Forget Christy, Cindy and Naomi; America’s first supermodel was Evelyn Nesbit, born in 1884. The fair-skinned beauty from Tarentum, Philadelphia, who died in 1967, was the most sought-after model in the 20th century; an era when fashion photography as an advertising medium was just beginning its ascendancy.
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Appearing in mass circulation newspaper and magazine advertisements, on souvenir items and calendars, Nesbit was a Gilded Age celebrity — her fame peaking when she became embroiled in her ex-lover’s murder in what was then dubbed ‘the trial of the century’.
After her father died, leaving her modest Scottish-Irish family in debt, Nesbit began to model — fully clothed — for artists as a way out of poverty. She quickly became high in demand, with artists like Violet Oakley, who specialized in portraits and stained glass, using Nesbit as a model for her stained-glass windows in churches throughout Philadelphia.
In June 1900, the family moved to New York City to pursue Nesbit’s modeling career. James Carroll Beckwith, whose main patron was John Jacob Astor, took her under his wing, introducing her to Manhattan’s most renowned artists and illustrators. Soon, she was the most in-demand model in New York.
Sculptor George Grey Barnard’s piece Innocence, which now sits in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, was modeled off Nesbit, as was Charles Dana Gibson’s 1905 piece, Women: The Eternal Question. It wasn’t long before she was used on the illustrated covers of journals and magazines, such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and Ladies’ Home Journal.
Nesbit then began to model for tobacco cards, calendars and lithographs, often posing for illustrators in costume, when fashion photography was just emerging. Just a year after moving to New York, she was given a role in the chorus line of Florodora, a popular Broadway musical. Soon after, she landed a speaking role in the Broadway play, The Wild Rose, and she began receiving attention from interested admirers.
‘For that first heady decade of the 20th Century, Evelyn Nesbit was the American Dream Girl whose “face was her fortune” and whose life reflected the era’s intoxicating, accelerated and daring mood,’ explained Paula Uruburu, author of a biography of Nesbit, American Eve.
‘She embodied all the contradictory impulses [of the Gilded Age]; at times she seemed a picture of Victorian sentimentality, but her bewitching… smile promised something forbidden.’ Architect and New York socialite Stanford White (his projects include the second Madison Square Garden, Tiffany’s on 5th Avenue, and the Washington Square Arch) began pursing Nesbit, despite the fact that at 47, White was nearly three times her age.
He bought her expensive gifts and introduced her to New York’s high society. But after their year-long relationship ended, Nesbit met millionaire Harry K Thaw. Following her mother’s advice, she married Thaw in 1905. A year later, on June 25, 1906, Thaw took Nesbit to the opening performance of Mamzelle Champagne at the the rooftop cabaret theater at New York City’s Madison Square Garden.
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Thaw approached her ex-lover, White, and shot him three times at point-blank range, twice in the face and once in the shoulder. Nesbit, the star witness, became embroiled in the three-month trial which transfixed the nation. Thaw was found not guilty by reason of insanity in a second trial, and spent eight years in an asylum for the criminally insane.
While Thaw was incarcerated, Nesbit returned to the stage and gave birth to a son. She made her film debut in Threads of Destiny in 1914, starred in a series of semi-autobiographical dramas, and wrote two memoirs.
Nesbit was portrayed on screen by Joan Collins in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), which also starred Farley Granger as Harry Thaw and Ray Milland as Stanford White. The model and actress oversaw the film’s production, to ensure accuracy.
source:dailymail