Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs"... Dagmar and her perfume bottle...

I know I've told you about my identical twin sister Dagmar and of her constant mischief and reckless life as we grew up, right?... well, around 1920, she was going through a particularly envious streak. World War I had just ended, and both America and Europe were in the process of liberating their morals and mores! Women on both sides of the Atlantic were experiencing newfound freedoms, and it showed in their fashions, their homes, and in their adventures!

Dagmar in particular, never having been very constrained to begin with, now exhibited the most scandalous behavior, much to the shock of much of our family (although our deranged mother only egged her on to greater and greater antics!). Suffice it to say that Dagmar began working her way through some of the remaining royal houses of Europe and the crossover businesses in style and fashion. Various Princes, Dukes, and Counts in assorted mini-countries and kingdoms scattered throughout Central and Eastern Europe found themselves having to lend their names to the manufacture of luxury goods to stay afloat; fine automobiles, gourmet wines and champagnes, exclusive tins of imported caviar, and exotic fragrances at the most expensive department stores. A case in point was "Mes Courgettes Violettes"... a perfume bottled by the French couturier, Fernande "Fifi" La Flouncet. She commissioned the great designer, Josef Hoffman, to create a flask that would be both unforgettable and perceived as possibly obscene by the public... and here it is, with Dagmar as the model for the dauber. She had been skinny-dipping one night in the enormous swimming pool at Madame's estate, and a photograph by Georgia O'Keefe of her jumping from the balcony of her bedroom became the inspiration for womankind's headlong plunge into modernity!

Was it MY fault that the public always assumed it was ME that had been the model for the iconic bottle? Dagmar and I were, after all, identical twins... so I'd just blush and and cast my eyes downward all-a-flutter when asked by admiring dinner companions and party-goers. Why should I spoil their fun???...

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Sybil Bruncheon's HIT-OR-MISS Histories... Fascinating Inventions:

... Ah, yes... the famous Seatless Hysterium... invented by Hyrus Schnectum. A student of Sigmund Freud, he became obsessed with the idea of the "unsatisfied" female psychiatric patient and that "hysteria" was a completely curable condition if a woman was properly... "attended to". Indeed, the word hysteria originates from the Greek word for uterus, "hystera". The oldest record of hysteria dates back to 1900 B.C. when Egyptians recorded behavioral abnormalities in adult women on medical papyrus. The Egyptians attributed the behavioral disturbances to a "wandering uterus"—thus later dubbing the condition "hysteria". In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a variety of electrical devices were patented as both medical and home remedies for female disorders which a woman could use "in the privacy of her toilette"... but it was Schnectum who came up with this dual purpose excercise/sexercize "Seatless Hysterium". Suffice it to say, there was no seat, ok?... I guess we can let the smile on Mrs. Gladys Hobkins tell us everything we need to know. Schnectum's slogan for the Seatless Hysterium?... "Pedal! Pedal! Pedal your way to PLACID!!"...

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A New Sybil Bruncheon's "WHO'Z DAT?"... BRIGITTE HELM (March 17, 1906 - June 11, 1996)

Darlings! Mummie has made a decision! After reading dozens of posts and having hundreds of conversations with well-meaning folks who just don't know about the great CHARACTER actors who gave films the depth and genius that surrounded and supported the so-called "stars", I am going to post a regular, special entry called "SYBIL'S WHO'Z DAT?"....there'll be photos and a mini-bio, and the next time you see one of those familiar, fabulous faces that you just "can't quite place".......well, maybe these posts will help. Some of these actors worked more, had longer and broader careers, and ended up happier, more loved, and even wealthier than the "stars" that the public "worships". (I think there may be a metaphor in that! What do you think???). And speaking of “character” actors, Mummie is going to introduce everyone to the concept of a “character LEAD”!! ….and this person was one of the greatest stars overseas. She had the advantage of being both beautiful and very talented, and was unafraid of stretching herself to fully inhabit her roles. She’s Brigitte Helm (March 17th, 1906 – June 11th, 1996).

          Born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Germany, she was the daughter of a Prussian Army officer who died when she was a toddler. She grew to be a serious, idealistic boarding school student with plans to become an astronomer, but she appeared willingly enough in school plays to please her friends and mother. In fact, Helm regarded acting with Prussian disdain as an immoral occupation on its face and had no plans to pursue it as a career.

