"In the 1930s, pyjamas were exotic, the sort of thing worn by young flappers. These so-called 'new women' dressed in skimpy clothes, they smoked, they drank, they partied and they laughed at convention" -- and when they were murdered, it was what they deserved. Alessia presents the whole nasty scoop of clumping kitty litter that is The Pygama Girl Mystery in, My Pajamas Made Him Kill Me (Or, In Which I Review A Film I Haven't Seen).
Bran Castle, built in the 14th century as a fortress to protect against the invading Ottoman Turks, was home to the Romanian royal family from the 1920s until the communist regime confiscated it in 1948. At the end of communist rule in the 1980's, Bran Castle was restored, dubbed "Dracula's Castle," and thus became a popular tourist attraction, with some 450,000 people visiting the castle each year.
While Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, aka "Vlad the Impaler", may or may not have ever stayed at Bran Castle, the Transylvanian castle did inspire Bram Stoker's classic 1897 novel Dracula -- and apparently that is enough for millions of people.
Me? I'm not such a fan of horror & blood. But I am a lover of affairs of the heart & hearts themselves... beating with life they literally keep the beat of our lives, turning the rapid pulse of emotion into the racing hearts of passion and then the heated pumping of erotic acts... and how the heart stills with emotional too, be it the skip at romantic introduction or the pause when the heart is broken... I even love them long after they've stopped beating. So, I'd still go see the Bran Castle -- but not for Dracula; I'd go for Queen Marie of Romania.
While married to Ferdinand of Romania, Marie not only had an affair with Lieutenant Zixi Cantacuzene which produced a child "disappeared from history"; a longer affair with Barbu Ştirbey which produced at least one son, Prince Mircea, and possibly one daughter, Princess Ileana; but Princess Maria (called Mignon) might have been the daughter of Grand Duke Boris Vladimirovich of Russia.
Certainly all of this had to have affected Marie's thinking regarding her son, King Carol II, and his relationship with Magda Lupescu -- first his mistress, and this his wife after his abdication -- but she publicly stated he had "sinned grievously". The irony seems to have been lost to Marie who only became further estranged from her son.
All such juicy things to further investigate...
And then there's this bit: Queen Marie made arrangements in her will for her heart to be kept in a cloister at the Balchik Palace -- her son Carol II dutifully carried out the request.
In 1940 her heart was transferred to the chapel at Bran Castle (the casket with Queen Marie's heart has since been moved to National History Museum of Romania in Bucharest).
Who doesn't want to pilgrimage to this woman's home?
If that's not enough to seduce you to, how about this quote from Queen Marie regarding a proselytizer:
I have met ..... I did not like him. He seemed to me to be a snob. He spoke of God as if He were the oldest title in the Almanach de Gotha. And all that business about telling one's sins in public -- He wanted me ... me ... to get up before my children and confess everything I had ever done! It is spiritual nudism! Ça se ne fait pas.
In 2005, the Romanian government passed a law allowing restitution claims on properties seized by the Communist government of Romania in 1948. It was due to this law that, in 2006, the Romanian government awarded ownership of Bran Castle to the son and heir of Princess Ileana, Archduke Dominic of Austria, Prince of Tuscany, known as Dominic von Habsburg -- then a 68-year-old New York architect.
Because of Princess Ileana's questionable lineage, among other things, the property distribution was challenged; but as Queen Marie herself named Ileana as the one to inherit Bran Castle, the Constitutional Court of Romania and an investigation commission of the Romanian government reaffirmed the validity & legality of the restitution procedures used and in December 2007 issued confirmation that the restitution to Ileana's son, von Habsburg, was made in full compliance with the law.
According to the contract signed when Bran castle was returned, the government pays rent to von Habsburg for the right to run the castle as a museum (including charging admission) for three years. That period ends in 2009 and full rights to the castle & property will then transfer to von Habsburg.
Having no experience with running a museum, von Habsburg and his family have put the castle up for sale to those "who will treat the property and its history with appropriate respect."
I'm not sure my lusty love of history would meet approval; but as Bran Castle is expected to fetch over $135 million, I don't suppose I could afford it anyway.
a little risque....a little naughty by 1940's standards anyways....they are along the line of "Jiggs and Maggie", if you remember that cartoon strip.
(Link added by SPS.)
Risque?!
Let's get real here. The woman brandishes a rolling pin -- from the lump on his head, she's connected at least once already. How does he retaliate? By removing her breast!
Honestly, just where did one display or use such S&P shakers? At the dinner table with the kids? When one entertained business associates? When the in-laws came over? Or maybe they were just used in the basement or rec-room bar, where drunk folks thought such risque things were supposed to be.
We're concerned (yet again) with a bare breast but not the violence -- even when the violence has severed a breast.
These are so bad that I must have them; like African Americans collect the horrible history that is Black Americana, I must have them.
I don't ask you for much, readers... So donate money to me so that I may buy them -- or let me know that you'll be buying them for me. (No need to bid against one another now!)
We all know pulp novels (which is a category of books wider than the term 'pulp' technically refers to) are exploitative works; but sometimes I just have to draw the line. Even if it's only 50 cents at a thrift shop.
Today's example, a copy of Super Cop Joe Blaze #3, The Thrill Killers, by Robert Novak.
It's not that I don't need to start collecting a bad series of cop adventure novels (supposedly by a Washington pundit), it's not that today I needed 50 extra pennies of my meager budget to go towards something else; I had after all lifted the book up to see what it was about. Nay, my refusal was based entirely upon the front cover text:
Nurses were being brutally raped then carved to ribbons by a pair of killers looking for kicks
My initial reaction was, "Aren't the readers lusting over the same kicks?"
And the more I ponder it the more my reaction stays the same, for the book doesn't say a single word, however clichéd, about how said super cop 'vowed revenge' or thought these murderers the 'worst sort of criminal'.
Instead it sells the rape & mutilation of women -- nurses who, by the way, are the pulp icons of 'good innocent & intelligent girls'.
Sexism, in light of the times & target consumer, may be rampant in pulp novels; but such misogyny is quite another thing entirely.
Growing up, my dad used to make jokes about luring girls with the offer of nylons. He still does, honestly.
It's a bit creepy -- but less creepy than jokes about little girls and candy, that's for sure; but if you don't know the history of nylons, you wouldn't quite get his jokes. (Admittedly, such knowledge would only help you understand his nylon jokes; Dad's other jokes could still be murky.)
Thankfully, my parents both were not only quite the history lovers but storytellers too, so I knew the score -- both in terms of the "Nylon Mania" & "Stocking Panic" and how my dad joked about hoping to score.
The mocking of women's love of stockings was a prevalent theme in many WWII home front publications, and the use of nylons to lure women was humor oft-used in men's mags -- sadly, none are at my fingertips now (searched-for things rarely appear when desired; I shall post them as I find them).
Luring women at home and abroad with nylons and candy bars was the "come up and see my etchings" of its time, and lived on in memory far longer as a euphemism, even when not fully understood.
Of course, the panic of nylon stockings was more than a joke. As noted in the history piece at SK, the real crimes took place as people tried to exploit the power of "Stocking Panic." OrangeCat at Flickr transcribed this 1945 Readers Digest article on the subject:
Bootleg Nylons Readers Digest, February 1945
Watch out for the fellow who offers to sell you "nylon" hosiery! There isn't any.
No mere man can fully understand the power of nylon stockings over women's minds, hearts, and consciences. But a lot of men are busy exploiting this feminine weakness.
Foremost example: Uncle Sam. The only legitimate purchaser of nylon hosiery in the world is the U.S. Government. No, the stockings aren't "sent to Iceland on lend-lease," as reported in a silly story that was repeated on the floor of Congress. They travel a much more devious route.
Our secret agents overseas discovered that a half dozen pairs of sheer nylons would buy more information from certain mysterious women in Europe and North Africa than a fistful of money. After all, what could the ladies buy with money in the empty shops of the Old World? So several large hosiery mills, which had made no nylons since Pearl Harbor, received substantial orders from Washington; the necessary yarn, they were informed, would be available. Pleasantly surprised, they turned out the merchandise -- the only nylons legitimately manufactured in years.
Nevertheless, enough American women want nylon stockings at any price, in contempt of law, and with callous indifference to our soldiers' needs for other nylon goods, to support a sizable black market. It is some satisfaction to record that the black market operators give the women a merciless stinging.
Thirteen cases of raw nylon en route from the Du Pont factory in Martinsville, Va., to a parachute yarn plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., were stolen from a motor-freight terminal in Greensboro, N.C. Accepting the thin story that the nylon was salvage from a warehouse fire, two manufacturers made it up into hosiery. It was spread as far as possible by making the feet and tops of cotton. But these skimpy makeshift stockings sold readily for $5 a pair to bootleggers, who in turn got $10 a pair from customers, male and female, hexed by the magic word "nylon." The nylon yarn was worth $7800; it was made into $140,000 worth of stockings.
FBI and OPA agents arrested three men. One, a former official of a trucking company, was fined $5,000 and is serving a two-year prison term. The two hosiery mill men were fined $12,000 each and placed on 18 months' probation. The Government agents managed to seize 5,000 pairs of hose before they could be peddled. These, by court order, were sold at the OPA ceiling prime of $ 1.65 a pair in the office of the U.S. Marshal in Greensboro. The sale was to begin at ten o' clock in the morning. At 5 a.m. the queue began to form; when the doors opened, the line of women, four abreast, extended four city blocks. Half of them went away disappointed.
