David Marshall Jamesby David Marshall James
First published in Winter, 2009, Volume 6, Issue 3, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
To those who have been faithfully following the escapades of our titular triumvirate, we offer this brief foreword, in explanation of our advance in their personal histories—herein, particularly that of Miss Genia Davenport, who is expeditiously fashioning an illustrious career “on the boards,” as the parlance of the Great White Way would have it.
Certainly, readers should not be surprised to discover that the individual histories of the Mesdemoiselles have drawn to a collective close. Which is not to say that, respectively, they did not lead remarkable lives—futures, indeed, underscored in marked contrast to those readily available to grown women at the time of the trio’s births, in the very early years of the second decade of the twentieth century.
Because we thus have in hand the complete lives of the Mesdemoiselles, we may jump forward, as herein, or backward in their biographies.
Childhood compatriots Nan, Beth, and Genia were all aged sixteen years when they completed their studies at Miss Hadrian’s Academy in Fall River, Massachusetts, at the outset of June 1927. To be sure, Nan and Beth were fast approaching their seventeenth birthdays. Nan—hankering on the heels of her attorney father—and Beth—mostly hankering to the beat of her substantial drum—had both been accepted for matriculation at Barnard College in New York City.
Meanwhile, Genia, whose immediate concern involved professional theatricals, was determined to bypass, indefinitely, institutionalized higher learning in favor of life upon the (hopefully not-so-wicked) stage, a vocation for which she had been training in a series of successively larger parts, to increasing renown, since the proverbial bug that bites aspiring thespians had nipped her deeply following the triumphant win of the Mesdemoiselles at the Shore Time Follies held at the Wawtuckett Hotel in July 1922.
More than a few long-stemmed red roses had landed at Genia’s feet during curtain calls for the Fall River Little Theatre’s production of “Trudy McGrudy: It’s Your Duty,” a bravura performance witnessed by Mrs. Drexel D. (“DeeDee” to her many friends and admirers) Stallsworthy, sister to famed Broadway impresario and talent agent Burton Schuster Florenz. Mr. Florenz had since tendered an offer of representation to Genia upon the interminable admonishments of his formidable sibling, in whose judgment he placed a well-founded faith.
Genia promptly embarked upon her Broadway career (with no conception that it would span more than six decades) as, to be expected, an ingénue: a most desirable commodity of that era. Therefore, she flitted gaily from one small role to the next: seventy performances here, a few more there, and all mildly respectable runs for shows of that period.
Nevertheless, following a year and a half of such “ingénue-ity,” Genia made up her mind that she ought to make a splash, lest she risk drifting into the obscurity of the second chorus. Thus, she urged Mr. Burton Schuster Florenz to tout her for the role of Bettina Butterfield in Nance, Perchance, as the part came with two songs, including “If I Could Dance Like Nance,” which became a wildly popular tune of the day, helping to carry the show to hit status.
Enchanted by Genia’s portrayal of Bettina Butterfield, famed British playwright, novelist, tunesmith, and lyricist, Sir Crispin Whit Caradoc penned a plum part for her in his musical comedy Bob’s My Auntie, all about a marchioness who poses as an earl so that her family estate will not be disbanded and thus sold to villainous industrialist Herr Dieter Peter Von Cheatskunkle, who plans to construct a sauerkraut-canning factory on the property.
As Edwina “Dweenie” Tiddlesford-Ford, Genia portrayed the niece of her Auntie/Uncle Bob (nee, conveniently, Roberta) as well as the love interest of Sir Jenks MacAckleford-Mack, who turns out to be a third cousin, thrice-removed, of Auntie/Uncle
Bob was entirely within his rights to assume the earldom (and, naturally, to marry distant cousin Dweenie), thereby preserving it without Auntie/Uncle Bob’s continued assumption of masculinity, so she may resume life as Auntie Roberta.
The role of Dweenie provided a show-stopping production number built around Genia, “Milady’s a Gent,” and audiences lapped up the lighthearted confection from November 1928 to February 1930. RKO motion-picture studio (one of the few movie-production facilities actually located in Hollywood) was at that time embarking upon the most ambitious and lavishly produced musicals of the era, and it was soon to be rewarded for those efforts by striking gold dust from the stardust of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Astaire and Rogers had not yet crossed the country from the Great White Way on the Kansas City Chief, but Genia and most of the principals from Bob’s My Auntie were set to recreate their roles in an unusually faithful (pre-film-production code) movie version of their stage success. Genia took up residence in the Roosevelt Hotel for the eight weeks of recordings, dance rehearsals, and actual filming. She simply rode the streetcar to and from nearby RKO for the duration, rarely venturing anywhere else, as her shooting schedule consisted of twelve-hour days, off on Sunday’s only.
