EVELYN NESBIT - THE GIRL IN THE RED VELVET SWING - JOAN COLLINS as EVELYN NESBIT

If curious, you can check YouTube for the film, which is very dated.

This is one of the promotional posters.

The film also came out on DVD via

Twentieth Century Fox DVD Restored film Cinema Classics Collection in 1995. 

 

EVELYN NESBIT was her name, and STANFORD WHITE, an elite architect based in New York was her keeper.  A Pittsburgh millionaire named Harry K. Thaw became her husband,  Thaw was a man who thought that marrying the girl who had once supported herself and her family by posing for artists in the era of the Gibson Girl, and who had been a Mistress, would mean that she was forever more all his.  His jealousy erupted one night in a dinner theatre and he shot and killed White.  His wealthy family hired the best lawyers and got him out of serving a murder's sentence by using the insanity plea.  EVELYN NESBIT might have become notorious for her youth and beauty and artist's posing, for going into the special room that White had designed for his pleasure, where she sat on a red velvet swing hung from the ceiling nude, and swang back and forth on it, but her testimony at the trial was like her third strike of notoriety.