         Then her mother, who had no such notions, sent her daughter's photograph to the screenwriter, Thea von Harbou, the wife of Fritz Lang. Brigitte, who was just 17 when she was tricked into taking a screen test, was suddenly on her way to stardom. Lang cast her as the female lead in his early masterpiece, METROPOLIS (1924), then the most expensive German film ever made. She later became the most sought-after actress of the glory days of the German film industry, a tall blond beauty who starred in more than 35 movies and set directors against one another in the competition for her services. Ms. Helm was regarded as such a perfect embodiment of the era's ideal of cool sophistication that when she turned Josef von Sternberg down for the starring role in "Blue Angel," he had to settle for Marlene Dietrich. Yet for all the acclaim she received, Ms. Helm could never eclipse the role, or rather roles, in which the good Maria, an oppressed working girl, is transformed into an evil robotic doppelganger of herself in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."

        Even today, 90 years after it was released, METROPOLIS is not only a cult classic, it is regularly listed among the half-dozen most important films ever made. This is a tribute, to be sure, to Lang's grotesque science-fiction vision, and the array of fabulous special effects he used to bring it to the screen. The film depicts the world of 2006, a time, Lang envisioned, when a ruling class lives in decadent luxury in the lofty heights of skyscrapers linked by aerial railways, while beneath the streets slave-like workers toil in unbearable conditions to sustain their masters.

        But for all the steam and special effects, for many who have seen the movie in its various incarnations, including a tinted version and one accompanied by music, the most compelling lingering image is neither the towers above nor the hellish factories below. It is the startling transformation of Ms. Helm from an idealistic young woman into a monstrous robot and then to a barely clad creature performing a lascivious dance in a brothel and corrupting every man who sets his eyes on her. While he may not have been the sadist many of his actors made him out to be, director Fritz Lang was such a hard-driving perfectionist that Ms. Helm, who worked virtually every day for 18 months, often hanging upside down or standing in water up to her waist for hours at a time, found the experience excruciating.

After one torturous ordeal, when she wondered why a double could not have taken her place during the nine days it took to shoot a scene in which she is encased in a metallic robot shell, her face obscured, Lang haughtily claimed an auteur's creative sensibility. "I have to feel that you are inside the robot," he said. "I was able to see you even when I didn't." After the movie made her an overnight star, Ms. Helm, who had her own artistic standards, refused to make another movie with Lang. Helm was one of those stars that made a successful transition to sound, but refused to abandon Germany for Hollywood. METROPOLIS financially ruined UFA (Berlin’s major film studio, the Universum Film-Aktien Gesellschaft), but it made Brigitte Helm an overnight success. UFA gave her a ten-year contract and wanted to typecast her as a man-eating vamp: she twice had to play ALRAUNE (1928- the silent version, and again in 1930-the sound version). A science fiction horror story, Alraune is the legendary woman born of the seed of a hanged murderer artificially placed in the womb of a whore, who drives men to their deaths. But by 1929 she had already attempted to refuse all vamp roles. She took UFA to court and lost; the trial cost her a fortune and after that she acted mostly in order to pay off her debts.

In addition to many mediocre and sometimes downright bad films, the director G.W. Pabst gave her some great acting opportunities. In THE LOVES OF JEANNE NEY (1927) she plays a helpless blind woman who is seduced by a rogue. In CRISIS (1928), she portrays a spoilt woman of the world who from sheer boredom almost destroys her own life. They included L’ARGENT (1928), GLORIA (1931), THE BLUE DANUBE (1932), L’ANTLANTIDE (1932), and GOLD (1934)

In her films of the early 1930s Brigitte Helm became the embodiment of the affluent, modern woman. With her slim figure and austere pre-Raphaelite profile, she seems unapproachable, a model fashion-conscious woman, under whose ice-cold outer appearance criminal energies flicker. Ms. Helm was regarded as such a perfect embodiment of the era's ideal of cool sophistication that when she turned Josef von Sternberg down for the starring role in BLUE ANGEL (1930), he had to settle for Marlene Dietrich. Later on, Helm was considered for the title role in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935) before Elsa Lanchester was given the role.

Her role as the Hoschstaplerin ("The Deceiver") in DIE SCHONEN TAGE VON ARANJUEZ (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez) (1933) was reprised in 1935 by Marlene Dietrich in the film DESIRE. In the G.W. Pabst film L’ATLANTIDE (1932), Helm plays an opaque, static goddess, the mere sight of whom makes men crazy. Her power is not of this world, but incomprehensible, magical. This was Helm's last really great role, a legendary mysterious sphinx of the German cinema. Helm acted in 29 German, French and English films.

