BEACH, Amy Marcy Cheney Foremost Female Composer (c) By Polly Guerin

There are children who come into the world with a talent so extraordinary at such an early age that they are recognized as a child prodigy. Such is the amazing case of Amy Marcy Cheney, the American composer and pianist, who was immensely talented and largely self-taught. Imagine the wonder of it all. She was able to sing forty tunes accurately by age one and by age two she could improvise a countermelody to any melody her mother sang. As young as she was the seeds of determination to succeed took shape and later in life she developed a significant performing career. She taught herself to read at age three, began composing simple waltzes at the age of four and performed publicly at age seven. Many talented prodigies fizzle out when they mature but not Amy Marcy Cheney. She became the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music and composed copiously throughout her life. Amy March Cheney (Amy Beach) remains one of the foremost female composers of her time. THE FLEDGLING ARTIST Amy was born in Henniker, New Hampshire September 5, 1867 into a distinguished New England family that nurtured the precocious child’s talent. She began formal piano lessons with her mother at the age of six, and a year later started giving public recitals, playing works by Handel, Beethoven, Chopin and her own pieces. Inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem,”The Rainy Day,” the young composer at thirteen wrote her first published song. She was immensely talented and largely self-taught and during her lifetime she composed over 100 songs including the Three Browning Songs, OP. 44. In particular the delightful song “The Year’s at the Spring” proved enduringly popular. FORMAL STUDIES With such a precocious child further musical training was paramount to her development. In 1875, Amy’s family moved to Boston, where they were advised to enter her into a European conservatory. Because her parents could not afford to send her abroad she received local training in Boston, but was primarily self-taught learning orchestration from a treatise by Berlioz and counterpoint by writing out figures from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Prepared as she was beyond her years, in 1883, at age sixteen, she made her professional debut as a pianist. Later she became a soloist with the Boston Sympathy Orchestra. BECOMING MRS. H.H.A.BEACH At eighteen, Amy could almost certainly have made a brilliant career merely as a concert pianist, but she married Dr. Henry Harris Aubrey Beach, a prominent Boston physician who was 25 years her senior and from then on most of her compositions and performances, were under the name Mrs. H.H.A. Beach. Much to his credit and influence he encouraged her to limit public appearances and concentrate instead on composition (she later returned to the platform following his death in 1910). Her first major success was the mass in E-flat major, which was performed by the Handel and Haydn Society in 1892. Finding inspiration in Romanticism and the European folk music tradition of her New England ancestors, she composed copiously including Gaelic Symphony in E Minor, OP. 32 in which she turned to the Celtic folk tradition which incorporates Irish melodies. It was the first symphony by an American composer to gather significant attention in Europe. Beach composed the Jubilate for the Women’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exhibition, held in Chicago in 1893. AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN After Dr. Beach’s death Mrs. Beach resumed her career as a performer, changed her professional name to Amy Beach and embarked on a three year tour of Europe. She returned to the United States in 1914 later moved to New York which she became the virtual composer-in-residence at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church. She wrote most of her later works while visiting the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire including her two famous piano pieces, “The Hermit Thrush at Eve and “The Hermit Thrust at Morning.” When she died of heart failure in 1944, she left the rights to her music to the MacDowell Colony. Amy Beach’s output was prolific and covered all the major genres. Piano Concerto, OP. 45, for example, is a large-scale bravura masterpiece in the manner of contemporary late-Romantic concertos. Three of the four movements are based on material from Beach’s own songs. Amy Beach used her status as the pre-eminent American woman composer to further the careers of young musicians, serving as leader of several organizations, including the Society of American Women Composers as its first president. In Boston her name was added to the famous Hatch Shell and is the only woman composer on that granite wall. She received numerous honors and was inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio on April 24, 1999.

