Interview with Paula Uruburu - Part II

Welcome to part two of my interview with Professor Paula Uruburu, author of the new biography American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White and the Crime of the Century.

Q. The trial of Harry K. Thaw seemed to set the tone for later celebrity trials of the century like O.J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, where the victim seemed to be demonized in some way. Not that Thaw and Evelyn came out much better in the press.

It really was a watershed moment for the new century (which would see unfortunately other trial rooted in scandal and sensationalisms, each decade having its “trial of the century” – you mentioned a couple and I would add the Fatty Arbuckle , Lindbergh kidnapping,, and the Manson murder trials in this unholy unhappy pantheon.)

As I say in the book, at first, Harry was seen as the knigh t in shining armor and Evelyn the “ruined maid,” but once all the facts started to emerge about insanity and less than innocent behavior (in order to save Harry from the electric chair) the demonization had touched each of them.

Q. With so much written about the trial at the time, Evelyn’s two memoirs and Harry K. Thaw’s autobiography, where does a biographer begin to start sorting fact from fiction?

First by comparing what’s in those memoirs and then, trying to put them into the specific context x of the moment in which they were written and then the larger cultural context -- with a century of hindsight. Add to that significant detective work (such as finding hundreds of personal letters, the original trial transcripts) talking to real live people who knew the principals (family members, not all of whom are necessarily sympathetic), culling information from everymore impartial source possible (thousands of newspaper accounts, articles, etc.) and then hopefully using common sense and an informed vision of the forces of class and gender at work in such a complicated series of events.

Q. Harry’s mother was the complete opposite of Evelyn’s mother. Mrs. Thaw seemed to alternately smother and control Harry. When Harry was arrested, she did everything she could to make sure that he was acquitted, including having a film made of the murder. Not even OJ tried that!

Yes and I don’t think anyone would have been receptive to an OJ film (look what happened to his recent book deal that ended with an outraged hue and cry) But at the time of White’s murder, it was still an incredibly naïve period and the Thaw millions made it possible to utilize every means of media available to bombard an unsuspecting public only beginning to develop a taste for tabloid.. I say in the book it was a nation of “novice interpreters”and Mother Thaw at times did not realize that her own financial fueling of the media frenzy would come back to bite Harry and the Thaw family’s reputation – with a vengeance.

Q. There was certainly no ‘Dream Team’ in this trial. Thaw fought against being seen as insane. He insisted that he had the right to kill White because of his violation of Evelyn. How unusual was that for a defense? And do you think that Thaw was insane? It seemed fairly pre-meditated.

As I say in the chapters in the book that cover the trial, the “quaint” defense of the “Unwritten Law” which Harry’s lawyers tried to use in the first trial, was a Victorian holdover that would not fly even a year and a half later, when they had to go with the obvious insanity defense. Yet it was enough in 1907 for a hung jury even though Harry killed Stanny in front of 900 witnesses. I do think it was as premeditated as anything Harry could pull off – he had carried that gun around with him for a year and that day he had detectives tailing White’s every move. Once the “convenient or calculated” opportunity presented itself at the Madison Square Garden theatre, Harry made his fatal move. I do, however, also think he was totally demented.


Q. The district attorney William Travers Jerome (who as it happens was Jennie Jerome's double first cousin and Winston Churchill’s second cousin) also had a secret to keep, that he had a mistress. He also had a reputation for fighting against corruption. How important was this trial for him?

I think he was surprisingly naïve when he thought he could wrap this up as just another love triangle gone bad. He had no idea of the force of Mother Thaw’s will or of Evelyn’s astonishing presence in the courtroom – he had reduced many older, wiser professional men to fumbling idiots on the witness stand -- but Evelyn held her own with the “courtroom tiger.” If it was a question for the press of the Lady or the Tiger, I think most would say the lady won -- and this effectively dashed any hopes Jerome had in looking at the governor’s seat and possibly even the presidency at some time in the future (which had been the rumor). Having just lost our former governor to a sex scandal, I suppose not only has nothing changed in 100 years but it’s probably lucky for Jerome that things went the way they did -- since his own philandering might have come to light had he taken a higher public office.

Q. What was the nature of Evelyn’s relationship with Thaw after the trial?

That’s a complicated issue – since she felt the Thaws owed her big time for sacrificing her reputation and making herself a scandalous woman to save Harry’s life, she tried to stick things out and hoped for the best. But it was clear almost immediately that once Harry was in the insane asylum, Mother Thaw had no intention of rewarding Evelyn for her testimony. Yet she was now married to a lunatic incarcerated for who knows how long, and to say things were strained would be an understatement, especially since Harry grew more and more resentful that she was not grateful enough for what he did “for her” – which was to ruin any chances she might have had for a “normal “life.

