Published At Last!

It's been a long, long road from the day I got interested in this 100-year-old courtroom drama. I've spent many hours seeking out untapped sources, uncovering rare documents, and pondering the events from a different perspective to come up with new theories on what really happened. With the encouragement of several friends, I pulled myself out from the slump of discouragement and rejection. Forging ahead fearlessly, at last it has happened.

With a thrill, I can now announce that "Lady in White" is available in print and e-book formats.

Print/Paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946055042/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_dp_T1_wMQEzb45K98MK

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B074CF7SZ7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501294933&sr=8-1&keywords=lady+in+white+tanaka

Other E-Book Formats (iBook, Scribd, Kobo, Tolino, Nook, etc.):

https://www.books2read.com/u/bPJJX7

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.)

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. 

The Scandalously Fabulous Joan Sawyer

When Jack and Blanca divorced in 1916, the grounds were that he had cheated on her. The “other woman” was a successful Broadway dancer named Joan Sawyer.

From about 1914 to 1918, Joan Sawyer was one of the country's most popular and successful dance stars. Her main competitors were the dance team of Vernon & Irene Castle who promoted their wholesome image as a married couple. Joan Sawyer – a single, unmarried woman – went through dance partners like satin shoes.

As a self-reliant business woman, she managed a New York nightclub called “Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden” and her business manager was also a woman. She marketed herself to a general audience beyond the vaudeville theater goers. She made records on the early Columbia label and published sheet music with instructions on how to dance her versions of the fox-trot, the waltz, or the maxixe heel step.

Sawyer used her fame to promote the cause of women's suffrage (the right to vote) though ironically her business manager Jeanette Gilder was anti-suffrage.

Pushing the envelope, Sawyer employed black musicians at her nightclub, calling them her “Persian Garden Orchestra” and would not perform without them. Under the direction of Dan Kildare (of the Clef Club) and later Seth Weeks, the orchestra earned rave reviews wherever they played. Sawyer's role in sponsoring talented black musicians in these early days of ragtime and jazz is mostly forgotten.

Sawyer is mostly remembered for being the one who gave silent film star Rudolph Valentino his first break into show business. Sawyer and Valentino danced on stage in New York, Philadelphia, and once did a performance for President Woodrow Wilson. Valentino left New York to pursue a career in silent films. On his job application to the Hollywood studios, he wrote that he was tired of ballroom dancing.

Joan Sawyer also tried getting into films when exhibition dancing fell out of fashion during the First World War, but her movie career fizzled. Eventually, she faded away into obscurity.

Wedding Rings

Before the 1940s, most men did not wear wedding rings.  In the olden days, wedding vows bound the wife to "love, honor, and obey..." and the ring on her left hand sealed the deal.  American men started wearing rings in the 1920s. My money is on Rudolph Valentino starting the trend, as he started so many other fashion fads.

Here is dear ol' Rudy (left) posing with his brother Alberto in the mid-1920s.  Clearly a wedding band shows on Rudy's left hand. 

Dial the Way-Back machine a couple of years, and compare to the hand of our red-blooded, all-American male, ex-football captain and man about town, John de Saulles. A newspaper photographer in 1914 snapped a shot of him walking down the street, and it's so clear... almost a 100 years later, I can zoom in on Jack's left hand. Gasp! No wedding band. He has a pinky ring, which could be a fraternity or a class ring. 

Now, thanks again to the Library of Congress - I love you guys!!! - I have a clear shot of Blanca's left hand from a portrait photo of her and the baby. Little Jack Jr. is in a beautifully embroidered white gown, that I assume is his baptismal dress. Hey, she's Catholic. The gigantic square rock is so heavy that the band sagged sideways as she places her hand delicately against the child's front. 

Say what you will about Jack being too busy with his real estate deals and his baseball buddies, but he knew how to bling-bling his trophy wife.