The Adored One

By Susanne Dunlap

Lillian Lorraine was a naive 15-year-old chorine on Broadway when she attracted the notice of the notorious 41-year-old Florenz Ziegfeld. Accustomed to getting what he wanted, Ziegfeld took Lillian under his wing and into his arms, giving her coveted numbers in the Ziegfeld Follies and taking control of her career. But Lillian's rebellious spiri

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atmosphere Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781639888153

Susanne Dunlap

Susanne Dunlap is the author of twelve works of historical fiction for adults and teens, as well as an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach. Her love of historical fiction arose partly from her PhD studies in music history at Yale University, partly from her lifelong interest in women in the arts as a pianist and non-profit performing arts executive. Her novel The Paris Affair was a first place CIBA award winner. The Musician’s Daughter was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Bank Street Children’s Book of the Year, and was nominated for the Utah Book Award and the Missouri Gateway Reader’s Prize. In the Shadow of the Lamp was an Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award nominee. Susanne earned her BA and an MA (musicology) from Smith College and lives in Biddeford, Maine, with her little dog, Betty.

Book preview

Chapter One

I’m sitting at Flo’s memorial service in his theater, the one he wanted as long as I can remember, surrounded by every big name on Broadway from thirty years ago to the present day, and all I can think about is his naked body. He was tall, but thin. Very little hair. He wasn’t particularly strong. One of the many things I learned from him was that physical strength isn’t what gives you power.

People are getting up one by one to talk about all the good he did for the New York stage and for so many careers. I wonder just how many of them started like mine. I wasn’t a virgin when we met and he was forty-one and I was fifteen. But there’s no question, of all the men I had before and since, Flo sticks in my mind. With everything I’ve done since I met him, good or bad, if I follow the threads back they lead to Flo.

Is that Lillian Lorraine there? Looking beautiful as ever. Come on up and sing for us. You know, ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon.’

I haven’t been paying attention. I guess Eddie Dowling’s getting people up to perform in Flo’s memory, but I don’t want to. I try not to look up. Everyone near me twists their heads around to stare. I can’t. I just can’t. Not now. I don’t respond, hoping he’ll get the hint, but then I’m aware of someone walking up the aisle toward me, and a familiar voice says, Come on, Lillian. I’ll help you. When I finally look up, I see it’s Gus Edwards. He was kind to me all along. We go back such a long way, to the very beginning. I can’t let him down, not this time. I nod, and the people sitting between me and the aisle stand so I can get by and take Gus’s hand.

I don’t know, I whisper, hanging back.

He puts his arm around my waist and nudges me forward. Together we walk to the pit and Gus takes his seat at the piano and I stand next to it while he plays the introduction.

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. Not because there’s something wrong with my voice, but because of all the memories clogging up my head and my heart like bags of wet sand. The good and the bad, the love and the hate. I pretty much kept it all inside at the time, what mattered, I mean. You do that when you get shoved into a grown-up world at the age of fourteen. I had no idea what was ahead of me that day my mother and I pitched up in New York to muscle our way onto Broadway. I found out sooner than was good for me, but I never looked back.

Florenz Ziegfeld. Flo. Before I can talk about him, I need to set the stage, get the lighting right. I have to be able to see him as he was to me, and that’s hard, because he ended up being so many different people. I guess that shouldn’t surprise anyone, since he’d already passed two-thirds of his life when we met, and I was just a kid. I had no idea who I was then. One thing I did know, though: I wasn’t like any other girls my age.

I went on stage for the first time when I was four, playing Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. I don’t have a clear memory of it. It was enough to get my mother seeing fame and fortune on the horizon, though. While other girls played hopscotch and hoops, I learned how to recite lines and how to sing, dance, and the best way to send a facial expression up to the highest balcony. Backstage, the other actresses petted me and fussed over me, until I got pretty enough that the men started looking at me instead of them. That was around the time my mother decided San Francisco wasn’t big enough, and three months after I turned fourteen, we moved into a tiny apartment on Ninetieth Street and West End Avenue in Manhattan.