HOLT, Winifred and Edith, LIGHTING THE WAY (c) by Polly Guerin

When you are the daughters of the renowned publisher, Henry Holt, the Misses Winifred and Edith Holt might just as well have carried on as any proper heiress was expected to and lead a life of social pleasure. However, the Holt sisters were of that fine breed of American women that break down barriers and forge ahead as women determined to succeed in making the world a better place for people without sight. In the 1900s the problem of helping the blind in New York City was long in waiting for an intelligent solution but no program had been established. The pioneering Holt sisters, however, take their rightful place as the founders who facilitated that solution. Their humble goal became the Lighthouse International, an organization recognized for its pioneering work in vision, rehabilitation services, education, research and advocacy which enabled people of all ages who are blind or partially sighted to lead independent and productive lives.
A SERENDIPITOUS EVENT
The custom of the day for taking the ‘grand tour’ was on the Holt sisters’ agenda. During a concert in Florence, Italy, Winifred noticed a group of blind school children in the audience who were evidently enthralled with the music. Intrigued by their participation she investigated further and discovered that a free ticket program enabled the children to attend the concert. Inspired by such a simple solution to bring pleasure to blind individuals when the Holt sister returned home they established the Lighthouse Free Ticket Bureau in 1903. Their single thought was that like the Florence ticket service they might relieve the somber lives of the blind by procuring tickets from entertainment managers or their own friend’s tickets for concerts and operas and theaters. The ticket service went on for some time, but the sisters also became increasingly aware of the world of adults who were blind and their greater purpose that was unfolding.
FOUNDING THE FIRST LIGHTHOUSE
The Holt sisters pooled their resources and borrowed $400 from their dress allowances, which was a considerable sum at the time. The visionary sisters personally gave over their family brownstone at 44 East 78th to the work for the blind, installing clerks, stenographers, and other helpers for the larger work in their hands for all those in need. Their home became a hub of workers engaged in advancing the interests and education of the blind in many ways. In order to facilitate the program of training and educating the blind the sisters themselves studied the blind alphabet with blindfolded eyes in order to understand the difficulties of learning the various demands on blind persons to perform tasks. The blind men and women were given work to do and how to do it. Women were trained to create handcraft items. If a seamstress had lost her sight she was shown how to thread a needle and how to use a studded tape. The blind showed a remarkable ability with the typewriter and other pursuits, for which they are trained before they are gainfully employed. A workshop for blind men was established at 147 E. 42nd Street, where chairs were caned and brooms were made for house and factory use and other marketable items.
LEGISLATION AT LAST
The Lighthouse organized the first census of people who were blind in New York State resulting in the astonishing number totaling nearly 10,000 cases. Furthering the sisters’ research, after many efforts, in 1904 a legislative commission was formed to investigate the conditions of the blind in New York State and an appropriation of $5,000 was secured from the State for the collecting of all the data concerning the blind. Miss Edith Holt was appointed chief to head up the commission for gathering this important information. Winifred Holt also participated in founding the New York State Commission for the Blind and Visually Handicapped.
THE LIGHTHOUSE INCORPORATES
From this early seed, in 1906 the Lighthouse was officially incorporated as The New York Association for the Blind, Inc. Home teaching and instruction began, marking the first community-based direct service—the forerunner of today’s professional vision rehabilitation services. It was a fortuitous beginning and many programs were staffed by teachers who were blind. In 1907 Winifred Holt personally traveled to Albany to draft a bill making the use of a medical measure at birth mandatory to prevent “ophthalmia neonatorum.” She also established the first lay committee to address blindness prevention. In 1988 The Lighthouse Inc. became the Lighthouse International, in recognition of its global reach---and outreach---on behalf of 180 million people who are visually impaired worldwide.
THE HOLT SISTERS LEAVE A LEGACY OF PHILANTHROPY THROUGH ACTION AND PERSEVERANCE. FOLLOWING IN THEIR LEAD THE LIGHTHOUSE TODAY CONTINUES TO OFFER NEW AND INNOVATIVE WAYS TO HELP PEOPLE OVERCOME THE CHALLENGES OF VISION LOSS AND TO LEAD PRODUCTIVE, ACTIVE AND INDEPENDENT LIVES.

Visit http://www.lighthouse.org/abouthistory/ Learn more about The Lighthouse.

