Sister E X , livre ebook

Archway Publishing - K H Rafferty

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

84 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

A fascinating biography details a young woman’s endless quest for fame, fortune, and love as she searched to fill the void left by her stolen childhood.
When she was a little girl, K H Rafferty stumbled onto a photograph of her great-aunt, Evelyn Fariss. After an inquiry led her to learn that Evelyn was a silent movie star, Rafferty was thrilled. As she matured and curiosity led her to research her family history, Rafferty eventually pieced together a biographical story that details her great-aunt’s adventures, told in Evelyn’s voice.
In a remarkable tale, Evelyn details how the exploitation that ended her adolescence led her to a new beginning filled with adventure, fame, fortune, lust, fraud, blackmail, murder, prosecution, institutionalization in a mental hospital, and a lifelong search for love that spawned ten marriages. As she traces a career path that began with the Ziegfeld Follies and continued with offers to play significant parts in silent movies, Evelyn reveals how her fame led her to become known as the Million Dollar Baby of the New York theater scene. But it was not long before Evelyn’s poor decisions in life and love soon turned her fortunes into misfortunes and her name more infamous than famous.
Sister E X is a fascinating biography that details a young woman’s endless quest for fame, fortune, and love as she searched to fill the void left by her stolen childhood.

Sujets

Performing Arts

Biography

Entertainment

Autobiography

Million Dollar Baby

Informations

Publié par	Archway Publishing
Date de parution	03 octobre 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781665726740
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

SISTER E X
A Cruel Fate

BASED ON A TRUE STORY

K H RAFFERTY

Copyright © 2022 K H Rafferty.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-2675-7 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2673-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-2674-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022912704

Archway Publishing rev. date: 09/29/2022

To my beloved son, CJ, for his love, encouragement, and assistance in writing Sister E. X .
And to David, for supporting me on the many trips we took for research on this book.
CONTENTS
Preface

