Audrey Munson is a name that few people know today, but she is generally considered the first fashion model, at least in the United States.
Photographers, painters, sculptors and directors simply competed for this beauty who would become the first woman to appear naked in film.
Audrey was not only admired for her beauty and talent, she was also a strong advocate for women’s rights. But life was not to play with Audrey who died, forgotten by all, alone in a psychiatric hospital after no less than 65 years of stay there.
Fascinated by the beauty of Audrey
Audrey was born in the city of Rochester, New York in 1891, and from an early age she dreamed of becoming an actress.
At 17, she moved with her mother to the big city of New York to pursue her dreams of stardom and acting, with the faithful help of her mother. It wasn’t long before a man stopped her, as she was looking in the window of a famous Fifth Avenue store, and asked if he could take her picture.
The photographer’s name was Felix Benedict Herzog and he was mesmerized by Audrey’s beauty.
Herzog, who was highly respected in his profession, introduced Audrey to the artistic elite of New York, and it was the sculptor Isidor Konti who offered her the first major project, the one that would make her known… But he there was a condition; Audrey had to sit naked.
Audrey was up for it, but her mother was less impressed with the proposal, but in the end Konti managed to convince her.
Very demanding
The famous and elegant Astor Hotel commissioned the sculpture of the Three Graces, and Audrey was the model. The work was considered quite spectacular and demand for Audrey as a model skyrocketed. She poses for photographers and painters, but the sculptors are particularly delighted to have Audrey as a model.
To this day, statues, fountains and decorations can be found all over New York City, all of which have one thing in common: Audrey Munson was the model, earning her the nickname Miss Manhattan.
In 1915, when Audrey was 24, a huge sculpture exhibition was held in San Francisco, and amazingly, Audrey was the model for three-fifths of all the sculptures.
Three Graces
In the same year, Audrey starred in her first film.
Of course, she played the model of a sculptor and was the first woman to appear nude in film.
Some were shocked, but even more admired his courage.
Little has been done on the role of women
Audrey would star in more films, many of which would shock her contemporaries, but then return to her great love. Carvings.
From an early age, Audrey had been an avid campaigner for women’s rights and believed that little was being done with the work the models put in for the artwork. The performers, who in almost all cases were male, got all the credit. Women were left, nameless and forgotten, without the respect artists received, and only a fraction of their profits.
In fact, Audrey had had the same thing to say about the film industry and at one point threatened to leave the US and move to the UK if actresses weren’t more respected.
But little by little, Audrey’s life deteriorated since she was cited in several scandals.
Killed for the love of Audrey
In 1919, Audrey was living with her mother in a boarding house owned by a physician named Walter Wilkins. Walter fell completely in love with Audrey and ended up murdering his wife to marry Audrey. What Audrey had little or no interest in.
Audrey and her mother fled the scandal to New York, but police suspected Audrey of involvement in the case and the stepmother was wanted across the United States.
When they were finally found in Canada, they refused to return to New York and were questioned there. These reports were never made public, but it is known that Audrey strongly opposed any relationship with Wilkins, let alone having participated in the murder of his wife.
These mothers were eventually released, as there was no real witness who linked them to the case, but dr. Wilkins was sentenced to death by electric chair. He hanged himself in his cell before this happened.
Reputation in tatters
But even though the police freed Audrey, her reputation was in shambles and by 1920 there was no work for her. No one wanted to be associated with Audrey Munson. To support herself, her mother goes door-to-door and sells kitchen utensils, but Audrey becomes a teller in a museum that offers cheap and tasteless entertainment to the poor. The corpse of a two-headed calf and a mummy was to be found. However, most of the exhibits were probably fake.
But Audrey did not give up and from January to May 1921, she wrote a series of 20 newspaper articles reviewing her career and warning other girls not to follow the same path and become models.
“What will happen to the artists’ models? I wonder if some of my readers have not seen a masterpiece, a magnificent sculpture or a beautiful painting of a young girl whose modesty and purity has been sacrificed and shown naked, and wondered ” Where is she?” Now, that model that was so beautiful?
The road was going downhill fast
That same year, film producer Allen Rock bought up full pages in every major New York newspaper claiming that he had paid Audrey $27,500, a large sum of money at the time, to star in a film he planned to produce. If she hadn’t honored the agreement. Audrey was quick to respond for herself, claiming the check had been nothing more than a publicity stunt, and went to court with Rock herself.
But she will regret it, because during the trial it is revealed, among other things, that Audrey did not write the twenty articles herself, but had them written on her behalf by a little-known journalist.
Audrey’s path was only downhill after that.
Audrey was a model for countless works of art that adorn New York City.
Hoping to revive her career, Audrey began a partnership with a major newspaper publishing house in the summer of 1921. She was to do a series of articles on her search for the perfect husband. Arguably, he was the great-grandfather of reality TV shows as we know them today.
Almost two months later, she called him and said she was not interested in getting married.
In October of the same year, she was arrested in a movie theater and accused of indecency on the big screen, where she is of course naked. She was actually acquitted of those charges.
A mannequin in an unmarked grave
In May 1922, two weeks before her 31st birthday, destitute Audrey attempted suicide by drinking a mixture of chlorine and mercury, but was saved. It was Audrey’s first of many suicide attempts. Her mental health deteriorated and eventually her mother gave up and Audrey was committed to a mental hospital in 1931 where she would spend the next 65 years, or until her death at the age of 104.
The girl, who was called the Venus of America, lies in an unmarked grave somewhere on the grounds of the mental hospital.
It should be noted that the model for the Manhattan monument to Isidor and Ida Strauss, who died in the Titanic crash, was Audrey Munson.
Read News about Celebrity, and Gossip on The Eastern Herald.
