Vintage Powder Room

Beth Short

Beth Short (aka “The Black Dahlia”) would have been 85 years old today.

It’s difficult for me to imagine her as anything other than a lonely, melancholy, enigma of a girl trying to navigate the frequently treacherous streets of postwar Los Angeles searching for someone to take care of her. Someone to love. During the late 1940s there were countless numbers of girls like Beth who were trying to find their way to different dreams: Hollywood stardom for some, and for others a cottage with a white picket fence, a loving husband and beautiful children.

If anything, the mystery of her murder has deepened since January 15, 1947 when her body was discovered on a vacant lot in Leimert Park. Her killer has never been positively identified.  There have always been theories, ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. The truth is that we’ll never really know for certain who murdered her. But if we can’t bring her killer to justice, maybe the best we can do is to learn something of Beth’s life and by so doing, we can honor her memory.

Beth at Camp Cooke

Beth was one of thousands of young women who had flocked to Los Angeles during, and immediately following, WWII. There were good times to be had drinking and dancing with soliders, sailors and, Beth’s favorite, pilots. But the city was also a dark and dangerous place to be. Many of the former soliders returned to civilian life with demons that could not be vanquished with a bottle of beer or a spin on the dance floor with a lovely girl.

Because of my passion for vintage cosmetics and historic crime, I became interested in Beth’s makeup after reading comments made about her by one of her former roommates, Linda Rohr. Linda was 22 years old, and worked in the Rouge Room at Max Factor in Hollywood. When she was asked about Beth, Linda had said: “She had pretty blue eyes but sometimes I think she overdid with make-up an inch thick.”  Linda went on to say that the effect of Beth’s makeup was startling, that she resembled a Geisha.

Makeup in the 1940s emphasized a natural look, and it seemed from Linda’s statement that Beth was applying her makeup contrary to the latest trends — something that women in their 20s seldom did. I began to wonder; what was Beth hiding? She wasn’t concealing a physical defect, she had lovely skin and as Linda had noted, pretty blue eyes. It struck me that Beth was subconciously using makeup as a mask — a way to keep the world at arm’s length and to become the character she needed to be in order to go out and hustle for drinks, dinner, or a place to stay.

For more information and insights into Beth’s last couple of weeks in Los Angeles, including the REAL last place that she was seen alive (no, NOT the Biltmore Hotel) join me on Esotouric’s The Real Black Dahlia tour this Saturday, August 1, 2009. Kim Cooper will tell you about the news coverage of the case, especially as reported by legendary newswoman, Aggie Underwood. Richard Schave will have tales to tell, and I’ll expand upon my personality sketch of Beth. Our special guest, Marcie Morgan-Gilbert, will treat tour goers to a look at fashion from 1940s.

Esotouric is the Los Angeles based, family run, tour company that was founded by the husband and wife team Kim Cooper and Richard Schave.

Before I began to collect face powder boxes and other beauty ephemera, I collected compacts and vanity cases. I was recently poking around in the historic Los Angeles Times (from September 20, 1926) and I found a story about a young woman who used her vanity case to hold something other than a lipstick, so I thought I’d share it here. 

Twenty-four year old Gene Anderson was a lingerie designer , so she she took a particular interest in current fashion, and she loved to wear expensive clothes.  But Gene was in the same predicament as many young women were in the 1920s; she was employed but not very well compensated. The average man earned about $1313 per year (approximately $16,276 current USD) and the average woman made about half that amount.

The Myer Siegel & Company advertisement shows a dress that would have appealed to Gene; but it cost a small fortune! The $25.00 frock would be $304.65 in today’s dollars! Gene realized that if she was going to indulge her passion for high fashion, she needed to devise a plan to get her hands on some additional funds.  Finally she hatched what she thought was the perfect solution; she’d write rubber checks all over town.

As you may imagine, Gene’s plan was rather short-sighted; and after writing thirty-two bad checks (totaling over $1000!) the law caught up with her. Feigning illness, Gene was able to slip away from the officer who had taken her into custody and leap from the window of her Bixel Avenue apartment.  The slightly injured woman was discovered later in a local hospital, where she was once again arrested.

