Audrey Munson, the Tragic Story of America’s First Supermodel

 Audrey Munson, the Tragic Story of America’s First Supermodel 

Audrey Munson had a rough start in life. Her parents were what the Victorians called a mésalliance. Her father was Edgar Munson, a young man from a well-to-do and socially prominent Protestant family in upstate New York. His bride was Katherine “Kittie” Mahonie, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants.

The social gulf between the couple was enormous. It would be interesting to know how they met and what sort of pressures they faced when they announced their intentions to marry, but about that, history is silent. They wed in 1885 and moved to Rochester, New York, where Edgar worked for a wealthy family as a driver, and Kittie worked as a domestic servant.

The couple had one daughter, Audrey, born in 1891, but the marriage fell apart. History does not record what their problems were, but they must have been severe to even consider ending the marriage in that era. The couple divorced in 1899. Divorce wasn’t unheard of at this time, but it still carried an intense amount of social stigma. The judge awarded sole custody of Audrey to Kittie.

Edgar would remarry and start a new family, but perhaps he provided some financial assistance to his ex-wife and daughter because Audrey was able to attend a private school in Providence, Rhode Island. It likely would have been difficult when it came to socializing with her peers because of the scandal of having a divorced mother, but perhaps those life lessons gave her a measure of fortitude.

At school, she took lessons in singing and dance, and discovered a passion for performing. A few small parts on the stage in vaudeville acts led her to believe she might have a career in theater ahead of her, and so Kittie moved them to New York City.

Stories of how Audrey was discovered vary. One version says she was lightly struck by an artist’s car and he was enraptured by her beauty. Another version - the one that seems most likely - says Audrey was discovered and approached by a photographer while walking down a street. Audrey agreed to pose for photographs, and her mother attended the sessions to ensure nothing improper transpired.

The photographer showed the resulting shots to a sculptor, who thought Audrey had the perfect Grecian beauty for the work he wanted to complete. He approached Audrey's mother, explaining to Kittie that he wanted to sculpt Audrey, but the work required that she pose in the nude. Kittie was hesitant at first, but gave her permission.

Audrey was considered to be the “perfect girl” with her buxom, healthy form, lush hair, and Greek-style features. Her background in theater gave her a bit of a boost. She was able to recreate the mood the sculptor wanted and hold the pose for hours. 

Dozens of artists used her as the model for their works, including Stirling Calder, Adolph A. Weinman, Isidore Konti, Daniel Chester French, Robert Aitken, Attilo Piccirilli, Charles Dana Gibson, and others. Some believe she was also the model for the Mercury Dime, but that’s unconfirmed.

The fad for statues in architecture meant Audrey was soon appearing atop buildings and fountains around New York. Not everyone was pleased by Audrey’s nude statues appearing everywhere. When the new Pulitzer fountain was erected with a statue of Audrey on top, Alice Vanderbilt ordered that her bedroom be moved because she was so offended by looking out her window and seeing Audrey’s bare backside.

She was lauded in the New York newspaper “The Sun” in 1913: "If the name Miss Manhattan belongs to anyone in particular, it is to this young woman." By 1915, Audrey was becoming one of the most famous artist’s models in the world. 

That year, the Panama Pacific International Exposition was held in San Francisco. 75% of the statues at the event were modeled on Audrey’s features. She stood atop buildings and fountains, and graced gardens. As the "The Exposition Girl," her image gazed out from paintings and was featured on the commemorative coins and souvenirs for the event.

While she was in California, Audrey had offers to appear in motion pictures. Her first film "Inspiration," about an artist’s model, was the first non-pornographic film to feature a nude scene. People were shocked by it. Some theaters refused to show the film, religious groups protested, and local boards tried to prevent it from being shown. But the general consensus was that Audrey’s nude scenes were the exact same as the image in Renaissance paintings, and if the film had to be censored, so did the art.

Her father was interviewed around this time, when Audrey’s fame was at its height. He disapproved. “I wouldn’t think she’d want to do it…. I’d rather she wouldn’t, but it’s her affair…” He continued on to complain that Audrey spent her money like water.

Audrey’s second film would also be about an artist's model. Unfortunately, Audrey’s talents did not lie in acting. She was great at posing, but that was about it. By 1919, Audrey had returned to New York and her career as a model.

She and her mother moved into a beach house owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins and his wife, Julia. But the arrangement quickly turned sour. The sixty-year-old Dr. Wilkins became obsessed with his beautiful young tenant. Julia noticed her husband's undue attentions to Audrey and asked her and Kittie to move out, which they did.

On March 24, 1919, Julia Wilkins was found dead in the driveway of her home, having been brutally bludgeoned to death with seventeen blows from a hammer. Dr. Wilkins claimed he and Julia had returned from a walk and discovered three robbers in his house. He had his wife wait outside while he rushed in. The robbers knocked him down, stole his money, and then went outside and murdered Julia, threatening him that they'd kill the doctor too if he didn't lie still until they'd gone.