Toward the end of production on Bob’s My Auntie, Genia had returned to the hotel one evening around six-thirty, thoroughly famished, as she had been compelled to endure emergency fittings for a new, shimmeringly exquisite evening gown during her lunch break, as its predecessor was deemed too drab by the director after he viewed it in the daily film rushes the day before.
Genia therefore made a beeline for the hotel’s coffee shop, plopping gratefully in a black leatherette booth, then ordering from memory a chicken-salad plate with sections of grapefruit and avocado slices, covered with a poppy-seed dressing. As she sipped from her coffee cup, a woman in her sixties who could pass for nothing less than a woman in her sixties tottered into the venue in too-high heels, aiming unsuccessfully to disguise the fact that she was already in her cups, having evidently partaken in a protracted—and, at that time, illegal—cocktail party.
Said personage had the frowsy appearance obtained by overdressing in well-worn garments of decidedly outmoded vintage, including, in her case, a lavender wool coat trimmed in dyed-to-match rabbit fur, along with a garden-party style, broad-brimmed hat decorated with silk violets that had managed to attain a wilted look in spite of their artificiality.
She took the booth directly in front of Genia, yet seated herself so that she was facing away from her. She failed to garner the attention of the waitress until she arrived at Genia’s table with the chicken-salad plate, inquiring, “More coffee, ma’am?”
“Yes, please.”
“Oh, miss . . . ,” the patron in the lavender coat turned to stop the server.
“Just a minute, Nance,” the waitress replied.
“Oh, do go ahead with her order,” Genia insisted. “She’s been sitting there several minutes, and my coffee will hold for the moment.”
Only then did the waitress proceed with the waiting customer, and with acute brusqueness at that: “What’ll it be Nance? A pot of hot water and a teabag, so you can take the ketchup and make yourself a bowl of soup, then filch all the crackers out of the basket to go with it?”
“Miss,” Genia interceded, “she’ll have what I’m having—my treat. And please bring us a basket of hot rolls with butter, too.”
The waitress rolled her eyes, and then scampered on to the kitchen with her order. “That’s very kind of you, miss,” the older woman stated.
“Why don’t you join me?” Genia responded. “No sense in our dining face-to-back.”
“That would be lovely. By the way, I’m Nance—Nance O’Neil.” The name struck a chord in Genia’s mind, yet she couldn’t immediately grasp the relevance of its recognition. “I am an actress,” Nance furthered her introduction. “To judge by your war paint, you must be doing some movie work yourself.”
“It’s been a tough day. Spur-of-the-moment fitting for new wardrobe gobbled up my lunch break. I was too hungry to hit the cold cream till after dinner.”
“I see. Well, it really doesn’t look all that bad, considering it’s for the camera. Still, I can’t quite place your face.”
“No, you probably wouldn’t be able to, unless you had seen Bob’s My Auntie. I’m doing the film of that over at RKO. It’s my first picture, so I’m pretty much an unknown. Who knows? I may still be an unknown, even after the picture is released,” Genia smiled.
“You may be yet-unheralded by the unwashed masses, but I know exactly who you are,” Nance answered. “Miss Genia Davenport.”
“You must have an astounding memory for names,” Genia replied, thinking but not articulating, Especially for a woman who enjoys more than a wee dram of spirits.
“My dear,” Nance intoned as if she were gathering enough steam to hit the third balcony with the plot-pivoting second-act speech, “we have—a connection.”
“Here, now the bread can connect with the ham,” the waitress quipped as she delivered the hot rolls.
Nance, completely ignoring the impertinence, grasped the largest roll, smacked it with three curls of butter from atop an iced dish, and then bit into it with unbridled gusto. Genia daintily buttered her own roll while Nance devoured most of hers, and then washed it down with half a cup of coffee.
“There, I feel vastly replenished,” Nance declared. “I believe I was speaking of our—connection,” she resumed her declamatory tone, and Genia regarded her inquisitively, until Nance’s pregnant pause obtained full gestation. “Fall River,” she proclaimed, grasping herself across her prominent bosom. “Miss Lizbeth?” Nance eyed her questioningly.
Genia possessed no intention of revealing the full extent of her friendship with the late Miss Lizbeth Borden of Fall River, Massachusetts, to anyone, not even to Nance, even though Genia realized that she herself owned an article of Nance’s clothing: a beaded green jacket presented to Genia at age ten by Miss Borden, some nine years beforehand. Miss Borden had apparently been close to Nance during the first decade of the twentieth century, yet they had evidently arrived at a parting of the ways at least twenty years before this present encounter of Miss Borden’s two friends. Genia had pieced together a few odds and ends of information from Miss Borden’s infrequent allusions to Nance, although Genia could never raise the temerity to ask her late friend a direct question regarding the matter.
