“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 28, 1923, Empire Stadium, Wembley, London; Yankee Stadium, the Bronx, New York City, New York

This is “a bloody shambles,” in the words of one spectator.

The annual Football Association Challenge Cup—the FA Cup—has been drawing smaller crowds ever since the end of the Great War.

So the Association thought they could hold this year’s final in the new stadium built for next year’s British Empire Exhibition on this site in Wembley. The stadium has been completed ahead of schedule, in only 300 days, just four days before this match, and it holds 125,000. That should be enough capacity. They won’t have to issue advance tickets.

FA Cup program

Boy, were they wrong.

Unusually beautiful weather and the fact that one of the London home teams is playing—West Ham United—combine to bring out over 115,000 local fans. And 5,000 or more supporters of the other side, Bolton Wanderers, take the train from Lancashire. Five more rent a plane and fly in from Manchester.

The gates open at 11:30 a. m. as planned and everything goes smoothly until around 1 p. m. when the crowd starts getting larger.

The roads surrounding the stadium are so filled, the Bolton team players get off their coach and walk the last mile.

The officials consider canceling the match but realize they will then have an angry crowd to deal with. At 1:45 p. m. they decide to close the gates, but after about a half hour of waiting, almost 75,000 fans left outside force their way in. Thousands in the lower tiers spill out onto the pitch.

At 2:45 p. m. King George V, 57, arrives, prepared to present the winning trophy at the end of the game. The crowd breaks into God Save the King and calms down.

King George V

The players finally enter the grounds a bit after 3 p.m. and try to help the police get the spectators off the field.

The local police send out calls for mounted police assistance and here comes off-duty Police Constable George Scorey, 40, astride Billy, a light grey horse. Scorey is concerned he won’t be able to disperse the crowd, but Billy comes to the rescue,

easing them back with his nose and tail until we got a goal-line cleared…He seemed to understand what was required of him,”

says Scorey. The game starts about 45 minutes late.

Billy helping with crowd control

About 1,000 people are injured, including two policemen; more than 20 are taken to hospital.

The police do their job and get the situation under control. The FA—not so much. They will have to refund money to those who were stuck outside.

Bolton beats West Ham, 2 nil. Bolton supporters celebrate in central London, jamming traffic around Piccadilly Circus.

*****

Ten days before, in New York City, at precisely 3 p. m., conductor John Philip Sousa, 68, marches the Seventh “Silk Stocking” Regiment Band, playing The Star-Spangled Banner, on to the brand new field at Yankee Stadium for baseball’s opening day.

John Philip Sousa

The musicians are followed by politicians and players from the Boston and New York teams; Yankee star Babe Ruth, 28, is presented with an over-sized bat. New York Governor Al Smith, 49, throws out the first ball and lands it right in the center of the catcher’s mitt.

Opening day at Yankee Stadium

For the past 10 years the Yankees have been playing at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan, but they were just leasing that space from their rivals, the New York Giants. Things came to a head last year when the two teams faced each other in the World Series and all the games had to be played there. The Giants won.

Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, 55, had been looking for a new home for his team for years, and finally decided he would build and pay for it himself. Construction was finished in less than a year, and everything smells like new paint.

Babe Ruth and Jacob Ruppert

Baseball stadiums typically hold about 30,000 spectators; this one holds almost twice that. Today they announce attendance of 60,000, a new major league baseball record. Ruppert is betting that New York City can support three teams—Yankees, Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Ruth, who the Yankees bought from the Boston Red Sox three years ago, hits the first home run in the stadium, a three-run homer to the right field stands.

New York World sportswriter Heywood Broun, 34, quotes Ruth as dubbing the new Yankees home, “Some ball yard.”

Fred Lieb, 35, of the New York Evening Telegram calls it “The House That Ruth Built.”

The Yankees beat the Red Sox 4 to 1.

Yankee Stadium opening day program

To see why the Wembley game is known as the “White Horse Final,” click here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoMS8Q4XXBo

To see opening day at Yankee Stadium, click here.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZc3_-3cY28

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Happy Independent Bookstore Day this Saturday!

We interrupt this chronology, “Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago, for a tip of the hat to all our local independent bookstores.

This Saturday, April 29, 2023, if you’re lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, you could wander on over to Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue and get your signed copy of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Waiting for you are Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922, along with great Independent Bookstore Day merch.

Riverstone Books merch

If you’re not near Squirrel Hill, go to your local independent bookstore and demand that they carry all three volumes now! (Tell them to email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.)

All three volumes of “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s

And if you live anywhere near a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, I’ll come sign them for you.