Much more intricate was another scheme for black market nylons. A silk mill in Pennsylvania got a contract to convert raw nylon into thread for glider towropes. Part of the raw nylon was systematically snitched, and accounted for in reports to the WPB as "spoilage." The "spoiled" nylon was transported to three hosiery mills whose owners were in the plot. When the FBI cracked down, it found 10,320 pairs of nylons in one warehouse, 6,500 unfinished pairs in another, enough thread to make 36,000 pairs more. Four men were indicted.
Most patrons of the nylon black market are stung in two ways: they pay fantastic prices and they do not get nylon. Travelers, and even professional merchandise buyers who should know better, have bought "Mexican nylon" in quantities. Sometimes they have misleading names, such as "carbonyl."
Dozens of pairs have turned up for laboratory analysis at the New York headquarters of the National Association of Hosiery Manufacturers. They're just rayon. You can get them at any hosiery counter in the United States; ceiling price, $1.25.
An Omaha store imported 1,680 pairs of these "nylons" in good faith and advertised them at $2.25, plus $1.85 for customs duty. The Better Business Bureau had a pair analyzed and thus convinced the merchant he had been victimized. The stockings were withdrawn from sale.
The lengths to which the gyps will go is indicated by the troubles of the Van Raalte Company. It is getting a stream of complaints about hosiery bought as nylon, stamped with the Van Raalte name and the nylon trademark and, most convincing, made with the patented Van Raalte toe. Some victims bought the counterfeits in Mexico City, some bought them from bootleggers in the U.S.; but it seems plain that the imitations were all made in Mexico.
The small amount of honest nylon wastage or spoilage that does occur in war production is allotted to manufacturers of underwear, brassieres and girdles -- never to hosiery mills. Every retailer should know that there just isn't any nylon hosiery to be had. Still, when George M. Toney wrote to 1,000 stores from a post office box address in Washington, D. C., offering nylons at $7.44 a dozen pairs, he got orders with some $2,000 cash by return mail. There is no guesswork about the money, because postal authorities opened his mail and counted it.
Ruses of the bootleggers show little originality. The driver of a delivery truck, often bearing the name of a well-known shop, stops a woman on the street and tells her that some nylons were put on his truck by mistake. She can have them at $5 (or $10) a pair. Or a peddler drifts into a doctor's office on the pretext of making an appointment. He casually mentions that the parcel in his hand contains nylon stockings -- unfortunately not his wife's size. Could anyone use them? He is typical of the shifty-eyed, furtive nylon bootleggers who canvass office buildings in the big cities.
Perhaps the limit of credulity is reached by the people who buy compounds which, dissolved in water, will "nylonize" rayon stockings. One of the big hosiery manufacturers remarked dryly, "If any chemist has such a formula, he needn't bother with the 25-cent trade. I'll give him $5,000,000 for it in cash."
After the war there will be nylon hosiery, finer, sheerer, stronger, more beautiful than ever before. Designs for the machines to make it are past the blueprint stage. But until the war is over, the Army and Navy need every pound of nylon. There won't be any for stockings except what is stolen. And there won't be much stolen. So, ladies -- don't be suckers.
In researching crimes in the wake of "Stocking Panic", it is also clear that the threat of such power plays created a panic of victimization which rivaled that of the white slave trade.
In fact, I continue to search publications for the proffered opines of "Beware the nylon stocking offered; you'll end up in white slavery!"
If/when I find some, I shall, of course, share.
Along with the joke of wooing at home with nylons, the fear of betrayals & abuses back home was part of World War II psychological operation (PSYOP) strategy. This excellent article details more than the use of nylon stockings as symbol or eroticism and betrayal, but the use of the sex drive and pornography to "motivate" soldiers. Go read it.
You might find such manipulation of the male sex drive horrific (and I do), but beneath it all is still the notion that we women are "so in love" with nylons, that we'd "do anything" to get them.
We women aren't only fools for fashion, willing to prostitute ourselves for material goods, but we are such delicate things that we can be exploited for them even without intending to be.
We are bad girls because we are weak. And we weaken our men because of it. Men know this about us, and lament the horrors which will befall us because they aren't "home" to save us -- from predatory males and ourselves.
Yuck.
Image Credits/Further Reading: Stockings Go To War scan via CQ; "Stocking Panic" article from Business Week August 9, 1941, via Smithsonian; comic mocking women from 1950 Modern Woman Magazine, via KKC; WWII German propaganda leaflets, via Psywarrior.com.
Las Vegas policeman Bill Cassell said Tuesday that the actor was cited Friday for carrying an unloaded concealed weapon at the Las Vegas airport.
Lewis' manager, Claudia Marghilano, says the handgun is a hollowed-out prop gun that Lewis sometimes twirls during his show. She tells The Associated Press that the gun couldn't fire.
Marghilano says Lewis didn't know the gun was in the bag along with other props.
Cassell says if the gun were merely a prop "it wouldn't be a weapon and we couldn't cite him for carrying a weapon".
Possible quips:
a) Jerry's always mistaking real things for props; like Jerry's kids, for example.
b) Do the French still love Lewis?
c) Jerry hasn't been this low-key funny (as opposed to out-right slap-stick annoying) since Boeing Boeing (that's the 1965 film farce about sexist playboy journalists with a thing for stewardesses starring Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Dany Saval, Christiane Schmidtmer, Suzanna Leighnot, & Thelma Ritter' not to be confused with Boing Boing, the site which may or may not delight in such films).
(Apparently, The Episcopalian Church counts on Americans not to recall that Henry VIII killed two wives -- even after he broke with Catholicism so that he could get a divorce annulment of the marriage to his first wife. To secure such right to annul, he executed along the way. Forgiveness? My definition must be different... Unless Episcopalians are expecting forgiveness for calculated murders and other crimes; which could be a mighty fine religious selling point for some.)
But going back to history, I have always sustained that through advertising you can tell a lot about a country's psychology.
In that sense, the same goes for the history of advertising. When seeing ads from the past, is easy to realize how our habits, manners and values have changed. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worst.
But as with our own pictures, where most of the time we couldn't believe we were wearing that or using that hair style, old advertising becomes the photo album of us as a society.
From The Mail and Empire, Toronto, dated March 23, 1935, comes this clipping of the story for a renewed search for Maud Gillespie -- 40+ years after she was "kidnapped by Indians".
Leaving definitions & connotations of the word "squaw" to those far more suited to such endeavors (and I highly recommend you read it; regardless of your initial interest), I'm fascinated by such a story...
So many details are missing... Like the age of Maud when she was "kidnapped" or otherwise disappeared... Why her family members aren't listed by names, rather than crediting John Findlay... And, of course, did they find her?
"A few weeks after my return from St. Paul and Aeneas, there was another disappearance. It occurred hundreds of miles from the old home of Aeneas. About five miles from Thessalon, on the shore of Georgian Bay in the district of Manitoulin, lived a family of farmers named Gillespie. There was a pretty thirteen-year-old daughter, Maud Gillespie. Early in August 1888 she went out to pick berries and did not return. She was seen last near a trout stream, and a bully good trout stream it is, as I happen to know. Searching parties went out and hunted for days, but could find no trace of the child. On August 11th I went up to Thessalon and began another search. I organised parties and apportioned the territory, and sent some on foot and others in boats, and for days and nights we scoured the islands and the shores of Georgian Bay. We visited scores of Indian camps, and pushed on into the wilds, but could not find her. I knew she had no life insurance, and was not a county treasurer, and that her disappearance therefore was not suspicious, so far as she was concerned. Her parents were well-nigh distracted, and I determined to make a final effort to find her. With a small party I went far up to remote Indian camps, and in one of them I found an old squaw, who nodded and grunted to me, and I went outside with her.
"'White girl?' she asked.
"I nodded. The old squaw held out her hand.
"'Give,' she grunted. 'Give.'
"I drew out some money. She sniffed. I felt in my pockets. I had a couple of trout flies in some tinfoil; I took them out. The old squaw seized the glittering tinfoil eagerly, taking my last trout flies with it. She tucked it in her jet black hair, coarse as a horse's tail.
"'Me — see — white girl,' she muttered slowly. 'She go — so — so — so ——,' and she waved far north with her long arm.
"'Alone?' I asked. 'She go alone? Indian take white girl?'
"But the old squaw only grunted and played with the tinfoil and trout flies in her hair. We searched farther north, and twice we heard from Indians of a white girl who had passed that way. When further trailing was hopeless we turned back and made our way to Thessalon. It was a long, hard tramp. On the fourth day I came to the trout stream, where the little girl last was seen. I was tired, and I stretched full length on the ground and idly gazed at the blue sky through the trees, and then rolled over and stared at the water. It was a lovely stream. It glided beneath the over- growth into a broad, deep pool, on whose placid surface the reflection of the waving trees rose and fell amid patches of mirrored blue. Farther down the stream narrowed and rippled over rocks, splashing and gurgling as it went. But there must be no drifting aside into a fish story. I lolled by the stream until my men came up, and we moved on. No further trace of little Maud Gillespie was found, and I returned to Toronto. Fifteen years passed. In May 1903 a surveying party was exploring in New Ontario north of Lake Superior, over four hundred miles from the Gillespie home. They came upon a white woman living with the Indians in the wilderness. She was the wife of a big chief. She possessed a rare beauty of the wilds, yet was not wholly like her associates. She lived as an Indian, and exposure had tanned her a deep, dark brown. At first she was unable to talk with the white men, then gradually her power of speech in English returned until she could talk brokenly and remember a few English words. She finally recalled her name, Maud Gillespie, and her mother. They asked her if she wished to go back to her mother. She said she did, and they communicated with her people and she went back to them, a woman almost thirty years old. She had gone away a little girl of thirteen, fond of her mother, and constantly talking or singing in her childish way. She returned a silent, reserved woman, with the habits and manner and speech of an Indian. She had lost her language, she had become an Indian. Gradually her people are winning her back. It is like taming a wild creature, but eventually the inborn instincts will assert themselves, and much of the Indian life will fall away. They have been teaching her to speak her own language again, and she readily learned anew the songs she sang as a little child.
