The "It" Girl | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

this episode contains descriptions of sexual violence and may not be appropriate for everyone please use
discretion the only thing worse than modeling or it may be equivalent to would have been
acting going on the stage as a as a disreputable kind of morally questionable occupation and of course
her mother allowed her to do both Evelyn Nesbitt has one of the most famous faces
in the world but these days not many of us remember her name you know this is the the age where a glimpse of stalking
was shocking and as her mother said my daughter never modeled in the altogether in the late 1800s an organization called
the New York Society for the suppression of Vice was in full swing it was founded
by a man named Anthony Comstock and Anthony Comstock was upset about sex the Civil War had just ended and
soldiers had gotten their hands on so much pornography people were finding it littered all over the ground
Comstock wanted to criminalize erotic pictures along with erotic fiction songs depictions of women on sheet music and
playing cards anything quote calculated to carry impure ideas and a lot of people agreed with him in
1873 Congress passed the Comstock act prohibiting the transportation of obscene materials through the mail
including information about contraception but people still wanted to look at pictures of naked women there
was a burgeoning underground industry of uh I guess if you want to call pornography and art pictures were
included in that art studies and the way that of course artists fine artists got
around that was by saying that these were mythical figures like psyche or Aphrodite so that you
would use they would turn to mythology as a way of justifying having women in these sort of antique you know
diaphanous robes and gowns and things and uh between that and then the kind of costumes that chorus girls wore also
which were considered shocking at the time and here is Evelyn she's inhabiting both of these worlds at the
same time and she's just barely 16. I mean everything about her life from the moment that she was discovered as a
model her life was unusual Evelyn Nesbitt was born on Christmas day in 1884. in a small Pennsylvania town
outside of Pittsburgh the local paper reported she was the most beautiful baby ever born in the
county we're hearing about her from Paulie uriburu professor of English and film at
Hofstra Evelyn's father died unexpectedly leaving Mrs Nesbitt with two small children and no idea what to do it was
the classic it was like something out of a Charles Dickens novel where they were
the sheriff came and put the eviction notice on the house and all of that and the mother had no idea what how to deal
with the finances and so for a while they went from family member to family member and then eventually I think a
year later her mother because she knew housekeeping decided she would try to run a boarding house
um for a time the boarding house wasn't doing well because Evelyn was so beautiful her
mother made her go door to door to try to collect rent from the men living there
then Mrs Nesbitt tried to make money as a seamstress moving her children to Philadelphia where she hoped someone
would hire her in Philadelphia Evelyn was discovered it sounds like the typical sort of Hollywood scenario but
Evelyn was discovered on the street actually by a woman artist who thought that she was extraordinarily beautiful
and wanted to use her as a model for painting she was a a fine artist and Evelyn's mother agreed to let her pose
and then one after another other artists in the community there started to hear about this model and then she that was
the start of her modeling career soon after the family moved to New York where Evelyn modeled for artists and
appeared in ads for toothpaste face creams fur coats and Whitman samplers she was so sought after that she was
paid twice what other models made her mother was happy to let her do it because they needed the money
she came to New York just when the technology makes it possible for them to now reproduce photographs because prior
to that women's ads for example in the ladies magazines they were illustrations but once
Evelyn's picture gets reproduced that's when things changed and you know her face became recognizable as the the it
girl she's the first it girl before people knew what it was Evelyn was cast in the most popular play
on Broadway the floradora about young women in the South Pacific making perfume and being pursued by British
aristocrats the show's most famous song was called tell me pretty Maiden [Music]
like you do one of the most influential and glamorous architects in New York City
went to see the show over and over some say he went 40 times because he was obsessed with the new girl
his name was Stanford white Sanford white was uh this sort of this Dynamo and he was somebody who had a vision for
New York and he wanted to transform it I mean he was sort of an amazing figure he
managed to have a one foot in the world of the 400 and Mrs Astor and the robber barons and the extremely wealthy whereas
at the same time he was a Denizen of Broadway and friend of the artist in the Bohemians he designed mansions for the
Vanderbilts the Tiffany's he designed the original Madison Square Garden with a giant naked statue of the Goddess
Diana on the roof and he was famous for coming up with these wild over-the-top events filling the old Metropolitan
Opera House with 15 000 white roses turning a restaurant into the court of Versailles
for the Centennial of George Washington's inauguration he built an enormous ornate Arch the arch was so
popular that New Yorkers raised the money to keep it around and it's there in Washington Square Park today
he had red hair and a big red mustache newspapers described him as masterful and intense
he had a lot of power in New York and his wife was from an important and Wealthy family too he was just sort of
uh this Whirlwind figure who um who had uh at the same time an incredible appetite for beauty and
beautiful objects which is where I think Evelyn fits him it was the beginning of a new world of
celebrity money gossip Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age glittering and Beautiful on the surface and absolutely
rotten underneath I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal seeing Evelyn perform night after night
Stanford white arranged to meet her he managed to get one of his chorus girlfriends who befriended Evelyn to
come to bring her to a luncheon at one of his apartments around the city that he kept for these purposes he called his
snuggeries this particular Snuggery was a non-descript building on West 24th Street above a toy shop owned by FAO
Schwartz when Evelyn and her friend got out of the cab she wanted to go in and look at
the mechanical toys but her friend who'd been there before pulled her through a narrow door that opened automatically
