Florence Evelyn Nesbit was an American model, actress and dancer. In the era of fashion photography and and pin-up she was an early fashion and artists' model.
Background
Florence Evelyn Nesbit was born on December 25, 1884 in Tarentum, Pennsylvania, United States. Her father was Winfield Scott Nesbit, a lawyer, and her mother, Elizabeth F. Nesbit, had been a clothing designer. Nesbit's father died when she was eight years old, leaving Nesbit, her younger brother, and her mother with little financial support. The family then moved to Pittsburgh, where her mother ran a boardinghouse. In 1899, Nesbit's mother moved the family to Philadelphia, where she found work for them all at Wanamaker's department store, Evelyn as a stockgirl. Evelyn was quite beautiful, with thick, curly, copper-colored hair and hazel eyes, and so she began to pose as an artist's model. After a year, Nesbit and her mother moved to New York City, where Elizabeth Nesbit looked unsuccessfully for work as a clothing designer.
Education
Nesbit attended grammar school in Pittsburgh.
Career
Evelyn began to model, posing for Carroll Beckwith, Frederick S. Church, and others. George Grey Barnard sculptured her as "Innocence, " now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Charles Dana Gibson drew her in his famous sketch "The Eternal Question. " Photographs of Nesbit in newspaper advertisements brought her a part in the musical Floradora in 1901.
As a featured dancer, she was noticed by many wealthy men and showered with gifts and invitations. In August she was taken to a private luncheon by a showgirl friend. There, in a hideaway apartment, Nesbit met the architect Stanford White. He praised her beauty, introduced her to champagne, and playfully pushed her in a red velvet swing. White shortly won the confidence of Nesbit's mother and began supporting them both financially. He persuaded Mrs. Nesbit to leave Evelyn in his care while she visited Pittsburgh, and a few days after her departure White and Nesbit dined alone in his apartment. He gave her abundant champagne and a yellow kimono to model for him. Nesbit's story of this night varied with the telling, but her usual description was of waking in terror to find herself naked and no longer a virgin. She continued to see White, however, joining the extravagant parties he frequently gave in his tower studio at Madison Square Garden, which he had designed. He supported her in lavish style. In December Nesbit was introduced to Harry K. Thaw, a thirty-five-year-old railroad millionaire from Pittsburgh. Though Nesbit disliked him intensely, he courted her and impressed her mother. Floradora closed in the summer of 1902, and Nesbit joined the company of George Lederer's Wild Rose. She began an affair with John Barrymore, then twenty-two years old. White and her mother disapproved, and when the show closed in the fall, they sent her to the DeMille School in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey.
In April 1903 she was hospitalized with acute abdominal pains and underwent surgery for what appeared to be appendicitis, though it was rumored she had been pregnant. She convalesced in New York, where she was attended continually by Thaw and White. Upon her release, Thaw persuaded Nesbit to accompany him to Europe to recover, and in May she and her mother arrived in Paris to share Thaw's apartment and indulge in a spree of shopping, dining, and theatergoing. Thaw proposed several times, and Nesbit put him off by telling him she was not worthy of him because of her seduction by White. Elizabeth Nesbit returned home while Thaw and Evelyn continued their tour. During this time Thaw, apparently under the influence of cocaine, beat Nesbit severely with a dog whip. In spite of her professed terror of him, she stayed with him on their tour of Europe.
Nesbit returned to New York in October 1903, a few weeks ahead of Thaw. When White visited her and she told him of the beatings, he arranged for her to meet with lawyer Abe Hummel, who recorded her statements in an affidavit. Thaw's lawyers were notified, and they advised him not to see Nesbit until Christmas Day, when they supposed she would reach her majority, which at that time was age eighteen (but it would in fact be her nineteenth birthday). The pair celebrated their reunion at dinner together that night and resumed their affair, traveling to Europe again in the summer of 1904. Thaw continued to beat Nesbit; but she increased her power over him each time he begged her forgiveness, and she purposely enraged him by mentioning White's name.
After their marriage went to live at Lyndhurst, the home of Thaw's widowed mother. Nesbit became fairly comfortable with her mother-in-law and new home. Thaw, however, resumed frequent "business" trips to New York by that fall, and by the following spring his fits of rage were increasing. During a trip to New York together, the Thaws had tickets to the opening of Mamzelle Champagne at the Madison Square Garden roof theater, on June 25, 1906. Thaw wore an overcoat in spite of the hot weather as he and Evelyn had dinner and then went on to the theater. Nesbit became bored with the show, and their party got up to leave. However, Thaw lagged behind them, approaching Stanford White, who sat alone near the front of the room. Thaw drew a gold-plated revolver from beneath his coat and shot White three times in the head. As he entered the elevator with Nesbit he told her, "My dear, I have probably saved your life. "
Thaw was incarcerated immediately in the Tombs Prison, where Nesbit visited him faithfully. His mother and family came at once to New York and arranged for legal counsel. The trial began on January 23, 1907, and was sensationalized by the press. Thaw's defense depended on proof of his temporary insanity as a result of White's seduction of his wife and thus centered on Evelyn's testimony regarding her relationships with the two men. In April the jury declared it could reach no verdict, and a second trial began in January 1908. The following month Thaw was found not guilty on the ground of his insanity and sentenced to the Asylum for the Criminal Insane at Matteawan. During the second trial Nesbit's relationship with Thaw and his family deteriorated. She was given a financial settlement but went through the money quickly.
In early 1910 she went to Europe supported by a male friend. Nesbit returned to Europe in May 1913 and appeared that summer in Hello Ragtime in London with dancer Jack Clifford (born Virgil Montani). The show opened in New York in August and then went on the vaudeville circuit. When Thaw was released from Matteawan in June 1915, he divorced Nesbit immediately and she married Clifford, touring with him throughout the war years.
When Nesbit and Clifford divorced in 1919, she continued performing for a short time with a new partner. She became addicted to heroin and had difficulty finding work as her beauty and ability diminished. In 1921 she opened a tearoom near Broadway to support herself but moved in 1924 to Atlantic City. There she appeared at Martin's and the Palais Royale and then opened her own short-lived club called El Prinkipo. In 1925 she appeared at the Moulin Rouge in Chicago and, the following year, returned to Atlantic City. She opened a number of speakeasies in New York and Atlantic City, but all closed very quickly as a result of raids or badly chosen business partners. Nesbit continued to work in burlesque through the 1930's, and her second volume of autobiography, Prodigal Days, was published in 1934. By the 1940's she was living in a Hollywood rooming house. She was supported by her son, although Harry Thaw left her $10, 000 when he died in 1947.
In 1955 she acted as technical adviser for the producers of a motion picture based on her life called The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing, starring Joan Collins, Ray Milland, and Farley Granger. Early in the 1960's she was moved to a nursing home. She died in Santa Monica, California.