In
My Fascination with Nudies: Collecting Nude Art, Val mentions Alexander Stirling Calder's sculpture,
Star Maiden, created for the 1915
Panama Pacific International Exposition and up for
auction June 21st by
Michaan’s Auctions by the Bay.
Audrey Marie Munson was the 15 year old model for the piece.
It is said that she was discovered by chance in New York City by Ralph Draper, a professional photographer who passed Munson and her (divorced) mother walking down the street. Draper is said to have told mom that her daughter's face is one he longed to photograph. She consented and didn't seem to mind that her daughter would be nude.
Draper took many photographs, some of which he showed to his artist friend, Isidore Konti
.
Quickly Munson becomes a society darling and model of choice for artistic nudes by all the big-name sculptors and painters, posing for hundreds of works that still adorn public buildings and museums.
As the "the girl with the ideal figure" Munson was the model for 94 versions of
Star Maiden & other sculptures at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition -- said to be 75% of all the female-figure works at the Exposition. From
BikiniScience.com:
Munson is chosen to be the featured model for sculptures which tell the story of the Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. Her nude body rides atop an oxcart (1) , sits atop a fountain (2), and bears water in angelic form (3). She wears a barebreasted halter as she reclines on a phallic fish (4), wears a diaphanous and revealing costume as the "Star Girl" (5), and bares her breasts and pubis as an angel (6).
Likely as a result of her err, exposure in California at the expo, Munson moved to California and got a contract with the American Film Company.
Her first project was as an actress on a special-project basis with
Thanhouser. The five-reel film was George Foster Platt's
Inspiration (1915), the story of (surprise!) a sculptor's model, in which "the girl with the ideal figure" poses nude in classic artwork poses. (The film was reissued by the Arrow Film Corporation in 1918 as
The Perfect Model).
Inspiration is often credited as the first time that a woman appeared fully nude on film. I think it is more accurate to say that this is the first time a mainstream or legitimate full-feature film had the leading actress go completely nude, without body stocking, and that while Munson was the lead, she was not yet a "film star" (still leaving
Kellerman her title of first star to go nude in a feature film).
There was, of course, controversy about
Inspiration and its nudity, picketing and the like, but censors were reluctant to ban the film, fearing they would then also have to ban Renaissance art & close museums as such art was featured in the film.
The film was big at the box office, and a year later she would star in Rea Burger's 7-reel silent film,
Purity (1916), in a dual role as a spirit figure and as (yet another) country-girl turned nude artist's model. From
The New York Times:
Just in case there was any doubt that this American Film Company production was meant to be an allegory, the authors helpfully bestowed upon the characters such names as Purity, Virtue, Evil, Luston Black and Judith Lure! Cast in the dual role of Virtue and Purity, Audrey Munson enjoys the attentions of poet Thornton Darcy (Nigel de Brulier) and Claude Lamarque (Alfred Hollingsworth). But watch out for that no-good snake Luston Black (William A. Carroll) and his scheming mistress Judith Lure (Eugenie Forde). "To the Pure, All Things Are Pure" read one of the film's subtitles. Maybe so, but any film that banked so heavily on the undraped beauty of leading lady Audrey Munson) could not have helped but plant a few impure thoughts in the minds of its male spectators.
It was in this year, 1916, that Munson is said to appear on US coins. Having been
Adolph Alexander Weinman's model, she appears on dimes minted from 1916-1945 called the
Winged Liberty Head dime but often (mistakenly) called the "Mercury" dime (kindly note the discrepancy on the model information) as well as the
Walking Liberty half-dollar (1916-1947).
In 1918, Munson appeared in
The Girl O' Dreams:
After the death of his young wife, Phillip Fletcher, a millionaire and sculptor, makes his home on an uncharted desert island. Harry LeRoy, a cad who is courting the widow Mrs. Hansen, desires the widow's convent-bred daughter Norma and persuades mother and daughter to accompany him on a sea cruise. When the ship catches fire, Norma, abandoned by LeRoy and her mother in the confusion, is washed ashore on Phillip's island. Phillip clothes and shelters Norma, whose mind has become childlike from shock, and uses her as a model for his sculptures. Through Phillip's friend Jack, a photo of one of the sculptures travels to America, where LeRoy sees it and subsequently finds his way to Phillip's island. LeRoy tries to rape Norma, and in the ensuing struggle LeRoy is killed and Norma recovers her adult personality. Phillip, who is in love with Norma, sorrowfully returns her to the United States, but Norma does not board the boat, and Phillip, finding her posing as one of his statues when he returns to his hut, finally declares his love.