"This loss of language is a singular thing. I met an Englishman in South America who had lost his language, and he was distressed almost to distraction because of it. I have seen other cases, too, passing strange."
While there is a huge difference between the "more than forty years" the newspaper clipping claims and the fifteen years stated in Murry's memoir (memoirs themselves are imperfect recollections, and there is even some confusion regarding the memoir itself *), and this clipping was apparently published some 30 years after Murray's memoir (did she return to her Native American life and they went looking for her again?), there at least seems to be some proof to the story of Maud Gillespie... Or it's a continuing spoof story.
In my research I also discovered that there is another Findlay connection: Ralph Findlay, who did have a brother named John, was murdered and Murray was on the case.
Murray’s effectiveness is demonstrated by the first case in which he was involved after taking up his full-time appointment, an inquiry into the murder of Ralph Findlay, a Lambton County farmer. While local constables scurried about seeking clues to the perpetrator, suspecting that it was a stranger surprised while stealing horses, the county attorney, Julius Poussett Bucke, demanded the assistance of the government detective. It was Murray, it appears, who wrung a confession from the dead man’s wife that she had assisted her lover in the deed.
You can read Murry's recollection of the events in chapter XV of his memoir, in which he dates the murder to September of 1875, and describes a rather noble John Findlay.
* According to the University of Toronto, the first published edition of Memoirs of a Great Detective: Incidents in the Life of John Wilson Murray was published in London in 1904, without a mention of Victor Speer; however Speer is identified (as compiler and editor respectively) in the Toronto and New York editions of the book the following year.
In London on July 17th, Sothbey's will auction off a collection of case notes on autopsies, records kept by Sir Bernard Spilsbury in a wooden filing cabinet with four drawers, each labeled 1905-17, 1918-1927, 1928-30, and 1931-32. Who was Sir Spilsbury?
the professional records of the father of professional forensic pathology. Bernard Spilsbury (1877-1947) was the foremost pathologist of his day, with a formidible reputation as an expert witness: "his opinions were so impregnable he could achieve single-handed all the legal consequences of a homicide - arrest, prosecution, conviction, and final post-mortem - requiring only the brief assistance of the hangman" (quoted in Rose, p.xix). The post of Honorary Pathologist to the Home Office was created for Spilsbury, who made his name with some of the most famous English murders of the twentieth century, such as the Crippen case, the "Brides in the Bath" murders, the Voisin case, and the Brighton trunk murders, and who conducted over 20,000 autopsies during a career that lasted over forty years. Spilsbury was a media celebrity - Britain's "living successor to mythical Sherlock Holmes" (Time, 2 July 1934) - and was the original figure of the infallible forensic pathologist that is so familiar in contemporary crime fiction. According to his obituary in The Lancet, Spilsbury "stood alone and unchallenged as our greatest medico-legal expert". Recent research has shown, however, that the awe in which Spilsbury was held, combined with his own inflexible opinions, led to a number of miscarriages of justice, including several wrongful executions.
While Sotheby's won't let us look at what is inside, they will tell us some of the tantalizing details from the nearly 4,000 3x5 index cards:
There are many stories recorded in these terse notes, from horrific examples of neglect and abuse to bizarre cases such as the unfortunate Helen Elphinston-Dalrymple, who died of the effects of a dry shampoo applied at the Harrods salon in 1909. On 12 February 1918 Spilsbury performed an autopsy on 16 year-old Nellie Trew, and also examined her clothing for blood and semen: she had been raped then strangled on Eltham Common. The subsequent trial has recently been described by Rose as "one of the most blatant" miscarriages of British justice of the 20th century. Spilsbury's notes for 16 June 1919 record the autopsy of a 72 year-old widower who had been admitted to hospital two days previously: "He stated that on June 13 he had glass of beer ... Then stopped by 2 men who offered him whiskey. Drank 2 tablespoonfull which burnt his mouth". He had been given hydrochloric acid, which burnt through his stomach wall. In October 1923 Spilsbury examined the remains of a soldier, James Frederick Ellis ("H[anker]Chief & piece of cloth tied over mouth ... limbs had been tied ...when found body was reduced to skeleton except portion of lower limbs which were clothed in tight fitting garments..."), who suffocated as a result of masochistic sexual practices with another member of his regiment ("...he & Ellis proposed playing Cowboys & Indians & he trussed up Ellis who then told him that he was all right...").
Found at Gloria Brame's blog, information on the first annual Eroticon, a gallery viewing and auction of 40 works of erotic art created by imprisoned men and women from across America.
The event is intended as a fundraiser as well as an event to raise awareness about issues of incarceration, rehabilitation, sexual freedom and sexual expression.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
Tonight on Cult of Gracie Radio, the guest is Randall Radic, also known as 'Father Felony' or 'Daddy Radic,' is the Ripon, CA pastor who pleaded guilty to embezzlement after he sold the First Congregational Church without the knowledge of his congregation.
As the ad on the sidebar says, Grumpy Old Bookman wrote, "if you want to read a (fairly truthful) book by a priest who is a convicted felon and has had eight fiancees & two wives, & a very complicated set of relationships... then this is for you."
It promises to be a very interesting show.
About Randall: His recently released memoir, The Sound Of Meat (published by Ephemera Bound) covers his earlier life as a professional swim coach and priest, including his eight fiancees & two wives. "I used to try and save souls without ever examining my own," says Radic. Now, with this memoir, he puts pen to his mission, voice to his sin, sadism to his redemption.
Just go here at 9 p.m. (central) tonight, and press the orange button to listen live! Call in at (347) 838-8467
Can't be there live? Watch the Cult of Gracie blog for post-show info and downloads!
I am rather obsessed with watching the old What's My Line? & I've Got A Secret episodes. The shows' charms lay as much in the panelists themselves as it does with the guests (including "famous" folks I've never heard of) and, of course, the numerous delights that such vintage television provides. I've mentioned my delight in calling panelists names, simply because of what I'm continually discovering about them, but sometimes I'm just darn cruel.
For example, I'm so rigorous in my negative comments about panelist Dorothy Kilgallen's chin, saying things like, "I must Google to see if there's record of the incident with a horse that must have stepped on her face," that hubby was starting to become immune to them.
But now I feel badly about that... And not because hubby rolls his eyes at me with silent judgement for my rudeness or with boredom.
In deciding to investigate Kilgallen's chin, I discovered that Frank Sinatra and I held the same views on it. Performing in Vegas, Old Blue Eyes called her "the chinless wonder", and at the Copa, he said, "everyone in New York is here tonight except for Dorothy Kilgallen... she's out looking for her chin." Just more to love, or hate, about Sinatra, depending your personal views on the man.
But in discovery of such statements, I learned more about Dorothy Kilgallen, history, culture -- and myself -- than I ever could have imagined.
Kilgallen was more deeply entrenched in the romantic, mysterious, fascinating world of the late 50's and 60's that I prefer to live in, at least research wise.
Kilgallen left a small Hollywood career for that of a journalist. She was not only a gossip columnist, but a crime journalist -- which makes her more than the stereotypical female press person you think of, but a woman ahead of her times pursuing a profession deemed unsuitable for females. She also became the first woman to fly around the world.
But more than this, she was a woman. A woman who, lonely in her marriage to a cheating husband, turned to singer Johnnie Ray, a man 14 years younger than she, for what would be not only a passionate love affair, but a long-term one as well. This is where the feud with Sinatra is said to be at least partially rooted:
Sinatra had loathed Johnnie Ray from the moment the young musical upstart hit the scene. Ray's conquest of the pop charts in '51 (the top three spots all at once occupied by the same artist) had come at a time when the once (and soon to be again) successful Sinatra couldn't draw headlines unless it was for indulging in his penchant for punching paparazzi. So in '51, Frank was outraged to see that his place in pop music's upper echelon had been replaced by a skinny, half-deaf, androgynous cry-baby who all the scandal sheets proclaimed as a raging homosexual, and he was further incensed by the fact that the love of his life Ava Gardner had a star-struck obsession with the singer. Frank harbored a lifelong grudge.
Dorothy Kilgallen had been less than flattering to Sinatra in her popular opinion columns, citing his violent behavior and brooding public persona.
All of this melted my cold negative commenting heart a bit, but there is more.
On Aug. 3, 1962, Kilgallen became the first journalist to refer publicly to Marilyn Monroe's relationship with a Kennedy. Within 48 hours, Marilyn was found dead of a drug overdose at her Los Angeles residence. The inquiry into her death was marred by numerous unanswered questions and contradictions in the medical findings.* Dorothy publicly challenged the authorities with tough questions. For instance, she wrote, "If the woman described as Marilyn's 'housekeeper' [Eunice Murray] was really a housekeeper, why was her bedroom such a mess? It was a small house and should have been easy to keep tidy." Kilgallen also wanted to know "why was Marilyn's door locked that night, when she didn't usually lock it? If she were just trying to get to sleep, and took the overdose of pills accidentally, why was the light on? Usually people sleep better in the dark." And she asked, "Why did the first doctor [to arrive on the scene] have to call the second doctor before calling the police? Any doctor, even a psychiatrist, knows a dead person when he sees one, especially when rigor mortis has set in and there are marks of lividity on the surface of the face and body. Why the consultation? Why the big time gap in such a small town? Mrs. Murray gets worried at about 3 a.m., and it's almost 6 a.m. before the police get to the scene."