“I grew up on French Street, Miss O’Neil. How could I not have known Miss Borden?”
“It’s ‘Nance,’ my dear. And,” here another pause ensued while she selected a second roll, “may I assure you that no one ever really knew Miss Lizbeth Borden. I came closer, I daresay, than anyone. Nevertheless, when one guards one’s secrets as—religiously—as she did, then one shuts oneself off from the world as if one were covered in dust and cobwebs, as if one were in King Tut’s tomb. I know Miss Lizbeth had herself encrypted under a few feet of bricks, at that. Well, who knows: in another three millennia, some Lord Carnarvon of the future may come along and release her from the shifting sands of time. Will anyone still remember? Will anyone still care? It’s not as if she were buried with a batch of golden statuary, in a solid gold casket.” Nance proceeded to polish off her second roll.
Genia began to wish that she hadn’t invited Miss O’Neil to sup with her. She attempted to rationalize the older woman’s brash musings as largely alcohol-driven. However, she had never encountered Nance when she wasn’t sailing three sheets to the wind. Perhaps Nance was a few crackers shy of a barrel, as the saying went.
The waitress appeared with Nance’s entrée, prompting the latter to comment, “I was beginning to wonder whether the chicken had even been plucked. I should like more bread and butter, and more coffee, too.”
“Is that all, Queen Mary?” The waitress retorted.
“I would like a piece of lemon meringue pie, please,” Genia added, having cleaned her plate and being now desperate to procure something else to fill her mouth and thus excuse herself from the conversation, although Nance had mastered the art of doing both, simultaneously. Nance tucked into her plate with such relish that Genia feared the woman might well order another one. Surely, though, after an encore of the rolls, Nance would be satiated.
“Hmm,” Nance sipped more coffee. “Miss Lizbeth Borden had so much gold, she didn’t know what to do with it. I’m surprised she didn’t gild that white elephant of a house of hers, from cellar to dome. What a waste. Then, she up and leaves a fortune to the stray animals. Yes, my dear Genia, she left thousands of dollars to dogs and cats—dogs and cats she didn’t even know, mind you. Did she leave her old friend Nance a sou?” At that, she forked up several mouthfuls of chicken salad, and then queried, “Did she bother to leave you a sou, Miss Genia?”
As a matter of fact, Miss Borden had presented Genia with a special, valuable article of jewelry upon the occasion of her completing her studies at Miss Hadrian’s Academy, but that is another story entirely. Nevertheless, Genia was most assuredly withholding of that information from Nance during their encounter in the coffee shop.
“She could have parlayed her fortune into a hundred fortunes,” Nance stabbed her forefinger into the air above her head, while the waitress delivered bread, butter, and coffee with a smirk, and then turned on her heels. “Fifteen years ago,” Nance slapped her hand across her forehead, “fifteen years ago I begged Miss Lizbeth to invest fifty thousand dollars in Limelight Pictures. Just twice what she left the pooches and pussycats, mind you. I said, ‘Lizbeth, I realize we haven’t spoken in dog years, but here’s your opportunity to become one of the wealthiest women in America. Think of the pictures you’ll produce, the new friends you’ll make, the money you’ll make.’ My very words to her, then I added, ‘You can build a mansion five times bigger than Maplecroft. You’ll have sunshine all year round. Orange trees in your backyard. Fresh-picked grapefruit for breakfast. It will be like being . . . reborn.’” Nance threw both hands into the air, declaring, “It will be a renaissance, Lizbeth!”
The waitress stopped by with Genia’s pie not a moment too soon, much to the relief of the young actress, who was taken aback by Nance’s theatrical pronouncements. “You choking or something, Nance?” the waitress dropped in deadpan fashion, before withdrawing.
“That’s where Lizbeth made her tragic mistake,” Nance waved her fork at Genia. “She never left Fall River. She stayed in that snooty mill town and buried herself in Maplecroft as if it were King Tut’s tomb, because—goodness knows—she had to keep all her secrets buried. Meanwhile, she expected to mingle with what she considered the cream of society.” Nance shook her head. “The only chance she ever had was to go someplace where they don’t care who you were before. Where they just care who you are today. Where you are as big as your latest picture.”
Nance paused, but, when Genia did not respond, the former continued: “They would have loved her up in Frisco, too. She could have been Lizbeth Andrews out here in California, or some such. Nobody would have known, or cared, or asked. But, she thought that Borden name really meant something. Pshaw, it was nothing but a prison sentence. Make that a death sentence.”