Q. Evelyn’s life after the trial seemed to go from bad to worse for a time. What lessons, if any, can today’s young stars learn from Evelyn Nesbit? Can her story be viewed as a cautionary tale?

Without discouraging further scandalous behavior by adult women who are free to do what they like, I only wish that those young girls (not women) who are already in the harsh cynical light of celebrity-fueled fire – with names like Miley, Brittany, Lindsey, Mary-Kate and Ashley – or those contemplating fame based on such fleeting things as beauty or the whims of a fickle public, read Evelyn’s story and learn something from it. It is of course doubly difficult when, like Evelyn, virtually all of today’s teen-aged femme fatales are placed in harm’s way by parents with dubious motivations and atrocious parenting skill -- and that we are still a culture which delights in watching young women crash and burn for its own titillation and entertainment. As I say early in the book, those who don’t learn from history’s sins are doomed to repeat them -- and 100 years later NOTHING has changed.

Q. Evelyn lived long enough to see the movie 'The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing' with Joan Collins which you said that she thought that Joan Collins was too voluptuous to play her (how funny that both actresses cast to play her physically look nothing like her, at least in terms of body type). What do you think she would have
made of the continued fascination with her story?


Given that Evelyn wrote several letters in the last few years of her life about how she "rocked civilization," I'd say she would find the whole thing pretty amusing. She was able to have both literal and critical distance from the "Garden tragedy" by then. As "the girl who brought down the house" (much like Eve, Pandora, Helen of Troy, etc.) she ultimately believed that she was somehow destined to expose the sins of the rich and powerful.

I also think she would have had a great deal to say about the current state of affairs where young girls, who have much greater opportunities than those a century ago, are being "exposed" to the limelight by unscrupulous or deluded parents in the HD, TMZ, Hollywood Heat culture of today. Even though she could never bring herself to openly criticize her mother, she wrote again and again about how damaging it was to be exposed to fame at a young age

Thank you Professor Uruburu for joining me at Scandalous Women, and for allowing me to post the lovely images of Evelyn, as well as Stanford White and Thaw. You can purchase Professor Uruburu's book at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Also please see her web-site to read an excerpt from the book as well as watch the trailer at American Eve.

Welcome Paula Uruburu - Author of American Eve

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome Professor Paula Uruburu, author of American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, and the Crime of the Century (Riverhead Books).

Paula Uruburu is an associate professor of English at Hofstra University. An expert on Evelyn Nesbit and the time period, she has been widely published and has appeared on A&E's Biography, PBS's History Detectives and American Experience, and been a consultant for The History Channel.

The scandalous story of America’s first supermodel, sex goddess, and modern celebrity, Evelyn Nesbit, the temptress at the center of Stanford White’s famous murder, whose iconic life story reflected all the paradoxes of America’s Gilded Age. Known to millions before her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Evelyn Nesbit was the most photographed woman of her era, an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her.

When her life of fantasy became all too real, and her jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover—celebrity architect Stanford White, builder of the Washington Square Arch and much of New York City—she found herself at the center of the “Crime of the Century” and the popular courtroom drama that followed—a scandal that signaled the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex.

The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, sex, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrativethat reads like the best fiction— only it’s all true. American Eve goes far beyond just literary biography; it paints a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern, foreshadowing so much of our contemporary culture today.

Q. Welcome Professor Uruburu. Over a hundred years later, the story of Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White and Harry Thaw still continues to fascinate. What led to your interest in Evelyn Nesbit?

I actually mention this in the notes section of my book – and it fits quite nicely with your scandalous women – since it started with a course I teach called Daughters of Decadence.It’s a lit course on the depiction of women at the turn of the last century in short fiction, poetry and novels. I began to look for images of women to enhance my lectures and kept coming across the hypnotic face of Evelyn Nesbit. Like so many others, I became obsessed with her image and wanted to know more than what I thought I knew from reading Doctorow’s brilliant historical novel Ragtime.

Q. Evelyn’s mother seems to have abdicated her role both as a parent as a breadwinner. She’s not even really a stage mother in the sense of say, a Dina Lohan. And she abandons her when Evelyn needed her most during the trial. What is your take on Mrs. Nesbit?