Kilgallen wrote that "the real story hasn't been told, not by a long shot." Such bold reporting was not common in American journalism at that time.
In a case of what can now surely be called foreshadowing, this is eerily similar to the death of Kilgallen herself, just a few years later.
On November 8, 1965, Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her own home. A death with equally strange details, powerful connections, and a poor investigation of its very own.
She was found by her hairstylist, Marc Sinclaire, who after discovering her, told friend Charles Simpson, "When I tell you the bed she was found in, and how I found her, you're going to know she was murdered."
Things amiss include:
Kilgallen not sleeping in that room or bed.
A woman who was normally cold, putting the air conditioning on when it was cold outside.
Kilgallen routinely slept in pajamas and old socks, no make up etc., yet she was found not only wearing a peignoir set, but with hair and makeup in place as if she were going out.
Kilgallen had a book, The Honey Badger, by Robert Ruark, laid out on the bed next to her, but not only was it not in the proper position for her if she was reading it, it was a book she'd already finished reading & discussed with friends -- and while Dorothy needed glasses to read, they weren't found in the room.
There was a drink on the nightstand by the bed, but where Kilgallen sat, it was out of reach.
Oh, and while we're at it, those first at the scene say there was a piece of paper by the door, eluded to by some as a suicide note, but it was never produced and no one claims to have read it.
While there are many other curious things about the way cause of death was noted (and by whom), the story officially touted is that Kilgallen, like Monroe, had over-dosed, either as a suicide or more likely by accident.
As Kilgallen wrote about Monroe, why would a woman seeking to sleep, wear an outfit she never wore, put herself in a room so cold as to be uncomfortable, not remove her eyelashes -- or at least the very uncomfortable to lean upon hair pieces, get a book she's not only already read but then not bring along her glasses, and put a drink (medicated or not) on a table near the bed but then place herself such that she would not be able to reach it easily? And all this in a room she didn't sleep in?
Curiosity only grows when one discovers what Kilgallen had been doing in the years between Monroe's death and Kilgallen's own.
Just months after Monroe's death, on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated and Kilgallen was not only upset by the event, but was investigating it. She didn't believe the Oswald story at all, and when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, she arranged to have a private interview with Ruby.
No one is certain what was said in that interview, but Kilgallen often said she had something big, which would crack the JFK investigation wide -- and then some. She continued not only to investigate, but pen columns about it too, and it was said that the Ruby interview and other details would be published in her forthcoming book, Murder One, which was contracted to write for fellow What's My Line? panelist, Bennett Cerf, & Random House -- published without any such chapter(s) after her death. Kilgallen's file of notes on all this, seen by a number of persons, has yet to surface. Both the known and unknown details are fascinating -- and the stuff for conspiracy theorists, such as this article, Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen? by Robert Morningstar.
As easily drawn into such things as I can be, I'm leaving the threads here for you to follow-up as you choose, while I continue a different path.
What strikes me, shames me too, are other thoughts....
I don't like to reduce people, especially women, to such symbolic status that their humanity is removed, but in this case, Marilyn and Dorothy represent far more than just themselves.
While not complete mirror opposites, it's clear they each offer moments upon which to reflect upon their differences. Marilyn Monroe's wish for the sort of respect and admiration Dorothy Kilgallen had is widely documented. And Dorothy, who loved opulent surroundings and personal glamour, likely wished, at least from time to time, for some of Marilyn's beauty and to be seen and coveted in such terms. Neither was granted their wishes, of course, but such personal and private dreams are larger than just these two women.
If the woman of beauty, a man's plaything, is understood to matter less in this world, her afterlife continues to grow her legend. Monroe's beauty & status as sex icon only gathers more strength, even if she herself is batted about and accepted as a pawn at the whims of men and society.
If a woman's intelligence, however threatening, is supposed to matter more than earthy beauty, why is Kilgallen the less known? Her valor and strength are not reported and commented upon, even upon the anniversaries of her death. She is not revered -- in fact, she's nearly lost to history already.
We may never know what happened to each of these women. Their stories may or may not be tied to such grand crimes and cover-ups as the conspiracy theorists argue. But the really horrific facts are the if, how, and why these women are remembered. Conspiracy cover-ups aside, our collective societal values have been uncovered, and I do not like what I see.
Or what I myself have said and done with comments about Dorothy's chin.
If you can hear me now, Dorothy, you have my most sincere apologies.
According to the AP, director and playwright Paul Walker's prize-winning play, Ladies & Gents, is a noir thriller performed entirely in the covered men's and women's bathrooms in Central Park's Bethesda Terrace.
The action takes place near the sinks and urinals; the audience stands, clustered in front of the row of stalls. Each of the two pieces that comprise the play runs simultaneously in both bathrooms, and it doesn't matter the order in which they are seen; the audience splits in half and switches facilities at intermission.
Set entirely in a bathroom, the show portrays the seedy underside of 1950s Dublin, when double-talking politicians professed piety but entertained prostitutes on the side.
"So, pretty much like the state of New York right now," Walker said in an interview this week, referring to former Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution scandal. "These themes are always relevant."
Walker and Karl Shiels, the artistic director of the experimental Dublin theater troop Semper Fi, decided an actual bathroom was the best place _ no, the only place _ to stage the play.
This isn’t the first time Monroe has been on the obverse of a coin, although the first time around he had to share the honor with a friend: in 1923, the Mint commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine with a special half-dollar, with the heads of Monroe and his Secretary of State John Quincy Adams (who will appear on a dollar himself May 15th). It wasn’t actually the Mint’s idea for the commemorative dollar: the commemorative coin was part of an elaborate plan to clean up and improve the public image of the California film industry. 300,000 of the coins were minted at the San Francisco mint and distributed in California — they are relatively uncommon, but not unobtainably rare. Several have sold on eBay from $20 to $80, depending on condition.
From that link, regarding Monroe's first coin, I am reminded of jokes about the Monroe Doctrine. They've been the pun-ery and titular fodder for Hollywood-esque headlines involving Marilyn Monroe -- and as scathing comment on US politics. But before Marilyn, there was another Hollywood connection to James Monroe. Again from the coin article link, a bit of Hollywood history:
Scandals were beginning to severely tarnish the reputation of the studios’ stars and directors. Within only a few months director William Desmond Taylor was murdered under mysterious circumstances, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was indicted for the murder of a minor actress, and actor Wallace Reid died from a drug overdose. The studios responded by launching a public relations campaign that they hoped would help restore public confidence in the movie industry. Two committees were formed. One, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, developed over the next decade into a self-regulating censorship board. The other, the American Historical Revue and Motion Picture Historical Exposition, was a civic-minded organization whose public relations staff found it had little to promote.
Searching for a way to raise funds, the Historical Exposition decided that a commemorative coin would do the trick, and in the process would generate much-needed goodwill for the film industry. The only problem was there were no convenient centennial or jubilee celebrations that California could legitimately claim in 1923. The most obvious historic event correlating with 1923 was the 150th anniversary of the 1773 Boston Tea Party. But in 1773, California was a largely unpopulated province in the Spanish Empire with no connection to New England. This dilemma was finally resolved by Congressman Walter Lineberger. Introducing a bill to authorize the Monroe Doctrine Centennial half dollar, Lineberger reasoned that Monroe Doctrine prevented England, Spain, and Russia from claiming and occupying California. While this was nothing more than historical fiction, apparently Lineberger and his fellow representatives had little concern for such details. On January 24, 1923, legislation was passed authorizing the minting of no more than 300,000 Monroe Doctrine Centennial halves: the coins were to be struck at the San Francisco Mint and distributed by the studio’s Historical Exposition committee.
The front of the coin featured Monroe and his Secretary of State in 1823, John Quincy Adams; the back "in its final form is unquestionably one of the most unusual and daring design motifs ever placed on a U.S. coin.
In place of the relief maps of the continents, Beach substituted two female figures which were contorted into a rough approximation of the shape of each land mass. The North American figure holds a branch in her left hand in the area of northern Canada while extending a twig to South America through Central America with her right hand. The South American figure holds a cornucopia with her right arm. The major ocean currents of the Atlantic and Pacific are also included, and apparently represent the flow of goods between the two continents, unimpeded by the European powers. In the lower left reverse field the centennial dates 1823-1923 flank both sides of a scroll and quill, symbols clearly intended to suggest the Monroe Doctrine. Chester Beach’s initials are found near the reverse rim at the four o’clock position and the inscriptions MONROE DOCTRINE CENTENNIAL and LOS ANGELES encircle the border. Struck in low relief, the design overall is uninspiring. The reverse motifs are novel and would indicate a certain creativity on the part of Beach were it not for the fact that the draped female figures shaped as two continents were actually copyrighted in 1899 by artist Ralph Beck and used by Beach for the seal of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901.
In other words, the deal with the first Monroe coin was to promote a more pure Hollywood -- with a completely fabricated story & a coin with appropriated art. Nice new image, Hollywood.
How anyone can lament Young's continued upset over the devastating effects of Woods on her career is astonishing. Labeled a nut-case, a phsyco; black-balled from acting with the brand of "bitch" when she was the victim; what is she supposed to do? Just say, "Hey, that's OK. Lie and treat me like crap and keep me from my career, all because of your twisted ego"?
It's true that women often get the labels while the men get off scot-free -- even if, as in this case, he had to pay a huge settlement. It's the big omission in so many stories, which leads me to believe that something, someone was at work to make sure Young would be left out in the cold & Woods ultimately win.
But what really, really pisses me off is his 'accidental,' "I am sure it is fashionable to bash the guy (yawn) and pity the poor woman."
