Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Sources, Sources, Sources

Sure I could borrow photographs and images that I see floating around the internet. Pinterest! Wikipedia! Other blogs! But I have a code of ethics and I don't do that. If I can't cite the source, if I can't verify it's public domain, or if I can't get an affirmative permission from the copyright owner, I don't use it.

My book is in the home stretch -- the final week before it launches into the world. Here are 3 more photos that won't make it into the book because I could not find the source until this morning.

Miss Joan Sawyer was a nightclub owner, a suffragette, and an exhibition ballroom dancer in New York City. She is said to be the "other woman" who broke up Jack and Blanca's marriage. But is that really the whole story? I have some theories about that.

Today while browsing the Library of Congress archives online, as I often do on a Tuesday morning, I stumbled across an instructional manual on various trendy dance steps. The one-step and the maxixe are being demonstrated in photographs by the celebrity dancers of the day. Guess who is among them? Yup.





I've seen these photos of Joan Sawyer floating around on other blogs. Heck, I've used one in an earlier blog post here. I never knew the exact source. I could never verify the citation and, without that, I did not use them in my upcoming book. Well, that's OK. I have 34 illustrations already!


Hopkins, J. S. The Tango and Other Up-To-Date Dances a Practical Guide to All the Latest Dances, Tango, One Step, Innovation, Hesitation, Etc. [The Saal eld Publishing Co., Chicago, monographic, 1914] Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/14010455/. (Accessed July 25, 2017.)

Tuesday, July 18, 2017

Research Maniac

I discovered this 1917 murder case from Emily Leider's biography of silent film star Rudolph Valentino. Leider's book spends a few juicy pages on a scandalous episode from his past. Before he was famous, when he was just a two-bit tango dancer entertaining New York high-society ladies at tea parties and gala banquets, Valentino danced with Blanca de Saulles. He testified at Jack and Blanca's divorce hearing and left New York for Hollywood soon afterwards.

Blanca gunned down her ex-husband in cold blood, in front of witnesses. A jury declared her "not guilty." It all seemed so bizarre. Unlike Lizzie Borden or even O.J. Simpson, there was no doubt that she shot Jack. Yet she strolled away free and regained full custody of her young son.

Their tragic, deadly love story had all the glamour of The Great Gatsby and the Titanic.  Yet their names have been mostly forgotten. I felt there had to be more to the story.

  • What is the truth? What really happened?
  • Who were these people? What sort of man was Jack de Saulles? Was he really a womanizing scoundrel who deserved what he got?
  • How did the victim's public image turn upside-down so quickly? How did a popular ex-college football star transform into the villain of his own murder?
  • What sort of woman was Blanca Errazuriz? How did a dainty, high society lady turn into a cold-blooded killer?  


I started with historical newspapers. I pieced together a timeline, and then I dove deeper. And deeper. And deeper.

Research is like archaeology--there is always more underneath the surface. Even though I am not blood-related to anyone involved, I used my genealogy skills to go far beyond the newspapers' narrative. I got excited to scrape up rare photographs or forgotten documents that no other researcher has bothered to find. I've spend hundreds of hours excavating snippets on Google Books, on ProQuest, on WorldCat, and on Link+ to acquire rare and out-of-print books. I corresponded with the Library of Congress, Yale University, and the clerk at the courthouse where the trial took place. Thanks to translation software, I could correspond with the tourist information bureau in Blanca's hometown. Anything that had their name on it, I had to have it! By now, I have filled a crate with books, 3-ring binders, and photographs.

What is my favorite piece? It's a tie.

One is a used out-of-print book published in 1916 (the year before the shooting) where Jack wrote some first-person anecdotes about his golden days as a college football star. Along with another football instruction manual published 10 years earlier, these are Jack's own words unfiltered.

The other is when I emailed a reference librarian at the Library of Congress about Blanca de Saulles, he retrieved a box of un-catalogued photographs from off-site storage. A newspaper had gone out of business, he wrote, and just dumped their collection of clippings and marked-up photographs on the LoC. These are images that no one has seen in 100 years.

In the end, I never could decide if I was on Team Jack or Team Blanca. While writing up the narrative, my loyalties shifted either way from day to day. In the end, I had pity for both of them. It's such a heartbreaking tale all around. 


Monday, July 3, 2017

A Rare Portrait of Blanca

After her trial and acquittal, Blanca took her young son back to her hometown of Vina del Mar in Chile. Blanca married again on December 22, 1921 to Fernando Santa Cruz Wilson, a senator in Chile's parliament who came from an illustrious family of politicians. 

Now as Mrs. Blanca Santa Cruz, she posed for a portrait. The Russian artist Boris Grigoriev came to Chile in the late 1920s to study at the art academy. His portrait of Blanca is remarkable for capturing the woman's contradictions of daintiness and deadliness. 

The color palette is soft and light. She poses near a window. Her black hair is colored auburn. Surrounded by springtime colors, she wears a white blouse and a floral scarf draped softly around her neck. Yet her body is posed rigidly. Her spine is a sharp, slanted angle. Her arms are crossed and her elbows form another sharp angle. Her face is drawn in profile, not smiling but stern, and her eyes gaze off the edge of the canvas at what could be bitter memories. 

The painting -- and other works by Grigoriev -- can be viewed on the website of the Museo Nacional Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts) in Chile. 

http://www.artistasvisualeschilenos.cl/658/w3-article-40451.html


Sunday, July 2, 2017

Getting Closer to Book Launch

I have the manuscript back from editing. My graphic artist is working on the cover design. I have written permissions for (almost) all the photographs that are not public domain. It's happening, folks!