But just as suddenly as she had emerged, she disappeared again. At the height of her success, she had told one critic that her whole film career was a matter of indifference to her and that she would much rather be a housewife: to cook, bring up her children and look after her husband. After a few bad press reviews of her later films and a car accident, for which she was sentenced to a brief jail sentence, she withdrew into her private life. In 1935, disgusted with the Nazi takeover of the film industry, she abruptly quit, marrying an industrialist, Hugo von Kunheim, himself a Nazi opponent, and Jewish. Helm incurred the wrath of Nazi Germany for "race defilement" by marrying him. She withdrew from the cinema, and she and her family fled to Switzerland. From then on she never appeared on stage, film or on television, and she refused all invitations and turned down almost all requests for interviews. She lived the rest of her life quietly there in Switzerland, and died on June 11, 1996. She was 90 years old. She was survived by her four sons.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “A Summer's ending”...

...it was late in August, maybe almost Labor Day weekend, as a matter of fact. That Summer had been a famously hot one with hundreds of thousands of sweltering New Yorkers from the Bronx to the Lower East Side pouring out of the infernal subways into the blinding light and faintly stirring breezes of Coney Island's shore. In keeping with the "New Woman" of the Roaring 20s who could now smoke, drink hootch from a hip flask, ask a man to go dancing, and vote, young nubile lasses were now being hired to serve as Lifeguards on the shore. It was no longer considered unladylike for a girl to have a suntan, a strong toned body, and the physical capability to drag a man half-again as heavy as herself through pounding surf to safety, his desperate family, and cheering throngs!

To wear the special and provocatively lusty uniform of a Lady Lifeguard was considered both a badge of honor and a mark of shame depending on who was looking on... and that's why it was especially heartbreaking when, during a ladies-only smoking break, the entire party of the Secaucus Synchronized Senior Shallow-Splashers were swept out to sea... All in their 80s, the kindly old folks were picked up "as one" by a rogue wave, and delivered into the waiting maw of a riptide that swallowed them whole before the dumbfounded crowd staring onshore. A whole minute, (or was it more?) passed before the first choked scream rose from a stricken child clutching her rubber seahorse by the throat and pointing! Had she really seen her grandma and her grandma's funny-fishy friends disappear into the roiling green waves? Her young shriek was joined by one, then another, until finally the whole seashore howled with the grief, horror, and wrath of a thousand voices, all helpless, hopeless, and horrified that something so terrible could happen while the sun shone so cheerfully, and calliope music drifted from the midway. How? How could it be real??... and where were the lifeguards that had only an hour earlier been waving and smiling, watching over everyone, protective, almost proprietary about the souls entrusted to their care? Gone... all gone. Bathers and lifeguards... all gone. Giggling smokers snuggled under the old pier, and lost loved ones... gone.

But, even as the waves carelessly continued to brush across the sand, the weeks and months, and years began to wash the sharpness of that terrible day smooth. Like a bright red shard of broken glass speared in the sand, deadly even to look on, becomes smooth as the same sand and sea wash and tumble it, season after season. Finally, it lies like the perfect pebbles around it. Rounded and inviting. Only its scarlet red remains. And no one remembers the glinting edge of pain... just the late Summer sun… and the calliope music… and the whispering of the water on the sand...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "30 DAYS OF THANKSGIVING!".... and the first-runner-up is....

"Gee, Sally! I wish they'd made me Miss Turkey-In-The-Straw!...after all, I've had more ...um, experience!"..."

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Sybil Bruncheon’s “My Merry Memoirs”…. Chapter 113. “Pageants & Perfidy”…

             It was in the Summer of 1920 that the folks in Atlantic City decided that it might be fun to stage a “beauty contest” to entertain the crowds and stimulate even more business than was already pummeling the shore in that stifling heat wave. Names for the title were bounced around with a contest even proposed in the newspapers and prizes offered for the winning entry, and its two runners-up. The suggestions from the public ran the gamut from quite clever to imbecilic, but that was no surprise to Professor Hector Clapp of Rutgers University who was the chairman of the planning committee for the whole project. He was the head of the new psychiatry department at Rutgers and had experienced first-hand the potential lunacy of otherwise “normal people” when they were given free-reign to explore their “creative instincts”.