HORNE, LENA Elegant Chanteuse (c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Lena Horne: I never dreamt that I would meet you, the elegant chanteuse-entertainer, on the stage of Paramount Studios in Hollywood. But there I was a fledgling journalist invited to watch a rehearsal dance routine as Ms. Horne glided across the limelight like a glorious bird in flight, a backup team of men following in formation. Her vitality and star presence dominated the scene as it did in so many of her performances. I especially treasure this encounter and remember that her signature song was Stormy Weather and indeed she did weather many stormy race-related situations but remains one of the most respected, talented and celebrated performers of all time. A woman of great beauty and commanding stage presence, she performed in nightclubs, concert halls, movies and on radio and television. In the hallowed halls of celebrity Lena Horne is known as one of the most popular African American entertainers of the twentieth century.
DISADVANTAGES OF RACE
It is fitting to write about Ms. Horne during Black History Month and to remember that there were prevailing racial attitudes during the time when Lena was just starting her career yet she was a woman determined to succeed and forged ahead holding her head up high not only for herself but for her race. In Brian Lanker’s book, “I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed the World” she is quoted, “My own people didn’t’ see me as a performer because they were busy trying to make a living and feed themselves Until I got to cafe society in the ‘40s, I didn’t even have a black audience and then it was mixed. I was always battling the system to try to get to be with my people. Finally, I wouldn’t work for places that kept us out…it was a damn fight everywhere I was, every place I worked, in New York, in Hollywood, all over the World.”
SEGREGATION DILEMMA
Ms. Horne, in her own refined way, was a staunch fighter in making great changes in society that paved the way for anti-segregation. In WWII Italy, for example, she was scheduled to make an appearance before the troops, but she refused to appear before a racially segregated US Army audience. The plan was to have one show for the white troops and another show solely for black troops. Nothing doing for Ms. Horne, this African American woman, determined to succeed, stood her ground and insisted on performing for mixed audiences. She won the argument and put on a show for a mixed audience consisting of black US soldiers and white German POWs.
CONQUERING STEREOTYPES
While at MGM, Ms. Horne’s roles were shot so that they could be cut easily from the film. That was because MGM feared audiences of the day, especially in the South, would not accept a beautiful black woman in romantic, non-menial roles. Many in the show business believed that this was the main reason that she lost out on playing the mulatto “Julie” in MGMs remake of Show Boat in 1951. However, she had already appeared in the Show Boat segment of Till the Clouds Roll By (1946) in which she appeared as “Julie” singing “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” again shot in such a way so that it could easily be edited out of the film. Because of her association with Paul Robeson and her progressive political beliefs Lena was branded a “Communist sympathizer,” which led to her to being blacklisted in the 1950s. Robeson had made her realize that African American people were going to unify and she felt that she needed to be part of that movement. From that point onward, Lena Horne became a significant voice in the struggle for equality and justice for African Americans in the United States.
LENA’S EARLY YEARS
The seeds of entertainment were inbred in Lena Mary Calhoun Horne’s genes. She was born on June 30, 1917 in Brooklyn New York. Her mother, Edna, was an actress with an African American theater troupe and traveled extensively. Lena was born on June 30, 1917 and when her parent divorced she was raised mainly by her grandparents. Later when her mother took her on the road she experienced the first pangs of segregation when she attended various small-town segregated schools in the South. From an early age Lena dreamed of becoming a performer, much against her educated, middle class family. Lena, however, was a young woman determined to succeed against all odds and at age sixteen she was hired in the chorus at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club.
PREPARING FOR STARDOM
Lena took voice lessons and landed in an all-black Broadway show, Dance With Your God. From then on she was jet propelled ahead and in 1936 she performed as a ‘single’ in a variety of New York City nightclubs. Romance tickled the ivories and the beautiful and talented songstress married Louis Jones, a minor politician, by whom she had a daughter, Gail, and a son, Edwin. They divorced and she pressed on to join the great white swing band, Charlie Barnet Orchestra. However, as the group’s only black member she suffered many humiliations of racial prejudice, especially from hotels and restaurants that catered exclusively to whites.
CIRCUMVENTING PREJUDICE
Despite all the early prejudice and race segregation during the 1940s Lena Horne rose to heights of celebrity few African American women at the time could claim. Her singing roles in movies established her as the highest-paid African American entertainer in the United States. In 1981, Lena had her greatest triumph, a Broadway show called Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music and in 1991 she was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Lena Horne was an amazing woman determined to succeed. With pride of her heritage, and her innate elegance, grace and dignity she helped to improve the status of African Americans in the United States and particularly in the performing arts. She died May 9, 2010 leaving a profound legacy that has enriched the lives of her vast audience of admirers.