Mother. I still don’t know how to make sense of her. She did so much for me, but she wasn’t anything like what a mother was supposed to be. She was pretty, with her wavy brown hair and big, wide-set eyes, and I caught men on the street giving her the once-over sometimes. But she was all hard edges and calculation, not softness and affection. I realized how far ahead she’d planned for me the night Father came home drunk and tried to kill her. I suppose she didn’t expect me to stop him by smashing a whiskey bottle over his head, but she had everything ready for us to take off out of there, praying he didn’t send the police after us. I wonder if she knew the rest of it, and if that was part of why we left, the part about what he did to me sometimes, drunk, in the middle of the night.

Not long after that, we landed up in New York.

Don’t lift that box! You’ll break a fingernail, or scratch yourself bloody.

What should I do then?

Start looking through this for work. My feet had barely touched the ground in our cramped apartment and already she was in action, tossing the newspaper she’d bought at a kiosk on the street in my direction.

I flipped to the pages where theaters posted their notices of upcoming shows while she continued arranging our few possessions in a parlor I could cross in two big steps.

Anything promising? Mother came over and pulled the newspaper so I couldn’t read the notices.

I just started looking.

You always were a slow reader. Besides, you weren’t reading. You were daydreaming. Sometimes I wonder how anything ever gets into your brain.

According to my mother, I had no brain. I think it made her feel better about taking me out of school, like it was for my benefit, not hers. She told me every chance she got I had to make a fortune with my looks, because I had nothing else going for me. Maybe she was right. I barely passed the eighth grade, which to her meant I was slow at everything. Never mind that I missed half the year because I had to go to a rehearsal, or take dancing or singing lessons. It didn’t help that I wasn’t much of a talker, either. Not at that age. I learned early on that I could stay out of trouble and be safe if I just smiled and listened.

We were in Philadelphia for a couple of months before New York, where Mother managed to talk the cafe owner Joe Moss into giving me a spot in his nightly shows.

Here’s something! She thrust the paper back in front of me, jabbing her finger at a small advertisement that said, Models Wanted for Reputable Artists.

That’s not getting on the stage.

Do I have to do all the thinking around here? This is New York. You can’t just waltz into someone’s office and they give you a part in a musical revue. She had already started scribbling down an address.

But Mr. Moss—

What’s Mr. Moss got to do with it? He’s nothing here. No, the way to do it is to get people to fall in love with your pretty face. Besides, you’ve got to earn your keep.

She meant our keep, but I didn’t say anything. Just like I didn’t show her the letter Mr. Moss gave me, or tell her what he said after my last performance in his revue. Don’t you go forgetting Joe Moss when you’re rich and famous! Tell everyone it was me gave you your stage name. Leleanne de Jacques was too much of a mouthful, so he changed it to Lillian and my middle name, Lorraine. He liked me. His letter said he never had to show me a dance step more than once, and I remembered song lyrics better than anyone he’d ever worked with. I got a few friends on Broadway. They preview shows in Philly sometimes. What I say matters—just show ’em the letter.

I’d learned to pick my battles, though, so the next morning, Mother and I took the subway train down to Fifty-Seventh Street to the Art Students League.

You give them your particulars, then they send you out to artists who need models that they think would like you. It’s a good way to learn more about who’s important in this town, too.

Will you have to come to the sittings? She had attended every rehearsal and performance in Philadelphia and complained to Mr. Moss if she thought I wasn’t featured enough.

We’ll see. I don’t know if I can trust those artist types with someone as pretty as you. Mother moistened her fingers and tucked a stray wisp of my hair back in place before we went inside.

We’d just finished speaking with the lady in the office when the door flew open and a girl backed in, her hands full of envelopes. These are Mr. Beckwith’s outgoing. You got his mail for me?

The receptionist lady jerked her head in our direction, and the girl who’d come in turned to look at us. Oh hello! I’m sorry, were you…?

