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| American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White: The Birth of the "It" Girl and the Crime of the Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Paula Uruburu
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $5.66
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 17214
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594489939
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.71041092
EAN: 9781594489938
ASIN: 1594489939
Publication Date: May 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New Book. Fast Shipping. May have small remainder mark.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A Swing and a Miss (Literally and Figuratively) July 2, 2008
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
Late in his life, after a decade and a half absence from the stage, John Barrymore toured the country in an execrable play entitled "My Dear Children." Barrymore was reduced to engaging in bad self parody to earn sufficient sums of money to satisfy his numerous creditors. The play itself was a poorly conceived variation upon "King Lear" with Barrymore playing a once famous Shakespearean actor whose drunken and hedonistic excesses bore more than a passing resemblance to his own personal foibles and marital difficulties.
Notwithstanding the shoddiness of the script, the play enjoyed a measure of success as theater patrons flocked to the box office to witness the once great actor engaging in self deprecation. When Barrymore was tired or when he had forgotten his lines, he simply engaged in ad libs. Pouring himself a drink from a prop liquor bottle, for instance, Barrymore once reduced an audience to fits of laughter by observing in an unscripted aside, "God, I wish this were real!"
After finishing one night's performance with a touring company in Chicago, Barrymore settled into a booth at the Rush Street cabaret, the Club Alabam. In the darkened room, he recognized a face. Years had faded the beauty of his former love, Evelyn Nesbit, but he called to her and he announced to all the assembled cabaret patrons that Evelyn was the first woman that he had ever truly loved. Both Barrymore and Nesbit were reduced to tears by their chance reunion.
Barrymore at the height of his powers was considered the greatest actor in the world and could sometimes command six figures in weekly wages. Nesbit was once the prototype for the celebrated Gibson Girl illustrations, but she ended up being a model for the drunken "has been" character of Susan Alexander in "Citizen Kane" (other sources suggest this composite character was based upon Marion Davies, but the character incorporates aspects of several female entertainers). Almost four decades previously, Nesbit had rejected Barrymore's sudden proposal of marriage to continue acting as the kept mistress of Stanford White, a prominent New York architect. Barrymore was a penniless artist at the time while White was a wealthy patron of the theater who frequently seduced chorus girls. This arrangement was agreeable to Nesbit's avaricious widowed mother who seemed perfectly content to sell her daughter to the highest bidder.
When White refused to divorce his wife and marry his mistress, Nesbit took up with the sadistic millionaire Harry K. Thaw, the heir to a coal fortune, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When Thaw murdered White in 1906 on account of his obsessive jealousy, which was fueled in part by his belief that White had blocked his advancement in New York society by blackballing him at several exclusive clubs as much as by his learning that White had once been balling his wife, Evelyn played a key role as a defense witness at her husband's two murder trials.
It has been reported elsewhere that Evelyn received as much as $200,000.00 from Thaw's mother to commit perjury while on the witness stand to help secure Thaw's acquittal. The defense relied upon the theory that Thaw had acted from the purest of motives in avenging the loss of his wife's honor by killing the man who had seduced and raped her. The first trial resulted in a hung jury. During the retrial, Thaw's defense counsel introduced evidence of his client's long term history of mental instability over Thaw's own protests and the prisoner was spared the death penalty and sent to a prison for the criminally insane.
Did White actually drug and rape his mistress? Possibly, but there is evidence to suggest that Evelyn Nesbit was sexually precocious. She had been hospitalized for appendicitis and had to undergo an emergency operation a few years earlier. This was a subterfuge. Nesbit had undergone "an illegal operation," namely an abortion. In attempting to short circuit Thaw's defense that he acted out of honorable motives, the prosecuting attorney William Travers Jerome attempted to present credible evidence that Nesbit had undergone as many as three emergency appendectomies in her young life and had been sexually active. In all likelihood, at least two of the abortions were intended to terminate a pregnancies that resulted from Nesbit's sexual relations with Barrymore. Many of Nesbit's embellished stories of being a victimized virgin first surfaced during her courtroom testimony and were repeated in her numerous attempts to capitalize upon the sensational media circus created by the two trials and her own subsequent notoriety in two autobiographies. Nevertheless, she sometimes claimed to have been in love with Stanford White.
Unfortunately, you will not find all of these stories in "The American Eve." Paula Uruburu has neglected to review of all of the literature on the subject. Her bibliography omits John Kobler's magisterial biography of John Barrymore "Damned in Paradise" which contains the facts that I have recited. Similarly, she omits to refer to the autobiography of Cecil B. De Mille. The famous film director's widowed mother operated a private boarding school for young ladies which Nesbit attended after White and her mother sent her packing from New York as a means of breaking off her affair with Barrymore. De Mille politely described Nesbit as so much trouble and her latest feigned appendicitis attack occurred while she was at the school. It is interesting to contrast the behavior of two widowed mothers: De Mille's mother opened a boarding school to support herself and her family, Nesbit's mother was willing to allow her daughter to become a glorified courtesan and to live off her earnings as a chorus girl and a model while encouraging her to pursue wealthy male admirers and to become a fortune hunter.
After the trials concluded and Thaw was sent to the sanitarium, his mother cut Evelyn off without an additional cent. When Evelyn bore a son a few years later, she alleged that the child was conceived during a conjugal visit with Harry K. Thaw. Her crazed former husband vehemently denied paternity of the boy. Following his release from the prison for the insane, Thaw routinely refused to support his divorced wife and her child. On rare occasions, however, he provided Nesbit with token sums of money. She remarried and attempted a career on the stage and screen, but subsequently divorced again and became an alcoholic and a morphine addict. Her suicide attempts were unsuccessful and she died of natural causes in 1967.
