan, with John Barrymore, Mary Astor and Warner Oland; 1927's New York, featuring Ricardo Cortez and Lois Wilson; 1931's Street Scene with Sylvia Sidney; the Academy Award-winning Cimarron; and the Clara Bow talkie Call Her Savage in 1932.