I was up late, into the wee hours, reading pulp novels for you dear readers (ah, the things I do for you -- watch for the reviews) and decided to flip on the TV. It won't surprise you that I'm a huge fan of Turner Classic Movies, so being the last channel I watched, that's the channel that came on. The movie had already started, so I missed the opening monologue by Robert Osborne, but quickly fell in love with Love Me or Leave Me.
The film stars Doris Day in a role -- a film -- which I had not expected. She's much more like Monroe than I had ever imagined in this film, but being so cozy from all the reading, I felt myself drifting off... Until, that is, I heard Day singing Ten Cents A Dance (YouTube). Wasn't that a Ziegfeld Follies song?
Suddenly I found myself leaping off the couch to check the Internet to verify my dim recollection of the song. Sure enough, that song is a classic -- with a classic performance by Ruth Etting (YouTube).
And that's when I discovered that Love Me or Leave Me was the film adaptation of Etting's life.
Well, Ruth Etting's life along with her manager-come-husband, Chicago gangster Martin "Moe the Gimp" Snyder, and her pianist, Myrl Alderman, the 'love interest' -- all of whom were still living and paid well for consulting during the creation of the film (which still took Hollywood liberties here and there). The film portrays the real life story of Etting's discovery, rise to stardom as America's Sweetheart of Song, and the jealously or love triangle, complete with shooting.
While Etting divorced "Moe the Gimp" in 1937, Moe wasn't the kind of gangster to let it go...
Moe returned to California and in a jealous rage shot and wounded Ruth's pianist and boyfriend Myrl Alderman. The subsequent sensationalized trial brought her career to a halt. Snyder was tried for kidnapping and attempted murder. The trial was a sordid scandal and an ordeal for Ruth, lasting from October through December of 1938. Snyder was found guilty and sentanced to prison. When he appealed the decision, Ruth and Myrl Alderman declined to appear in court, and he was released after a year in prison.
One of the more interesting items in our collection is a scrapbook of newspaper clippings dedicated solely to newspaper coverage of the trial. The Los Angeles Examiner had an especially talented writer, James Lee, whose writings on this trial gave an interesting snapshot into journalistic ethics adn trial coverage of the mid-30s. Lee makes a drama of the proceedings, complete with characters: Ruth Etting is "The Little Lady", her ex-husband, Moe Snyder is "The Gimp", Myrl Alderman is "The Piano Player," and that all important scene prop, the gun, is called "The Equalizer." Here, for example, is a description of "The Little Lady" on the stand.
She was dressed sedately, but expensively. She wore a knee-length gray jacket of very wooly lamb, a severe, dark blue tailored dress, and a blue felt hat that looked like the campaign headgear worn by the Union officers in the War Between the States, only with a good deal more chic, of course. (Los Angeles Examiner, 12/13/38)
This kind of writing, plus word-for-word transcription of some of the courtroom scenes, make for entertaining and sometimes painful reading on this portion of Ruth's life.
After the trail and Ruth's marriage to Myrl Alderman, the two lived in seclusion on a small ranch in Colorado Springs.
The reason this film strikes one as so much different than most Doris Day flicks likely lies in the fact that Love Me or Leave Me, made in 1955 with MGM, was the first film made by Doris Day after her 'liberation' from Warner Brothers. It's rather obvious MGM wasn't viewing Doris Day as just another funny, fluffy, cute, good girl who could sing -- because in this role Day wears sexy costumes, drinks, and has the ambitions as well as the actions of a woman who was less girl-next-door and more on the make.
Maybe saying Ruth Etting was "more on the make" seems a bit too much, but we all know Doris Day's image -- and Ruth, the torch singer, was far more sex pot.
It's said that when Mae West first saw Etting (in the Ziegfeld Follies), she said, "The curtains opened, and here was this girl. Not what you'd call a classic beauty--but unusual. She had a sex quality that seemed to mesmerize the audience. And when she finished singing, they just kind of went crazy."
The Ruth Etting we see portrayed by Doris Day is far more aggressive than most of Day's characters (before or since -- however, I'm not a Doris Day aficionado). Day's abilities as an actress and MGM's faith in Day aside, one shouldn't underestimate Day's understanding of Etting. TCM says:
A final irony about Love Me or Leave Me is the fact that the relationship between Ruth Etting and Marty Snyder had some disturbing parallels to the relationship between Doris Day and her husband Marty Melcher. Like Snyder, Melcher also controlled Day's business affairs, made creative decisions for her even though he had no musical experience, and lived through her work. When Melcher died in 1968, Day discovered that he had mismanaged her entire life savings of $20 million dollars, leaving her completely broke.
Clearly Day wouldn't know how well she understood her character until years later, but it's worth noting.
And, she knew as the filming progressed that there was something special about the movie. Most film critics consider it her very best role. She certainly should have at least been nominated for an Academy Award. But there is something strange about Academy voters. A person in a singing role is rarely taken seriously. Few musical stars have ever been been nominated for an Oscar. She worked very hard on her role. During the first seven weeks of shooting, she had only one half day off!
Cagney said of Doris: “As an actress, she perfectly illustrates my definition of good acting; just plant yourself, look the other actor in the eye, and tell him the truth. That’s what she does, all right.” He considered this film one of his top five pictures.
And the picture turned out to be a “smash.” It was nominated for six Academy Awards. Best Actor, Best Screenplay, Best Song, Best Original Story. It makes you wonder what Doris’s film career would have been like if she had been at MGM from the very beginning of her career.
Related:
For more info on Ruth Etting, America's Sweetheart of Song, see www.ruthetting.com, the official and family run website. (Where it seems both JLo and Angelina Jolie want to be in a remake of Love Me or Leave Me.)
Also, this page is run by a "palruth" who is researching Ruth Etting for a book.
Will Straw, PhD, Department of Art History and Communications Studies professor spotted my Hollywood Follies post and sent me an email requesting some information.
While I dig around in my collection (I have a system, but it's not very friendly to research requests like this), Will has allowed me to share his email so that any here with info can help.
Hi -- I was googling "Wayne Sabbath" and, after five pages of references to religious books, found your site, with the scans from Hollywood Follies. Thanks for those. I've been trying to reconstruct the career of Wayne and of his partner (who may, in fact, be him) "Cap'n Joey"/Jo Burten, who published spicy magazines from the 1920s onwards. Burten's Follies was the best known of these, and "Follies" turns up in many of his titles. The last record of any of them I can find is a reference to Joe getting busted c. 1959 for obscenity. Do you know any more about these guys?
In any case, thanks for the interesting read, Will
If you have any info please post it here and/or contact Will via contact info on his webpage.
Belle Gunness was one of America’s most profligate known female serial killers. At 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and over 200 lb (91 kg), she was a powerful Norwegian-American woman. She may have killed both of her husbands and all of her children (on different occasions), but she is known to have killed most of her suitors, boyfriends, and her two daughters Myrtle and Lucy. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance benefits. Reports estimate that she killed more than twenty people over several decades–some claim more than one hundred–and possibly got away with it. She became part of American criminal folklore, a female Bluebeard.
The story of Belle caught my eye today as Andrea Simmons, graduate student at the University of Indianapolis, has exhumed Belle's remains, and is now analyzing them, comparing the DNA with DNA samples from Belle's letters, with hopes to clarify if the body is really Belle's. While a good historical mystery is fascinating, the life and deeds of Gunness are even more compelling -- in a morbid way.
Belle Gunness' history was re-examined and reporters wrote about the sudden inexplicable death in 1900 of her first husband, Mads Sorensen, who had been well-insured for $8,500. Two of her adopted children had died a few years earlier from conditions that might well have been due to poison, and several of her insured establishments had burned down. Belle traded her home in Austin, Illinois, for a farm in LaPorte, Indiana, and soon married Peter Gunness, who died eight months later when, as Belle reported, a meat grinder and jar of scalding water fell on his head (although no burns were present on the body and the blow to his head did not quite fit the supposed weapon).
Belle then placed matrimonial ads in various papers to lure men without family ties and with money—many of whom disappeared. That is, until they were found buried on her farm.
Belle Gunness was born in Selbu, Norway in 1858, and emigrated to the United States about 1886. She married Mads Sorenson in 1893. They owned a Chicago store that only turned a profit after it burned and they collected the insurance. In 1900 Sorenson died of convulsions and Belle received about $8,000 from his life insurance.
And she lured men via ads, like today's personal ads:
Belle began advertising in Norwegian language newspapers, "Widow, with mortgaged farm, seeks marriage. Triflers need not apply."
Apparently many answered her letters. Belle would introduce them as relatives. Belle's pretty, 18 year old niece, Jenny Olson, got suspicious because the suitors always left the farm during the night. Soon Jenny was away at school in California, according to Belle.
Do we have to guess where Jenny likely ended up?
It is believed that Belle had killed at least 25 people (other say 40 or more), including children, and the fire April 28, 1908 at Belle's home led to the discovery of many bodies -- but it also appeared as if Belle was now a victim herself.
The prime suspect in this apparent arson was a former hired hand named Ray Lamphere, who had worked for Belle about a year and who continued to have issues with her. He was even seen near her farm that morning, and he admitted he saw the fire, but said he had not felt compelled to warn anyone. Lamphere was arrested and detained.
Ray Lamphere, Belle's hired hand, was eventually charged with murder and arson. He was convicted only on the later charge. Before dying in prison, he maintained that Belle had escaped. For years afterwards there were numerous sightings of the murderess across the country, but none were confirmed.
Already, however, the researchers have made a shocking discovery: The casket they exhumed contained not just an adult woman's body, but also the partial remains of two children.
To Nawrocki, this surprise further confirmed that the initial investigations of the fire and Gunness' crimes were botched from the start.
"It makes me doubt every conclusion these people came to," he says. "Instead of answering questions, it just opened up more."