Hollywood has sought to depict the scandal of the "Girl in the Red Velvet Swing" on several occasions. Joan Collins and Ray Milland appeared in a sanitized version of the story (if it is possible to use the word "sanitized" in the same sentence with the name of a Hollywood harridan like Collins -- her casting couch nickname was once "The British Open"). The relationship between Stanford White and Nesbit is treated as an almost innocent relationship between two lovers who are unable to marry due to societal conventions beyond their control. Not surprisingly, this film used Nesbit as a consultant. A more plausible portrayal of Evelyn Nesbit occurred in the adaptation of the E. L. Doctrow novel "Ragtime" in which Elizabeth McGovern played Nesbit as a sexually promiscuous and money conscious woman on the make who could not control her lunatic husband.
In James Cameron's feature film "Titanic," the writer/director borrowed freely from other film adaptations of the shipwreck tragedy and he created composite characters that appear to be based upon Evelyn Nesbit, Harry K. Thaw, and the supporting cast of real life persons that played bit roles in the murder trial of the century. Frances Fisher plays the ambitious mother pushing her beautiful daughter to marry an insanely jealous millionaire. At one point, she explains to her daughter the necessity of a woman entering into a loveless marriage solely for financial security. Kate Winslet (Rose) and Billy Zane (Cal) can easily be viewed as simple variations upon Evelyn Nesbit and Harry K. Thaw while the penniless artist played by Leonard DiCaprio (Jack) approximates Jack Barrymore. The only composite character diminished in the screenplay is that of Stanford White. Victor Garber plays the ship's architect (Thomas Andrews) who seems to have a platonic or paternalistic love interest in Rose`s character, not unlike Ray Milland's sympathetic 1955 portrayal of White in "The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing," but this character is sidelined from the love triangle. Cameron's script turns history on its head as Rose opts for the starving artist rather than the rich madman before the ship collides with the iceberg. Some tragedies do bear dramatic repetition.
On the positive side, this new biography is lavishly illustrated with photographs and drawings. Evelyn Nesbit may well have been one of the most beautiful women in America during her prime. I cannot accord this book a higher rating simply because of its omissions. The author seems to have elected to rely upon Evelyn Nesbit's own dubious recollections of the events too often. "American Eve" is not necessarily a bad account of the murder, scandal and the two trials, but it is certainly an incomplete one. For example, the latter sixty years of Nesbit's life are handled in an abrupt and cursory manner.
 I wish I could give this book 6 stars! June 11, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I haven't finished reading it yet because I'm trying to drag it out as long as I can. First of all, it's a fascinating and terrible story but Ms. Uruburu has done an incredible job in building the plot to just where it needs to go, keeping the tension as tight as possible to propell the reader into the next portion of the story. Outstanding! There is no other word for such a fine piece of writing, such an enthralling piece of writing.
The best book about the case July 29, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The new book has been called the best-ever rendering of the case, and it's impossible to disagree.
Whether or not you've read other books about the fatal love triangle between Stanford White, Evelyn Nesbit, and Harry Thaw before, you may relish this telling as I did. Like generations of tabloid readers before me, I "gorged" myself "on every morbid morsel."
It is the author's decision to stay entirely within the point of view of Evelyn Nesbit, the apex of the love triangle, that makes this book so engaging -- that and her aesthetic vocabulary. This version of one of the most infamous crimes of passion of the 20th century features a sable-hared Pandora, a scheming roue' who fell slave to her, and another man who was fatefully smitten. The molten force of emotions fairly sets fire to the pages.
Harold Schechter referred to the author's "breathless narrative pace," and that's what's to like. Other authors have bored students of the scandal with long-winded descriptions of how great an architect Stanford White was. This author doesn't go beyond a mention of his career.
This author has also rendered two murder trials in only a few pages, focusing on what mattered to the heroine of the story -- her time on the witness stand.
In this telling of the backwards fairy tale, Evelyn Nesbit is alternately lost, willful, wicked, giddy, blissful, unguarded, needy, starved for attention, desperately alone, impulsive, and spiteful. She is a voluptuary sultana, the little Galatea, the molten-eyed soubrette who inspired scenes worthy of Chekhov.
 Mostly Good, but not Great June 9, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This tale has all of the forbidden Victorian elements that kept it front page press for over a month: obscene riches, deathly beauty, the rakish ways of a old man, a crazy man a family just couldn't contain, and finally, murder. When I was first intrigued by this tale, I decided to buy this book, instead of E. Nesbit's own biographies, because I wanted analysis and interpretation of events, instead of just reporting them from a certain perspective. With this book, I'm glad I made this choice.
This is a crisply written book that holds attention and compels you to flip to the next page. The book is well researched, and all threads of the tale are brought together into a cohesive story.
Why I take off one star: First, the book comes up short in Evelyn's post-Thaw life. After the entire hubris faded away, her life went on with difficulties: her mediocre theater career, her alcohol and morphine addictions, and suicide attempts. Her son went on to become an ace WWII pilot. Evelyn's tale after her 30th birthday is also heart breaking interesting, but this section is cut woefully short. Then, some juicy tidbits didn't make it, such as Thaw's masochism during their marriage, and White's activities with other under-age girls.
So, the story is great - just not complete.
A Very Happy Customer May 29, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The book American Eve is brillantly written. It is not only a juicy celebrity gossipy tale, but to me it is a true piece of work with a strong timeless theme. Reading the book will make you feel as if you are living in the turn of the 20th century until your cell phone or any other modern nuisance jars you out of your post victorian wonderland. The book arrived promptly with a valuable coupon inside. I will always get my reading material from Amazon. Very pleased with my service. 5 stars easily.
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