GUGGENHEIM, PEGGY ART COLLECTOR EXTRAORDINAIRE (c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Peggy: I first saw your extraordinary art collection at the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni on the Grand Canal in Venice when I took twenty college students from the Fashion Institute of Technology on a whirlwind fashion tour several years ago. In an attempt to include some cultural venues to the fashion expedition I took the students to Venice to view your magnificent collection of modern art. They were in awe of the art works as well as your sculptures in the garden, but more than that your presence, though absent, was felt deeply and inspired their vivid reports back to the college. Your name is synonymous with the Guggenheim Museum yet you carved out a life determined to succeed as an independent art collector who bought art, not as an investment, but primarily because you loved them.
THE HEIRESS AND ART
It certainly makes a big difference if you have enormous wealth to support purchasing art, sometimes even picking up works of art even if they didn’t sell. However, Peggy was unique and became a true patron of the arts discovering among modern artists Jackson Pollock when he was working as a humble carpenter in the Solomon Guggenheim museum. Peggy was a unique woman, born in 1898 to a wealthy New York City family. Her lineage gave her certain advantages. Peggy’s father was Benjamin Guggenheim and she was the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who established the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. However, her education in modern art did not begin until 1920 when she inherited from her father, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, a trust fund with an income of $22.500 a year. With her inheritance Peggy Guggenheim could have chosen to play the role of a socialite among New York’s tony social set, but she became something more than that: an avid art collector who safeguarded modern art from obscurity.
THE AVANT-GARDE CONNECTION
With such financial resources Peggy realized her desire to carve out a life of her own. When Peggy was twenty-two, she traveled to Europe and discovered the literary and art worlds in Paris and lived there on and off for some twenty years returning to New York sporadically. She made Paris her home base and quickly immersed herself in the arty circles. Peggy became celebrated not only as a patron and collector of modern art, but also for her love affairs with important artists including Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock and Samuel Beckett. A dedicated collector she acquired Constantin Brancusi’s “Bird in Space and works by the abstract painter Robert Delaunay. In 1938 she opened the gallery Guggenheim Jeune in London and Marcel Duchamp was her chief advisor showing the first one man show for Wassily Kandinsky, the abstract expressionist, and Yves Tanguy, the surrealist painter’s work, Le Soleil dans son ecrin (The Sun in a casket) 1937. In 1942 on the advice of the surrealist painter Max Ernst and the poet Andre Breton she continued to add to her collection and opened the gallery Art of This Century in New York. Venice beckoned in 1949 and she moved into the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, where she installed her remarkable collection of modern art.
LOVE AFFAIRS AND FAMILY
Peggy coveted both art and lovers and became notorious for her overt love affairs, such was her free spirit. However, she did sandwich in several marriages. On one of her visits to New York when visiting a gallery owned by a cousin, Harold Loeb, she met Laurence Vail, a Dada sculptor and writer who was part of the avant-garde intelligentsia in Greenwich Village. They married two years later and had two children, Michael Sindbad and Pegeen Vail Guggenheim. The marriage ended and in 1928 she met and formed a relationship with the English intellectual John Holms, never a success he was a man who suffered from writer’s block. They engaged in a tempestuous alliance that was riddled with drunken harangues and boisterous rows. Her second husband was Max Ernst, in 1941. Another liaison was with Kenneth McPherson with whom she felt comforted and safe, and they eventually became the best of friends. Throughout her days in Venice Peggy was always surrounded by her beloved Lhasa terriers and when she died she was interred in the sculpture garden of her home next to her beloved dogs inside the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, the Palazzo Venier dei Leoni.
PEGGY GUGGENHEIM’S MODERN ART COLLECTION IS HER MOST DURABLE ACHIEVEMENT NOT ONLY AS A PATRON, BUT AS A PHILANTHROPIST SHE HELPED ARTISTS AND FOUNDED A PUBLIC MUSEUM.

