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American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, the Birth of the "It" Girl, and the Crime of the Century (2008)

door Paula Uruburu

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4771951,325 (3.7)6
Famous by her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Gibson Girl 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 wanted her. When 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 scandal that marked the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex. The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrative that reads like the best fiction--only it's all true, a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern.--From publisher description.… (meer)
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1-5 van 19 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
It is a pity that this book is so badly written, because inside there is an interesting story struggling to get out, one which I had not heard of before - the story of a young American woman whose beauty brought her into the orbits of two wealthy men, with highly unfortunate results. But the writing is so lamentable that one wonders whether the publisher employs any editorial staff at all. The author Paula Uruburu never uses one word when ten are available - especially if they are adjectives. And for someone who is an academic, her readiness to make assumptions about what people are feeling or thinking at any one moment, with no solid evidence, is close to unprofessional, even if this book is 'narrative history' rather than scholarly biography.

The book also makes no pretence to any neutrality; it is extremely biased against some of the people involved. The only small consolation is that the last third, about the trials and aftermath, is slightly better as there are more facts to record and less need for padding.

The greatest irony is that, to judge on the basis of the extracts from Evelyn Nesbit's diaries and books quoted in this biography, she appears to have been a much better writer herself than Uruburu. So it may well be worth getting hold of her works if you are interested in delving deeper. ( )
  ponsonby | Apr 4, 2023 |
DNF at pg. 100

I have to put this down for a while. This is the wordiest book I've ever picked up. Adjectives, adjective, adjectives... way too many that leaves the reader struggling to find the point in a paragraph. I read 100 pages that could have easily been cut down to about 30 without losing any important facts. Or really any facts at all, as the author repeats her points over and over.

And what is with the personal vendetta again Evelyn's mother? The author does not describe or discuss her mother without at least one unwarranted attack. I think there a personal sensitivity on the author's part coming out in response to Mrs. Nesbit. Given this is a biography, it seems even more out of place.

I don't want to completely give up on this book, however, because the topic is so interesting and it is obvious well-researched. There is so much potential and others have enjoyed it, so I think I will just take it in sections.
  Linda_Holcomb | Jun 6, 2019 |
Two books about notorious New York murder cases: Daniel Stashower’s about Mary Rogers’ (The Beautiful Cigar Girl) and Paula Uruburu’s about Stanford White (American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the “It” Girl, and the Crime of the Century).

Mary Rogers’ death was a mystery; in fact, protoconspiracy-theorists claimed that despite identification by her mother and one of her suitors the body found floating in the Hudson on July 28 1841 wasn’t Mary Rogers at all. It was a hot day in New York City and several young men seeking temperature relief by strolling along the Jersey side spotted the object, borrowed a boat, lassoed it around the neck, towed it to shore, and, being unwilling to touch the thing, tethered it to a handy rock. A floating corpse was a novelty, and the curious showed up to poke it with sticks and comment on its appearance. Someone worked up enough courage to wade into the river and drag it ashore, and someone else peered between the legs and made rude comments to his friends. Albert Crommelin had been searching for his missing romantic interest for several days and feared the worst when he spotted the tangle of bystanders; sure enough, he identified the thing as Mary Rogers.

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Stanford White’s death was no mystery at all. It was a hot night in New York City and with many others he was seeking temperature relief attending the opening night of a musical comedy presented in the rooftop theater at Madison Square Garden (which he had designed). Millionaire and major loon Harry Thaw, attending the same performance, left his table, walked up behind White, and shot him three times in the back of the head. There were hundreds of witnesses, including actresses and chorus girls, theater patrons, and Thaw’s wife Evelyn. Unlike Ms. Rogers, there was no doubt who the victim was – although his face was no longer recognizable.

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Author Daniel Stashower turns Mary Rogers’ story into a history of 1840s NYC police practices, the newspaper business, and an excellent biography of Edgar Allan Poe. Those of us used to CSI will find 1840 police procedure a little disconcerting; the police were abysmally corrupt and most murder investigation was in the hands of judges and coroners. The Mary Rogers case was a godsend to the newspaper business; editorials lambasted the police, the mayor, the governor, the coroner, and each other. (William Gordon Bennett enthusiastically drubbed his competitors in the editorial pages of the New York Herald; New York Sun editor Moses Beach “had no more brains than an oyster" and the New York Tribune’s Horace Greeley was less effective than “a large New England squash”). In the absence of any sort of police force, the newspapers took on the investigator role themselves and cheerfully accused just about everybody in the city, plus a good fraction of New Jersey. Poe comes into the picture because in his usual financial desperation he adapted the Mary Rogers story for the second of his C. Auguste Dupin detective mysteries, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.

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Paula Uruburu concentrates on the title heroine, and Ms Uruburu is unhesitant in sympathizing with Ms. Nesbit (well, although I’m just a little suspicious of her veracity, I’m pretty sympathetic with Evelyn, too). Evelyn Nesbit lost her comfortable middle-class life when her father died, and quickly found herself supporting her family as an underage chorus girl and artist’s model (her mother was concerned, but took the money). Her Gibson-girl beauty attracted the attention of Stanford White, who had a reputation for this sort of thing (White is supposed to have coined the expression “Would you like to come up and see my etchings?” and invented the concept of having a girl jump out of a cake at a party (well, it was actually a pie, which in addition to four-and-twenty blackbirds contained a 14-year-old girl dressed in a blackbird hat and feathered toe rings)).

After some beating around the bush the 40ish White drugged and raped the 16-year-old Evelyn (there’s some question of how naïve Evelyn was. Uruburu glosses over it, but even in more innocent times you might expect that a girl from a theater background would realize that invitations to a much older man’s apartment to pose for lingerie art would eventually end badly). She acquiesced to the arrangement; Mom kept taking the money.