             It was just that particular phenomenon that occurred when they first advertised contestant interviews too. Ads in all the major papers, on girls’ college and ladies clubs bulletin boards, and on cards tucked into menus at nice restaurants and cafes for women lunching in the city inspired hundreds of auditions. What had been expected to take a couple of afternoons for the panel turned into an entire month of feverish all-day meetings with lines of ladies of all ages snaking around the block at 5th Avenue and East 50th Street where they converged on the offices of the Harrow’s Ladies Digest Magazine which was a major sponsor of the contest. The entire board of 14 ladies and gentlemen plus Professor Clapp decided that they would even have to split into five separate panels of three interviewers to process all the applicants in time before the Summer actually ended. The final tally of potential contestants?..... 1129 and that was only the ladies whose ages fell between 18 and 29, the preferred range. The actual range of ages that had come to enter was as young as 2 months of age (Millicent St. Peters whose mother felt she could model for baby food or inflatable tires) to 103 (Miss Gretel Sherbis of Passaic who, unmarried, had devoted her entire life to coaching girls’ soccer at the Betjemann Academy For Well-bred Ladies…. And raising oblong vegetables with her permanent companion Lucy Carnoff, a calligrapher of invitations to weddings, christenings, and funerals.)

            The panels worked around the clock, seven days a week, and finally narrowed the 1129 contestants down to a precious nineteen. They had come from all over the country, although they were mostly representative of the Northeast, particularly New England, New Jersey, and of course, New York. One girl had come from as far away as Louisiana, but her virtue was a cause for suspicions by some of the women on the committee, particularly Mrs. Edna Hatton who was heard to say that “Bayou Girls are used to heat, humidity, and harlotry”… and another girl had made her way from the Hawaiian Islands. Mrs. Hatton asked if she had a coconut brassiere and grass skirt in her overnight case, and then told her fellow judges that the girl was probably lying when she said “no”.

          The judges discussed what the girls should compete in in front of the audience…. cooking, housekeeping techniques, poetry recital, tasteful make-up application, making a dress, (both daywear and evening gown), composing a song dedicated to motherhood or modest wifely-ness, and of course, frosting a cake. But when the time allowed for just such a show was considered, it appeared that it would be longer than a 4H Country Fair… and this was going to be broadcast on that brand new invention sweeping the country, the domestically owned radio. Radio producers and sponsors emphasized that new audiences had only so much attention for non-musical programs unless they involved violent crime, scary monsters, repeated explosions, or barnyard sounds. Interestingly, Colonel Bangle’s Talent Time on Thursday nights usually guaranteed all those thrills and a great many more so the judges asked if they could pre-empt his time slot by merging their program with his and making him the Master of Ceremonies. Being a much celebrated Vaudevillian (and “a big hambone” according to Florenz Ziegfeld), he immediately accepted and had his Italian tailor construct a special set of white tie and tails in magenta and chartreuse paisley made for the show.

            The show was scheduled for August 26th, 1920, although many of the cotton candy cafes, hot honey-peanut parlors, and dunk-the-clown booths begged them to schedule it in early September to extend the length of the Summer business out on the boardwalk, but Mrs. Hatton and a phalanx of Presbyterians and educators made it clear that “nothing should interfere with the commencement of the school year beginning in a responsible manner in the Fall”…. In other words, any frivolities in September could be interpreted as an invitation to slothfulness, illiteracy, and even homosexuality, Pope-worship, and bad penmanship. August 26th was definite, and the Seagram’s Seaside Pleasure Palace was booked to hold the audience estimated at 2500…or more. The eighteen girls were booked into the adjoining Armbruster Breakers Hotel with assistants and chaperones to both help and “protect” them, and everything was set. Sponsors, technical crews, set builders, dressers, stagehands, vendors, caterers, and an entire orchestra were arranged for. Press boxes and much-desired “golden horseshoe seats” were snapped up immediately…the whole experiment had taken on a frantic and festive life of its own, and Professor Clapp, Mrs. Hatton, and the entire committee were both stunned and titillated in spite of any “modest reserve” that some of them might have espoused…

               One last thing remained to be determined; what should the contestants wear at the start of the evening as they entered the auditorium for the first time. Cotillion gowns, athletic team-wear, and even bathing bloomers were proposed but immediately voted down as too cumbersome, expensive, anti-climactic, or downright obscene. Finally, the idea of the girls costuming themselves as “maidenly virtues, admirable women in history, or things of femininity that a nice young lady might aspire to or have in her home” was proposed and accepted eagerly. They were given an entire week and a team of seamstresses to help them. This photo was taken just minutes before the girls were led out onstage before the cheering throngs. What a spectacle!...and what a wonderful beginning to the decade known as “The Roaring Twenties”…which ended up being about anything but maidenly virtue!

