THE LASTING SCULPTURAL LEGACY OF AUDREY MUNSON "MISS MANHATTAN" in NEW YORK CITY

Two of the best YouTube videos about Audrey Munson I found, illustrating some of the sculptures she posed for. Additional information from the book by James Bone below.

 

This video is short but sweet. 

From the book here are the locations of some enduring pieces - a short list.

 A twenty five foot sculpture across from New York City Hall... It's the second tallest sculpture in New York city as the Statue of Liberty is first. It's on the Municipal Building.

The Pulitzer Fountain outside the Plaza Hotel near Central Park.

Arch at the end of the Manhattan Bride as "Spirit of Commerce"

Entrance of New York Public Library.

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AUDREY MUNSON : AN ATTEMPT TO BE ACCEPTED BY SOCIETY and MARRY A SILVER MINING HEIR GOES WRONG : THERE'S NO GOING FROM BOARDING HOUSE TO NEWPORT "COTTAGE"

Unlike the ever critical mother of Maria Callas, whom was our Mistress of the Month last month, Audrey Munson's divorced mother Kittie, seemed to not only depend on her, but appreciate her. Home from a day of holding poses, her muscle's stiff, Kittie would massage her daughter.  Kittie also went to work at poorly paying jobs to provide.  It would be Kittie, however, who determined that Audrey was not capable of dealing with the world and committed her to a mental hospital.

Kittie also took her daughter to Eliza the Gypsy Queen when she was a girl.  The Gypsy Queen seemed to be making a soothsaying tour at the time.  She told her:

"You shall be beloved and famous.  But when you think that happiness is yours, its Dead Sea fruit shall turn to ashes in your mouth.

You, who shall throw away thousands of dollars as a caprice, shall want for a penny. You, who shall mock at love, shall seek love without finding.

Seven men shall love you.  Seven times you shall be led by the man who loves you to the steps of the altar, but never shall you wed." (page 2)

So, after three silent films beginning in 1915 Hollywood, Inspiration, Purity, and Girl o' Dreams, after years of modeling for famous sculptures and photographers, Kittie was an early Hollywood film star with aspirations and already having spurned some of the men who had been interested in her.  The lack of publicity for the last film and what may have been a significant rip off by the film maker added to her stress. Mother and daughter moved to the beach community of Santa Barbara, where it was clear that daughter was supporting them both.  It was a time in which women still had a few years wait for the vote and bra's were being patented as liberating. Audrey was photographed wearing a man's one piece swim suit that was more revealing than what women wore into the ocean and seemed to be a spokeswoman for liberation. 

Around 1916, Audrey took the fifth man into her life and this time, though there had been speculations about her sexuality due to her nude modeling, this man probably was a lover. She wrote a semi fictional newspaper account of her love life and gave him the name Gordon, but other than that he was a "movie director" and an older man, not much is really known about him.

Audrey moved to Newport, Rhode Island. If she was a Mistress, her involvement with a silver mining heir, Herman Oelrich Jr., whose mother, Tessie Oelrich, had been unusually accepted by society, though they were Catholics, may have been when. (Audrey had been raised nominally as a Catholic as her mother was of Irish Catholic ancestry.) Kittie Munson was very much one to promote the two of them had married - perhaps secretly.  While there seems to be no document that would prove a marriage, perhaps Kittie wanted to save Audrey's reputation. For on the 1930 and 1940 United States census, she is listed as Audrey M. Oelrich.

Though he did eventually marry, Herman was a lousy choice to be a husband.  He was violent and alcoholic and possible gay.

During this time, ripped off financially and rejected or unable to find a suitable mate, Audrey began to have the mental problems that were probably triggered by stress.

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DANCER

No that's not Audrey....

 

AUDREY MUNSON AS AN ARTIST'S MODEL : SHE SAW IT AS AN AUDIENCE OF ONE : ON SCULPTOR and EVEN A LADY LIBERTY COIN

Arnold Genthe - Photographer, Felix Benedict Herzog - sculptor, Isadore Konti - and so very many more.  Audrey saw her nude posing as for an audience of one.  She was paid about fifty cents an hour. 

Using the Inflation Calculator here: Fifteen cents in 1913 be about fifteen dollars an hour in 2024. (An unlivable wage.)

In this Rochester-made video it's noted that she was the model for over 100 statues exhibited in the 1915 World's Fair and a Lady Liberty coin.  (According to the book, she demurred and said she had been just one of the models for the coin.)

At the time Audrey's nude modeling was considered daring but not pornography.  She embodied the classic Greek and Roman notions of womanhood and femininity. She was never posed or enacted a sexual act. The term "supermodel" came decades later into pop culture, and today's models for photography and on runways rarely also pose as artist's models for sculpture. She is the model for many works of sculpture that endure today.  In 1915 at the World's Fair, sculptures of her were made just for the exhibition.

Audrey Munson was at the height of her fame after she made Hollywood history acting in a 1915 film called Purity.  It was after that film - she made two more - that she attempted to live separately of her mother and enter society, perhaps hoping for a suitable rich husband.

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AUDREY MUNSON : AMERICA'S FIRST "SUPERMODEL" : AN ALLEGED INVOLVEMENT WITH A MARRIED MEN LED TO HIS SUICIDE AND THE END OF HER CAREER and SANITY

AUDREY MUNSON

Audrie Marie Munson

1891-1996

I'm electing Audrey Munson, called "America's First Supermodel" to the Honorary Mistress of the Month pantheon here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, because she denied that she had an affair with a married man, but whatever the truth of it was, it ended her career after he, assumed to be love sick and mentally ill,  murdered his wife.  There was plenty of evidence that he did murder his wife, with seventeen blows to the head with a hammer, so the question is, was Audrey a victim of the sexism of the era and the press?

