Ms. Nesbit, artists' model and chorus girl, was at the heart of what was
known at the time as the Crime of the Century. Her abusive husband,
Pittsburgh millionaire Harry Thaw, murdered 52-year old architect and
socialite Stanford White (of the firm McKim, Mead, and White), who had
taken advantage of 16-year old Evelyn and subsequently become
her lover a couple of years before she married Thaw. Harry Thaw's mother
mother quickly financed propaganda, even a film, to portray her son as
a protector of women's virtue; at the same time, the media reported the
very-married White's many other transgressions involving young women.
After his first trial ended in a hung jury, Thaw was retried in 1908 and
found insane. He was sent away to a mental institution for the criminally
insane in upstate New York, from which he which he escaped once; in 1915
he was released with reputation untarnished--a homicidal hero.
The Hidden Woman(1922)as Ann Wesley
My Little Sister(1919)as The Elder Sister
A Fallen Idol(1919)as Princess Laone
Thou Shalt Not(1919)as Ruth
Woman, Woman!(1919)as Alice Lindsay
The Unwritten Law: A Thrilling Drama Based on the Thaw-White Tragedy(1907)as Self
Nikola Tesla: Mad Scientist of the Gilded Age(1984)as Self