Not only was his story fishy, it seemed like Dr. Wilkins had planned the crime. According to one article, Dr. Wilkins had questioned the lead detective closely some time prior about another murder that had been committed with a hammer and how wrapping the hammer in cloth and paper had prevented the collection of fingerprint evidence. The hammer that killed Julia was wrapped exactly as the hammer in that crime. 

Other elements of his story also seemed false. The house had not been ransacked - cash and items of value in plain sight were left undisturbed, and the glasses the doctor claimed the thieves had used to drink champagne while they were looting were covered in a film of dust.

The police were skeptical of the doctor's story, but they dutifully searched for months to try to locate the burglars. They grew even more skeptical when they learned of Dr. Wilkins’s obsession with Audrey.

The police wanted to speak with her, but they had no idea where Kittie and Audrey had moved. They turned to the newspapers in hope Audrey might see in articles that they were searching for her. As a result, everyone soon knew of the scandal of Audrey Munson and the doctor who murdered his wife so he could marry her. The papers implied she had something to hide by refusing to come forward.

Kittie and Audrey were located at a vacation home in Toronto, Canada, where they had gone to escape the summer heat after Julia asked them to leave. They knew nothing of the murder, but the scandal had already ruined Audrey’s career.

The doctor was found guilty of the murder of his wife and sentenced to death in the electric chair, but hanged himself in his jail cell before he could be transferred to prison.

Audrey tried to revive her career by appearing in a new film, "Headless Moth," in 1921. It was again about an artist’s model. Bizarrely, Audrey only played the scenes in which the model posed – a similar-looking actress performed the rest of the role.

She was around thirty years old now, and modeling work was drying up. Many of her sculptor clients were starting to retire, and the fad for statues in public architecture was dying out. Audrey wrote a series of newspaper articles about the life of an artist’s model, displaying a keen intelligence and social understanding of the role of women in art, and the objectifying nature of beauty standards.

Her income dwindling, Audrey moved with Kittie back to her father’s hometown in upstate New York. Edgar had become a real estate developer and he allowed them to live in one of his houses. Kittie made a living as a nurse and housekeeper, while Audrey reportedly sold silverware door-to-door.

She was deeply unhappy there. The local ladies looked down on Audrey for having posed nude, and disapproved of her flamboyant New York City wardrobe. One writer recounted meeting a woman who had been a young girl when Audrey lived in town. She said her mother would close the curtains when the woman who had “undressed for money” walked by the house.

In 1922, Audrey made one last grasp for headlines with a publicity stunt. She announced a contest. The “perfect girl” was looking for the “perfect man” to wed, and would marry a man who met the exact physical specifications she listed. The press loved it. She received hundreds of proposals from all over the country.

But there are old rumors that Audrey was already married. Kittie insisted later that it had been true. Supposedly, Audrey was secretly married to a man named Hermann Oelrich, a relative of the wealthy and influential Vanderbilt family. But such a family would not want to be in any way associated with Audrey. There is no documentary evidence to prove it, supposedly destroyed by the family in a bid to erase Audrey from their family tree.

Soon after the contest, Audrey fell into despair. She attempted suicide by swallowing mercury bichloride, a medication usually used to treat syphilis patients. Her mother discovered her and Audrey was rushed to the hospital. She survived. Audrey explained she had received a telegram from the winner of the “perfect man” contest” and he had refused to marry her, which left her despondent.

But no such telegram, or gentleman by the name she gave, could be located. After her physical recovery, Audrey began calling herself “Baroness Audrey Meri Munson-Monson”, and insisting she was the victim of a vast conspiracy to keep her from succeeding in films and the modeling world.

Kittie tried to care for her daughter as best she could, but Audrey’s mental health was deteriorating rapidly. Already considered eccentric for her flamboyant clothing, Audrey took to wearing roller skates on the unpaved roads around town, using a lawnmower pushed in front of her for balance. There are reports she may have drank heavily or used drugs. In 1925, she was suspected of arson when several barns burned down, but was never officially charged.

On her fortieth birthday in 1931, Kittie had Audrey committed to Saint Lawrence Psychiatric Center in Ogdensburg. It was a very nice facility for a mental hospital of the era, with its own theater, shop, sports teams, and beauty parlor for the patients. But it was still a mental hospital. And Audrey would remain there for most of the rest of her life.

Very little information is known about Audrey’s life in the hospital, just small anecdotes that have survived. She was known for being kind to the staff and loved to sing for them. In the 1950s, Kittie died, and Audrey had no visitors thereafter.

In the 1980s, she was briefly transferred to a rest home for the elderly, but it was located across the street from a bar. Audrey kept sneaking out to go drink and regale the patrons with stories of her past life as a model. The rest home sent her back to the mental hospital. She lived to the impressive age of 104.

Her death went largely unnoticed by the world, and Audrey, the woman immortalized in so many statues, was buried with no memorial to mark her grave in her father's cemetery plot.

Her statues still grace New York, and surely some passersby have wondered about the lovely girl who posed for them. Audrey’s words in one of her newspaper articles are a haunting memorial: “What becomes of the artists’ models? I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question, ‘Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?’ ”