Did you hear the one about the guy who parachuted out of the plane he'd just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash -- only to disappear? No, it's not a joke; it's the story of DB Cooper, the 1971 mystery in which neither Cooper nor the marked money was found.
However, in 1980, a young boy, 8-year-old Brian Ingram, playing along the banks of the Columbia River, found wads of the decomposing twenty dollar bills from Cooper's heist. A few years later, at age 14, Ingram was given a portion of the found money as a sort of 'finder’s fee', but the finder's not playing keepers; he's now auctioning them off.
Austin claims Ingram, her ex-husband, owes $60,000 in child support for Kara and says, "I wanted to see if I could sell one of mine. Since our daughter may never see the majority of her child support Brian owes her, I thought this may be a way to add to her college savings fund I have for her."
And that's how dirty wads of Cooper's money are now a part of Kara's family tree and her own sex history.
Pastor Free Methodist Church Corner West Colton Avenue and Webster Street Redlands, California
(a newspaper report)
PARENTS HEAR PULPIT ATTACK Sheik Fathers and Flapper Mothers are Assailed by Redlands Clergyman (Special Staff Correspondence "The Sun")
REDLANDS, CALIF.--Sheik fathers who enjoy prize fights and jazz more than the comfort of home and children, and flapper mothers "who display the kneebone, collarbone, backbone, and wishbone," were scored in the spirited sermon preached by the Rev. Harry Black at the first of a two weeks revival at the Free Methodist Church in Redlands.
"The automobile, sheik fathers, flapper mothers, immodest dress and lack of religious training are the causes for the downfall of many of our youth," the pastor declared in his sermon on "The Revolt of Youth, Roadside Spooning, Why Our Young People Go Wrong and Who Is To Blame." He continued:
CROWDED AUTOS ARE ATTACKED
"The automobile can be made a blessing or a curse, and it is both. It is a disgrace to society for four or five young folks to crowd into one seat of a car, and nothing but a base desire will lead boys and girls to do this. They should be arrested right on the spot.
Double The Fanny Brice Is Twice As Nice (Part One)
Recently at a sale I spotted this 78 with one side titled Second Hand Rose and eager to show it off to my pal Secondhand Rose, I didn't even notice it was by the Fanny Brice -- nor did I note the other side with My Man -- until I had it home.
But once I did, I knew I had sheet music about here... Somewhere...
Weeks (and boxes) later, I found it. (And of course, more than a dozen others to scan and post here later too.)
Anyway, here's the belated post.
To understand the context of both songs, here's a bit of Brice's bio:
Brice starred in the Ziegfield Follies in the 1920s and 1930s and became known for her beautiful voice and limber grace, which she always used in the service of humor. When she tried dramatic Broadway roles, her plays were unsuccessful.
As Brice's fame increased, so did her notoriety. In 1918, she married Jules "Nicky Arnstein, a handsome, urbane but somewhat inept con man and thief she had lived with for six years. Despite Arnstein's infidelity and a stretch in Sing Sing Prison for illegal wiretapping, the devoted Brice stayed with him, had two children and supported him by working on-stage almost constantly. Brice's tumultuous relationship with the ne'er-do-well Arnstein gave her material for a rare non-ethnic success: appearing in the Ziegfield Follies of 1921, the usually manic comedienne stood nearly motionless on the stage and, singing in a beautiful, unaccented voice, moved audiences to tears with her rendition of "My Man" with its now-classic lyrics, "But whatever my man is, I am his - forever."
In 1924, Arnstein was charged in a Wall Street bond theft. Brice insisted on his innocence and funded his legal defense, at great expense. Arnstein was convicted and sentenced to the Federal penitentiary at Leavenworth. Released in 1927, the ungrateful and unfaithful Arnstein disappeared from Brice's life and that of his two children. Reluctantly, Brice divorced him.
Brice had some of her greatest success during her years as Mrs. Arnstein, including her famous song "Second Hand Rose." Yet, in 1923, as biographer Grossman puts it, Brice "tired of being a sight gag" and had her nose surgically straightened. Still, acceptance eluded her when she tried her hand at "American" drama.
After a failed marriage to Broadway impresario Billy Rose and starring roles in Hollywood film, Brice found a niche -broadcast radio - that made her comfortable. In 1938, she launched her own weekly radio show. A wonderful mimic and impersonator with a great ear for dialect, Brice chose instead to limit herself to one character, Baby Snooks, a precocious, bratty toddler - who had no accent. Her enormously successful run on radio lasted until her death in 1951, just as television was beginning to capture the radio audience.
Barbra Streisand paid tribute to Brice in her loosely biographical film Funny Girl.
Now to the song lyrics.
Second Hand Rose By James Hanley and Grant Clarke -- listen along here. (Many thanks to Sex-Kitten.Net for hosting the file!)
Father has a business, Strictly second-hand, Everything from tooth-picks to a baby grand. Stuff in our apartment, Came from Father's store, Even things I'm wearing, someone wore before. It's no wonder that I feel abused; I never get a thing that ain't been used!
I'm wearing second-hand hats, Second-hand clothes, That's why the call me Second Hand Rose. Even our piano in the parlor, Father bought for ten cents on the dollar. Second-hand pearls, I'm wearing second-hand curls, I never get a single thing that's new! Even Jakie Cohen, he's the man I adore, Had the nerve to tell me he'd been married before! Everyone knows that I'm just Second Hand Rose, From Second Avenue.
I'm wearing second-hand shoes, Second-hand hose, All the girls hand me their second-hand beaus! Even my pajamas, when I don them, Have somebody else's 'nitials on them. Second-hand rings, I'm sick of second-hand things, I never get what other goilies do. Once while strolling through the Ritz, a woman got my goat, She nudged her friend and said, "Oh, look, there goes my last year's coat!" Everyone knows that I'm just Second Hand Rose, From Second Avenue.
My Man
Sung by Miss Fanny Brice in Zeigfield Follies of 1921 as Mon Homme (My Man). Written by Maurice Yvain, lyrics by Channing Pollack.
It's cost me alot, But there's one thing that I've got It's my man. Cold and wet, tired, you bet But all that I soon forget With my man.
He's not much for looks And no hero out of books Is my man... Two or three girls has he That he likes as well as me But I love him!
I don't know why I should He isn't any good He isn't true But I'll stick to him like glue What else can I do?
Oh my man, I love him so! He'll never know. All my life is just despair But I don't care! When he takes me in his arms The world is bright, All right!
What's the difference if I say I'll go away? When I know I'll come back On my knees some day; For whatever my man is I am his Forever more!
Sometimes I say If I just could get away With my man He'd go straight, sure as fate, For it never is too late For a man.
I just like to dream of a cottage by a stream With my man Where a few flowers grew and perhaps a kid or two Like my man.
And then my eyes get wet I 'most forget 'Til he gets hot And tells me not to talk such rot...
Oh my man, I love him so! He'll never know. All my life is just despair But I don't care! When he takes me in his arms The world is bright All right!
What's the difference if I say I'll go away When I know I'll come back On my knees some day For whatever my man is I am his Forever more!
She was once many things, including at the time she married Vincent Astor named Brooke Marshall, a widow of Buddy Marshall, and herself a very attractive 50-year-old magazine editor & writer, with a son, Anthony D. Marshall -- yes, the one now up on charges.
Brooke, the other Astor wives & the women in their lives have interesting stories to read about -- check here for starters.
Thinking of Brooke Astor and her ilk reminded me of my Dad's love of a local wealthy philanthropist and social doyenne -- we'll call her 'Jane'. When American Beauty came out, Dad used to imagine the withered & aged rail-thin body of Jane beneath not rose petals, but hundred dollar bills. Which reminds me, us, that money is a huge turn-on for many; more than youth, big breasts and firm skin.
The Black Hand, despite the wild claims of newsmen and yellow journalists to the contrary, was never a formal organization with any kind of international ties. The Black Hand was never a society (although a Black Hand Society did exist for hundreds of hears in Spain as an organization designed to help the needy and to fight invaders, but died out before 1900; another Black Hand Society originated in Serbia, a secret cabal designed to establish Serbian dominance in the Balkans). The Black Hand was never tied to any of the real secret societies or criminal conspiracies, such as the Camorra, the Mafia, or the Unicone Siciliane, even thought many members of these nefarious organizations practiced the sinister ways of the Black Hand. It was simply an extortion racket practiced upon decent citizens, first in Italy and Sicily as early as the 1750's, and later in the U.S., chiefly affecting Italian-Sicilan immigrants in major metropolitan areas, especially New York, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and San Francisco.
The racket was prosaic--and deadly. An anonymous Black Hander would threaten various types of violence to extort money from one, usually well-to-do, victim. These threats most often involved kidnapping a family member, threatening to blow up a business or shop, or to attack, injure, or kill a family member or the recipient of the Black Hand note. These notes were crudely written in broken English (in the U.S.) and boldly demanded a certain amount of money, with a specific instructions as to how the cash was to be delivered. The note would usually be decorated with a number of horrific symbols and images--daggers dripping blood, a bomb exploding, a gun smoking at the barrel, a skull and crossbones, a body dangling from a rope tied about the neck. The signature of the sender was invariably a hand imprinted in heavy black ink, thus the sobriquet, La Mano Nera (The Black Hand).
As for our lady with the hand printed lingerie, one can only imagine that this infers a different sort of blackmail or threat.
For more, see this article which uses the 1950 film, Black Hand (starring Gene Kelly as the Italian man seeking vengeance), to discuss the Armenian Black Hand.
striking woman with very long wavy hair, tropical print dress, leis of whitish flowers around her head and hanging from her neck. gaze to side of camera.
believe this to be a photograph of a Mahu--a person born as a male but raised as a female in Tahitian culture. A practice not only of Tahitians but of groups in India, Indonesia, and other places. Considered as part of the Third Sex by contemporary gender studies.