While you’re out and about, stop by your local independent café also.

If you are not lucky enough to have an independent bookstore near you—start one! (And you can still order “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.)

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1923, throughout central London

Last October, a group of Conservative party Members of Parliament held a meeting at the private 91-year-old Carlton Club and took the decision that their party, the Tories, should withdraw from the coalition supporting the Liberal party government of David Lloyd George, 60, thereby triggering a general election. They won.

Carlton Club

That national vote brought into power their own current Tory Prime Minister, Bonar Law, 64. Now, some of the new backbench Tory members who were elected last fall have started a private dining club which meets regularly, calling it the 1922 Committee. The backbenchers hope this will give them more of a voice with senior members of the Conservative party.

In the House of Commons, MPs have voted to defeat a bill that would have introduced American-style Prohibition to the United Kingdom by a 236 to 14 vote. The bill had been proposed by Parliament’s only Scottish Prohibition Party member, newly elected MP for Dundee, Edwin “Neddy” Scrymgeour, 56.

Neddy Scrymgeour

*****

Just a few blocks away in Westminster Abbey, preparations are proceeding apace for the royal wedding of Prince Albert, Duke of York, 27, to Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, 22, not a princess! But from a good family.

The couple’s wedding rings are made from 22 carat Welsh gold. The bride, attended by eight bridesmaids, will be wearing a dress modelled on an Italian medieval gown with two trains, one falling from the hips and one from the shoulders, with a ring of leaves instead of a tiara securing her veil.

The groom will be wearing his Royal Air Force full dress uniform.

Wedding party of the Duke and Duchess of York

After a wedding breakfast at Buckingham Palace, the couple will honeymoon in Surrey, followed by a trip to Scotland.

Lady Elizabeth had turned down Bertie’s proposals twice before giving in earlier this year. She is not looking forward to living in the fishbowl that royal life demands. But at least her husband is second in line for the throne; his brother Edward, Prince of Wales, 28, is the one who will have to be king.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, inaugurated last fall, wanted to record and air the wedding on the radio, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, just turned 75, refused to allow it because of concerns that men might listen to the broadcast in pubs. And how would that look?

*****

About a mile up the Thames, at the Strand Theatre in the West End, the play Anna Christie has premiered to great acclaim. The first play by Irish-American Eugene O’Neill, 34, to be performed in London, the drama and its original Broadway cast received thunderous ovations—even after the first act!

Original cast of Anna Christie

*****

Mountaineer George Mallory, 36, is disappointed. He has received word that the planned expedition to climb Mount Everest has been cancelled.

Mallory was chosen to be part of this team after the partial success they had last year; one team member topped the previous record by going past 8,000 meters (just over 27,000 feet).

But the Common Everest Committee, which organizes these trips, had invested much of its funds in the British-run Alliance Bank of Simla, based and loosely regulated in India, which has just gone bankrupt.

Mallory realizes he will have to spend at least another year as a lecturer for the Extramural Studies Department of Cambridge University to support his wife and three children. He just hopes that the Committee can get it together to mount an expedition next year. Mallory is itching to go again.

Last year’s British Mount Everest Expedition team

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 19, 1923, Vienna, Austria

When he moved here almost two years ago, to have psychoanalytic treatment from world-renowned doctor Sigmund Freud, 66, American publisher Scofield Thayer, 33, decided he could still oversee his literary magazine in the States, The Dial, from afar.

Scofield Thayer

To do so he has depended on unofficial “agents” in European capitals who are on the lookout for talent, such as the American ex-pat poets Ezra Pound, 37, in Paris and T. S. Eliot, 34, in London.

Also in the UK, Thayer has relied on a British writer, Raymond Mortimer, about to turn 28, who has a large circle of literary friends. Through the aristocratic hostess Lady Ottoline Morrell, 49, Mortimer has met many writers, including novelist Virginia Woolf, 41.

Raymond Mortimer

Recently Mortimer told Thayer that he was expecting to get a short story from Woolf, titled “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street.” She doesn’t want it to be published in Britain,

probably because she has done a portrait of someone in it, at least that is my guess,”

Mortimer writes. Maybe Ottoline?!

Virginia Woolf, taken by Ottoline Morrell

Thayer has received the story, with Mortimer’s note,

I enclose Mrs. Woolf’s story (very badly typed, as she said)…I think it is most exquisite, & hope you will like it. I am coming to think her the best writer we have.”

