AUDREY MUNSON : UNSTABLE and SPINNING CONSPIRACY THEORIES : POSSIBLY PREGNANT BY HERMAN OELRICH JR? THE SILVER MINING HEIR?

Page 189: "Ever since Girl O Dreams, Audrey's mental health had seemed to ebb and flow.  At times, she became convinced the world was out to get her, she spun incredible conspiracy theories, and lost her reason. She looked for culprits, weather secretly funded by the Kaiser, or part of some other imagined plot.  At other times, she was again her bright and charming self, childishly enthusiastic, friendly, and disarmingly funny. She seemed to lack control over her moods, and there is some suggestion that she tried to self-medicate with drugs - although her mother always vehemently denied it.  Audrey was at war with herself."

Audrey even wrote a long letter to the State Department going against Hermann Oelrichs and others, people who had deeply hurt her. The Gypsy Queen's world about Dead Sea may have been taken to mean Jewish people.  Audrey seemed to be antisemetic at a time when that was not uncommon. If she had not been secretly married to the man, perhaps she had been his Mistress and pregnant at one time.

Page 188 : Excerpt from her letter:

"You will see how pro-German Hermann Oelrichs is when he tried to frame me up with an Irish Doctor I called upon for an errand.  The Doctor had witnesses in the Anti-Room and tried to make out because I was going to England that I was about to become a mother.  I have heard this openly discussed in street-cars and one the street by women who were this mans (sic) agents." (Misspelling is hers.)

Was she actually ever pregnant?  A miscarriage? An abortion? Gave the child up for adoption in Canada?  Her mother said no.  Audrey was unsure.

Here is where I have to express that more than one woman who spoke up to defend herself or was open with her opinions, and who made an enemy or two, found themselves labeled "crazy" or mental illness was used as some sort of defense. As well, I speculate that her mother, Kittie, may have done the best thing possible for Audrey at the time because the mother-daughter duo were so poor. An institution might not be much but might provide as much as a homeless shelter might today.

But early in 1919 the Munsons were living in Long Beach, New York, in a boarding house owned by a sixty-five year old man who was on his third marriage, a Doctor Walter Keene Wilkins, and though it became convoluted and he always denied he was the murderer, Doctor Wilkins was convinced of murdering his wife with blows to her head with a hammer.  He was sentenced to die in the electric chair but committed suicide awaiting.

Page 199 : Detectives told the press they were seeking an actress as "the other woman" in a love triangle to explain why the normally amiable Dr. Wilkins hammered his wife to death.  Two days after Dr. Wilkins was arrested, the Washington Times reported: "A definite clew indicating that a pretty young woman may prove to be an important factor in the solution of the murder of Mrs. Julia Wilkins whose husband Dr. Walker K., Wilkins, who was indicted for murder in the first degree, has been found, according to Detectives working on the case.  The eternal triangle is on the verge of being revealed, these Detectives assert, and sensational disclosures which will dwarf others so far unearthed, are soon to be made."

A postcard-sized ad of Audrey in her swimsuit was the clue.

This began the infamy of Audrey Munson which would ruin her modeling career and render her unemployable.  But both Dr. Wilkins and Audrey denied they had more than passing hellos between them.

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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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