Evelyn Nesbit

Biography

Florence Evelyn Nesbit (December 25, 1884 or 1885 – January 17, 1967) was an American model, Broadway actress, writer, sculptor, and silent film star. She is widely recognized as the world's first supermodel, rising to fame as a teenager in New York City at the beginning of the 20th century, and she was at the center of a sensational murder trial. As a model, Nesbit was frequently photographed for mass circulation newspapers, magazine advertisements, souvenir items and calendars. When she was about 14, she had begun working as a model for various artists in Philadelphia. Nesbit continued after her family moved to New York, posing for artists including James Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church and notably Charles Dana Gibson, who idealized her as a "Gibson Girl". She began modeling when both fashion photography (as an advertising medium) and the pin-up (as an art genre) were beginning to expand. Nesbit entered Broadway theatre in 1901, initially as a chorus line dancer before becoming a featured star. A variety of wealthy men vied for her company, including the prominent architect Stanford White, who was more than 30 years her senior. In 1905, Nesbit married Harry Kendall Thaw, a multi-millionaire with a history of mental instability and abusive behavior. The next year, on June 25, 1906, Thaw shot and killed White in the middle of a highly attended musical performance at the rooftop theatre of Madison Square Garden. The press called the resulting court case the "Trial of the Century", coverage of which was sensational. Nesbit testified that White had befriended her and her mother when she was performing as a chorus girl, and that when she was about 16 years old, he had given her wine and drugged and then raped her when she was unconscious. Nesbit and White also had an ongoing romantic relationship after the alleged rape incident. Thaw was said to have killed White in retaliation for his actions with Nesbit, based on his own obsession with her. Thaw was eventually acquitted for murder based on an insanity defense. Nesbit visited Thaw while he was confined to mental asylums. After being poorly treated by Thaw's family, she left and toured Europe with a dance troupe, and her son, Russell Thaw, was born in Germany. Later she divorced Thaw and took the boy with her to Hollywood, where she appeared as an actress in silent films. Nesbit wrote two memoirs about her life, published in 1914 and 1934. She died in Santa Monica, California, in 1967.

== Early life == Florence Evelyn Nesbit was born as Florence Mary Nesbit in Natrona, Pennsylvania, a small town near Pittsburgh, on December 25 (Christmas Day) in either 1884 or 1885. The year of her birth remains unconfirmed, as the local records were destroyed in a fire and Nesbit said she was unsure of the date. In later years, Nesbit confirmed that her mother sometimes added several years to her age to circumvent child labor laws. Nesbit was the daughter of Winfield Scott Nesbit and his wife, Evelyn Florence (née McKenzie), and was of Scots-Irish ancestry. Her father was an attorney, and her mother was a homemaker. Nesbit later said that she had an especially close relationship with her father and tried to please him by her accomplishments; he in turn encouraged her curiosity and self-confidence. As she loved reading, Nesbit's father chose books for her and set up a small library for her use, consisting of fairy tales, fantasies, and books regarded typically as of interest to boys only – the "pluck and luck" stories that were popular in that era. When Nesbit showed an interest in music and dance, her father encouraged her to take lessons. The Nesbit family moved to Pittsburgh around 1893. When Nesbit was about ten years old, her father died suddenly at age 40. Her family was left penniless; they lost their home and all their possessions were auctioned off to pay outstanding debts. Nesbit's mother was unable to find work using her dressmaking skills. Dependent on the charity of friends and relatives, the family lived as nomads and shared a single room in a series of boardinghouses. Nesbit's younger brother Howard was often sent to live with friends or relatives for periods of time. Nesbit's mother was eventually given money to rent a house to use as her own boardinghouse, securing a source of income. She sometimes assigned young Evelyn (aged about 12) to the duty of collecting the rent from boarders. "Mamma was always worried about the rent," Nesbit later recalled. "[I]t was too hard a thing for her to actually ask for every week, and it never went smoothly." Nesbit's mother lacked the temperament or savvy to run a boardinghouse, and the venture failed. With their financial prospects continuously dim, the Nesbit family moved to Philadelphia in 1899. A friend had advised Nesbit's mother that relocating to Philadelphia could open opportunities for her employment as a seamstress. Evelyn and Howard were sent to an aunt and then transferred for care to a family in Allegheny, whose acquaintance their mother had made some years earlier. Mrs. Nesbit indeed gained a job, not as a seamstress, but as a sales clerk at the fabric counter of Wanamaker's department store. She sent for her children, and both 14-year-old Evelyn and 12-year-old Howard also became Wanamaker employees, working twelve-hour days for six days a week. It was here that Nesbit had a chance encounter with an artist who was struck by her beauty. She asked Nesbit to pose for a portrait, which her mother agreed to after verifying the artist was a woman. Nesbit sat for five hours and earned one dollar (equivalent to $32 in 2024). She was introduced to other artists in the Philadelphia area and became a favorite model for a group of reputable illustrators, portrait painters and stained-glass artisans. In later life, she explained: "When I saw I could earn more money posing as an artist's model than I could at Wanamaker's, I gave my mother no peace until she permitted me to pose for a livelihood."