            Seen here in the front row (left to right),

1) Gigi Campbell in her charming Garden Poppy ensemble. Unfortunately, she became allergic to her own chapeau and spent most of the opening musical number sneezing and finally hacking up unappealing amounts of mucus into the embroidered handkerchief her grandmother had given her “for luck”!

2) Mabel Sneeden of the famous Sneeden’s Landing family. She had started out as a tribute to Cleopatra for her extreme beauty and feminine wiles, but Mrs. Hatton and her Presbyterians protested the night before the contest, and Mabel was forced to turn her Egyptian asp into a croissant and “a tribute to baked goods”, hence the sulking clearly seen on her face.

3) Debra Anne Postaire as “The Honeymoon Night”… also sulking because her original title had been “Floozie Helps With Shore Leave”. She and Mabel ended up drunk on cheap gin with some appreciative stagehands later after the show. Their arrest was hidden from the press for a few days till they could both be extradited to a work farm in New Hampshire.

4) Penny Glasstein, a lovely and cheerful contestant who entered as “Mirth”, the perfect choice for her sunny disposition. Sadly, it was revealed later that she had lied about her age (43) and that she had been a contortionist in a traveling Eastern European circus through Poland. Her stage name had been Brigitte The Bendy Lady.

5) Ruth Penn, a reasonably attractive girl with a stutter. She had a terrible time telling the judges in the opening sequence that she was dressed as “Li-LL-Li-Li-LLL-LILIL-…. Liberty! La-La-La-Lady Libert-t-t-t-t-ti!”… the audience applauded for three minutes when she finally finished…and the orchestra struck up a few bars of “God Bless America”….

      In the second row (l. to r.),

6) Beth Higham who struggled with her weight almost immediately after being chosen as a finalist, and decided to embrace her curvaceousness by titling herself “Motherhood” since “Pregnancy” and even “Expecting” were considered pornographic by Mrs. Hatton.

7) Gabrielle Garbersen in her tribute to “Little Miss Muffet”. Unfortunately, her tuffet was not strong enough and when it broke it crushed her “spider”. Much to the horror of the judges, she had enlisted her poodle Pinkie to play the spider after painting him black. On a happy note, Pinkie had only been squished into the heavy cushioning and was complete unharmed, although it took two weeks to get the black paint out of his handsome fur.

8) Clementine Hossfether, “Clem” for short. She decided to come as “Industry” as a tribute to her adored and widowed father who had raised her since she was 2 and a half. She had learned welding and riveting from him and accompanied him on skyscraper building in midtown Manhattan disguising herself as a teenage boy. Her chapeau there is actually her hardhat!...decorated with a borrowed flounce or two!

9) Ynetta Greene as “Perfumed Arabi” which almost got her censored by Hatton and her harpies, especially when she insisted on showing them her veil dance the night before in Armbruster’s. But when she backed down and said she would just recite something from Omar Khayyam, they gave her a pass. Interestingly, none of the judges knew what an “Omar Khayyam” was.  

10) Nancy Strunk, who unfortunately had also come in as “Liberty”, but in deference to stammering Ruth Penn offered to change her entry to “Victory”. Her costume was fairly ordinary, but her graciousness to a fellow contestant earned her an additional seven points for “Sportsmanship & Camaraderie”…out of a final tally of 3,450 points to finish in the top three.

11) Freda Jenkins came in as “Womanly Wisdom”. At the last minute, the judges recommended that she enter carrying a feather duster, a steam iron and ironing board, or perhaps a rolling pin to show that her wisdom didn’t supercede the wisdom and logic of the male sex. She reluctantly agreed but entered with an electric mixer to show her modernity and a woman’s place in the new industrial age. Her 43’ long extension cord tripped eight of the other girls though and caused a bit of a ruckus backstage during the intermission before the second act.       

            And in the third row (l. to r.),

12) Hortense Smith, who came as “Gay Paree” and offered to do a can-can at the end of which she would toss her beaded French beret in the air. She did it at the dress rehearsal the night before and closed with jump splits, a loud “Voila!”, and the tossed beret. Unfortunately, the beret had been so heavily encrusted with rhinestones, beads, semi-precious stones, and bakelite that it weighed twelve pounds and nearly poked out Mrs. Hatton’s left eye.