RUBINSTEIN, HELENA...QUEEN OF BEAUTY(c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Helena: Aladdin may have had his lamp, but you had a magical elixir, a simple face cream that eventually made you one of the world’s richest women. Determined to succeed with little else at first but your milky complexion and pots of gold you became a legendary beauty authority, industrial pioneer, patron of the arts and philanthropist. Who would have imagined that Chaja Rubinstein (later adapting the first name Helena), the eldest of eight children born December 25, 1870 to Augusta and Horace Rubinstein in Cracow, Poland would shape the way generations of women see themselves. Like loyal subjects women bowed at your beauty throne to acquire the cream that made the Helena Rubinstein Empire a reality.
AUSTRALIAN OPPORTUNITY
At the age of eighteen, Helena immigrated to Australia in 1902 arriving with no money and little English. However, Helena’s milky complexion and stylish clothes did not go unnoticed by the Melbourne ladies. She noticed that the Australian women had rough reddish faces that required attention. At a time when career opportunities for women were virtually nonexistent Helena Rubinstein created a successful business enterprise. She opened a modest shop in Melbourne where she dispensed her “Crème Valaze,” supposedly including herbs imported “from the Carpathian Mountains”. Costing ten pence and selling for six shillings, it walked off the shelves as fast as she could fill the pots.
THE SECRET INGREDIENT
Fortunately a key ingredient for the beauty cream was readily on hand. Coleraine, in Western Victoria, might not have seemed the likely place to find the gold for Helena’s cream, but the secret ingredient came from sheep, some 75 million merinos that produced the finest wool, secreting abundant grease in the process. To disguise the ship oil’s pungent pong, Rubinstein experimented with lavender, pine bark and water lilies. Helena’s cream was an enormous success and she could soon afford to open a salon in fashionable Collins Street, selling glamour as a science to clients whose skin was ‘diagnosed’ and a suitable treatment prescribed.
A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS ENTERPRISE
Helena knew that women craved the attention and coveted the beauty results of her Crème Valaze. So overwhelmingly was her success that she went to London in 1902 and financed a Salon de Beaute Valaze, to Paris in 1906, and to New York in 1912. As such, Helena formed one of the world’s first cosmetic companies. Remember, this was accomplished at a time when women could not obtain bank loans, so the money was her own. Helena was a brilliant innovator in developing her business so that it required beauty routines and women to dispense advice. She trained sales people to teach women skin care and inaugurated a “Day of Beauty” in her salons, which became an instant success.
GETTING PERSONAL
In 1937 after a shaky marriage she divorced her husband Edward William Titus in London. They had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus and Horace Titus. Eager to pursue a regal title to call her own in 1938 she married the self-proclaimed Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, a Georgian royal twenty-three years her junior, which enabled her to pass herself off as Helena Princess Gourielli. Always alert to market trends Madame developed a line of male cosmetics which bore his name. Author, Ruth Brandon relates in her book, “Ugly Beauty,” that the war also boosted Rubinstein’s business. Because “glamour was recognized as being of the greatest psychological importance” in the Allied countries, cosmetics sales spiked and Rubinstein’s company’s profits nearly doubled between 1941 and 1942 alone. During the same time Madame also sold the United States Army kits of toiletries for every G. I. deployed in the invasion of North Africa; sunscreen and camouflage makeup, not to mention deodorant and cologne which became lucrative new additions to her product line.
HELENA RUBINSTEIN FOUNDATION
As Helena Rubinstein’s business grew, so did her interest in the arts and philanthropy. Later in life she used her enormous wealth to support charitable institutions in the fields of education, art and health. She was a friend and patron of many artists and also accumulated significant collections of African sculpture, modern paintings, Oriental and Oceanic art and Egyptian antiquities. In 1953 she created the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, which provided the necessary funds to organizations concerned with health, medical research and rehabilitation. The Foundation also supported and awarded scholarships to Israelis. In 1959, she went to Moscow where she officially represented the cosmetic industry in the United States at the American National Exhibition. She died April 1, 1965, aged 94.
One of Rubinstein’s numerous mantras is: “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” Some say that Helena Rubinstein was a ruthless entrepreneur, but to a multitude of women she was “The Queen of Beauty.”