== Modeling career ==

In June 1900, Mrs. Nesbit, leaving her children in the care of others, relocated to New York City to seek work as a seamstress or clothing designer. However, she did not succeed in this competitive world. In November 1900 she finally sent for her children, although she had no work. The family shared a single back room in a building on 22nd Street in Manhattan. Nesbit's mother finally used letters of introduction given by Philadelphia artists, contacting painter James Carroll Beckwith, whose primary patron was John Jacob Astor. Beckwith was both a respected painter and instructor of life classes at the Art Students League. He took a protective interest in the young Nesbit and provided her with letters of introduction to other legitimate artists, such as Frederick S. Church, Herbert Morgan and Carle J. Blenner.

Nesbit's mother was forced to take on managing her daughter's career, proving unable to provide either business acumen or guardianship for her daughter. In a later interview with reporters, she maintained: "I never allowed Evelyn to pose in the altogether". Two artworks, one by Church and another by Beckwith in 1901, contradict her statement, as they display a skimpily clad or partially nude Evelyn.

Nesbit rapidly became one of the most in-demand artists' models in New York. Photographers Otto Sarony and Rudolf Eickemeyer were among those who worked with her. Charles Dana Gibson, one of the country's most renowned artists of the era, used Nesbit as the model for one of his best-known "Gibson Girl" works. Titled Woman: The Eternal Question (c. 1903), the portrait features Nesbit in profile, with her luxuriant hair forming the shape of a question mark. Elsewhere, Nesbit was featured on the covers of numerous women's magazines, including Vanity Fair, Harper's Bazaar, The Delineator, Ladies' Home Journal and Cosmopolitan. She appeared in fashion advertising for a wide variety of products; and was also showcased on sheet music and souvenir items – beer trays, tobacco cards, pocket mirrors, postcards, and chromolithographs. Nesbit often posed in vignettes, dressed in various costumes. These photo postcards were known as mignon (sweet, lovely), as their pictorials were of a suggestive sensuality in contrast to the graphic, notorious "French postcards" of the day. She also posed for calendars for Prudential Life Insurance, Coca-Cola and other corporations.

The use of photographs of young women in advertising, referred to as the "live model" style, was just beginning to be widely used and to supplant illustration. Nesbit modeled for Joel Feder, an early pioneer in fashion photography. She found such assignments less strenuous than working as an artist's model, as posing sessions were shorter. The work was lucrative. With Feder, Nesbit earned $5 for a half-day shoot and $10 for a full day – equivalent to $309 in 2024. Eventually, the fees she earned from her modeling career exceeded the combined income which her family had earned at Wanamaker's. But the prohibitive cost of living in New York strained their finances.

== Chorus girl and actress == Over time Nesbit became disaffected with the long hours spent in confined environments, maintaining the immobile poses required of a studio model. Her popularity in modeling had attracted the interests of theatrical promoters, some legitimate and some disreputable, who offered her acting opportunities. Nesbit pressed her mother to let her enter the theatre world, and Mrs. Nesbit ultimately agreed to let her daughter try this new way to augment their finances. An interview was arranged for the aspiring performer with John C. Fisher, company manager of the wildly popular play Florodora, then enjoying a long run at the Casino Theatre on Broadway. Mrs. Nesbit's initial objections were softened by the knowledge that some of the girls in the show had managed to marry millionaires. In July 1901, costumed as a "Spanish maiden", Nesbit became a member of the show's chorus line, whose enthusiastic public dubbed them the "Florodora Girls". Billed as "Florence Evelyn", the new chorus girl was called "Flossie the Fuss" by the cast, a nickname which displeased her. She changed her theatrical name to Evelyn Nesbit. After her stint with Florodora ended, Nesbit sought out other roles. She won a part in The Wild Rose, which had just come to Broadway. After an initial interview with Nesbit, the show's producer, George Lederer, sensed he had discovered a new sensation. He offered her a contract for a year and, more significantly, moved her out of the chorus line and into a position as a featured player – the part of the Gypsy girl "Vashti". Nesbit's new role generated much publicity, and she was hyped in the gossip columns and theatrical periodicals of the day. On May 4, 1902, the New York Herald showcased Nesbit in a two-page article, enhanced by photographs, promoting her rise as a new theatrical light and recounting her career from model to chorus line to key cast member. "Her Winsome Face to be Seen Only from 8 to 11pm", the newspaper title announced to the public. The press coverage invariably touted her physical charms and potent stage presence; acting skills were rarely mentioned. In 1902 Nesbit portrayed Miss Always There in the musical Tommy Rot.