Upon being searched by a matron at the County Jail, it was discovered that Gene was packing a loaded revolver in her vanity bag!  Vanity bags were what modern handbags have become, a home away from home containing everything necessary for spending a day or evening out.  

Gene tried to talk her way out of the gun charge to no avail. She finally said “I want to go to San Quentin and get it over with”. She had reason to regret her statement. Her application for probation was denied and she was sentenced to from two to twenty-eight years in prison.  She served fifteen months of her sentence and was released in January 1928.

Years before she became known as the quintessential 1950s daffy housewife, Lucille Ball was the queen of the B movies. It’s no wonder — she was talented and stunning. The above appeared in the Los Angeles Times on August 9, 1942. Lucy was doing what so many other stars would do, lending her name in support of the home front mandate to conserve.

The Guerlain advertisement by Jacques Darcy is one that I adore, and one which I have noticed is very similar to the Man Ray photograph of Elizabeth “Lee” Miller from 1930.

Elizabeth "Lee Miller" by Man Ray (1930)

Both images are of a woman’s face — upside down, hair flowing, eyes shut. The images reveal women who appear to be sleeping peacefully. Because the advertisement has a caption, we know that the woman is dreaming. The father of modern psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, said that “wish-fulfillment is the meaning of each and every dream, and hence there can be no dreams besides wishful dreams”. Nothing like interjecting a bit of Freudian psychology into an advertisement for lipstick!

Man Ray may not have been probing the human psyche in the same ways as Freud, but he was exploring the landscape of the mind through his art. Ray was an American artist residing in New York in 1916 when he became acquainted with fellow artists, and recent arrivals from France, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. The three men were kindred spirits and they soon became active in the anti-art movement in the U.S. Anti-art didn’t mean that they rejected art per se but rather that they were rebelling against conventional “museum art”. The movement was known as Dada and was a protest against the nationalism, capitalism, and other “isms” which many people felt were the fundamental causes of World War I. Artist George Grosz characterized his Dadaist art as a protest “against this world of mutual destruction”.

Observatory - The Lovers by Man Ray (1934)

When Ray arrived in France in 1921 he was one of many expatriate artists and writers who would gravitate to Paris in the 1920s; and just as his predecessors had done he found his way to Montparnasse, sometimes referred to as the “Harlem of Paris”. Ray continued to pursue his art; however, Dadaism peaked by 1922 as many of his contemporaries embraced Surrealism.

La Magie Noire by Rene Magritte

There were several parallel, and very important, art, design, philosophical, and political movements gaining ground during the 1920s: Dada, Surrealism, Art Deco, Freudian psychoanalysis, and Existentialism (the term existentialism was not used in the 1920s; it was coined in 1943 by Gabriel Marcel, and it would be retroactively applied to philosophers such as Martin Heideggar and Soren Kierkegaard). I see subtle similarities between the Darcy ad and the painting La Magie Noire by Rene Magritte. Perhaps it is the coloration, or the peaceful expression on the face of the woman who seems to belong to both the earth and the clouds.

For most of the 1920s Ray’s muse was Alice Prin (aka Kiki de Montparnasse), the Queen of Montparnasse. Kiki had come up hard as the illegitimate child of a peasant girl, and was given over to her grandmother to be raised. The two struggled in extreme poverty (Kiki often stole food from local gardens) and so when at age 12 she had an opportunity to live with her mother in Paris, she took it. She was a headstrong girl and she and her mother frequently clashed. When Kiki finally left her mother’s home for the last time she was only 14 years old.

Kiki with vase by J. Mandel (c. 1928)

She was a lovely girl, and it wasn’t surprising that she was quickly discovered by local artists. Her relationship with the artists was often mutually beneficial — many times they produced their best work when using Kiki as a model. That was certainly true of Man Ray.