We’ve just completed our business, thank you. Mother gave her a flat smile while she put on her gloves and smoothed the fingers.

The girl stuck her hand out toward me. Name’s Rosemary Reilly, but everyone calls me Rosie. You?

Lillian. Lillian Lorraine.

Mother was already halfway out the door and held it open, tapping her foot.

You’re awful pretty. You want to do some modeling?

I nodded.

You’re in luck! You can come with me to James Beckwith’s studio. I’ll say you’re a great friend and then he’ll ask you to sit for him. Without missing a beat she said to Mother, I can borrow her for an hour or so, can’t I? She won’t come to any harm. Assuming a yes, she turned back to me. We can get to know each other. We all need friends in this town.

Mother had a way of making her eyes frown, and she did it then. What do you know of this Beckwith?

Oh, he’s an old friend and a wonderful artist. Lillian will be just fine, I promise! I’ll see she gets home in a cab.

I didn’t know why Rosie put herself forward for me then, but I sure was glad she did. I only understood later just how important someone like Rosie could be, that it wasn’t always the people at the top who gave you chances.

You be home in an hour, Mother said before stalking out the door.

She’d been caught. Rosie handed her what she wanted on a silver platter: to get me in front of someone who could get me in front of someone else. But it wasn’t on her terms, it didn’t include her, for the first time ever.

Come! Rosie hooked her arm through mine. We’ll take a trolley to Murray Hill. I want to hear all about you.

You’re a model? What’s it like? Something about Mother being gone loosened my tongue and, though I wasn’t one to chatter on with people I didn’t know, I felt like I could talk to Rosie.

To tell the truth, it’s a little boring. But it’s good money and good practice.

Practice for what?

She squeezed my arm in her elbow. The stage, of course! Or did I guess wrong? Rosie stopped and turned me toward her. Surely you want to be on Broadway, like I do. Why else would you be here?

I couldn’t argue, so I smiled. After that, Rosie filled my ears with stories about the different artists she’d sat for and their quirks and ticks, which ones had roving hands and which ones were that way so you really didn’t have to worry about them.

I’ve never met an artist before.

Don’t let on that you’re impressed. Their heads are swelled up enough already!

We laughed and chatted and I told her as much as I dared about my background, and she didn’t press me for more. It had been longer than I could remember since I’d been on my own with a girl more or less my own age, someone I could talk to and joke with. Mother always claimed that anyone who wanted to be my friend was a rival and not worth trusting.

Could be Rosie was too. I didn’t know then. But on that March day, I felt New York open its arms to me and knew we’d get along just fine.

Chapter Two

Modeling wasn’t so bad. Rosie was right: the artists loved me. I got lots of jobs right off the bat. After a while, my nose stopped twitching at the smell of turpentine and I learned, after ruining two pairs of shoes, to avoid the still-wet splotches of oil paint on the floors of the studios. Four different artists kept me busy with portrait work—for collectors, they said. I was told I had the ideal American face, whatever that was. We’re so foolish when we’re young, looking into the mirror and seeing only what’s wrong with us. No surprise, though. My mother’d been telling me for years that my forehead was too low and my chin was too pointy and it had a masculine cleft in it. According to her, my deep blue eyes, long lashes, and thick auburn hair made up for those mistakes of nature, and I was lucky for it.

Rosie’s invited me to a party, I said one early June morning as my mother brushed my hair until it was glossy.

Rosie! Who is this girl, really? What do you know about her? I think you should stop associating with her. She could be a harlot for all we know.

Mother never liked it when I had friends. She considered them all rivals. Mine or hers, it was hard to tell. When she talked like that, it always made my gut twist just a little. She’s been kind to me. I don’t know if I’da gotten so much modeling work without her, at least not so quick. That was as close as I got in those days to contradicting her. She was good at making me think I had no power. She doesn’t know anything about me either, and I’ve probably got a lot more secrets than her.

