Background
Born in New York City, Pinchot was the daughter of Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party and Gertrude Minturn Pinchot, the daughter of shipping magnate Robert Bowne Minturn, Junior.
Born in New York City, Pinchot was the daughter of Amos Pinchot, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party and Gertrude Minturn Pinchot, the daughter of shipping magnate Robert Bowne Minturn, Junior.
She had a younger brother, Gifford (nicknamed Long Giff). The family divided their time between their home in New York City and the family estate, Grey Towers, in Milford, Pennsylvania. In 1919, Amos Pinchot married magazine writer Ruth Pickering with whom he would have two more children: Mary Eno and Antoinette "Tony" Pinchot.
At the age of nineteen, Pinchot was discovered by Max Reinhardt while traveling on an ocean liner with her mother.
Reinhardt cast her as a nun who runs away from a convent in the Broadway production of Karl Vollmoller"s The Miracle. Pinchot"s appearance in the play caused a sensation and led to her receiving considerable attention from the press who named her "the loveliest woman in America".
He later cast her in productions of William Shakespeare"s A Midsummer Night"s Dream and Franz Werfel"s The Eternal Road. She made her only film appearance in the 1935 adaptation of The Three Musketeers, as Queen Anne.
On the morning of January 24, 1938, a cook found Pinchot"s body in the front seat of her car parked in the garage of a rented estate in Old Brookville, New New York
Her death was later determined to be caused by asphyxia due to carbon monoxide poisoning and was ruled a suicide. Pinchot left two suicide notes of which the contents were never made public. Pinchot"s funeral was held at her mother"s townhouse in New York City on January 26, 1938, her tenth wedding anniversary.
She was buried in the Pinchot family plot in Milford Cemetery in Milford, Pennsylvania.