After reading it, Thayer totally agrees. Today he sends the story on to the New York office of The Dial so they can calculate and issue the correct payment. Probably about £60. “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” should appear in the magazine this summer.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1923, Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, London

They all make fun of her. The group of writers and artists who live in Bloomsbury have not been welcoming to Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova, 31, current lover of their friend, economist John Maynard Keynes, 39.

Lydia Lopokova

Novelist Virginia Woolf, 41, has mocked Lydia’s broken English, in a letter to her sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 43: 

Maynar like your article so much, Leonar,”

referring to Virginia’s husband Leonard, 42.

Lydia has been annoying Vanessa by stopping by on Sunday afternoons just to chat. Vanessa doesn’t have time to chat. She has two sons, ages 15 and 12; an estranged husband; and her partner, Duncan Grant, 38, to look after.

Vanessa has painted a not particularly flattering portrait of Lydia, which is included with Vanessa’s work in this month’s London Group Show. She knows that Duncan is also working on one.

At least Vanessa got good reviews for the show. Her other Bloomsbury friend, art critic Roger Fry, 56, has a one-man show at the Independent Gallery and his portrait of Lydia has been chastised. The London Observer criticized its “cloying prettiness.”

Vanessa did the portrait of Lydia so Maynard would buy it, but he refused. Vanessa feels that Maynard has never really liked her painting.

Lydia Lopokova by Duncan Grant

N.B.:  Duncan Grant’s portrait of Lydia Lopokova was bequeathed to King’s College, Cambridge, by John Maynard Keynes in his will. The whereabouts of the other two portraits are unknown.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.ukin both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 12, 1923, Abbey Theatre, 26 Lower Abbey Street, Dublin

When William Butler Yeats, 57, and Lady Augusta Gregory, 71, started a theatre, almost 26 years ago, this is exactly what they had in mind:  Presenting plays by a young, working-class writer who would put the authentic dialects and feelings of Dubliners on the stage.

Tonight’s presentation, The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O’Casey, 43, is the first time the Abbey has had a premiere sold out. Buzz around town has been good.

Sean O’Casey

Of course, O’Casey—born John Casey in Upper Dorset Street—actually was from a Protestant middle class family. After his father died when John was just six, the family fortunes went downhill and he worked as a newspaper delivery boy and on the railroad for a time.

In the early years of the century, Casey joined the union movement and also the Gaelic League, organized and run by one of the other founders of the Abbey Theatre, poet Douglas Hyde, 63. That’s when John Casey changed his name to Seán Ó Cathasaigh and began writing political ballads and plays.

The Shadow of a Gunman, set in a Dublin tenement in 1920 during the Irish war for independence from the British, is the first of O’Casey’s plays to be produced. His original submission to the Abbey was almost 20 years ago; the rejection came with an encouraging note from Lady Gregory, so he kept trying.

O’Casey’s home, 422 North Circular Road, Dublin

Lady Gregory can tell from the audience reaction that this one is going to be a hit. She’s only scheduled this run for four performances, including the Saturday matinee. Augusta is thinking the Abbey should maybe put it on again, later this year.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also availableon Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1923, Paris

Count ‘em. 10. Ten. Irish ex-pat writer James Joyce, 41, has had 10 teeth pulled just this month.

Joyce tells his son, Giorgio, 17,

They were no good anyway.

The Joyce family

In addition, this month Joyce had treatment for seven abscesses and one cyst. His doctors are hoping that all this dental work will also have a positive effect on his eyes. But he still needs to have his long-delayed three eye operations for his iritis.

In this particularly sunny April in Paris, Joyce is spending most of his days in the hospital. His publisher, the ex-pat American owner of the Left Bank bookshop Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach, 36, has been taking care of him and his family. Sylvia stopped by the hospital with a huge basket of roses and tulips. A group of Joyce’s American fans, fellow writers, chipped in and told Sylvia to go all out.

Although Joyce promised himself he would take a break from any major writing after the publication of his epic, Ulysses, early last year, when he is not in the hospital he is sprawled over a large sheet of paper, drawing large letters on it with a charcoal pencil, working on his next novel.

James Joyce

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 6, 1923, Carnegie Hall, Seventh Avenue at 57th Street, New York City, New York

British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 63, creator of the world’s most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, is pleased to be doing what he is meant to do:  Lecturing an audience of Americans about the importance of spiritualism.

The Conan Doyle family departing from Victoria Station for their trip to America

Doyle spent the past day constantly answering reporters’ questions about the death of George Herbert, 5^th Earl of Carnarvon, 56, financier of and participant in the recent excavation of the tomb of King Tutankhamun near Luxor, Egypt. Carnarvon died yesterday in the Continental Savoy Hotel in Cairo, about two weeks after shaving over a mosquito bite on his cheek that became infected. Blood poisoning combined with pneumonia and his general ill health led to his death.