Evelyn later wrote the sudden plunge from that dingy Street entrance into this room was breathtaking the
predominating color was a wonderful red heavy red velvet curtains shut out all the daylight there was a table set for
four she liked the apartment but she did not like Stanford white she found him quote
appalling and terribly old she was 16. he was 48. they were having this feast and he says I want to show
you this room that I have upstairs and they went up a set of stairs and there in this room with the high ceiling was
this beautiful red velvet swing that was attached to the ceiling and also attached to the ceiling was a Japanese
paper parasol and he said to Evelyn you want do you want to ride on the swing and he put her on the swing and pushed
her and encouraged her to go as high as she could to try to kick through the parasol and that was one of the
afternoon's entertainment was to ride on the swing the famous red velvet swing after that first meeting Stanford white
decided that everything about Evelyn was perfect except for one thing her teeth they were good but not as good as he
wanted them to be he sent her to a dentist to as he said satisfy a purely aesthetic urge and he paid the bill he
paid for a lot of things he began this sort of uh program of patronage of her she became his quote
Protege he moved her and her mother into a beautiful apartment that he decorated
specifically for her paying for her brother to go to school he sent her brother to Military Academy he visited
Evelyn and her mother many mornings with gifts often books he wanted Evelyn to read he arranged for her to take piano
lessons he made appointments for her to model for his friends real artists he said not the hacks she'd been posing for
and he introduced her to an artist named Charles Dana Gibson she became one of Gibson's favorite models and the Gibson
Girl today still you know when they had that series of stamps that came out about the century a while ago sure
enough Evelyn's picture was the Gibson Girl stamp that they put out so it's such a it's such an iconic image of that
Gilded Age and she's she is it what was a Gibson girl uh Gibson girl was really um Charles Dana Gibson took the idea of
the new woman which was sort of threatening to the Old Guard but his idea of the American Girl if you want to
use that term was she was tall and statuesque and she was seductive but without being it's actually realized and
she was usually depicted in his illustrations as an heiress as being healthy as being participating in the
newest trends whether it's riding a bicycle or playing tennis or Golf and they didn't need men necessarily they it
was it was really kind of the ideal image of the new woman and that's what he created one of
Gibson's most famous drawings of Evelyn Nesbitt is called the Eternal question it's a profile image and in it her hair
is piled up on her head but also there are some curls that fall over her shoulder and it looks like a question
mark and Freud famously says the Eternal question is what does a woman want and Gibson played on that idea what is this
what is this creature what is this new woman how are we supposed to respond to her what does she represent and Evelyn
is the Gibson Girl She is the Eternal question what does a woman want and and it's brilliant because you know in that
period a girl wore her hair down in curls and then when she was 16 she lost the short skirts and wore long dresses
and her hair then was put up to indicate that she was a woman now and what's brilliant about the Eternal question is
that you have it both ways she's got her hair up and she's got it down so it's some some interesting transitional
figure between the old and the new between the old and the young actually Stanford white continued to be a father
figure to Evelyn and he became very close with her mother winning her trust completely he talked to Mrs Nesbitt
about her friends and family back in Pennsylvania he said it was important not to lose touch and encouraged her to
go home for a visit and her mother was didn't want to leave Evelyn by herself in the city at this point Evelyn is now
modeling in the daytime and performing on Broadway at night and he says don't worry I'll take care of her and and her
mother left her in the care of of white and he told Deb when he was going to be having a party at the Madison Square
Garden Tower and that she should come when she arrived there was no one else there he said isn't it too bad all the
others have turned us down he told her that they'd have their own party he gave her a gift a toy Bank he'd
bought in London and a glass of champagne and then another and another up until this point he'd kept the close
eye on her drinking never wanting her to have more than one glass but this night was different
he took her up a staircase she'd never noticed before at the top a small Studio decorated with tapestries and mirrors
and antiques he opened the tapestries to reveal an even smaller secret room with a four
poster canopy bed surrounded by mirrors all around the top of the bed were light
bulbs that changed colors she says uh though I like to use her description she says she went into the room of Virgin
and she did not come out one uh and that was a night that um she woke up and she was basically nude
next to a naked Stanford white and he says you're mine now and you're my kittens and it's awful
she had no memory of what had happened when she woke up and saw her reflection in the mirrors she screamed
before 1895 to prosecute someone for rape you had to prove a woman fought back after 1895 sex with anyone under 18
carried a minimum sentence of 10 years Stanford white told Evelyn that nothing unusual had happened that everyone did
it and that quote a girl must never talk he'd remind her of this sing simply don't talk Evelyn
I mean you have to try to remember that she's 16 when she meets white she had been living after her father died she
was living in extreme poverty and living from hand to mouth and suddenly she's with one of the most dynamic Attractive
people in New York you know white was somebody that men and women found you know sort of irresistible in terms of
his personality in terms of his charm the way she describes it in her letter she said it was like the force of an
earthquake you know it was a seismic force that he had and uh and as I said everybody
anybody who knew white um whether it was as the artist or as the entrepreneur or as the art
connoisseur he was just this magnetic figure and so probably in her naivete as a 16 year old she thought oh he's he's
gonna maybe leave his wife for me which he never intended to do so yeah it was a very um uneven
relationship to say the least foreign [Music] for Evelyn's 17th birthday Stanford
white filled his Madison Square Garden apartment with flowers covering every inch of the place and he covered the
flower petals with confectioner's sugar to make them look like they've been dusted by snow
and he was just getting started her birthday gifts included two diamond solitaire rings a large Pearl on a