Mother slammed the brush on the table and whirled me around on the stool to face her. "Don’t you ever tell her any of them, do you hear me? And it’s ‘than she.’ "

You’ll bruise my shoulders! I said. She relaxed her grip but still held onto me, and no matter how much I expected these outbursts, my heart still took a long time to settle down after. She knew my body had to be perfect for the photographs I’d also started sitting for, where sometimes the photographer had me open the top of my dress to show more skin. Those photographs for advertisements paid well: soap, corset stays, even cigarettes sold better with a pretty face to set them off. Every time I opened Harper’s Bazaar or McClure’s I found myself smiling out at me somewhere in the pages.

I wasn’t giving up, though, no matter how she acted to me. I’ll go to that party with Rosie Friday. And I need some money for a new dress and cab fare home after.

My mother turned me around again to face the large mirror she’d bought with some of the money I’d earned.

Who will be at this party? Her eyebrows drew together and a sharp line creased between them.

All the artists I know and then some others. There might be theater people, too. Certainly some actresses. Rosie’s got a small part in a chorus somewhere, not on Broadway, though.

I could almost hear the click and whirr of gears in my mother’s mind as she pinned up my hair, her expression softening bit by bit. You’re too young to go alone. And you’re right. You should have a new dress. I’ll go with you. Where is the party, and at what time?

Shit. I didn’t know what made me think she’d let me go without her. But what choice did I have? All the money I made went to her. I didn’t even know how much the artists and photographers paid for a sitting. Once a week she’d go around and collect envelopes full of cash, and dole it out to me a nickel at a time so I could take the subway or a trolley to sittings and back. I had to act like an adult, but she still treated me like a child.

Rosie met me that afternoon at Joel’s studio, a photographer whose work got into every magazine and newspaper in the country just about. I told her my mother would only let me come to the party if she came too.

How old are you? Her eyes opened wide.

Seventeen, I lied.

Well, in a year she won’t be able to have a say over what you do. But bring her along. It’s only a dinner party at Rector’s. Stanny’s giving it. And he’s happy to have any good-looking women around him, whatever the age, although he prefers them young.

Who’s Stanny? Yet another name to hold on to.

She laughed. I forget sometimes you’re so new to the city. I feel as if I’ve known you my whole life, you know? Stanny’s what everyone calls Stanford White, the architect. He’s famous, and so much fun. Such a kind man. Her cheeks flushed pinkish when she said it.

We left at the same time after our sessions were over and Rosie walked me across town to Seventh Avenue where I could get the subway uptown and be home in time for dinner. What’s it like, being in the chorus? I asked. I didn’t want to lose sight of my real reason for being in New York, and Rosie could just be my way in.

Oh, Lilli! It’s so exciting. I don’t get paid nearly as much as I would as a model, but just to be around the other actresses and chorus girls—it’s magical.

I burned with envy. I wanted to hear the applause and the cheering and know it was for me. The little tastes I’d had in Kansas City and Philadelphia gave me a thirst for it. Are you ever frightened?

Well, sometimes a little. Tell the truth, I spoiled a chance I had to get a bigger part. Her usually cheerful expression faded.

What happened?

One of the featured chorines twisted her ankle on stage during a performance. The stage director pulled me aside just as we were supposed to go on for our bit and told me to do hers.

Did you?

She screwed up her mouth. I hesitated. And one of the other chorines stepped forward and elbowed me out of the way.

Was it someone you knew? I resisted the temptation to tell her she’d really messed up.

Yes, that’s the thing. We were friendly in the dressing room. She sometimes helped me with my hooks and fixed my makeup.

Well, you’ll get another chance. But I knew she wouldn’t.

Rosie waved goodbye as I walked down the subway stairs. Once I was below ground, everything about me changed. I’d learned in my first few weeks of making my own way to Murray Hill and home again not to let my eyes meet any stranger’s, just stay head down all the way up to Eighty-Sixth Street no matter what, ignoring whistles and lewd comments. Sometimes I had to remind myself to breathe. I couldn’t help imagining men grabbing me, or pushing me onto the tracks, things Mother warned me about before I left the house every day.

