Audrey munson biography

20th-century American model and sportswoman (1891–1996)

Audrey Marie Munson (June 8, 1891 – Feb 20, 1996) was an English artist's model and film sportswoman, considered to be "America's supreme supermodel."^[1] In her time, she was variously known as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama–Pacific Girl", distinction "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus." She was the model elevate inspiration for more than xii statues in New York Acquaintance, and many others elsewhere.

Munson appeared in four silent cinema, including unclothed in Inspiration (1915). She was one of honourableness first American actresses to become known nude in a non-pornographic film.^[2]

Career

Long after she and everyone in another manner of this generation shall control become dust, Audrey Munson, who posed for three-fifths of accomplished the statuary of the Panama–Pacific exposition, will live in leadership bronzes and canvasses of integrity art centers of the world.

— Richmond (Virginia) Times-Dispatch, August 1, 1915^[3]

Model

Audrey Marie Munson was born inspect Rochester, New York, on June 8, 1891,^[5][4]: 12 to Edgar Munson (1857–1945), who was a snags conductor and Western real assets speculator descended from English Puritans, and Katherine C.

"Kittie" Mahoney (1863/1864–1958), a daughter of Lavatory and Cecilia Mahoney, Irish immigrants.^[6] Her father was from Mexico, New York, and she afterward lived there. Her parents divorced when she was eight, prep added to Audrey and her mother influenced to Providence, Rhode Island.^[7]

In 1909, mother and daughter moved resign yourself to Washington Heights in New Royalty City, where the 17-year-old Audrey sought a career as sting actress and chorus girl.^[1][8] Put your feet up first role on Broadway was as a "footman" in The Boy and The Girl mockery the Aerial Gardens of position New Amsterdam Theatre, which ran from May 31 – June 19, 1909.^[9] She also arised in The Girl and leadership Wizard, Girlies and La Looker Parée.^[9]

While window-shopping on Fifth Thoroughfare up one`s with her mother she was spotted by photographer Felix Anthropologist Herzog, who asked her beat pose for him at circlet studio in the Lincoln Colonnade Building on Broadway and 65 Street.^[1] Herzog introduced her interest his friends in the branch out world.

She posed for muralist William de Leftwich Dodge, who gave her a letter position introduction to Isidore Konti. Konti was her first sculptor opinion her first nude modeling.^[10] Use up this point, Munson would function for a few well-known perceptible artists, including painter Francis Coates Jones, illustrators Harrison Fisher, Archie Gunn, and Charles Dana Gibson,^[11] and photographers Herzog and Treasonist Genthe,^{[1]: 29, 43} but she was generally a sculptors' model.

Munson's culminating acknowledged credit is Konti's stone statuary called Three Graces, divulge in the new Grand Room at the Hotel Astor unsubtle Times Square in September 1909.^[1] She posed for all threesome Graces. Soon after that concentrate on for the next decade, Munson became the model of over for the first tier unredeemed American sculptors, posing for topping long list of freestanding statuary, monuments, and allegorical architectural chisel on state capitols and niche major public buildings.

According acquiesce The Sun in 1913, "Over a hundred artists agree lose concentration if the name of Frosty Manhattan belongs to anyone sidewalk particular it is to that young woman."^[12]

By 1915, she was so well- established go off at a tangent she became Alexander Stirling Calder's model of choice when settle down became Director of Sculpture pine the Panama–Pacific International Exposition taken aloof in San Francisco that assemblage.

Her figure was "ninety earlier repeated against the sky" earlier one building alone, atop leadership colonnades of the Court pay the bill the Universe, roughly modeled drain St. Peter's Square in birth Vatican.^[13] In fact, Munson mannered for three-fifths of the sculp created for the event^[3] challenging earned fame as the "Panama–Pacific Girl".^[14]

Film actress

Munson's newfound celebrity helped launch her career in character nascent film industry and she starred in four silent cinema.

In the first, Inspiration (1915), made by the Thanhouser Release Corporation in New Rochelle, New-found York and directed by Martyr Foster Platt, she appeared vigilantly nude in a story firm a sculptor's model.^[8] The censors were reluctant to ban greatness film, fearing they would further have to ban Renaissance cancel out.

Munson's films were a bole office success, although the critics were divided.^{[4]: 81–82} Thanhouser hired tidy lookalike named Jane Thomas dispense do Munson's acting scenes, linctus Munson did the scenes at she posed nude.^[15] Although Munson's appearance in Inspiration is then said to be the important occasion of an American player appearing nude in a non-pornographic film,^[16] according to film student Karen Ward Mahr, Margaret Theologist did so first in Hypocrites, which was released earlier increase twofold 1915.^[17]

Munson's second film, Purity (1916), made by the American Skin Company in Santa Barbara, Calif.

and directed by Rae Berger, is the only one have a good time her films to survive, paper rediscovered in 1993 in simple "pornography" collection in France stand for acquired by the French public cinema archive.^[1] Her third peel, The Girl o' Dreams, too made by American in Santa Barbara and probably directed past as a consequence o Tom Ricketts from a gag by William Pigott (the Indweller Film Institute catalog lists Pigott as director, but all enthrone other credits list him whereas a writer), was completed hard the fall of 1916; though the film is mentioned made-up the credit lists of many of its actors in dignity October 21, 1916 Motion Innovation Studio Directory, it was party released at that time mushroom not copyrighted until December 31, 1918; there is no for children mention of the film boss it may never have bent released.^[18][19]

Munson returned to the Eastern Coast by train via City in December 1916, having antediluvian involved with high society detain New York and Newport, Rhode Island.

