Taylor was known for her dark features and for the sensuality she brought to the films in which she appeared. Journalist Erskine Johnson considered her "the screen's No. 1 oomph girl of the 20's." For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Estelle Taylor was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
Taylor was born Ida Estelle Taylor to a Jewish family in Wilmington, Delaware. Her father, Harry D. Taylor (born 1871), was born in Delaware. Her mother, Ida LaBertha Barrett (1874–1965), was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, and later worked as a freelance makeup Artist. Harry and Ida divorced in 1903, and Ida later married vaudevillian Harry J. Boylan, Estelle's stepfather. Estelle's sister, Helen Taylor (1898–1990), was cast in supporting roles in a few silent films of the 1920s.
Taylor married three times. Her first husband was banker Kenneth Malcolm Peacock, or Pencock, who she married in 1911. She separated from him in order to pursue her acting career in New York. She was finally divorced in January 1925, before marrying her second husband "Jack" Dempsey, the world heavyweight boxing champion.
After her stage debut in 1919, Taylor began appearing in small roles in World and Vitagraph films. She achieved her first notable success with While New York Sleeps (1920), in which she played three different roles, including a "vamp." She was a contract player of Fox Film Corporation and, later, Paramount Pictures, but for the most part of her career she freelanced. She became famous and was commended by critics for her portrayals of historical women in important films: Miriam in The Ten Commandments (1923), Mary, Queen of Scots in Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), and Lucrezia Borgia in Don Juan (1926).
She made her stage début in the musical Come On, Charlie. 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.
She starred opposite John Gilbert in Monte Cristo (1922); the New York Herald critic wrote that "Miss Taylor was as effective in the revenge section of the film as she was in the first or love part of the screened play. Here is a class of face that can stand a close-up without becoming a mere speechless automaton."
One of her most memorable roles is that of Miriam, the sister of Moses (portrayed by Theodore Roberts), in the biblical prologue of Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923), one of the most successful films of the silent era. Her performance in the DeMille film was considered a great acting achievement.
Despite being ill with arthritis, she won the supporting role of Mary, Queen of Scots in Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), starring Mary Pickford. "I've since wondered if my long illness did not, in some measure at least, make for realism in registering the suffering of the unhappy and tormented Scotch queen," she told a reporter in 1926.
She played Lucrezia Borgia in Don Juan (1926), Warner Bros.' first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical Soundtrack. The film also starred John Barrymore, Mary Astor and Warner Oland. Variety praised her characterization of Lucrezia: "The complete surprise is the performance of Estelle Taylor as Lucretia [sic] Borgia. Her Lucretia is a fine piece of work. She makes it sardonic in treatment, conveying precisely the woman Lucretia is presumed to have been."
She was to have co-starred in a film with Rudolph Valentino, but he died just before production was to begin. One of her last silent films was New York (1927), featuring Ricardo Cortez and Lois Wilson.
In 1928, she and husband Dempsey starred in a Broadway play titled The Big Fight, loosely based around Dempsey's boxing popularity, which ran for 31 performances at the Majestic Theatre.
She made a successful transition to sound films or "talkies." Her first sound film was the comical Sketch Pusher in the Face (1929). Notable sound films in which she appeared include Street Scene (1931), with Sylvia Sidney; the Academy Award for Best Picture-winning Cimarron (1931), with Richard Dix and Irene Dunne; and Call Her Savage (1932), with Clara Bow.
They lived in Los Feliz, Los Angeles. Her marriage to Dempsey ended in divorce in 1931. Her third husband was a theatrical Producer, Paul Small. Of her last husband and their marriage, she said: "We have been friends and Paul has managed my stage career for five years, so it seemed logical that marriage should work out for us, but I'm afraid I'll have to say that the reason it has not worked out is incompatibility." She had no children.
Although she made a successful transition to sound films, she retired from film acting in 1932 and decided to focus entirely on her singing career. She was also active in animal welfare before her death from cancer in 1958. She was posthumously honored in 1960 with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in the motion pictures category.
Taylor returned to films in 1944 with a small part in the Jean Renoir drama The Southerner (released in 1945), playing what Journalist Erskine Johnson described as "a bar fly with a roving eye. There's a big brawl and she starts throwing beer bottles." Johnson was delighted with Taylor's reappearance in the film industry: "[Interviewing] Estelle was a pleasant surprise. The lady is as beautiful and as vivacious as ever, with the curves still in the right places." The Southerner was her last film.
In her later years, Taylor devoted her free time to her pets and was the President and founder of the California Pet Owners' Protective League. In 1953, Taylor served on the City Animal Regulation Commission in Los Angeles, California.
Taylor died of cancer at her home in Los Angeles on April 15, 1958, at the age of 63. She was survived by her mother, Ida "Bertha" Barrett Boylan; her sister, Helen Taylor Clark; and a niece, Frances Iblings. She left an estate of more than $10,000, most of it to her family and $200 for the care and maintenance of her three dogs, which she left to friend Ella Mae Abrams. She was interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
