I was researching something or another the other day when I ran across a 1982 story in the NY Times about Bette Davis. She mentioned in it that she had posed nude for a statue when she was 18 and she knew it was in Boston somewhere.
She couldn't remember what it was called, nor the name of the sculptor, but it was a fountain piece.
I did the math.
Davis was born in 1908, which means the piece had to have been done in 1926-ish.
My instant response was "It must be the piece they took out of the Public Garden when the Beacon Hills mothers voiced a complaint to the city fathers."
That piece was done by one of my favorite early 20th century sculptors, Anna Coleman Ladd.
So I cracked open my archives and started hunting the photocopies until I came across the news article I was looking for.
"Nude Bronze Out of Garden- Five Figures in "Wind and Spray" too Revealing for Children to See, so Ban Order Comes." The headline blared out the news, and the picture of a dancing girl could have been Bette.
(Picture from libimages.wolfsonian.org)Today, I continued my search.
I ran across a 1983 article from the Wilmington Star-Bulletin which said that the editor of Playboy, which had published her initial interview, sent the star a picture of that very fountain.
Davis fingered it as the one she was talking about! I was thrilled at my detective powers.
But wait!
Something, I thought sadly, didn't match up.
I knew that the piece had originally been shown at the San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the Palace of Fine Arts.
The year? 1915.
Either Bette's memory was faulty, or she was the most mature looking seven year old I'd ever seen.
Alas for me for not hitting it and alas for Bette for not remembering it. So, somewhere out there in the world of bronze, a nude Bette Davis cavorts in Boston.
No comments:
Post a Comment