Kiki fled Paris in 1940 when the Germans began their occupation and she never returned as a resident. She died at age 51 — the likely result of alcoholism and drug abuse.

Le Violon d'Ingres by Man Ray (Kiki as model)

In 1929 Kiki was supplanted in Ray’s affections by Elizabeth “Lee” Miller. Lee arrived at Ray’s Paris studio and announced to him that she was his new student. He insisted that he didn’t accept apprentices, but Lee was extraordinary; she was gorgeous and talented. They became lovers as well as student and teacher. Lee had run to Paris after posing for a Kotex ad. The ad is famous for being the first feminine hygiene ad in which an actual photograph of a woman was used. At first Lee was mortified by the ad, apparently she hadn’t realized that she wasn’t to be a model for a drawing, but rather for a photograph.

Lee Miller in Kotex ad (1928)

Lee would stay with Man Ray for a few years, but eventually she grew restless and returned to New York where she opened her own studio. If her studio work was superlative, her work as a photojournalist for Vogue magazine during World War II was brilliant; however, witnessing scenes at liberated death camps, among other horrors, profoundly changed her.

She put away her camera in the 1950s and channeled her restless energy into gourmet cooking, at which she excelled. Lee succumbed to cancer in 1977; her ashes were scattered over her herb garden at her farm in Sussex, England.

Darcy ad for Guerlain's "Are You Her Type?" ad campaign

As for Jacques Darcy, the artist who created the distinctive advertisements for Guerlain, I have not been able to discover very much about him. I found conflicting information in various sources. The consensus seems to be that he was born on February 7, 1892 and died in 1963 in Michigan. His work appeared frequently during the 1920s and 1930s in such publications as Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, and Vogue. He is best known for the art he produced for Guerlain — in my opinion some of the best commercial art ever created.

The illustration on the Comfort Hair Net package reminds me of psychedelic rock ‘n roll posters from the 1960s. The ubiquitous posters advertised concerts that were held in every venue from the Fillmore West to the Fillmore East, and every dive bar in between.  Organic, sensual, and other worldly, the style of the posters owed a huge debt to artists such as Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. Is the name of the hair net a discreet nod to Tiffany? It’s unlikely, but not out of the question.  Fixing a date for the hair net package is tricky, but because Art Nouveau was at its peak of popularity between 1890 and 1905 it is probably from that period.

Psychedelic art shared a similar aesthetic with its predecessor.  Both styles are considered to be applied art (i.e., graphic design, fashion design, interior design, etc.) and both were in some sense lifestyles – at least their artifacts could be incorporated into one’s daily life.  Art Nouveau was present in architecture, as well as in personal items such as jewelry. Psychedelic art encompassed music, light shows, fashion and interior design and was also a way in which to describe the experience of taking certain mind altering drugs like LSD or mescaline.

The most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau period was Aubrey Beardsley. Beardsley’s subject matter was often erotic in nature and grotesque in execution – occasionally depicting enormous genitalia. He was quoted as saying “I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing.” He was influenced to some extent by Japanese Shunga, which is erotic art. One of the most beautiful and disturbing of the Shunga images is “Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife” by Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1820). 

Alphonse Mucha was another artist who worked in the Art Nouveau style (sometimes even referred to as the Mucha style); and it was his work that was often cited as a major influence by the psychedelic artists of the 1960s.  One of Mucha’s best known works is a poster that he did for the actress Sarah Bernhardt (“The Divine Sarah”) advertising her appearance as “Cismonda” in Paris.  Sarah adored the poster, and it wasn’t that last one that Mucha would create for her. 

Even though it was Mucha who produced posters of the “Divine Sarah”, she may have had more in common with Aubrey Beardsley. Both of them were extreme personalities, flamboyant and eccentric. Beardsley expressed himself quite often by donning outlandish garments, and Bernhardt frequently slept in a coffin so that she could “better understand my tragic roles”. 

Sarah was arguably the most skilled actress of her time, and  she lived as dramatic a life as any of the characters she portrayed on stage. She was rumored to have had an affair with the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII). And it is also possible that she had a lesbian liaison with French painter, Louise Abbema.