Lord Carnarvon

The main question to Doyle has been, Was Lord Carnarvon’s death the result of a curse put on all who disturbed the tomb of the Pharaoh, dead over 3,000 years? The headlines have read, “Doyle Blames Spirits for Carnarvon Death,” “Conan-Doyle Says Spirits Killed Lord,” “Says Ghosts Did It,” and

Cedar Rapids (Iowa) Gazette

Doyle has told reporters that the spirits of the Egyptians

easily may have used these powers, occult and otherwise, to defend their graves. They always opposed digging up the mummies.”

In his lecture tonight, the first on a six-month American tour, Doyle wants to leave Egyptian curses behind him and impress the crowd with a series of “spirit photographs” he has, that show ectoplasm and floating faces. He wants to convince them that, since the Great War, mankind is searching for meaning, and religion has failed. Only spiritualism can provide the necessary comfort.

During the lecture Conan Doyle rests his head in his hand and closes his eyes—such drama. He says he can see

a great church forming which will take in all sects from the Roman Catholic to the Salvation Army…which will bring religion and science together…The old Christianity is dead—dead. How else could 10 million young men have marched out to slaughter? Did any moral force stop that war? No, Christianity is dead.”

The media are already souring on Conan Doyle’s theories about the Egyptian curse. The New York Times is planning an editorial headlined, “He’s Beginning to Strain Our Patience.”

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April, 1923, New York City, New York; and Hollywood Hills, California

Let’s go to the movies!

The new kid on the block, Warner Brothers studios, releases its first film, Main Street. Based on last year’s hit novel by Sinclair Lewis, 38, the movie is billed as “The Story that Made the World Sit Up in a Dazed Surprise.” The studio was only incorporated about three weeks ago by four immigrant brothers originally named Wonsal.

Main Street film lobby card

Production company Famous Players-Lasky and distributor Paramount Pictures account for several of the films bringing people to the theatres this month, including Prodigal Daughters starring Gloria Swanson, 24, and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine starring Mary Miles Minter, just turning 21.

Prodigal Daughters poster

Famous Players-Lasky’s most innovative offering however, is Bella Donna staring Polish-born Pola Negri, 26, in her first American film, and Pittsburgh-born Adolphe Menjou, 33. The new Phonofilm process, developed by inventor Lee de Forest, 49, allows audiences to hear the music and sound effects synchronized with the film, not from live musicians. Later in the month, de Forest puts on a demonstration of the sound-on-film technique at the Rivoli Theatre, presenting a variety of short movies with music and dancing, but no synchronized dialogue. Yet. He’s working on it.

Bella Donna poster

The biggest hit this month, from Hal Roach Studios, is Safety Last!, with handsome star Harold Lloyd, just turning 30, trying to look nerdy behind oversized eyeglasses. The most astounding scene shows Harold dangling off a clock on a skyscraper, high above the street below. The scene was created using footage showing Lloyd, who has already lost parts of a few fingers in a stunt accident; a couple of stunt doubles, including one who works as a steeplejack; and various buildings between First and Ninth Streets in downtown Los Angeles.

After Safety Last! premieres at the Strand Theatre in New York, the Times says that the seven-reeler is,

filled with laughs and gasps…Although laughter follows quickly on the heels of each thrill, the thrill lasts long enough for a man to feel that dizzy feeling when looking down from a height of 12 stories.”

Safety Last! poster

*****

In that same issue, the New York Times reports that a Mexican teenager, Marina Vega, 15, traveled from Mexico City to break into the house of international film star Charlie Chaplin, just turning 34, in the Hollywood Hills.

Charlie Chaplin’s Hollywood Hills home

After being removed from the house, Vega returned and put on Chaplin’s pajamas in his bedroom. Chaplin convinced her to leave by promising to pay for her train ticket home.

However, two days later Marina was back again, strewing red roses on Chaplin’s driveway and lying on top of them. Chaplin’s valet saw all the red and thought the woman had shot herself. Vega claimed she had taken poison and was rushed to the hospital. But it was never clear whether she had really poisoned herself.

So the Times went with the headline, “GIRL PURSUES CHAPLIN; Marina Vega Is Said to Have Taken Poison at His Home.”

You can watch Harold Lloyd and stunt doubles hang off a clock here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFBYJNAapyk

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through III, covering 1920 through 1922 are available at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

This summer I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.