platinum chain a set of white fox Furs and a ruby and diamond ring she called him Stanley Claus
she was thrilled to be the center of his attention he would pinch her shoulders and say he
was feeling for her wings neither of them had any idea they were being watched Evelyn had been cast in a musical called
The Wild Rose and a strange man attended dozens of performances he always sat in
the front row following almost exactly in the footsteps of Stanford white the strange
man asked one of the girls in the play to bring Evelyn to lunch so he could meet her
Evelyn agreed the man called himself Mr Monroe he met her he he got down and grabbed the Hem of her dress and kissed
it and he said do you know you're the most beautiful girl in New York and she was actually horrified
about a week later at a pre-show dinner Evelyn ran into Mr Monroe again they were seated next to one another which
was not a coincidence this time very theatrically the man told her that his name was not Mr Monroe he
revealed his real identity the heir to a 40 million dollar Fortune Harry thaw Harry was this incredibly spoiled and
apparently very unstable young man who then uh wanted to become sort of uh you know the
toast of the town and came from Pittsburgh to New York and because he was so odd and because he
was let's face it he was from Pittsburgh okay I didn't want to catch this person
on Pittsburgh but the New York crowd considered him just a sort of insane sort of Outsider who did things like
ride a horse up the steps into the Union club and used to show off by lighting his cigars with hundred dollar bills and
things like this so he was um he had been kicked out of Harvard he'd been kicked out of law school it didn't
actually matter he didn't need to work his mother gave him a monthly allowance of eighty thousand dollars which would
be about two million dollars a month today he spent his time traveling around the
world getting into fights and asking his mother to bail him out like Stanford white Harry thaw was
obsessed with young and beautiful Broadway actresses and specifically he was obsessed with their virginity he
would actually run ads and have young girls come to his apartment with the idea that he was
going to be a dramatic coach and he would instead scald them in bathtubs and handcuff them and beat them with a dog
Whip and tell them that they were bad he believed he was saving them in some way
his mother spent tens of thousands of dollars paying them not to press charges Evelyn didn't know about any of this but
she knew she was not interested when Harry thaw sent two dozen pairs of silk stockings to her house she sent
them back he sent a Steinway grand piano she sent that back too he proposed she declined
she was in love with Stanford white she believed they were going to be together forever and as she saw that he was
paying attention to other chorus girls as well she didn't like that and I think she started to
um it's she turned 17 she became maybe somewhat wiser or somewhat aware that she needed to do something and so that's
when she started a relationship with John Barrymore I think to make white jealous in the
hopes that he would leave his wife somehow Mrs Nesbitt had no problem with Evelyn spending many evenings with
Stanford white but when she started spending time with someone age appropriate she panicked and sent Evelyn
to boarding school she enrolled at the DeMille School run by Cecil B demille's mother
Stanford white paid her tuition while she was at school she needed an emergency appendectomy
Evelyn's mother couldn't reach Stanford white so she contacted that other wealthy middle-aged man hovering around
her teenage daughter Harry thaw he sent one of the finest doctors in New York to operate on Evelyn and then
offered to pay for recuperative trip to Europe for Evelyn and her mother and he would go along too
early in the trip Evelyn and her mother were fighting so badly mostly about her mother spending Evelyn's money on
clothes for herself that her mother insisted on going back to America and so Harry and Evelyn were alone they were in
Paris and and here was this guy who was kind of weird and uh but he was constantly professing his love for her
and how beautiful she was and then One Night in Paris he he sort of cornered her in her room and said
tell me about Stanford way tell me what he did to you I know he did something to
you and she told him and he broke down crying and hysterical and saying oh my God that's terrible terrible he began to
cry and pressed her for more details and they stayed up all night talking Evelyn was moved by his reaction
they continued to travel together and Harry would bring up Stanford white constantly when they visited the
birthplace of Joan of Arc he wrote in the guest book she would not have been a virgin if Stanford White had been around
they moved on to Germany where Harriet rented an old Gothic Castle secluded up a steep Mountain
there were two servants in the castle and one night Harry thaw sent them both away
Evelyn woke up to find him standing beside her bed naked with a whip he attacked her he tore a nightgown off
and hit her and said things about Penance for her sinful Behavior he raped her the next day he behaved as if nothing
had happened Evelyn asked to see a doctor she was badly injured and still recovering from the appendectomy
he took her to a doctor who ignored the bruises and marks all over her body she was completely trapped
eventually they went back to Paris where she ran into one of Stanford White's friends an older woman who got Evelyn
out of there back home in New York she realized that she was completely on her own
her mother wouldn't speak to her Stanford white was distracted she worried that at 17 she was perhaps
already too old to keep his attention Harry thaw sent an entire florist shop of flowers to apologize
when she refused to see him he sent others to apologize on his behalf he wrote her letters promising that if
she'd only marry him things would be better he said he would be a different person he said he would be like a monk
this went on for two years on April 5th 1905 they were married she wore black and
for a brief time it seemed like maybe this was going to be okay and then of course he starts coming into her room at
night and saying tell me again what Stanford white did to you tell me just and she realized that part of the reason
why he married her was because he wanted to relive this experience over and over
again about white he was so obsessed with him Harry thaw began to carry a gun in our next episode
the story it was very clear that none of the people in the in the in the center of
this tragedy neither Evelyn nor white nor thaw was exactly what they had been initially depicted as
criminalists produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Rob Byers matild erfilino is our intern
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I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal foreign [Music]