Louise Abbema

During a performance of “Tosca” in Rio de Janeiro in 1905, Sarah injured her knee in a leap from a high wall. The leg never properly healed, and by 1915 gangrene had set in and the leg was amputated. It is said that she turned down $10,000 offered to her by a showman (not P.T. Barnum, who was long dead by 1915) for her amputated limb.  Despite the loss of her leg Sarah Bernhardt continued to perform, as well as to run her own repertory company, until her death of uremia on March 23, 1923.

 

 

 

 

 

When I spotted the listing for “The Powder & The Glory” on PBS, I knew I had to see it. After all, how often can you find a documentary about beauty and make-up pioneers?  Also, I thought that the title of the film was as clever as the title of the book on which it is based, “War Paint” by Lindy Woodhead.

Woodhead’s well researched biography of Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein makes compelling reading, and the documentary does it justice.  I don’t know why there aren’t more documentaries exploring the lives of female entrepreneurs, in particular those women who made their marks in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries – maybe this fascinating offering will start a trend.

They may have become cosmetics giants, but both Arden and Rubinstein began their careers by offering beauty treatments, not make-up. They created creams and ointments which they said would nourish and improve a woman’s complexion, and make her look younger.

The desire to be beautiful isn’t new, but the way in which Arden and Rubinstein interpreted it was profoundly modern. They were advocating science for the formulation of beauty potions, and exercise for health. For instance, if you’ve spent any time at a spa, or if you belong to a gym, you can appreciate Elizabeth Arden’s whole-hearted endorsement of yoga. She credited her practice of yoga with having saved her from hip surgery and she offered classes at her Red Door salon. Helena Rubinstein did not exercise, but she was a canny observer of trends and introduced Rubinstein Rhythmics (exercise incorporating dance routines) at her salon.

The two women whose lives and careers were played out only blocks apart in New York City, never met face-to-face. It’s a shame they never made an effort to get acquainted – they had so much in common. Each of them was hard-wired to succeed, and the documentary made it clear that the competition between them created an atmosphere in which they felt even more driven to excel.  Still, it is fun to imagine what a partnership between them may have accomplished. Helena Rubinstein once said: “With her packaging and my product, we could have ruled the world”. I believe she was right.

If you are curious about how the beauty culture of the 20^th century developed, or if you are just interested in learning more about two incredibly talented and brilliant business  women, I strongly recommend that you look for “The Powder & the Glory” on PBS and grab a copy of Lindy Woodhead’s biography of Arden and Rubinstein, “War Paint”.  

Now excuse me while I touch up my lipstick. Then maybe I’ll do a downward facing dog.

The roles that women played during World War II were as complex and contradictory as at any time in history. On the home front they were wives, mothers, sweethearts, factory workers, and taxi drivers.  War time propaganda encouraged women to keep the home fires burning, while simultaneously raising children and driving rivets into the hull of a destroyer or the fuselage of a bomber.

I have noticed that one phrase appeared consistently in wartime articles on make-up and fashion, and that was “morale is woman’s business”. It was made clear that in addition to any other responsibilities she may have had, it was a woman’s patriotic duty to look her best at all times. The business of morale was taken seriously, and countless articles were written to advise women on how to be competent, effective war workers, and yet remain attractive and cheerful companions.

While the women of the home front were keeping things on track, servicemen needed to be reminded why they were fighting, and what they were fighting for; and nothing sent a clearer message than a gorgeous pin-up picture.  Hollywood stars Rita Hayworth, Jane Russell and Betty Grable were the three most popular pin-up girls of the era, and their photos accompanied soldiers in their footlockers around the world. Five million copies of Rita Hayworth’s picture were sold; that number exceeded only by Betty Grable’s iconic photo.