Well, as I say in the book, initially I was sympathetic to the plight of a woman left a widow with two children and no social programs or avenues of help at the time. But then, the more research I did and the more I learned, she became what I call a “monster in human form” – not all monsters are easily recognizable as such, which makes them all the more insidious and dangerous – as certain parental behaviors in the news currently appear to me.(think Lohan, Spears, Cyrus …).

Q. Nowadays we are so used to people becoming famous seemingly out of nowhere like Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. But Evelyn’s fame was something new back then. Her photographs were everywhere, and she seems to have posed for most of the great photographers and artists of the day. What do you think it was about Evelyn that made her such a celebrity?

Two things. She was an extraordinary-looking girl (I stress that since she started modeling at 14) and had an extraordinarily natural beauty, completely against the type of the time – which made her stand out and which connoisseurs of the artistic avante garde like White recognized. Hers was also a case of unique timing, since new technology converged with Evelyn which literally made her the poster girl of the Gilded Age. It was the New Century in search of symbols to represent the age and she was It.

Q. Stanford White was also very well known at the time as well. How was he able to keep his proclivities so secret from the public for so long? Particularly with the likes of Anthony Comstock and the Society for the Prevention of Vice around?

This was the last gasp of the gilded period where an unspoken conspiracy of the rich and powerful were able to keep their private sins separate from the public sphere they ruled over. White was almost found out with the Pie Girl incident( people will have to read the book to find out what that was) but he begged the newspapers to keep his name out of things and pretty much succeeded. After his murder the walls of secrecy came tumbling down.

Q. In many ways, Stanford White seemed to fulfill the roles of both father and lover to Evelyn. Do you feel that the loss of Evelyn’s father when she was young led her to seek out father substitutes? She wrote in her memoirs that he was the only man that she ever really loved; do you think that’s true?

I believe Evelyn when she says that “Stanny” was the only man she ever truly loved – and while I would leave it to the psychologists to offer a more expert opinion on whether or not Evelyn had an Electra complex., I do think that there was some fusion (on confusion) of daughter-love with what became a sexual relationship once White crossed the line with Evelyn. As she says, even though at first he struck her as appallingly old, his youthful exuberance and playfulness eventually won her over. I do think her brief “frolic” with John Barrymore , by the way, was more of a crush and not really love.

Q. Why was Thaw so obsessed with Stanford White?

Thaw wanted desperately to be part of the “smart set” and social elite in Manhattan (as he perceived he was in Pittsburgh and certain European capitals .) But when his crazy antics and abrasive personality manifested themselves, he was virtually banned form every club in the city – many of which White had built or was a member of – and Thaw believed White blackballed him – he saw White as the source of his social disgcrace and thus a perfect target for obsession and revenge.

Q. Why did Evelyn eventually marry Thaw after learning about his darker side?

That’s the hardest question for me since she in fact had a very intelligent and intellectually curious mind (which her beaut y overshadowed overwhelmingly). I think her decision was based on several factors -a childhood of poverty versus what she perceived of as the comfort of the Thaw millions; added to that is the fact that Stanny had already “ruined” her as far as legitimate suitors would be concerned; and like all practiced sociopaths, Harry effectively cut her off from other avenues of choice and promised,(and gave convincing evidence) of being able to curb his darker appetites and behave especially in the presence of his Mother in whose house they would live.

Q. All three principals seemed to have a duality to their nature, Stanford White and Thaw certainly, but even Evelyn seemed to have two sides to her as well.

Yes that’s another reason why I find the story so fascinating – three larger-than-life people from very different backgrounds all converged at the moment of America’s cultural identity crisis at the turn into the new century. People wanted to hang on to outdated stereotypes (the melodramatic scenarios of the Victorian era) when it all began, but the culture was already in transition – and Evelyn was far more a modern girl in spirit than the age allowed. Without any sort of guidance, she had to make her own way, which meant having to survive and embrace decadence.at certain moments, all brought on by her incredible beauty.

Q. Do you think it was possible for the tragedy to have been averted any point? Or do you think it was inevitable in some way?

Evelyn talks in her own memoirs a lot about Fate and I can’t help but see her life and her position in this new world “Garden tragedy” as some weird convergence of larger forces. . The fact shat she was “Evie” and Stanny was the creator of the Garden, infiltrated by the devious snake Harry Thaw only underscores for me the mythic inevitability of the whole thing.

Come back tomorrow for Part II of my interview with Paula Uruburu!