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Mary Rogers’ case was never solved. The evidence was hopelessly muddled; however, the best guess is that rather than being gang-raped and beaten to death as originally supposed, she died during a failed abortion and was beaten up and dumped in the Hudson post-mortem. The abortion theory caused major problems for Poe; he had promised that he would reveal the murderer in Marie Rogêt and had published two of three serializations when evidence for an abortion emerged. He had to quickly rewrite the final chapter.

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Stanford White eventually grew tired of Evelyn and moved on to other chorus girls. By now, however, Evelyn had attracted the attention of Harry Thaw, a Pittsburgh steel millionaire (or more correctly, the spoiled son of the widow of a Pittsburgh steel millionaire). Stanford White was a statutory rapist, but Thaw was a real piece of work. Already notorious for hiring ladies of the evening for whipping sessions (he did the whipping), he persuaded Evelyn and her mother to go on a European tour (interrupted briefly when Thaw whipped a bellboy in a London hotel). Mrs. Nesbit left her daughter in the middle of the trip and Evelyn found herself alone with Harry in (nope, not kidding, really this Gothic) a deserted German castle Harry had rented for a week. Harry persuaded Evelyn to tell her the story of her affair with White, and latter that evening forced open the door of her room, naked and carrying a riding crop. He spent several hours of admonishing Evelyn for her misbehavior, which left her so covered with lash marks that she couldn’t lie down for fear of the bedclothes sticking to the bloody cuts. Rather surprisingly, when the couple returned to the US Evelyn agreed to marry Thaw.

Thaw, however, couldn’t get over the fact that White had Evelyn first – he took Evelyn to his dentist and had all the dental work White had paid for removed and replaced. That wasn’t quite enough to satisfy him – hence the Madison Square Garden shooting. Thaw was utterly convinced that he would be found innocent – and was outraged when his family bought him a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict. Once she had testified – pretty convincingly – that Thaw really was a nutcase, the Thaws immediately dumped Evelyn without a cent. (After getting out of the asylum the first time, Harry Thaw was picked up and committed again for another bellboy whipping incident; in fact, he spent more time in custody for whipping bellboys then did for shooting Stanford White). She spent the rest of her life in a series of increasingly dreary nightclub and cabaret shows (although briefly regaining some notoriety as a consultant for The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, where she’s played by Joan Collins, and, of course, posthumous recognition in Ragtime, this time played by Elizabeth McGovern).

I liked both of these – Stashower’s evocation of 1840s New York is compelling, as is the biographical material on Poe. I confess when I first picked it up I had Mary Rogers confused with Helen Jewett, another New York cause célèbre murder victim. Miss Jewett didn’t sell cigars, however). As far as Evelyn Nesbit goes, perhaps Uruburu takes a little too much of Nesbit’s testimony at face value. But it’s pretty clear that even if Evelyn stretched the truth a little what demonstrably happened to her was pretty grim. Besides, I’ve always had a weakness for Gibson girls. ( )
  setnahkt | Jan 1, 2018 |
Though is started out somewhat breezy and lightweight, once she got into the heart of the story, it really settled in and became a very enjoyable but scholarly read. She does have an overfondness for the cleverly turned phrase but I think she got into much of the important details of Nesbit's early life to make the trial less a sensation and more understandable. Since I knew so little about this major event of American pop culture, it was interesting to read about. The only part I found a bit odd was the constant descriptions of Evelyn's amazing beauty but the photos included didn't really impress me except as a pretty young girl. Perhaps tastes have changed or perhaps men find her more beautiful or perhaps photos don't do her justice but that was how she made her living. Interesting.
  amyem58 | Jul 3, 2014 |
A biography of Evelyn Nesbit, the beauty who became the symbol of the Gilded Age. Often 'beauties of the age' don't stand the test of time, but Evelyn is just as beautiful now as she was considered to be back in 1901. At 16, Evelyn became one of the first 'super models'. At 21, Evelyn became the center of the 'crime of the century' when her husband Harry Thayer murdered the famous architect Stanford White, who had been her lover at the tender age of 16.

White later would be vilified as a man who ruined young girls, and he certainly took advantage of Evelyn, drugging her and robbing her of her 'virtue', but Thayer, was no better, a jealous and mentally unstable man who raped and beat Evelyn after she confessed her 'loss of innocence' at White's hands.

It's a story that illustrates very harshly just how powerless a young girl could be - and indeed still can - in the hands of vicious, brilliant men, with no one to guide her and a life that offered her no concept of normalacy.

Evelyn's story was gripping - I couldn't put the book down - but at the same time it's very, very disturbing. This is Definitely not an easy read. I couldn't stop thinking about it. The whole time I was reading it, I felt like I was trapped in a nightmare. I literally lay awake at night, unable to stop thinking about it. I told Evelyn's story to everyone I talked to, trying to make sense of it, trying to lose that sense of horror.
( )
  shojo_a | Apr 4, 2013 |
1-5 van 19 worden getoond (volgende | toon alle)
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Introduction: A little more than half a century before a winsome, waiflike, and wide-eyed Evelyn Nesbit, not yet sixteen, found her way to the island of Manhattan, Nathaniel Hawthorne had written a modest allegorical tale titled "Rappaccini's Daughter."
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Famous by her sixteenth birthday in 1900, Gibson Girl 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 wanted her. When 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 scandal that marked the beginning of a national obsession with youth, beauty, celebrity, and sex. The story of Evelyn Nesbit is one of glamour, money, romance, madness, and murder, and Paula Uruburu weaves all of these elements into an elegant narrative that reads like the best fiction--only it's all true, a picture of America as it crossed from the Victorian era into the modern.--From publisher description.

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