Photos from home were crucial to a fighting man’s morale, but sometimes a candid snapshot wasn’t good enough. I found an article in the Los Angeles Times from October 1943 entitled “Send Him Your Picture”. The article described in detail how to apply make-up for a professional portrait, and it also provided tips on what to wear and whether or not to apply whitener to your teeth. This all speaks to the significance of the pin-up photo during the war. The pin-ups weren’t merely masturbatory tools for lonely troops, but they were a necessary, if idealized, connection to home.

 Not surprisingly, the focus of home front culture was on victory. There were victory gardens, victory pins (to wear on your sweater or jacket), and there was victory lipstick.  Victory lipstick came in tubes made of paper, plastic, or wood because metal was required for the war effort.

Jergens wasn’t alone in using patriotic themes in their advertising, but they put an imaginative spin on it when they hired world class pin-up artist Alberto Vargas to create both a package design and an ad that urged women to “be his pin-up girl”. And of course it was Vargas, among other pin-up artists, who inspired some truly glorious nose art (art that graced the fuselage of many of the aircraft during the war).

It’s plain to see that Jergens grasped the relationship between pin-up art and the woman’s business of morale and used it masterfully to their advantage.

The pin-up girl ad campaign appears to have run during 1944, and the face powder box with the Vargas art turns up in ads for about a year following the end of the war in 1945.

There was no shortage of such cartoons during the 1920s. Makeup (or powder and paint as it was frequently referred to) was causing a revoltuion.

The Lady Conceta face powder box was a lucky find (an antiques mall), and I believe that it dates from the late 1920s to the early 1930s.

Whenever I attempt to date a face powder box that has no manufacturer information on it there are a couple of preliminary steps that I will take.  I’ll look at the back of the box, because sometimes the font used in describing the contents can be a clue to the era. The Spanish shawl which is draped so charmingly over the woman’s arm with the design spilling onto the sides of the box is what made me think of the 1920s/1930s.

It’s also helpful to have a general knowledge of popular culture during different decades because the graphics on the box very often reflect popular themes of a specific era.  Spanish shawls were a popular fashion accessory during that period. I’ve seen them in old films and photographs; although I’ve never been able to make a distinction between a Spanish shawl as an accessory, and the virtually identical piano shawl (also popular during the 20s and 30s) which was used to protect the top of a piano from scratches. They may have been one and the same (if anyone knows for sure, drop me a note).

Another popular culture clue in dating the Lady Conceta box was the woman depicted in the design. During the silent movie era the screen was often dominated by exotic looking men (e.g. Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro) and women. Of the women working in film during those years two came to mind: Delores del Rio and Lupe Velez. The woman on the box seemed to me to be Lupe.

Lupe was born Maria Guadalupe Velez de Villalobos on July 18, 1908 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Her father was an army officer, and her mother was an opera singer.  Lupe was educated in a convent in Texas, however she once said in an interview “But can you imagine a girl like me – all the time so happy – in a convent?” She found her calling and a place for her manic energy, when she first appeared at the Teatro Principal as a teenager. She was lovely, vivacious, and she wowed audiences in Mexico City.

When Lupe arrived in Hollywood in 1927 she was spotted by Hal Roach who cast her in a Laurel & Hardy comedy. She’d made an impression, and was selected as one of the WAMPAS “baby” stars in 1928. Even though Lupe’s big break would be in a dramatic role in “The Gaucho“, co-starring Douglas Fairbanks, Lupe had a flair for comedy. In 1933 she made the switch to comedy full-time.  She won the role of Pepper in “Hot Pepper” and she would shine.

Lupe’s role in “Hot Pepper” provided her an easy segue into the “Mexican Spitfire” films. The Spitfire series was written specifically for Lupe to showcase her talent as a comedic actress. Lupe’s exuberance and sparkle would draw audiences to her. Of course it didn’t hurt that she was as madcap off screen as on.

Nearly every article written about Lupe described her as fiery, tempestuous, and the petite star did have a volatile personality. She was once at an airport, ready to board a flight, when she realized that her tickets had gone missing. She hurled her hat, handbag, and gloves to the tarmac and proceeded to stomp her hat into a pulp.

