FLORODORA GIRLS : MANY MARRIED MILLIONAIRES

According to the book, The Curse of Beauty by James Bone, which is about the career and life of Audrey Muson, Marion Davies had appeared in the 1930 movie The Floradora Girl but in real life she had been a Ziegfeld Follies girl.  (The costumes these girls wore left a lot to the imagination compared to the clothing actresses wear on the Red Carpet today.)

Evelyn Nesbit had also been picked out of Floradora Chorus line....

You know I've dedicated a month to these women in the past!

You may be interested in:

February 2017 Archives find:

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

July 2013 Archives find"

MARION "ROSEBUD" DAVIES : MISTRESS OF NEWSPAPER MAN AND HEARST CASTLE BUILDER  WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST

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

EVELYN NESBIT - 1930's SINGING

IS EVELYN NESBIT MODELING FOR THIS SKETCH?

EVELYN NESBIT AMERICAN EVE : A SILENT MOVIE (Lots of Modeling Photos!)

Two videos... Lots of modeling photos of Evelyn Nesbit, as well as STANFORD WHITE, the headlines, the trial called "Murder of the Century" at the time.  I think she would be considered beautiful by today's standards too.

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.

 

EVELYN NESBIT : TEENAGE MISTRESS OF ARCHITECT STANFORD WHITE and WIFE OF HARRY K. THAW - MURDER SCANDAL

 

EVELYN NESBIT

(1884–1967)

image from Wikipedia

 

Born Florence Evelyn Nesbit, originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, life was good enough until her father's death meant debt and poverty. Then her mother pushed Evelyn forward to support them both. As a beautiful girl in the Gilded Age she posed for artists around New York and was seduced by the married and famous architect Stanford White when she was a 16 year old virgin and he was 46.  (There are existing statues, posters, and other art that she posed for. Some call her "the Original Gibson Girl").

 

After being wined, dined, and taught to enjoy the finer things in life, after entertaining White's fetish, for which he had built a secret room, where she sat naked on a special red velvet swing and, well, swung,  as had other girls, Evelyn's introduction to sex was date rape with intoxication. Then, at 17, she became too old for Stanford's tastes.  It was time to move on and up.

 

She had a fling with the actor John Barrymore, and then became entwined with Pittsburgh Millionaire, Harry Kendall Thaw, who may have been unstable all along.  He took her and her mother on a tour of Europe and again she was raped.  This time it was sadistically. Had she entered into a "Fifty Shades of Grey" kind of relationship?

 

Evelyn claimed till the day she died, in 1967, that White was the only man she had ever loved.   She is quoted as saying, "The tragedy wasn’t that Stanford White died, but that I lived."

The book that is the primary reference for

this months Mistress of the Month!

Author Paula Uruburu, for her book "American Eve" 

made use of Nesbit's own memoirs, photos, and diaries,

as well as personal research, 

to bring the scandalous story of Evelyn Nesbit's life as a young woman to us. 

 

*****

White was murdered by Thaw and in public, making it not just a murder but a society scandal.  He died in 1906, while dining out at what would become Madison Square Garden, when the jealous and perhaps revengeful, Thaw shot him. This event led to a public trial and generated lots of scandalous news.  Evelyn was considered a flirt and a Gold Digger and that notoriety still sticks with her when you research around her in the present day, though it may have been another case of blaming the victim.  (Consider the more recent case of Scott Thorson, the man who was kept by Liberace starting when he was a teenager.)

 

Evelyn may have been promised reward for her testimony in the trial.  According to IMDb,"Harry Thaw's mother quickly financed propaganda, even a film, to portray her son as a protector of women's virtues, while, at the same time, the media reported on the very-married White's many other transgressions involving young women. After her son's first trial ended in a hung jury, Thaw was retried in 1908 and found insane. He was sent away to a mental institution for the criminally insane in upstate New York, from which he escaped once, and was released in 1915 with reputation untarnished -- "a homicidal hero."

Evelyn, be it that she was continually sadistically or otherwise abused by her husband or not, stuck with him for a decade. They were married from 1905-1915 and had a son, Russell Thaw, who would eventually act in some Hollywood films himself. 

 

As I write this month's Mistress of the Month post, I think about EMPOWERMENT, about CHOICE, about SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS OF WOMEN, of how it is we (at least some of us) get to live, breath air into our lungs and claim value on this earth, survive, and even prosper, while others do not. Wouldn't it be wonderful to live in a world where no one ever gets raped, or molested, or pimped out, or sex trafficked?  Wouldn't it be wonderful if victims were no longer blamed for having become so?

 

Consider reading, here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO, about the lives of the teenage ballerinas in France in the 19th century, who often had to prostitute themselves or find a man to Keep them.  Or perhaps about the life of Dawn Schiller, the teenager who was seduced and eventually pimped out by her porn actor boyfriend,  John Holmes,

 

Then, and this may make you seriously question how young a woman is when she makes the choice to have less-than-legal sex, read here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot about the Groupies, sometimes under the age of 18 (legal adulthood), who had sex with Rock Gods.  The ones talking about it say it was their choice - even if they were 14 at the time.  I ask you to do this having personally known women who started having sex at 14 and who say that's just how they were and do not seem to regret it.  But the women I know were with boys of the same age or just a bit older, boys from high school who lived with their parents too, and the element of POWER OVER that figures in when a man is much older, or rich, or a celebrity or powerful man of business, just isn't there.

 

EVELYN NESBIT seems to have made the case for not having been seriously forever hurt by her early sexuality.  It is historically true that girls who were just 14 or 16, depending on the state, were considered ready to legally marry for quite some time in early America and many of us have ancestors who married that young. Some people think teenagehood as a transitional time in life was just a modern invention of marketers, not a link between childhood and adulthood!

 

We want to know if she survived after this well.  Read the rest of this month where you will find evidence Evelyn sure seems to have!

 

Missy

 

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