Genia put down her fork and stared at Nance, who continued, “That’s right, my dear: Our Lizbeth died a slow death at Maplecroft, sighing and waiting to be accepted by people who would never accept her. Really, how long does that thought take to sink in at last? She lost me; she lost that sister of hers, too. If you ask me, Miss Emma Borden was at least half the problem from the get-go. She could have tried to control Lizbeth’s attitude toward that stepmother. However, I believe Miss Emma just sat back and quietly enjoyed the whole scene. You see, she played the part of the quiet-as-a-mouse, respectable-on-the-outside sister. But she had her sights set on the gold, too. The difference was that she wanted the acceptance even more than Lizbeth. Yet, did she ever more enjoy acting out through her. Then she ditched her. Ditched her because she wanted to appear more respectable than her only sister. Yessir, I call that love. Mark my words: Emma’s feelings were even stronger than Lizzie’s. She just didn’t have the gumption to display them as publicly as Lizbeth did, when the parents were still around.”
“Did you ditch her, too, Nance?” Genia inquired straightforwardly.
“No, my dear, it was a mutual parting of the ways. As I’ve said, I pitched the prospect of a brand-new life to her, but she wasn’t biting. She wanted to live in the old ways, and I wasn’t about to live in them with her. No, ma’am. I didn’t leave her cold, though, the way her sister did. I said, ‘Lizbeth, come with me. You’ll be so much happier in the new life that you can create for yourself.’”
“That sounds like something on the order of an ultimatum.”
“Fair enough. Nevertheless, Lizbeth needed an ultimatum. She needed someone to shake her shoulders hard and tell her, ‘Your way isn’t working. The old saw isn’t cutting the wood anymore.’ Or, the old hatchet—take your pick.” Nance raised her eyebrows at Genia, who sat frozen and staring.
“Tell me this, Genia: Do you honestly think she was happy, judging by whatever contact you had with her while you were living alongside her, on French Street?”
Genia recalled the day that Lizbeth had presented her with Nance’s green jacket, about how wistful her neighbor had been at the time. She remembered the stricken look on Lizbeth’s face when she feared someone was planning to perform a vicious song parody about her, one summer at the Wawtuckett Hotel. She thought of other encounters, including their last, the day on which Lizbeth had given her the special present, and what had occurred afterward. Sadly—tragically—nothing in Genia’s memories of Miss Borden could contradict Nance’s statement.
Nance extracted an inexpensive tin cigarette case from a coat pocket, and then proceeded to smoke. When the waitress arrived to collect the dishes, Nance stated, “I’d like one more cup of coffee, and you may bring me our check. Don’t look so surprised, dear,” she addressed the server, “I’ve got myself another bit in a picture. Let that be a lesson to you, Miss Parsnip, about insulting your customers. You ought to know by now that, in this town, you can be down one day and up the next. It’s not like the rest of the country. It’s not like Fall River, is it Genia?”
“I’m compelled to agree with you, Nance. It’s another world out here.”
“With plenty of plum parts in your future, ripe for the picking. You grab them when they’re dangled before you, my dear. I could give you quite a lecture on taking full advantage of your youth, but I figure you for a pretty smart gal, or else you wouldn’t have made it this far, this fast. Pluck all the little goodies off this tinsel-laden Christmas tree. When your arms are full, then go back East, but not a moment before. It’s just as easy to be a well-fed actor as it is to be a starving one.” Nance puffed like a dragon in a Chinese New Year’s parade. “I don’t wonder that Miss Sassyfrass isn’t stopping back with my coffee. Must think her tip is going to be directions to a four-letter destination. She’s too predictable. I’ve had so much fun this evening not to drop a little silver in her frilly pink apron. Who knows? Next week it might be ketchup soup and crackers again. Gotta keep her guessing. And, Genia: Don’t let me happen to you.”
Nance gathered herself up from the booth, dyed-rabbit-fur-trimmed lavender coat, broad-brimmed hat, and all. She blew Genia a kiss then disappeared in a night lit brightly for the shank of the evening, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood.
Bob’s My Auntie placed Genia Davenport on course for steady work in motion pictures throughout the 1930s. Instead of signing a seven-year contract with a major studio, as was customary at the time, she was one of the handful of cinema actors who freelanced from film to film, vastly aided by a powerful agent.
Before the beginning of World War II, she returned to New York City, taking up residence in the same Central Park East apartment for the remainder of her life, although she occasionally went West for a movie role. Her crowning glory came with a one-woman show, Last Leaves of Maplecroft, which she wrote and starred in on Broadway, first in 1960, at the centennial of Lizzie Borden’s birth. Genia went on to recreate the role in three New York revivals, and on numerous tours, during the next quarter-century.
Although Genia never again encountered Nance O’Neil following their impromptu first meeting, the conversation that transpired that evening ultimately supplied passages and themes for her composition of Last Leaves of Maplecroft, in which Genia closed with the haunting lines: “Please don’t ask me. Don’t . . . ask.”