Her affairs were legendary, and she always had something provocotive to say about love. Her most famous quote is: “The first time you buy a house you think how pretty it is and sign the check. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It’s the same with men.”

She had a well publicized Hollywood romance with Gary Cooper in the late 1920s, but when it blew up the two bickered and took potshots at each other in the press. About Gary, Lupe said that he may have been an idol to his mother, but that to her he was less than nothing. The statement lends credibility to the rumor that the relationship was torpedoed by Cooper’s mom.

By early 1933 she was linked with Olympic champion swimmer, and star of “Tarzan, the Ape Man”, Johnny Weissmuller. On January 12th of that year she was quoted in the Los Angeles Times explaining that “Love is not for such as me, and anyone who says I am in love with Johnny Weissmuller is crazy”. It turned out that the rumors were true. Lupe and Johnny were married ten months later.

All of Lupe’s relationships seemed to have been turbulent on and off again affairs – and her marriage to Weissmuller would be no different.  On August 13, 1938 the Los Angeles Times suggested that if only Weissmuller had “confined his warfare on the animal kingdom to tying knots in the tail of Numa the lion” perhaps his marriage to Velez wouldn’t have been on the rocks.  During their divorce hearing in 1939, Lupe told the judge that “Johnee wanted to kill my little dog”. According to her Weissmuller would scare her Chihuahua so badly that it would turn tail and run, yipping, to hide in her lap.

A few years following her divorce Lupe became involved with French film actor Harald Ramond Marecsh. By Thanksgiving 1944 local newspapers were reporting that the two planned to wed. Only a couple of weeks later, on December 14^th, Lupe Velez would be dead by her own hand.

Lupe was pregnant with Harald’s child, and he was very reluctant to get married. It may have been his suggestion of a mock marriage that pushed Lupe over the edge. The note she left for him (which was reprinted in full in the papers) said as much. She wrote: “How could you Harald, fake such great love for me and our baby when all along you didn’t want us”.

Lupe carefully staged her final scene in her home on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  She was discovered by her maid “sleeping peacefully” in her all white boudoir, on ivory satin sheets, wearing blue silk pajamas.  On the nightstand was an empty bottle of Seconal and two notes, one for Harald and one for her secretary.

A rumor has persisted for years that Lupe didn’t die of a barbiturate overdose and that instead she was feeling very sick after ingesting the Seconal, got up out of bed and went into the bathroom where she stuck her head in the toilet to vomit and subsequently died by drowning.  I’ve never found any credible source for that story.

When I think of Lupe I remember the life and energy that radiated from her in her films, and in the interviews that she gave. While re-reading Raymond Chandler’s great novel, “The Little Sister” I’ve found a character who seems like a deviant twist on Lupe’s public persona. The woman in the novel is Dolores Gonzales. Like Lupe she’s vibrant and sensual; but unlike Lupe she puts on a phoney accent and hails from Cleveland, Ohio. And Dolores is a very a bad dame.

One side note — I think that the woman on the cover of the Black Lizard trade paperback edition of “The Little Sister” is burlesque queen Dita von Teese. Anyone agree with me?

I love the image of the woman on the Richard Hudnut Deauville face powder box. I’ve always thought of her as a courtesan dressing for her paramour — she’s just the right combination of innocence and decadence.  The face powder box dates from the early 1920s, but the image of the woman recalls an earlier time. While I love the blues and  rock ‘n roll, I’m also a fan of opera, and to me the woman in the design represents the beautiful but doomed Violetta Valery from Verdi’s  1853 opera La Traviata. Verdi based his opera on the novel Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas (the younger — it was his father who wrote The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo).

Marie Duplessis

Dumas was born in Paris in 1824, and he was the illegitimate son of novelist Alexandre Dumas and dressmaker Marie-Laure-Catherine Labay. Dumas often tackled complex moral issues in his writings , such as the life of his fictional courtesan Marguerite Gautier. Dumas didn’t have to rely solely on his imagination to tell the story of Marguerite because she was a thinly veiled depiction of Dumas’ former lover Marie Duplessis.