I wondered how the seller could make such a claim -- other than close inspection of the photo showing more 'masculine' traits in the face. Even then it is rather a big leap.
I did some research of my own on the Polynesian Mahu.
The definition of 'third sex' and 'person of ambiguous gender' is a bit misleading. While Mahu are thought to possess the virtues of both men and women, Mahu are most definitely males -- males who physically remain male but dress and act like women, right down to typical household chores of cooking and taking care of children. (Males who do more than behave like females, who become females, are called Raerae -- transsexuals.) In some ways, this makes the Mahu your every day gay. But that's a simplistic gender view.
According to Like a Lady, In Polynesia by Roberta Perkins Mahu have ancestral customs and were socially accepted -- even admired for the special roles they play within their communities. It's a somewhat complicated picture:
For the English, French and Dutch seafarers who visited the South Pacific Islands in the 18th century, confronting the Polynesian transgenders was a mixture of shock, fascination and repulsion. The best reports of these early contacts come from the HMS Bounty expedition to Tahiti (1789-91) under Captain William Bligh. One of his officers, Lt. Morrison, wrote: "They have a set of men called mahu. These men are in some respects like the eunuchs of India but they are not castrated. They never cohabit with women but live as they do. They pick their beards out and dress as women, dance and sing with them and are as effeminate in their voice. They are generally excellent hands at making and painting of cloth, making mats and every other woman's employment" Being a thorough gentleman who considered it his duty to investigate everything, Captain Bligh's curiosity got the better of him "I found with her a person, who although I was certain was a man, had great marks of effeminacy about him and created in me certain notions which I wished to find out...The effeminacy of this persons speech induced me to think he had suffered castration...Here the young man took his mantle off which he had about him to show me the connection. He had the appearance of a woman, his yard and testicles being so drawn in under him, having the art from custom of keeping them in this position...On examining his privacies I found them both very small and the testicles remarkable so, being not larger than a boy's five or six years old, and very soft as if in a state of decay or a total incapacity of being larger, so that in either case he appeared to me as effectually a Eunuch as if the stones were away." One can imagine old stiff and proper Captain Bligh in full dress uniform fingering the mahu's genitals with his starchy white gloved hands.
An unexplained phenomenon on Tahiti was that just one, and only one, mahu resided in each village at any one time. As one Tahitian pointed out: "When one dies then another substitutes...God arranges it like that.. It isn't allowed...two mahusin one place. I've traveled around Huahine (the Society or Tahitian Islands) and I haven't seen two mahus in one place. I never saw it." How this phenomenon worked is still a mystery, but obviously some sociological mechanism must have been at work in each village to ensure that not more than one mahu lived there at a time. Since, as we know the desire to change gender is spontaneous and not an orderly event, how then did such precision occur on cue? Perhaps a young mahu growing up in a village which already had an established older mahu may have been forced to seek a village where none existed. Another suggestion is that a mahu was made by the community, who selected a boy to be raised as a girl to replace the established mahu when she passed on. The question remains, though, what criteria was used for this selection? However it was achieved, mahus were accorded great respect and dignity.
Bligh observed: "The women treat him (mahu) as one of their sex, and he observed every restriction that they do, and is equally respected and esteemed." Anthropologist Robert Suggs reported a similar attitude towards mahus on the Marquesas Islands, while another ethnographer, Donald Marshall, said much the same for Cook Islanders, and by all accounts it was similar on Hawaii. On Mangaia, the mahus were not only well regarded by the rest of the population, but they excelled at women's tasks, sang in an excellent high pitch falsetto and were better dancers than all other women. Anthropologist Robert Levy claimed that the mahus on Tahiti served as an object lesson for demarcating the sexes. Since the sex roles were similar in many respects and some tasks were performed equally by men and women, the mahu was pointed to as neither wholly man nor wholly woman. However, this does not explain the presence of mahus in more warlike societies ouch as the Marquesans, the Hawaiians or the Maoris, where the sexes were clearly defined by the warrior status of men.
According to Captain Bligh: "These people (mahus), says Tynah, are particularly selected when boys and kept with the women solely for the caresses of the men...Those who he connected with him have their beastly pleasures satisfied between his thighs, but they are no farther sodomites as they all positively deny the crime." Indeed, it seems that anal sex, even in heterosexual relations was not practiced in Tahiti. The mahu then was a diversion for oral sex, since many Tahitian men claimed that it’s just like doing it with a woman, but his (mahu) way of doing it is better than with a woman...When you go to a woman it is not always satisfactory. When you go to the mahu it's more satisfactory. The sexual pleasure is very great." However, fellatio was not reciprocal, as one Tahitian explained: "I was 'done' by a mahu...He 'ate' my penis. He asked me to suck his. I did not suck it...He offered me money. I said I would hit him. I did not want that sort of thing, it is disgusting." Despite this, there was a Tahitian belief that semen is like a vitamin supplement. "(Mahus) really believe that (semen) is first class food for them," said one Tahitian man. "Because of that mahu are strong and powerful. The seminal fluid goes throughout his body...I’ve seen many mahu and I've seen that they are very strong." Sodomy was also denied by other islanders. The mangaians, for example, thought anal sex ridiculous, yet were quick to point out that it took place on the other Cook Islands. It is possible, of course, that the Polynesians were quick to realise the disgust with which white men regarded sodomy, and in their eagerness to accommodate them as trading partners flatly denied any such behaviour in their community. So, Europeans began to view mahus not as substitute women, nor as sodomites, but as an alternative sexual arrangement for the sole gratification of men.
As for the incidence of female-to-male transgenders across Polynesia, it seems to have been unknown, or, at least, rare, for anthropologist Donald Marshall was told of the existence of women who insisted on doing men's work (though not cross-dressed), on Mangaia, though he had never seen one.
Like many old world traditions and societal sects, the Mahu tradition has changed. Not with 'the times' so much as in response to foreigners, including more than the usual ministry of white missionaries which stripped them of the respect of their communities.
But the Mahu tradition is struggling. When thousands of French soldiers arrived for the nuclear testing program there weren’t enough local women to entertain them – so many Mahu turned to prostitution.
As Bormann reports, it’s given a traditional phenomenon a very bad name.
It's simplistic to say "so many turned to prostitution", as if this had no cultural, economic or other motivational issues. Attitudes aside, what currently exists of Mahu culture is a rather watered-down version of the old legacy of the islands. Even the word Mahu is, in many places, now just derogatory slang to dismiss any non-hetero males, ignorant to the word's origin and history.
For more on Mahu you can visit The Island Goddess Pages, "embracing the online Mahu Communities of Hawaii, Mainland US & Worldwide".
Christine Keeler was the infamous woman at the center of the 1960's Profumo scandal in England (and it had it's American impact as well). Keeler had affairs with both John 'Jack' Profumo, war minister in Harold McMillan's Conservative government, and Eugene Ivanov, the assistant Naval Attache to the USSR embassy who was considered to be a spy by MI5. Obviously, this mix created quite a scandal. Keeler was just 19 years old when the smack went down.
But as always, there's a life which leads up to such events...
Christine Keeler grew up with her mother and stepfather in the Berkshire village of Wraysbury. The home was small and allowed little privacy. Although she was close to her mother, she felt threatened by her stepfather's attentions to the point where she kept a knife under her pillow in case he forced himself upon her.
In 1957, at the age of 15, Keeler commuted daily from Wraysbury to London for her job as a model at a dress shop in the Soho quarter. One day the shop's sweeper invited her to his flat... There, she lost her virginity in what she described as a non-stimulating experience.
At 16, Keeler was dating American GI's from military bases in her town of Wraysbury. One of the men, a black sergeant from Laleham Air Force base named Jim. Months after he had left for the states, Keeler discovered she was pregnant. She tried to abort the baby herself with a knitting needle and as expected, it was a bloody, traumaticatic mess. The child was not aborted, but born prematurely on 17 April 1959 and lived just six days.
That summer Keeler left Wraysbury, and an unhappy life, for a lifeexcitementment and adventure in London.
She waitressed at a restaurant in Baker Street where she soon met Maureen O'Connor, a girl who worked at Murray's Cabaret Club in Soho. O'Connor introduced Keeler to the owner, Percy Murray, who hired her almost immediately as a topless showgirl. Part of a showgirl's work then, as now, involved encouraging them to buy more drinks by sitting with the customers between acts.
One night, a rich Arab customer, accompanied by a starlet and another man, came to the club. The other man was Dr. Stephen Ward. Ward was a society osteopath who mixed in influential circles, presumably for introducing pretty party girls to the aristocratic set. Charming Keeler with compliments regarding how "wonderful" she was in the show, Ward wormed his way into getting her phone number.
The next day, Ward called Keeler three times; she blew him off. But he turned up at her family's home in Wraysbury and charmed her mother into Keeler giving him one date. On the second date Ward asked Keeler to move into his flat in Bayswater.
Keeler agreed; she was an attractive woman alone in a big city and Ward could give her security and companionship. Ward did not pester her for sex like most men, and Kereferredfered to their liarrangementsments as like that of a 'brother and sister'. Some time after meeting Ward, Keeler met a new dancer at the club, Mandy Rice-Davies.
Rice-Davies has been quoted as saying "It was dislike at first sight" and Keeler apparently felt the same, but as both girls found themselves at the same parties, they became companions if not friends. Not only did they compliment eachother well as far as personality, the two also worked well in the bedroom, earning themselves money for clothes and entertainment purposes.