There is also the possibility that she was the mistress of a silver mining heir, one of the richest men in America, who was known to be alcoholic and abusive (and possibly gay, though he did eventually marry), Herman Oelrich Jr.  Audrey may have become pregnant by this man but whatever actually happened, her mother seemed to cover the adventure by declaring her as Audrey Oelrich on two United States census.

Audrey Munson never earned much money and she and her mother, Kittie, who was divorced, mostly lived in boarding houses. She was a chorus girl (called a chlorine) and made her Broadway debut before the age of 18. And she was supposed to have been "discovered" while walking down the street. America's first supermodel made about fifty cents an hour or thirty dollars a week. A loaf of bread was about a nickel but this was just enough for the daughter-mother duo to pay their rent. They were living in one that Doctor Walter Wilkins owned when the murder occurred. 

Perhaps the doctor's motive was to get rid of his wife because she was an obstacle to marrying Audrey. Audrey and her mother moved out and went to take care of business in Canada, behavior that they justified but which was considered suspicious. He denied any involvement with her. She declined to testify against him.

Doctor Wilkens commit suicide by hanging himself while awaiting the electric chair. 

Eventually Audrey herself was committed to a mental institution by her mother and lingered there for sixty-five years. However, her mental or emotional decline may have started before this scandal. She died in obscurity having reached the age of about 104!

Was she cursed as the title if this book suggests?

Was Audrey driven to insanity - paranoia - because of the infamy of this scandal? 

Did Audrey take the Gypsy Queens predictions for her life too seriously, and interpret what happened through the eyes of the psychic?

Now, I have to admit that I hesitated to elect Audrey Munson to this honor because I frankly think her obscurity ended some years ago; there are very many YouTube videos and articles about her and her tragic life that I had to curate. I hope to bring something a little different to my coverage of her.  So while I will be using James Bone's book about Audrey - The Curse of Beauty -  I cast my net wide for information about Audrey Munson.

The first notion that came to me is is that we need to think about what Monica Lewinsky, a young woman who was raised in far more liberated times when it comes to sexuality, has been through. I've been an advocate for getting off Monica's back since way back in the day when she became infamous due to her involvement with the then President of the United States, William Jefferson Clinton, who didn't suffer a bit in comparison. Let's go back to Audrey Munson's day - the early twentieth century when the judgement about a young woman's sexuality could effect her entire future. It was even assumed that any woman who acted or sang or danced was a prostitute. In 2016, when I covered ballerina Celestine Emarot, the Mistress of Baron Charles de Chassiron and Ferdinand De Montguyon and the French ballerina Courtesons, we learned that a young dancer often had to have a "patron" so she could afford the lessons, toe shoes and clothing, and eat. Not so long ago it was near impossible for a unmarried adult woman to be supported in this world without a man with limited educational and career options.

I'm always trying to sort through the expectations of purity, the expectations of waiting until married (or at least marrying the first man one has sex with), the expectations that one will be sexual after marriage, the expectations that one will marry, the expectations that one will marry once and stay married - and then all the changes in attitude we've gone through until here we are today.

In 1908, she made Audrey Munson first performance as a teenager at the Rocky Point Amusement Park in the "Dancin' Dolls" chorus line. By 1909 she was performing at the Casino Theatre in New York on the "Great White Way" which was what Broadway was called because of the new electric lights.

She became one of the Floradora Girls and all six of the original girls married a millionaire. (Evelyn Nesbit had also been picked out of a Floradora chorus line as a teenager. Certainly she must have heard of the scandal when Nesbit's lover killed another man over her.) Before she turned eighteen, Audrey made her Broadway debut in "The Boy and The Girl." 

Her first break in New York as an artist's model might have been because she was sighted on the street by photographer Felix Benedict Herzog.  For three months she posed for him but with her mother in attendance to protect her. She posed for mythic schemes like in Old Master's Paintings.

Audrey was called "Miss Manhattan" because so many sculptures around Manhattan were ones she posed for, as well as the "Panama-Pacific Girl" and "The Exposition Girl" because she posed for those marketing events for paintings, sculptures, and magazine covers.  "American Venus" is also a more general affirmation of her as a beautiful model.

Audrey was the first Silent Screen era actress to appear nude in a film called Inspiration in 1915!  It was one of three films she appeared in. The film was not pornography. To give some perspective, The Birth of a Nation, Hollywood's first motion picture, came out the same year.

But so much went wrong.  In 1931 by Oswego County court order she was committed to St. Lawrence State Hospital in Ogdensburg, New York and live there almost sixty-five years - the majority of her life. Though her mother thought it was temporary, the woman eventually moved to a boarding house in the same town. Audrey may have had schizophrenia.

So this month I'll muse about the curse as well as what all made Audrey "crazy" enough to be committed to a mental hospital (then called insane asylum) by her own mother, where she languished the majority of her life!  Her records, which staff members saw during her years there, were sealed and she was buried in an unmarked grave.

Missy

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You may find these archived posts interesting:

September 2016

CELESTINE EMAROT-  MISTRESS OF BARON CHARLES de CHASSIRON and FERDINAND De MONTGUYON and the French Ballerina Courtesans

February 2017

EVELYN NESBIT : Teenage Beauty and Mistress of Architect Stanford White: Before It Was All Over There Was A Murder