Who is the mystery woman on The Tattooed Lady?

Photo by Simon Liddiard

Yesterday was the seventh birthday of my art work The Tattooed Lady! She made her debut on the 22nd May 2015 as part of the launch exhibition at HOME Manchester and since then has appeared at other art events dispensing temporary tattoos (you can find out more about her on this blog). As a birthday treat I thought I'd write about the history of the mysterious woman whose photo I used as inspiration for the painted section of my penny arcade machine and share her dark and forgotten story. She was an enigma to me until recently, but her story is unforgettable.

So get comfortable, take a deep breath, and read on as we explore the tumultuous history of a tragic showgirl star...

A tale of love and regret:

As one of the stars at the Ziegfeld Follies, Imogene was riding a wave of notoriety and fame. She had become one of it's most popular showgirls, sparkling and shimmying every night in her Erte costume and her effervescent personality could be felt far beyond the stage.

 

The columnist Mark Hellinger had once quipped, "Only two people in America would bring every reporter in New York to the docks to see them off. One is the President. The other is Imogene "Bubbles" Wilson." Frequently spotted around town in the best restaurants and night clubs, she had earned a reputation as a party girl and how the press adored her! 'Bubbles rhymes with troubles' yelled the headlines!

It was 1922, and Imogene was a jazz baby living as a fashionable and daring young thing. Yet she had arrived in New York under very different circumstances just a few years earlier. 

A small and thin child with few belongings, Imogene had made the long journey from Kentucky to the Big Apple to live with her older sister Mabel. She had chosen to leave behind the foster home that her father had put her in after her mother had died, and in doing so had changed the course of her life. 

Aren't you going to dance? by Arthur William Brown

By 13 Imogene was already a beautiful girl and began to work as a model for magazine illustrator Arthur William Brown. Word must have got around about her good looks as Broadway producer Florenz Ziegfeld Jr soon came calling and put her in his musical revue. He dubbed her 'Bubbles' due to her irrepressible nature and gave her a featured role in the show catapulting her into stardom.

By 1924 everyone's favourite showgirl was to begin a highly publicised affair with fellow Vaudeville act Frank Tinney. A popular black face performer, Frank was successful, older and very married. He must have made quite a glowing impression on the teen but shared a condescending attitude with others stating, “Sure I have a wife, a mortgage and an appendix, but why should I bring these things up and spoil a pleasant evening?”

 

 

Unfortunately for Imogene, Frank was also a heavy drinker and over the length of their relationship she would often turn up for work with bruises where he had hit her. Things reached a head when Frank found her alone in her apartment with a newspaper reporter and assuming the worst beat her so badly that she afterwards attempted suicide.

Later the newspapers reached a frenzy when 'Bubbles' Wilson appeared in court to press charges against Frank Tinney. She showed her bruised belly where he had kicked her and claimed he practiced his boxing on her lithe frame. Even Imogen's maid testified that Frank was a heavy drinker and was often violent. She herself claimed he had 'chastised' her and caused injury.

Despite all this, a grand jury refused to indict Tinney on assault charges and he went on to tell the press that Imogene had fabricated the whole thing as a publicity stunt. Already known as a free spirit and party girl, it wasn't a far stretch for the 1920's general public to also paint her as a deviant and liar. 

 

Ziegfeld was not impressed by Imogene's 'cheap' behaviour and fired her, feeling that her reputation would be bad for the show and the morale of his performers. This was in spite of the fact that his own personal doctor had inspected her injuries himself and declared “this girl looks as though she had been struck by an automobile.”

 

Even with her bruises and losses, Imogene was still infactuated with Tinney and in a move to get his attention that only cemented her delinquent image, she threw a 'suicide party' and swallowed heaps of sugar pills in front of her guests. After an ambulance was called and news of this hit the papers, Tinney beat her once more.

 

 

It seemed nothing could deter Imogene from her addiction to this toxic relationship. After Tinney announced he was leaving for an stint on the English vaudeville circuit the two reconciled and she boarded the ship to see him off before his departure. She told the waiting reporters that Tinney was, 'the only thing in my life. I know it, you know it, so why should I beat around the bush?'. She cried as the ship sailed away.

The next month she too was sailing, heading to Europe to appear in a French revue. It was not long however until she hopped across the Channel back to Tinney. He had begun to drink again and shortly after their reunion Imogene was once more black and blue. In early 1925 they finally split up for good when Imogene was tempted away to star in German films. When later asked about her affair with Frank she claimed she had only been 14 when it started, and it had been, 'a nonsensical mixture of fights and laughs, and half and half'.

 

On a side note; When Frank Tinney returned to New York his reputation had been tainted and his reception was less than glowing. Many of his friends abandoned him, his career floundered and his wife having divorced him wanted nothing more to do with him. Soon ill health and debts overtook his career and he faded from the limelight.