During the scandal, Ward was charged with living on the "immoral earnings" of Keeler and Rice-Davies and running a brothel in his home. Keeler has strenuously denied this. She claims Ward used women and sex not for cash, but to gain access to the affluent and influence his rich peers. Keeler also claims Ward was a spy for the Soviet Union and that asked her to do work for him. Tasks included were to get information from Profumo about the placing of nuclear warheads in West Germanydroppingoping off letters at the Soviet Embassy. Keeler claims that once while water-skiing Ward had tried to kill her because he feared she was going to blow the whistle on him. (Ward was prosecuted but committed suicide on the very last day of the trial -- before the jury reached their verdict.) But back to Keeler's story...
In July of 1961, after swimming in the buff in Lord Astor's pool, Keeler met both Profumo and Ivanov. The two vied for Keeler's attention. Keeler howepreferredfered Ivanov, believing he was a real mans man. But one drive around London in the ministerial limousine, and Keeler was smitten by his aura of power. The affair lasted about a month before Profumo called it quits for reasons of propriety.
By November Keeler had a number of lovers. General Ayub Khan, then military dictator of Pakistan, makes the list. But two rivals, West Indian men, Aloysius "Lucky" Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe, would lead to the discovery of her affair with Profumo.
Gordon was jealously infatuated with Keeler. He had assaulted Keeler in the street and she alleges he held her hostage for two days with an axe. (Keeler dropped charges for the latter incident due to appeals from Gordon's brother who feared that Gordon would get a long sentence because of his criminal record for violence.)
After rejecting Gordon for the last time, Keeler bought a gun to protect herself from him. She also enlisted Edgecombe to help with her security. This led to Edgecombe and Gordon meting face-to-face in 27 October 1962 at a Soho club. A confrontation ensued, and Edgecombe slit Gordon's face with a knife -- Gordon's wound needed 17 stitches.
Edgecombe quickly went into hiding from the police. Keeler, in fear for her life, changed address so that Gordon could not find her. After a few weeks, Edgecomb realized that he could not remain in hiding indefinitely. He asked Keeler to help him find a lawyer so he could surrender himself to the police. But as Edgecombe had taken another lover, a jealous Keeler refused, telling him that not only would she not help him, but that she planned to testify against him in court.
Obviously outraged by Keeler's decision, Edgecombe showed up outside Ward's flat on December 14, 1962. Keeler was there visiting Rice-Davies; she refused to let him in. Incensed, Edgecombe used the gun that had once belonged to Keeler to shoot at the flat door resulting in enough noise to startle neighbours. Quickly the area was teaming with police and journalists. Edgecombe managed to get away in a taxi, but was later arrested at his Brentford flat.
It was during the investigation to this incident that the details of Keeler's affair with Profumo were discovered. Keeler tried to escape to Spain, and a ridiculous chase ensued as the entourage of reporters pursued her through Europe.
Keeler was found guilty on unrelated perjury charges for not attending as a witness in the trial regarding Gordon's attack. She was imprisoned for nine months in Holloway Prison.
Keeler changed her name, took a job, and when her past has caught up with her, she's been fired. She had two children, from two different fathers. She is said to be estranged from one son yet close to the other.
Today she lives in a council owned flat in north London with her cat.
When Profumo died (March 10, 2006), Keeler said she had not been in love with him as he was so many years older than her.
More than 40 years later Keeler is still bewildered by what happened. She has made public claims that Ward and herself were used as a "smokescreen" by the establishment who wanted the focus kept on the racier aspects of the story, concealing the serious breach of British security. Yeah, like that would ever happen (wink).
The first American feature-length sex film was Traffic in Souls (1913) (aka While New York Sleeps).
Made in 1913, Traffic was a "photo-drama" expose of white slavery. As a the turn of the century production, the director, George Loane Tucker, treads the line between sexpolitation and public service message. As the film guides viewers through various dens of iniquity in New York City, which certainly has provocative footage, the story includes the processes of crime detection, and the mandated climax of pure values as the police work to bust the white slavery rackets.
At the time of its release, the motion picture was controversial in many ways. Obviously, there was the whole issue of its daring to address prostitution and sex. And while the nervous producers did much to bill this as a warning message to citizens, a 'true crime' vice film, the advertisements promised steamy sex.
Due to the advertisements & the content of the film itself, there were obscenity charges & ensuing problems, of course, but perhaps more important, was the public reaction.
This was not only due to 1913, and Victorian era thinking, for film was a new medium & 'new' brings its own issues.
There was much concern as to the role of film in lives of Americans. Full length films signaled the end of the Nickelodeon, and the beginning of, well, who knew what. Of major concern was the film viewer itself. While the Nickelodeon was for men and boys, if motion pictures were to survive, they would need the approval of women.
In the early 1900's, the most popular films were vice films, & in the teens, a major societal concern was The White Slave Trade. Sensational white slave films were made during this time, to warn folks of the dangers to their women. Conflicting with the as-billed-educational-films messages, cinemas brought women-folk out into public where they could easily fall prey to such ills as the white slave trade. Debate centered around the irony. Other debate focused on the films themselves, and censorship issues were raised. And to make matters worse, women seemed to enjoy such films! Oh, how could such tender beings watch & enjoy such lewd filth such as scenes from brothels?!
Victorian purity meets a changing culture head-on with the new medium of film. Culturally, the film stood as point of debate. Historically, we know what happened, and the dialogues which continue. As a film, Traffic in Souls was one of the first films to prove that 'sex sells' and it served as a tipping point, encouraging, with its sales, more films like it.
After Traffic there would be more shocking 'truth' films with the same theme of the horrors of prostitution -- with all the same combination of message, melodrama and sexploitation. These films include The Inside of the White Slave Traffic (also in 1913), Damaged Goods (1914) and The Sex Lure (aka The Girl Who Did Not Care, 1916).
In fact, the trend continues today, with Lifetime's miniseries, Human Trafficking. But this conversation over today's historical parallels in sex, obscenity, and alarming the public, well, I'll leave that to others.
If all of this intrigues you, and how can it not, you may also be interested in reading Mother of Truth by Ivan Abramson.
Mother of Truth, subtitled "A Story of Romance and Retribution Based on the Events of My Own Life", was published in 1929 and is fiction by director Abramson. Abramson was a Russian born film director and writer of over 56 Hollywood films, including many pre-code productions such as The Sex Lure. While fiction, Mother of Truth is fascinating reading for fans of film.
If you want to contact me, post a note. If you wish to talk in private, Naughty dot Words at gmail dot com is the current solution -- however, if it's about link swaps, affiliate programs etc., read the FAQfirst!
If you insist on knowing more about me...
I've been interviewed on Radio Blowfish (direct link to the specific podcast download here).
Peter of
Jane's Guide says, "This blog site is perfectly charming. What an enjoyable time I had here. Your hostess, and the site, is named Silent Porn Star - with no doubt interesting and untold stories behind the name. The focus here is in curating - and celebrating - sexual iconography. I browsed the site's last couple of years of archives, hip hopping over such delights as old pulp fiction cover art, black & white vintage photography, occasional contemporary censorship issues, and even - to my delight - a link to a YouTube clip of Cher and Raquel Welch, all glitter-glamoured up in their prime and glory, singing Peggy Lee's "I'm A Woman". If that isn't as iconic as you could ask for, you're not looking. The commentary is smart, positive, and insightful. This is just the sort of unique site we love to encourage." (Silent Porn Star even made Peter's list of favorite sites!)
Cinema Retro says, "[A] gem of a site that will appeal to any libertines among our readers. Silent Porn Star is an addictive, often hilarious look at how sex and pornography has presented in pop culture over the last century. There are vintage postcards of topless Polynesian dancers, tasteful nude starlets of yesteryear and some delightfully distasteful photos and stories of more recent vintage. We don't expect too many contributors to Mike Huckabee's presidential campaign to patronize the site, but those of us who are proud to be less pure can have a field day looking through those old ads for movies about promiscuous teenagers as well as reveling in other forbidden delights. There's plenty to gawk at whether you're straight, gay or in between - fun for the entire family!"
"Required reading," and "When it comes to sex and collecting, there is no better blog to read because it is always about the sex and the collecting," says Shon Richards.
Blowfish Blog says, "Although the writing is warm and friendly, an aura Sphinx-like and cool surrounds Silent Porn Star. Written by a female collector of historical erotica and risque objects, in it we find out a great deal about a great many things, although not much about the author. But that is part of its charm; like an expert strip-tease, you think you see everything, and then realize that you only saw what you were permitted to. If you are a lover of historical smut, this site is simply mana from heaven, of course. But for everyone, the commentary is learned and witty, intellectual without being snobbish. And we learned so much about the mafia, too."
Starla of The Naughty Guide says: "The writing is elegant and flows off the screen with ease and the site is packed full of information. Some humorous, and some thought provoking. I am sure you will find something to tease your taste buds on this site."
Engaging in "rampant presentism," says anonymous. (Ha!)
Erotic Mandy of Sexy Blog Reviews says, "This is a sex blog of a more 'cerebral nature'," and gives Silent Porn Star 3/5 Orgasms because I'm, "interested in vintage sexuality and is probably quite smart."
Terra at The Naughty Guide gushes, "Silent Porn Star was a joy of a find for me, due to my fetish for vintage erotica. LOVE IT!! This is a blog that is a collection Vintage Erotica bringing it to us in one spot. It is a must visit for those of us that are curious or enthralled with the history of erotica. ...Content is slick, almost as if it was a commercially produced site. I usually read personal blogs, but this interest blog is one that I am adding to my daily read list."
Christine Keeler was the infamous woman at the center of the 1960's 
And at Abe, you can still find 