SHAW, FLORA A VISIONARY JOURNALIST (c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Flora: You carved a career in journalism at a time when few women ventured into the world let alone shaped public policy. A woman determined to succeed despite all odds you were in the right place at the right time in England and began your career in journalism in 1886. Flora was sent by the Manchester Guardian newspaper as the only woman reporter to cover the Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels. Her influential journalism furthered a brilliant career. In 1892, The Times sent her to Southern Africa and thus began an incredible journey. The positive benefits of the British Empire infused in her writings led the way in publicizing favorable attitudes about British imperialism. Flora Shaw became one of the greatest journalists of her time, specializing in politics and economics, but she is also known for naming Nigeria.
A FREE WOMAN
As a free woman, unencumbered by husband or family, Flora decided to use her writing ability to shape political policy. For fifteen years she worked as a highly regarded political journalist and foreign correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette and The Manchester Guardian. She started to write for the London Times under the name F. Shaw trying to disguise the fact that she was a woman. Later she was so highly regarded that she wrote openly as Flora Shaw. She penned more than 500 articles on economic and political issues in British colonies that supported British expansion, by military force if necessary. Shaw was not timid about her point of view. She did not merely report what leading statesmen had to say about imperialism, she shaped the ways that politicians used language to garner support for the imperialist cause. Had she been a man, she was told by the Times, she would have been made their colonial editor.
NAMING NIGERIA
In an essay, which first appeared in The Times on January 8, 1897, Flora Shaw, the advocate for imperialism, suggested the name “Nigeria” for the British Protectorate on the Niger River. She thought that the official title, “Royal Niger Company Territories” was too long and coined “Nigeria” in preference to such terms as “Central Sudan” that was associated with the area. Her argument pushed the name chance through saying, “The name Nigeria applying to no other part of Africa may without offense to any neighbors be accepted as coextensive with the territories over which the Royal Niger Company has extended British influence, and may serve to differentiate them equally from the colonies of Laos and the Niger Protectorate on the coast and from the French territories of the Upper Niger.”
THE SEEDS OF IMPERIALISM
Imperialism played a role in the Shaw’s family, even before Flora was born in 1852, in Woolwich, England. Her mother’s father was the governor of Mauritius, A French Colonial Island in the Indian Ocean. The daughter of an English father, Captain George Shaw and a French mother, Marie Desfontaines, Flora’s talent for writing emerged early. When she was 17 she met writer John Ruskin who adopted Shaw as a protégée and with his guidance, she published her first children’s story, Castle Blair which was based on her own Anglo-Irish childhood experiences. Between 1876 and 1886 she wrote four other novels as well as a history of Australia for children. Ruskin also introduced her to historian Thomas Carlyle who introduced her to the ideals that would shape her life and career.
A SOLITARY LIFE
Flora became an extremely successful career woman. Like modern women today, she did not marry until she had established a name for herself, thus freeing herself from the restraints of marital duty that were obligatory for white, middle-class, 19th century women. Although Flora had a determined sense of individualism and independence she apparently did not extend that philosophy to other women. Case in point, sadly she did not believe that other women ought to act independently of their fathers and husbands as she did and refused to support woman suffrage, or the right of women to vote.
DAME OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE
When Flora was 50 years old she married Sir Frederick Lugard, a high commissioner of Northern Nigeria, a British colony in West Africa. As a governor’s wife she continued to support the imperialism cause by promoting her husband’s career and working with philanthropic organizations, such as the Royal Society of Art. Flora Shaw Lugard’s work with refugees during World War I earned her the title Dame of the British Empire.
Dame Flora Louisa Shaw, Lady Lugard: Despite her fame, Flora remained modest saying, “To have helped to rouse the British public to a sense of Imperial responsibility and an ideal of Imperial greatness…to have prevented the Dutch from taking South Africa, to have directed the flow of capital and immigration to Canada…are all matters that I am proud and glad to have had my part in.”