Chapter 1 San Francisco, October 1965
Chapter 2 Chattanooga, July 30, 1912
Chapter 3 Ziegfeld Follies, 1912
Chapter 4 New York City, 1914
Chapter 5 New York City, 1915
Chapter 6 New York City, 1918
Chapter 7 Chattanooga, 1920
Chapter 8 New York City, 1920
Chapter 9 Murder, Tampa, 1923
Chapter 10 New York City, 1924
Chapter 11 Paternity Blackmail Scheme, New York City, 1931
Chapter 12 Bellevue State Mental Hospital, New York City, 1931–1935
Chapter 13 Tampa, 1935
Chapter 14 New York City, 1941
Chapter 15 New York City
PREFACE
Indiana, 1957
Back when I was a small child, my parents got divorced, and my mother, sister, and I went to live with my grandmother Daisy at her summer cottage in southern Indiana. It was a difficult time for all of us. One comfort I found was to explore Grandmother Daisy’s bedroom, so I often did. I loved her fine antique furniture, small collectibles, her jewelry, and her closet full of clothes. I especially loved trying on her fur coat and jewelry. I pretended to be a glamorous actress in Hollywood, but then again, most little girls love playing dress-up. As a young girl, it was quite an adventure for me to visit Grandmother’s bedroom, and I could smell the soft scent of her perfume lingering in the room even in her absence.
For a few years after Grandmother’s death, my mother didn’t move a thing in her bedroom. She kept everything the same, as if it was a shrine and we were all supposed to pay homage to her. That wasn’t difficult because we loved Grandmother and grieved the loss of her for a very long time. She was so much more than just my grandmother. To me, Grandmother Daisy was grand and elegant but strict, and she loved teaching us about the world. My mother, being the only child born to Daisy and Louis and extremely close to both of her parents, suffered the greatest loss after Grandmother died. Her father had passed away five years before her mother, which left a terrible void in her heart.
Years after Grandmother’s death, Mother gave me a small, delicate antique perfume bottle that contained remnants of that same soft-scented fragrance of violets that was so indicative of Grandmother. Because of its prominence, the perfume bottle seemed to hold court on Grandmother’s massive antique mahogany dresser. Even today, I delight at seeing the perfume bottle on my Chippendale vanity, and I cannot help but marvel at its exquisite pear-shaped design with its top or stopper mimicking the royal crown of England.
On one of my explorations of Grandmother Daisy’s bedroom, I noticed an unfamiliar picture on the wall. It seemed strange to me—strange because I had never seen it before and had absolutely no clue who the person was in the photo. The eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph was encased in a simple black frame. I remember as if it were yesterday; I just stood staring at the picture in awe. Through my young eyes, I thought the woman in the photograph surely had to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She had raven-colored hair and large, dark eyes that reminded me of the color of the black coal that was used in the furnace to heat Grandmother’s house in the winter. Even at my young age, I could see sadness in the woman’s eyes as well as a spark of pure energy. Those eyes seemed to secretly hold a story of the past that she kept locked tightly inside of her soul, never to be revealed. To this day, I can still look at those eyes in the picture and instantly be reminded of a quote from a movie, “A woman’s heart is an ocean of secrets.” That describes what I saw in her haunting eyes. She led a life of profound joy, privilege, and adventure, as well as deep hurt and pain. But at the same time, you knew she harbored turmoil and self-doubt. I didn’t know all this at the time, but I pieced together her story in later years.
The woman in the picture had fine, fair skin, indicating that she had never done any outside labor in her life. Back then, it wasn’t in vogue to have a suntan, so most people had pale-colored skin. This mysterious woman had one of those finely chiseled faces with alabaster skin that was so translucent it was as though she shined from within, like a light bulb, creating a fixed, radiant glow that always seemed to beam, even during hard times. When she smiled or laughed, I was told, she could bring a grown man to his knees. In the photograph, she appeared to be wearing nothing more than a white mink coat, and the contrast of the stark white coat against her features was unforgettable.
I asked my grandmother Daisy, who was still living at the time, who the woman in the photograph was, and she told me that it was a picture of her younger sister, Evelyn Fariss, my great-aunt, when she was in silent movies. Now that immediately caught my attention. I was excited to hear that I was related to a movie star. What could be more of a thrill for a little girl? Like many girls my age, I spent hours playing with cutout paper dolls from McCall’s magazine of movie stars like Doris Day and Debbie Reynolds.
I had to know much more about Evelyn, but Grandmother said that she had committed suicide and was no longer living. I didn’t understand any of this, so after much curiosity, I looked the word up in Webster’s Dictionary , and my little nine-year-old world was shaken to its core with the definition of committing suicide. Later, I was told by another relative that Evelyn was killed in a car accident (taxi), in Reno, Nevada, in 1952, and no one went to the funeral, which piqued my interest even more as to what really happened to Evelyn Farris. I later discovered that my great-aunt didn’t kill herself or die in a car accident, but that and much of the rest of her life remained a mystery to me for many years. Indeed, I will never know most of the truth about her, leaving me to use my imagination to fill in the many blanks.
Most of the pictures that family members had of my great-aunt Evelyn were inscribed with Sister E. X. on the back. I asked my grandmother what that meant, and she said it meant that Evelyn considered herself as the black sheep of the family. Whenever her name came up, my family always referred to her that way. I suppose, at that time in history, family members felt shame and humiliation with the lifestyle she led. I was told that Evelyn accepted that definition of herself and laughed it off, but I imagine it was still devastating to her. Clearly, she’d been estranged from the family for many years, and I wondered why.
I came to know more about my great-aunt Evelyn and small fragments of the interesting story that made up parts of her life through another family member many years later. I had been living in Boston at the time, where I was based as a flight attendant for American Airlines, and occasionally visited my quirky and somewhat bohemian great-aunt Elizabeth in Florida. Aunt Elizabeth was my grandmother Daisy, Mary, and Evelyn’s sister-in-law. Aunt Elizabeth was married to my great-uncle Seaton, who had died seven years earlier. Seaton was Evelyn, Mary, and Grandmother Daisy’s brother. I had not seen Uncle Seaton, who was fondly referred to as the “mad scientist from MIT,” since I was a little girl, but I enjoyed hearing stories about him.
My eccentric great-aunt Elizabeth and her husband, Seaton, never had children but instead raised four rather temperamental Chihuahua dogs that used to nip at my ankles every time I got up from a chair or simply moved. Although I have loved animals my whole life, I was never fond of their dogs because of their excessive barking and their constant aggression toward me, which indicated that they were never socialized.
Aunt Elizabeth was a fiercely independent woman even before she married Uncle Seaton and continued to be so long after he died. I used to marvel at the stories she would tell me about herself when she was a young girl growing up in Georgia. When Aunt Elizabeth was a mere nine years of age, she had the forethought to start a pie-baking business to earn money. She learned to bake homemade pies, some of which came from her grandmother’s recipes, but most of the pies came from her own creations. She would sell these pies door-to-door or from a pie stand that she set up near town. She used her profits to enhance her business and for spending money. I looked forward to