the one and only

“Hollywood” didn’t exist when Nesbit was 14; in fact, movies themselves barely existed in 1898. Prominent architect Stanford White groomed her to be his mistress after he spotted her in the Broadway show, FLORADORA, in 1901. Her autobiography describes her not remembering anything between drinking champagne at White’s apartment and waking up with him in bed, nude and deflowered. Throughout their relationship and well after, White supported her family and sent her brother (for whom he was a father figure) to college. After White, her first real boyfriend was a 21-year-old John Barrymore (Drew’s grandfather). Her first husband, the physically abusive, jealous, and unstable millionaire Harry Thaw, murdered White (shooting him in the head, in Evelyn’s presence, at the Roof Garden Theater of the White-designed Madison Square Garden) in 1906. The Thaw family coerced her positive testimony at the trial by saying she would get nothing from them if Thaw was convicted. He was sentenced to life in medical confinement. Her suicide attempt was in 1921 when she was 36 and broke; she herself phoned for the ambulance. Barrymore came to see her cabaret show in the mid-1930’s and announced to the audience that she was his first love. She died in 1967 at 83.

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