Evelyn Nesbit Was at the Center of a 120-Year-Old Murder That Still Influences Pop Culture Today

The public has always been obsessed with the life of a showgirl, especially when she's at the center of a deadly feud.  

Evelyn Nesbit was a teenage sensation at the turn of the 20th century after she arrived in New York City and was almost immediately spotted by an artist who wanted her to model. She was only 14 years old when she began modeling but widely considered so beautiful that many artists wanted to capture her image. She became the face of ideal femininity in the wake of the Gilded Age, one of the original "it girls." Vanity Fair put her on a list of influential socialites that also included Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner, and her image is still used today. She eventually became a chorus girl then actress on Broadway.

Nesbit gained a reputation as a seductress, but the truth was that much of her life was controlled by two troubled men: famous Manhattan architect Stanford White and millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw. White, who was married and in his late 40s when he became fixated on Nesbit, bankrolled her lifestyle and weaseled himself into the role of a twisted father figure, which enraged Thaw. 

Thaw, a man with a history of mental illness and drug addiction, already had an outsized hatred of White and was determined to wrestle Nesbit away from him. Thaw abused and manipulated Nesbit, isolating her from her widowed mother and notoriously hitting her with a whip—after she told him about White drugging and sexually assaulting her as a teen and then having what she described as an affair.

Nevertheless, Thaw married Nesbit in 1905, and in 1906, they went to a performance at a theater White had designed, the second (though not current) Madison Square Garden. During the finale, Thaw shot White through the eye from only about two feet away. 

Throughout two trials, which included Nesbit's harrowing testimony of her assault by White, the press was glued to the story, and Nesbit cemented herself as an unforgettable complex and tragic figure. She and Thaw eventually divorced, and she lived a comparatively quiet life until her death in 1967 aged 82.

Nesbit was a child who was forced to grow up too fast, which makes it ironic that Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery clipped a magazine photo of Nesbit's face to use as the inspiration for her children's book heroine. Anne Shirley is an 11-year-old orphan who adjusts to her new, whimsical life after being adopted by two siblings, and Montgomery, not knowing about the murder trial and Nesbit's testimony, saw the photo as a reminder of the character's "youthful idealism and spirituality."

Joan Collins plays Nesbit in this fictionalized retelling of the murder, beginning with White noticing Nesbit's beauty and ending with Nesbit moving on post-trial. The title refers to a red velvet swing, adorned in vines, that occupied one of the rooms in White's home and was apparently used for seduction purposes. Even though the still-living Nesbit was paid for this version of her story, the film downplays many of the worst parts, including her assaults and abuse, and it was even panned at the time of its release. The New York Times said, "Outside of the brightly decorative and rococo settings and costumes, there is practically nothing to warrant attention in The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing."

Nesbit's story was borrowed for Ragtime, the historical fiction novel by E.L. Doctorow, which was later turned into a film and then a Broadway musical. It blends fictional characters with historical figures, including Nesbit, Thaw and White, along with Harry Houdini, J.P. Morgan, Henry Ford and Booker T. Washington. Nesbit even encounters anarchist Emma Goldman, who tries to teach her to shed her reliance on men and sings a song called "The Crime of the Century." Elizabeth McGovern played Nesbit in the 1981 film, which also starred Mandy Patinkin, James Cagney, Brad Dourif, Mary Steenburgen and Jeff Daniels in his film debut.

Nesbit's story has been told in many books, but Gilded Age expert Paula Uruburu's exhaustive 2008 biography contextualizes her, reframes her "seductress" status and gives her a voice, thanks to Nesbit's own diaries and letters. In an interview on the show American Experience, Uruburu said much of the public saw Thaw as a hero, mostly thanks to his mother paying for positive press. "Americans watched it play out like a Victorian melodrama, with good triumphing over evil," she said. 

The character of Gillian Darmody, played by Gretchen Mol, was reportedly loosely based on Nesbit, though TV's Boardwalk Empire is set in 1920s Prohibition-era Atlantic City, N.J. Steve Buscemi stars as Nucky Thompson, a powerful, corrupt political figure, mob associate and bootlegger. Darmody is an old friend of his, and her son, Jimmy (Michael Pitt), is Nucky's former protégé. The story goes that Darmody was raped at the age of 12 and became pregnant with Jimmy, then became a showgirl with a parade of admirers but little to no understanding of how love or relationships work. It's not the kindest interpretation of Nesbit, but it is sympathetic to how much of her life was not in her control.