The train was coming and, as usual, I was watching my feet rather than looking up. I rushed forward to get on it so I didn’t have to stand alone on the platform, and as I hurried to put my token in the turnstile, it slipped out of my fingers and rolled to the other side, stopping on the metal edge of the platform. It was the only token I had.

I looked up toward the booth. The guard was busy taking people’s money, so I guessed he didn’t see what happened.

My eyes burned. Mother never even gave me a nickel more than necessary, so I couldn’t buy another token or make a call from the pay telephone in the station. Her reason was I’d likely lose it, or spend it on a nickelodeon, and we needed all the money we had to get my career going. If she knew what just happened, I’d never hear the end of it, of how stupid I was not to take better care.

I never cried—except when I was on a stage and I was supposed to. But the whole situation, how I didn’t have any power to fix the bind I was in, triggered something in me. Instead of walking out of the station, I sat near the bottom of the steps and let it all go, not caring if my nose swelled and my eyes got red.

Here. Better not sit there. You’ll spoil your dress.

Someone’s hand reached down from above me and dangled a handkerchief in front of my face. I took it and dried my eyes and blew my nose. When I handed it back, I looked up, right into the face of a young man who couldn’t have been more than eighteen years old, maybe twenty. He wore a suit that hadn’t yet started to fray at the cuffs, and a shirt that looked as though it had been starched too many times and would stand up on its own. I stood up, and he steadied me.

What seems to be the trouble? he asked. People streamed down the stairs, parting like water around a boulder to avoid us.

My token. It’s over there. My voice was still rough at the edges from crying, and I pointed to the platform.

So get another! he said and smiled. He had kind eyes. New to town?

I looked down at my feet. How could I tell him I didn’t even have a nickel in my purse? I certainly didn’t look poor with my clean new clothes.

Oh, I see. Wait here.

He approached the ticket booth and spoke to the man taking money, nodding his head in my direction. To my surprise, the man in the booth handed him a token without taking a penny from him.

He came back to me, holding out the token. Here. Go in, get the other token, and bring it back to me so I can return it to him. A swap.

I smiled. It would have been easy for him to just buy another token, but it was smart the way he thought of something better. I let myself through the turnstile, found my original token poised on the very edge of the platform, and brought it to him. Thank you. I don’t know what to say.

You could tell me your name, he said, but not in a way that made me feel like he might be dangerous.

I’m Lillian Lorraine.

Gene’s my name. Gene Buck. He put his hand out and I shook it. If I wanted to find you again, how’d I do that?

Once or twice young men had come calling for me in Philadelphia with big bouquets of flowers. Mother always took the flowers and turned them away at the door, her excuse that I was too young to be courting. New York was different, though. I managed it so Mother wasn’t always around. I’ll be on the corner of Thirty-Eighth and Third tomorrow at noon.

I’ll buy you lunch! Oh, here’s my card.

He pulled a card out of his breast pocket and I brushed a piece of pocket lint off it as I took it from him. Thanks! A train screeched to a stop behind me. I’d better go. Thank you again.

I glanced out the window as the train pulled away and saw Gene still standing there, staring in my direction.

Of course I didn’t mention Gene to my mother. Funny. Of all the men I ever made friends with, he turned out to be just about the kindest, and wouldn’t’ve hurt a fly. His card said he was a lyricist and a playwright, and I thought maybe he’d be useful, maybe know the right people to get me on stage. I just needed that start, I was sure, and the rest would take care of itself. Another part of me was curious. He wasn’t a bad looking fellow and I could tell he liked me. I was still so young then. What I didn’t know could’ve filled all of New York Harbor.

The next day was glorious. June is my favorite month in New York. Everything is still fresh, green, and warm, and the horse manure in the streets hasn’t started to smell too bad. It occurred to me that Gene might not show up, so when I left my sitting at Beckwith’s studio, I walked out without expecting anything and turned west toward Fifth Avenue where I could catch a trolley north and walk across the park.

Hello there! The call came from the opposite corner of the