The story behind the face of New York’s Gilded Age, “Gibson Girl” Evelyn Nesbit.

For more information, check out Paula Uruburu’s book, American Eve.

Music in the episode “Valantis” by Blue Dot Sessions “Dance of Felt” by Blue Dot Sessions “Gymnopedies 1” by Blue Dot Sessions “Dolly and Pad” by Blue Dot Sessions “Lens Flare” by Podington Bear “Senseless ” by Podington Bear “Milkwood” by Blue Dot Sessions

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode 91 originally published 5/18/2018 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-91-the-it-girl-05-18-2018

Brief Summary

Evelyn Nesbitt's rise to fame, her relationships with Stanford White and Harry Thaw, and the societal challenges she faced are explored.

Key points

Evelyn Nesbitt's Rise to Fame. Evelyn Nesbitt becomes the first 'It Girl' in New York, modeling for top artists.
Stanford White's Obsession. Stanford White, a powerful architect, becomes infatuated with 16-year-old Evelyn.
The Dark Side of Fame. Evelyn's life takes a dark turn as she navigates relationships with powerful men.
Evelyn's Nightmare. Evelyn wakes up to find Harry Thaw standing beside her bed naked with a whip.
A Desperate Escape. Evelyn runs into a friend who helps her escape from Harry Thaw.
The Wedding. Evelyn marries Harry Thaw, hoping for a better future.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

You're mine now and you're my kittens.

Stanford White's words to Evelyn after their encounter.

14:37WatchJan 11, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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