Talk about your typecasting.
While the films were box office successes, the reviews were mixed, and one can only imagine how quickly the novelty of the nude model turned actress whose only real roles were that of nude models lost its lust-her.
Munson returned to New York and her mother.
In 1919, back in New York, she and her mother lived in a boarding house owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins. Wilkins fell in love with her, murdering his wife, Julia, with a hammer so he could be available to marry Munson. By the time of the murder, Munson and her mother had left for Canada under the "advice" of Mrs. Wilkins and had nothing to do with the murder, but the police still wanted to question them, resulting in a nationwide hunt for them, with headlines announcing, "Syracuse Model wanted in N.Y.C. Tragedy". When finally questioned in Toronto, the police were satisfied & the women left to return to New York. (Wilkins himself was tried, found guilty, and sentenced; but he hung himself in his prison cell before he could meet the electric chair.)
The Beaux-Arts construction boom was over, fickle Hollywood fame had left, and the dark cloud of scandal hung about her, ending both her modeling & acting careers. While some would say that Munson was forgotten, she did continue to work in public view -- not just present in sculpture and art, but as a columnist.
In the 1920s, she wrote
a series of 20 articles for
American Weekly, a Sunday insert in
The New York American (originally the
New York Journal, renamed in 1901), one of the preceding publications merged to form the
New York Journal-American, which served as the flagship of William Randolph Hearst's communications empire from 1895 to 1966.
From a
NY Times article:
In them she criticized society's lack of respect for models and challenged the prevailing standards of decency and beauty. "All girls cannot be perfect 36s, with bodies of mystic warmth and plastic marble effect, colored with rose and a dash of flame," she wrote. "Of course not."
And in at least one article, Munson wrote of "a man prominent in the theatrical world" (she never named names) who had decided to ruin her career after she resisted his advances.
Munson made one more film,
Heedless Moths, which she is credited with writing as well as performing in. Again from the
New York Times:
The story involves an incident in the life of notorious early 20th century nude model Audrey Munson. Munson herself appears in various stages of undress, but she doesn't actually play herself -- that's left to Jane Thomas. According to the picture, Munson is supporting herself and her mother through her modeling, but she is actually a good girl -- when a painter makes a play for her, she walks out. She is brought to a celebrated sculptor (Holmes E. Herbert), who is inspired by her beauty and asks her to pose nude for a statue. The sculptor's wife (Hedda Hopper) becomes jealous of all the attention her husband is giving his art and has an affair with the painter. The painter dumps his latest model/mistress for the wife, and the rejected girl swears revenge. She writes a letter to the sculptor informing him that his wife is having dinner with the painter. Munson rushes to take the wife's place at the table and pretends to be drunk when the sculptor shows up. He's so disgusted that he destroys the statue he made of her. Eventually Munson orchestrates a reconciliation between the sculptor and his wife.
It wasn't enough to resurrect a film career -- and enough became enough for Audrey Munson.
After failing to find "the perfect man" in a widely publicized search for a husband in 1922, on the afternoon of May 27, 1922, at her home in Mexico, New York, Audrey Munson swallowed a solution of bichloride of mercury.
From the article that ran May 28th of that year, some interesting notes:
Miss Munson still refuses to disclose the contents of the telegram she received shortly before she tried to take her life. It is thought it may have come from Joseph J. Stevenson, of Ann Arbor, Mich., to whom she said was engaged.
...It became known today that since the announcement of her engagement to Mr. Stevenson, Miss Munson has been calling herself Baroness Audrey Merl Munson-Monson, though the derivation of the title is as much a mystery as her effort to commit suicide.
...Some doubt was expressed in Mexico today as the the authenticity of the telegram.
...An extensive search in Ann Arbor for Joseph J Stevenson, reported engaged to Audrey Munson, has failed to reveal any trace of him. So far as can be learned, no man by that name ever lived here.
She was saved from the suicide attempt, but not really saved at all... On June 8th, 1931, she was admitted to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane, in nearby Ogdensburg. She was just 40 years old.
To the world she was gone and forgotten.