Gardiner, Muriel "The Real Heroine" (c) By Polly Guerin

Dear Muriel Morris Gardiner Buttinger: Who was the real “Julia?” That is the question. When the 1977 movie “Julia,” came out about a young heiress involved in the Austrian underground, in which American author Lillian Hellman claimed the story as her own, you were a woman determined to set the record straight and rightfully did so saying, “The film distorted history.” Muriel realized that the similarities between her wartime exploits and the Julia film version were remarkably similar. The release of the movie prompted Muriel to record her own story, “Code Name ‘Mary’: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground, which depicts her heroic role in war torn Europe in the 1930’s.

THE TRUTH BE TOLD

According to the documentary “The Real Julia,” Muriel related her wartime experiences in the Austrian Socialist party in Vienna to her lawyer, Wolf Schwawbacher and the speculation is that through Schwawbacher, who also was also Hellman’s lawyer, he was probably the source for Hellman’s story. Muriel also talked about the time she convinced a friend to smuggle a supply of American passports in her high-fashion fur hat, just as it happened in the movie, “Julia.” The similarities were remarkable and resulted in the controversy that challenged Hellman’s authenticity, as she was known in literary circles to invent heroic details about herself in her autobiographies. In the documentary Muriel set the record straight and declared that she had never met Lillian Hellman nor had Hellman ever smuggled anything to Muriel in her days with the underground. Muriel Gardiner declared that she was “The Real Julia.”

AN AMERICAN HEIRESS

The daughter of Edward Morris (the meat-packing magnate and president of the Morris & Company) and Helen Swift (a member of the family which owned Swift & Company) Muriel Morris was born on November 23, 1901 into a Chicago family of great social position. Although it gave her enormous wealth, privilege and opportunities Muriel was uncomfortable with her wealth and gave away money to the needy and gifts to friends. As a young heiress she became aware of the plight of the poor and developed a lifelong commitment to social and political reform which planted the seeds of philanthropy.

THE SEEDS OF SOCIAL JUSTICE

The seeds for social justice were forged when Muriel became a student at the University of Vienna Medical School in Vienna, Austria where she became an staunch activist. She later married Joseph Buttinger, leader of the Austrian Revolutionary Socialist movement. By 1934 Muriel became involved in anti-fascist activities and used her significant trust fund, and enormous courage to help Jews and others in danger by the Nazis, who would soon run Austria. Amidst great poverty and despair Muriel provided her home as a safe-house, smuggled false passports and provided money to help hundreds of Jews and political dissidents escape from Europe.

RETURNING TO THE UNITED STATES

When she graduated from medical school in 1938, she was forced out of Vienna by the Gestapo guards after writing that she was Jewish on her exit forms and a similar scene appears in the movie. However, during her sojourn in Europe she also forged a strong relationship with Anna Freud, daughter of the father of psychology, Sigmund Freud. When she returned to the United States Muriel continued in her role as benefactor and was active in aiding concentration camp refugees. She completed her medical internship and began work at the Trenton State hospital. She switched to psychoanalysis and worked for years as a therapist and adjunct professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick.
Muriel Morris Buttinger Gardiner’s exploits in the Austrian Socialist movement, the expulsion from medical school in Vienna, her enormous trust fund which aided Jews and dissidents, the transportation of passports, the subject of the fashionable fur hat—all this was Muriel’s own story and the basis for the movie, “Julia.”