 

Back in Germany, it was a different tale. Imogene was now known as 'Imogene Robertson', and making a genuine go of things. For the next two years she starred in several films and received good revues earning her around $1500 a week. This led producers in Hollywood to take interest and offer her American projects, but she turned them all down. In Europe, while her life was still chaotic, she was at least free of her dubious past.

 

 

However, when Joseph Schenck of United Artists offered her a lucrative contract to return to the USA and work for him, she finally relented. The press took a huge delight in retelling her scandalous history prompting some women's groups to protest against her making films in America, while well known prude William H Hayes also expressed his dislike of her return. As a way to distance 'Bubbles' links with her past United Artists relaunched her career under a new screen name, Mary Nolan.

Under United Artists Mary starred in a just two films before moving to Universal Pictures. Here she played opposite such Hollywood elite as Lon Chaney and Lionel Barrymore and made such an impression on movie goers that she became a sought after starlet making $3000 a week. By 1929 she was once more riding high and had earned a lead role in the drama 'Shanghai Lady' playing a former prostitute and opium addict embarking on a respectable love affair only for her sordid life to catch up with her.

 

 

In reality it seems Mary likewise couldn't contain her still in-suppressible nature and she fell in love once more. This time the object of her affection was none other than legendary 'Fixer' and all round shady character, the executive and producer Eddie Mannix. If his status as the man who covered up Hollywood's crimes and disgraces by nefarious means wasn't enough, he was also, like Tinney before him, very married.

 

Mannix used his connections to push Mary's career and got her work with MGM on the film 'Desert Nights', while rumours flew that he also forced the star to undergo an abortion. Not long afterwards he abruptly ended their relationship. 

 

Mary, never one to handle a break up well, threatened to tell his wife about their affair which sent Mannix into a rage beating her into unconsciousness and hospitalising her for six months where she underwent 15 operations to repair the damage he had inflicted to her abdomen. It was during her recovery that Mary was prescribed morphine for pain relief and it was rumoured she became addicted to the drug. The next year while being treated for severe sunburn, nurses gossiped of finding needle marks up her arms.

 

 

In 1930 while making the movie 'What Men Want', Mary got into an argument with the film's director when she complained that she was the only cast member not to receive a close up. She was first banned from the set then fired altogether. After threatening to file a lawsuit against them, Universal bought her contract and possibly encouraged the hearsay about her temperamental behaviour and alleged drug use around Hollywood cutting her chances of ever getting work with another major studio.

 

 

From here on Mary worked on bit parts and supporting roles in low budget films for Poverty Row studios and in another attempt at love she married a stock broker named Wallace T McCreary. One week before their nuptials he lost $3 million on bad investments. With his remaining money the couple opened a dress shop, 'The Mary Nolan Gown and Hat Shop' but it went out of business within months. The couple were sued by creditors and ex employees seeking their wages. When giving a statement on proceedings, Mary said, 'They hound me because they remember a naughty Imogene Wilson. Don't they know that the side of me... vanished?' The next year Mary filed for bankruptcy and divorced McCreary, she was 24 years old.

Over time Mary's name was seen in the papers again when in 1935 she made an ill judged decision to file a lawsuit against her former lover Eddie Mannix for the physical abuse that had contributed to her career's downfall. She asked for $500,000 in damages. Predictably Mannix, an old hand at manipulating events to turn his way, stated that the claims were made in an attempt to resurrect her flagging film work. He further went on to discredit her and ruin her reputation by leaking negative stories about her sex life and many abortions, and he even sent a private eye to her home to threaten her with arrest for possessing morphine.

 

Now, shunned by Hollywood and making a shaky living back on the vaudeville circuit, Mary's life was punctuated by an arrest for an unpaid dress bill and several stays in hospitals for an attempted overdose and  'severe nervous strain'. Eventually upon her release she changed her name to Mary Wilson and got a job managing a bungalow court.

 

In 1948, Mary decided to write her memoirs  titled, 'Yesterday's Girl', with the help of the writer John Preston, but they remained unfinished. Suffering from malnutrition and residing in a small Hollywood apartment she was found dead at 42 from an overdose, the cause of which was never decided.

 

 

In her short life Mary blazed a trail across the entertainment industry burning brightly and very fast. It seemed that even with her talent energy and beauty, she was drawn to terrible relationships with awful men which took hold of her and kept her in a state of self destruction. With little to no support or understanding from the machine that had fed off her fame, she was left as an outsider and remembered as a dream that once was. Despite all this she is known to have said, 'I've had a beautiful life. I've tumbled into the most beautiful life in the world. I'd never change it'.