Alexandre and Marie had a relationship that lasted only one year, and their affair was an open secret in Paris. It wasn’t until after Marie’s untimely death that Dumas began to write the story of the lady of the camellias.  Dumas was typical of the time in which he lived, he seemed to have no qualms about taking a mistress, nor about appropriating her life story for his fiction, yet he would write frequently about the evils of prostitution. In fact, Dumas went so far as to propose to the government that all street prostitutes be deported to the colonies — out of sight, out of mind. Not exactly an enlightened approach to public policy and social ills.

Marie’s life story was much different than Dumas’ romanticized version. She was born Rose Alphonsine Plessis in Normandy, France in 1824. Marie’s parents weren’t a good match, and when they split up Marie’s mother abandoned her own family and became employed as the maid to an English family living in France. Marie was left in the care of her father, who shipped her out to the boonies to live with relatives. She lost her virginity at age 12 to a farm hand, and by 13 she’d been returned to her father who began to pimp her out. Despite her earning potential Marie’s father shipped her off again, this time she went to stay with relatives in Paris who owned a grocery. She worked as a clerk in a hat shop and saved enough money to get her own apartment in the Latin Quarter. Because she was vivacious and pretty she soon came to the attention of wealthy men who could buy her a better life than she could afford on her own.

Her first benefactor lasted only as long as his money held out. Marie’s subsequent lovers were wealthier and more powerful in turn, and she was finally able to move out of the Quarter and into a sumptuous apartment on Boulevard de Madelaine. If spending money was an Olympic event,  Marie would have won multiple gold medals. She easily spent 100,000 francs per year on her personal upkeep, not including her staff. By the age of 20 she may have been the queen of the demi-monde in Paris — but she was also dying. Marie had consumption (tuberculosis) and it was destroying her. She knew she didn’t have long to live, and that knowledge, coupled with her deprived upbringing, undoubtedly fueled her compulsive spending and gambling habits.

Heroin Chic redux? An ad from c. 2007

Consumption has been common throughout human history. Ironically, during Marie’s lifetime women emulated the visible symptoms of the disease for fashion! People believed that the symptoms of the disease enhanced senstive, artistic dispositions. It was a kind of “TB chic” (just as the so-called “heroin chic” would have its day in the mid-1990s). The white skin, flushed cheeks, and luminous eyes were frequently achieved by using extremely dangerous substances. Among the potions used were compounds containing lead (many women died as a result of lead poisoning) and belladonna. Belladonna (the juice of the poisonous nightshade plant) was used to make a woman’s eyes bright as if she had a fever.

Greta Garbo in Camille

Marlene Dietrich may have presented a tragically romantic vision as she died in Robert Taylor’s arms in the 1936 film version of Camille (one of the many films based upon La Dame aux Camellias)  but Marie’s end was excruciating. Shortly before she died she had met and fallen in love with the composer Franz Liszt. The love may have been reciprocated, but Lizst didn’t take Marie on tour with him. This would have been the time when so-called Listzomania was sweeping Europe, so perhaps he thought better of taking a lover on a tour during which women fought over shreds of his hankies and gloves. Lizst left on tour, and soon afterwards Marie spent her last days in agony before death released her.

Theda Bara

Marie was deeply in debt when she died, and her belongings were sold at auction — even her pet parrot! The auction drew crowds of people who were mostly interested in the vicarious thrill they could derive by handling the possessions of an infamous courtesan.

Among those in the crowd at the auction was author Charles Dickens. Of the crowd he said: “One could have believed that Marie was Jeanne d’Arc or some other national heroine, so profound was the general sadness.”

Marie’s life was brief, but she achieved immortality through Dumas’ work. Her story has been told many times in film and on stage, and she has been portrayed by actresses such as: Greta Garbo, Eleonora Duse, Lillian Gish, Theda Bara, and Sarah Bernhardt.

Marie’s funeral was reported to have been extravagant — drawing a crowd of hundreds. She is interred in Montmarte Cemetery.