15 thoughts on “TBT: The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955)

  1. I haven’t seen the movie, though I do have a book on the subject. It’s part of Rick Geary’s Treasury of XX Murders series, under the title “The Madison Square Tragedy.” I like how it follows Ms. Nesbit’s life after the trial, her struggles as a single mom, and her eldery passion as a sculptor.

    Obsolete Oddity on YouTube also has a decent video about Ms. Nesbit’s early life and the crime.

  2. I watched the movie as a kid (on tv). Never saw it in color, now must look it up. The swing dress– as I remember (vaguely) lingerie was pleated in the 50s. So, it was to give the illusion of bedware?

  3. Poor Evelyn. White certainly victimized her, Harry Thaw was right about that much, too bad he was mad as a hatter. She doesn’t seem to have had much luck with men.

  4. There is an excellent book about Evelyn Nesbit called ” American Eve” by Paula Uruburu. It looks at her life, from her childhood in Pennsylvania through the murder of Stanford White and the subsequent trial of Harry Thaw. I like the movie, but after having read this book, I kept yelling at the screen, ” That didn’t happen, etc.” :)

    1. Am in the middle of watching ” Land of the Pharaohs”. It’s a Joan Collins film festival! LMAO with these awful costumes, not to mention Joan Collins in brownface. I swear the Pharaoh was wearing pleather in at least one scene.

  5. I haven’t seen the movie although I think I read about it one of Joan Collins’s memoirs. I’ve been obsessed with the story for years. I must have 5 or 6 books on the subject including one about Winston Churchill’s cousin, William Travers Jerome, who was the New York district attorney at the time of the case. The hotel where Evelyn and her mother lived still exists but the building that contained White’s studio collapsed a few years ago. I have to say the costumes are typical Hollywood of the 1950’s, just period enough but not really.

  6. The heck?! I just listened to a podcast about yesterday and discovered this movie’s existence. Weird coincidence.

  7. Thers is a great graphic novel on the subject, Eve Sur la Balançoire ( don’t know the English title) that shows that her mother pimped her to artists then to White, who raped her and whose relationship with her was very squicky ( all with the permission of Mama Dearest). DOes the movie mentions her love story with John Barrymore, who genuinely loved her and asked for her hand?

  8. P.S. Joan Collins’s greatest performances were as the sexy, but wicked, stepmother AND the unpleasant, and wicked, witch in Faerie Tale Theatre’s “Hansel and Gretel.” (She clearly relished being the witch.)

    Has FF ever looked at Faerie Tale Theatre’s costuming? I like the different visual styles: Beardsley-inspired for “The Princess and the Pea,” more Rackham and Cocteau in “Beauty and the Beast.”

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