Which was rather as Munson feared, I suppose, as she wrote this in one of her columns in 1921:
What becomes of the artists’ models? I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question, "Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?"
Just a few wondered about her... Like
Barry Popik (links added by SPS):
So I said how about this, I've got another story, there's this woman named Audrey Munson, and she's on top of this building as "Civic Fame," and we just gilted her statues at great expense, but no one knows who she is, or if she's alive or dead...
"Rescuing a Heroine From the Clutches of Obscurity" appeared in the New York Times, city section, April 14, 1996. It was the only article published on Audrey Munson since 1926, in 70 years. The article mentioned, in passing, that I'd also solved "the Big Apple."
I donated my papers and a copy of the article to the National Sculpture Society. I got a call from a book publisher, and I sent copies of all the papers there as well. One woman, a photographer, called and said she was interested in a photo book about Miss Munson. She had contacted me through the Times. I gave her all my papers and met her and another woman, a writer. I told them that I didn't have any book plans at the moment—I was busy with my father and mother dying, and a full time job, and this Big Apple Boulevard/Corner catastrophe. However, if they were interested, they should contact anyone upstate in her home town of Mexico, NY named "Munson." I never heard from the two women again.
"That Metropolitan Woman" was a book review in the New York Times of October 3,1999. Accompanying the review was a photo of a sculpture identified as Daniel Chester French's "Brooklyn" that was really "Manhattan." The book was American Venus. The authors had gone upstate and had found a treasure trove of Audrey Munson material. Audrey had been living in a mental institution for almost seventy years, until her death in 1996 at age 105. The authors, the review stated, "have made an extraordinary effort to reclaim long-forgotten facts, newspaper clippings and vintage photographs of a once -celebrated life." I wrote a letter to the editor of the book review that, just three years before, in the very same newspaper—yeah, my letter wasn't published.
The book didn't even give me a single credit.
From that article,
Rescuing a Heroine From the Clutches of Obscurity:
But such efforts seem incidental in comparison with Mr. Popick's obsession with Miss Munson, a woman he calls "more popular than Cindy Crawford but much uglier." A raven-haired native of Mexico, N.Y., near Syracuse, she starred in a handful of plays and silent movies, but they generally received dismissive reviews. It was her modeling career that made sculptors like Daniel Chester French vie for her services and rave over the dimples in her back.
Mr. Popick might well empathize with her history. He has written numerous plays, short stories and research papers. To date, however, Mr. Popick's efforts have received almost as much scorn as Miss Munson.
Say what you may about Popik, he's worked to get the U. S. Postal Service
to issue an Audrey Munson stamp, honoring America's greatest model.
Audrey Munson died February 20, 1996, at age 105, nearly alone &, in something that's past tolerable in irony, in an unmarked grave.
Says Joe Schumacher of the blog
Audrey Munson: model, muse, forgotten, remembered:
She had been committed to the Ogdensburg Psychiatric Institution in 1931 for what now are largely treatable diseases of depression and schizophrenia. Her parents divorced when Audrey was very young. After her parents died (Edgar is her father) she had no visitors for several decades before being rediscovered by a niece. Audrey Munson is buried in an unmarked grave in her father's plot in the New Haven, NY cemetery.
The Audrey Munson Fund is "collecting funds to finance a gravestone for Munson, who though deceased for more than ten years still doesn’t have one."
In total, Munson starred in four silent films; but only one print of
Purity has survived (said to be in an archive in France). But if you want to see her, all you have to do is
look her up -- and then, most likely, look up to gaze upon the face and form that has launched a thousand artworks.
Even
after her lifetime.
For more on Audrey Munson, see:Andrea Geyer’s book,
Queen of the Artists’ Studios.
PS While the article on Popik says that Munson was in plays, I wonder if
Wiki should be linking to
this Audrey Munson at the Internet Broadway Database -- if this is the same Munson, she would have been on the stage at 9 years of age. (Then again, I never know what the hell Wiki's going on at Wiki.)
However, it is said that
Munson did inspire a bit in Broadway's
Oh, Lady, Lady.
Labels: Art, Babes, Collecting, Crime, Essays, Films, Images, Sex History
Also up for auction is Man Ray's Seated Nude, with an estimate of 8,000—12,000 EUR:
As Grace Glueck wrote in The New York Times in '97 the bronzes include:
Also up for auction is Man Ray's Seated Nude, with an estimate of 8,000—12,000 EUR:
