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

C 2024  Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

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

CELESTINE EMAROT, MISTRESS OF BARON CHARLES de CHASSIRON and FERDINAND De MONTGUYON and BALLARINA COURTESANS

THE BALLARINA COURTESANS?  The Paris Ballet was called a Brothel.

(1824-1892 approx.)

An 18th century photo identified

as Celestine Emarot from

ROYALFAVORITES.BLOGSPOT.COM

To become a ballerina in the 19th century, a young woman often also had to be a Mistress of a well-to-do man.  An average dancer made between 3,000 and 6,000 francs a year, while having to afford her own toe shoes, clothes, and much else on a very low income.  Many as teenagers become prostitutes, but with the hope that they would through the long and hard physical work of becoming a dancer, rise up to the top. Being Kept, having a Patron, being one man's Mistress was a better option.

Ballerinas often started in the corps, where the girls, about ten to fourteen years old, were called "Petit Rats," not just because they had to work like rats to develop their dancing skill and be competitive to advance, but because they often ate like rats!  Half starving and too thin and sickly much of the time, putting in extremely long days, the corps required endurance while in survival mode. Celestine Emerot, our Mistress of the Month here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, was one of those girls.

Born illegitimate and impoverished in 1824 as Marguerite-Adelaide Emerot, her own mother hoped she would save them both from destitution and encouraged men to interest her and patronize her. When she was fifteen years old, and he twenty-four, Baron Charles de Chassiron, a French Diplomat who hung out at The Jockey Club (apparently the hang out of a number of men who had mistresses), began their affair.  But maybe they didn't have sex right away.  He got her pregnant.  She gave birth to a daughter, Jeanne-Emma, on September 23, 1842, which was supposed to be nine months from their first sexual encounter.  He abandoned them. 

The Baron's genes were better than Celestine's, and their daughter, Emma, said to look just like him, though no beauty, turned out to be a natural dancer, with the flexibility and grace perfect for ballet that her ballerina mother never had.

Celestine danced in minor parts for fourteen years and at best got mixed reviews.  You could say she was a lousy dancer but had little choice. She had to find another ballet patron of her own, to protect herself from having to prostitute, and to protect her daughter more than herself.  Celestine then became the mistress of a man of less wealth than the Baron, Ferdinand de Montguyon,  also a member of the Jockey Club.

She became a controlling mother, while Montguyon, a ballet fanatic, took fatherly interest in Emma's education.  As he financed a fine education for the young girl at a convent, called Institute des Demoiselles Cathonnet  (Catholic School for Girls), it was expected that she would escape the ballet.  But she became a dancer anyway, one that outshone Celestine's ability by far. And Montguyon turned out to be quite the PR man. He managed to get Napoleon III and his wife interested in Emma, who renamed herself Emma Livry, and used his influence so that she was taken on by the Paris Ballet, skipping the corps, as a Principal Dancer!

Celestine Emarot's daughter Emma Livry from WikiCommons

 

Emma Livry distanced herself from her mother's reputation with a name change.

 

LINK TO 19th Century Photos for IMAGE OF CELESTINE EMAROT

 

 

 

BALLARINA by Deirdre Kelly

"Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol Of Perfection"

is a primary source for information

on this Month's Mistress of the Month, Celestine Emerot,

her Ballarina daughter, Emma Livry,

and the lifestyle of French Ballarinas.

 

A retired famous ballet dancer, and Italian named La Taglioni, came to see Emma dance and instead of seeing her as a rival, saw her as the Next Great.  In 1858, Emma danced "La Sylphide," a dance La Taglioni was known for, and the reviews were fabulous.  Emma Livry was known to be of the Romantic tradition.

 

Taglioni in a Ballet called "Gypsy Girl"

Image from WikiCommons

 

 

Now La Taglioni decided that she would invent and choreograph a ballet just for Emma, called "La Papillion"  (The Butterfly) which would emphasize her Romantic aspect, her breathtaking grace.  The ballet premiered on November 26, 1860 and was a success. She continued to dance this signature ballet. 

 

But on November 15, 1862 the worst possible thing that could happen to a dancer on stage did, during a dress rehearsal for "La Muette de Portic."  While Celestine and Montguyon watched from a private box, Emma fluffed her skirts which fanned the flame of a gaslight, also called a limelight, the light stages were illuminated by before there was electricity, and a known hazard, and she caught on fire.  In her terror she ran, screamed, panicked and pushing away a backstage fireman and others who tried to come to her rescue.  Finally, she was tackled and rolled in a wet blanket.  (This is how we have come to say to someone who is hushing out our enthusiasm "Don't be a wet blanket!)  Alive but burned over 40 % of her body, with only a fringe of clothing still covering her, her corset bones deep in her burnt flesh, it was the beginning of the end.  Celestine fainted at the sight of her precious daughter.

 

For 131 days Emma lay on her stomach, with her hands stretched to her sides to avoid her rib cage, as doctors and nuns oversaw her agonizing treatment, afraid to cry out in pain which would make it worse.  Celestine even paid the city of Paris to cover the noisy street outside her daughter's bedchamber with straw, trying to kill the sound.  Montguyon, PR man as always, claimed she was healing and would return to dancing.

 

Emma wanted to live.  Her main concern being her mother, Celestine, what would happen to her if she died.  Finally, having been given the courtesy of the use of a country house by Napoleon III, in the spring of 1863 she made her first appearance, dressed all in white, and waved to those assembled along the road to see her.  But blood poisoning prevailed and she never made it.  Emma died having convulsions at Celestine's rented apartment  in Neuilly -Sur-Sienne on the way.  Her funeral was at in Notre Dame-de-Lorette and she was buried all in white - called a virgin's funeral - in the Montmarte Cemetery with a corps of ballet girls in attendance.

 

The "now what" began for Celestine.  She pawned her jewelry to pay 27,000 francs for her daughter's medical bills.  Montguyon asked Napoleon III for help and she was granted 40,000 francs plus another 6,000 of an annual pension.  Celestine Emerot was all right until 1871 when the Second Empire fell and the Third Republic began.  She lost the pension. Her relationship with Montguyon wasn't the same after Emma died, and when she died 30 years later at the age of 68 of cancer, she was in a small apartment and alone in life.

 

Many feel that when Emma died it was the end of Paris as the World Capital of Ballet, the end of a 200 year rule, with French dancers going to Russia.

 

As this fascinating book by Deirdre Kelly suggests, suffering, sex, and scandal are still part of the world of the ballerina.  Here's her site! Deirdre Kelly

 

C 2016  Missy Rapport / Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

 

If you're interested in dancer mistresses you might want to go into my archives and read about ISADORA DUNCAN, MISTRESS OF THE MONTH FOR February 2016.