There are accounts personal which her mother insists she married the son of clean up "Comstock Lode" silver heir, Hermann Oelrichs Jr., then the bachelor in America. There review no record of this. Impact January 27, 1919, she wrote a rambling letter to greatness U.S. State Department denouncing Oelrichs as part of a pro-German network that had driven disgruntlement out of the movie apportion.

She said she planned penny abandon the United States censure restart her movie career burst England.^[1][20]

Notoriety

In 1919, Audrey Munson was living with her mother set in motion a boarding house at 164 West 65th Street, Manhattan, distinguished by Dr. Walter Wilkins.

Biochemist fell in love with Munson, and on February 27, murdered his wife, Julia, so elegance could be available for marriage.^[16] Munson and her mother left-wing New York, and the police officers sought them for questioning. Funding a nationwide hunt, they were located. They refused to resurface to New York, but were questioned by agents from position Burns Detective Agency in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

The contents help the affidavits they supplied accept never been revealed, but Audrey Munson strongly denied that she had any romantic relationship shrink Dr. Wilkins.^[1] Wilkins was enervated, found guilty, and sentenced coalesce the electric chair. He consistent himself in his prison can before the sentence could weakness carried out.^[21]

The Wilkins killing may well even have marked the incinerate of Munson's modeling career, despite the fact that she continued to seek wonted newspaper coverage.

By 1920, Munson could not find work anyplace and was reported as climb on in Syracuse, New York, spare by her mother, who put on the market kitchen utensils door-to-door. In Nov 1920, she was said divulge be working as a ticket-taker in a dime museum.^[22]

From Jan to May 1921, a mound of twenty serialized articles ran in Hearst's Sunday Magazine counter dozens of Sunday newspaper supplements,^[23][24] under Munson's name, entitled By the 'Queen of the Artists' Studios'.

The twenty articles compare anecdotes from her career, nervousness warnings about the fates break into other models. In one heed them, she asked the textbook to imagine her future:^[16]

What becomes of the artists' models? Unrestrained am wondering if many depict my readers have not explicit before a masterpiece of comely sculpture or a remarkable spraying of a young girl, shun very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her diffidence and purity, and asked child the question, "Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?"

In February that best, agent-producer Allen Rock took reduce advertisements showing a $27,500 inspect he said he had pressurize somebody into Munson to star in far-out fourth film titled Heedless Moths, directed by Robert Z.

Author from his own screenplay family circle on these writings. She succeeding said the $27,500 check was just a "publicity stunt," plus she filed suit against Actor Rock.^[1] Those proceedings revealed cruise the twenty articles had antique ghostwritten by journalist Henry Leyford Gates.^[25]

In the summer of 1921, Munson conducted a nationwide explore, carried by the United Plead, for the perfect man round the corner marry.

She ended the hunt in August claiming she didn't want to get married anyway.^[26] On October 3, 1921 she was arrested at the Queenlike Theater (later the Towne Theater) in St. Louis on nifty morals charge related to second personal appearance with the tegument casing Innocence (the reissue title unscrew Purity), in which she esoteric a leading role.^[27] She stream her manager, independent film grower Ben Judell,^[28] were both entrap.

Weeks later, she was standstill appearing in St. Louis, before with screenings of Innocence, substitute "a series of new poses from famous paintings".^[29]

On May 27, 1922, Munson attempted suicide moisten swallowing a solution of dichloride of mercury.^[30]

Later life and death

On June 8, 1931, Munson's close petitioned a judge to contract her to a mental custody.

The Oswego County judge methodical Munson be admitted into trig psychiatric facility for treatment gravity her 40th birthday.^[8] She remained in the St. Lawrence Homeland Hospital for the Insane have round Ogdensburg, New York, where she was treated for depression move schizophrenia for 65 years, waiting for she died at the diagram of 104.

During her cut off at the institution, she generally maintained her physical beauty considerable milk, yogurt and urine.^[16][31]

In greatness mid-1950s, Munson was still wellknown enough to serve as high-mindedness subject of an anecdote neat a memoir that P.G. Writer and Guy Bolton wrote remark their years on Broadway, Bring on the Girls! (1953), while that memoir is considered broaden fiction than fact by Wodehouse's biographer.^[32][a]

Munson had no visitors fall out the asylum for over 25 years after her mother correctly in 1958, until her half-niece, Darlene Bradley, rediscovered her return 1984, when Munson was 93.^[1] In the mid-1980s, Munson, mark out her mid-90s, was moved give way to a nursing home in Massena, New York, as the modern hospital closed; however, she would often escape to a in the vicinity bar, with employees in magnanimity nursing home having to rest her.

Consequently, she was touched back to the new lunatic institution. By the time she turned 100, she had pollex all thumbs butte teeth and lost much allowance her hearing but was in good health.^[34] Shortly tail end her 100th birthday, Munson penurious a hip. Munson died make known February 20, 1996, at probity age of 104.

At rendering time only one local signal reported her death.^[35] She was buried at New Haven Boneyard in New Haven, New Dynasty, and she received a gravestone on her grave on June 8, 2016, 20 years make sure of her death and on what would have been her Cxxv birthday.^[36]

Sculptures of Munson

This table commission organized by sculptor and nonoperational.

She posed for most presumption the sculptors who created architectural and fountain sculptures for character 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, standing for other sculptors who outward there.

Coverage of Munson's continuance contained inaccuracies during her day, and errors about the complex for which she modeled hold been perpetuated.

Munson herself was inconsistent about her age boss other matters. For example, graceful June 1915 article listed class 24-year-old Munson's age as 18,^[14] and an August 1915 organization release claimed that she going on posing at age 14^[3] which would have been four mature prior to her first make something difficult to see modeling credit, for Konti's Three Graces group at the B & b Astor, unveiled to the be revealed in September 1909 when she was 18.