The first in a long string of female beauties whose heady rises and catastrophic falls would captivate a nation, Evelyn Nesbit was known to millions by her sixteenth birthday in 1900. The most photographed woman of her era, she was an iconic figure who set the standard for female beauty. She was a model for the
Gibson Girl, the famous Ragtime female archetype, and a Florodora chorus girl whose underage sexuality titillated Manhattan's stage-door Johnnies. Women wanted to be her. Men just wanted her. But when her life of fantasy became all too real, and her insanely jealous millionaire husband, Harry K. Thaw, killed her lover,
Stanford White, architect of much of
New York City, she found herself at the center of a media frenzy. The scandal, and the wildly popular courtroom drama that followed, sparked an entire industry of news and gossip that captivated the nation, signaling the beginning of America's growing obsession with youth, beauty, glamour, celebrity, and sex.
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Background Information
New York City at the mouth of the Hudson River is the largest city in America.