13) Sally Carouf came as “Carefree”… she had spent about twenty minutes the night before turning a salad bowl from room service into her hat and she hand-washed a blouse and pantaloons in the tub and hung it up to air-dry. Later in the first act of the actual show, she was the first contestant to be eliminated…she apparently was a little too “carefree” for the judges who claimed that she “had phoned in" her participation. She was not at all discomfited and packed her make-up table and props and hailed a cab to the local clam house for dinner.

14) Becky Marie Musgrave who was the tallest of the contestants at 6’ 2” decided to celebrate her Amazonian proportions by coming as “Pele the Hawaiian Goddess of the Volcano”. Her headdress was supposed to be a huge plume of erupting lava and fire, but Becky felt that the effect was mediocre. It wasn’t until she borrowed a generous douse of Madame Cloisenette’s perfume “Pyro-Passionelle” for her feathers and lit it up that she felt she had succeeded. She severely misjudged the alcohol content of the fragrance. Fortunately the fire was contained in the backstage area by the brave set changers who only lost the Nativity Scene and the “Girls In Gondolas” number. The audience was unaware of any mishaps although the smell of smoke and tomato sauce did fill the auditorium for twenty minutes.

15) Gladys Shenk presented herself as “The Spirit of a Dove in Flight”. Perhaps the most sweet-natured of the contestants and certainly the most lady-like, she appealed to the judges and the audience on so many levels, and she was an odds-on favorite to finish in the top three…until it was revealed near the end of the evening that her costume had NOT been made from old feather pillows as she had originally claimed, but that she and a gang of deranged Girl Guides had hunted down and killed several seagulls just down the shore from Atlantic City. She was ejected from the theatre just before the seventh act….around 1:30 in the morning.

16) Therese LaCouf came as “La Tulipe”…another flower theme. She was the girl who had the jumbo sized bottle of “Pyro-Passionelle” on her dressing table. During the opening sequence, the other girls complained that she was wearing too much of the fragrance…they didn’t realize that she actually was drunk and that, at $11.00 a gallon, Madame Cloisenette was a very affordable escape down on the Bowery where she returned when she came in eleventh in the competition.

17) Marguerite Mancombe made herself into “The Queen Of Spades” and even did some of the aria from Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE…. On the kazoo.

18) Cynthia Fath had been a casual entrant, but her stage mother dragged her to the initial interviews. She made it through to each successive step and became one of the lucky nineteen, much to her own surprise. She was such a humble and even shy girl that her costume as “Czarina” was rather ironic…. But she comported herself very pleasantly and even learned how to introduce herself to the audience in Russian and follow it with the phrase, “Tonight is a beautiful night and I share it with my fellow contestants and you, our esteemed judges!”…. unfortunately, her accent and a mix-up on an adverb or two resulted in the sentence coming out closer to “Tonight is the festival of the poking of goats and I share it with the farmers who are naked and jumping up and down with big carrots”. There happened to have been some Russian speakers in the auditorium…. Needless to say some women fainted and it took a few minutes for the shrieks and laughter to subside.

…and now, for those of you remembering that I said there were NINETEEN contestants, if you look closely at the photograph, you’ll notice that right behind number 16, La Tulipe, Therese LaCouf, there’s what appears to be a hand raised in the air and a bit of a kerfuffle of netting and taffeta. Yep! That’s number 19, falling off the back row of the bleachers we were standing on!...ooops! Did I say “WE”??? Yes again, that was me! Your very own Sybil Bruncheon, contestant number 19, who had entered as “Gymnasia The Spirit of Healthy Womanhood”. I had been the captain of the Ladies Rugby and Cross-Country Obstacle-Course Croquet Club…and I was in my leanest prime. My measurements at the time were 50-26-43, and my hourglass figure had been immortalized by artists John Singer Sargent, Claude Monet, and Picasso (who made me look like a guitar with both my eyes on one side of my face). Imagine how devastated I was when I fell off the back of those bleachers and tore my costume. How lucky I was to find a coconut brassiere and a grass skirt in Edna Hatton’s overnight case in her dressing room, and I changed my entry to “Meester Jeem Likee Tahiti?”…. and ya know, Edna kept her damn mouth shut when I threatened to turn the French postcards of her in it over to the press. At the end of the evening, I came in third place and got a sensible little tiara, a sequined satin sash, and a gift certificate to Mel’s Clam Palace worth $47.00. ….good times….ah, good times.

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Sybil Bruncheon’s Merry Memoirs: Paris....he who laughs....

Paris, November 5th, 1922..... I had rented the sweetest little flat on the Rue de Chou-fleur Puante, an infamous cul-de-sac, where, in 1871, a gang of 19th-century pickpocket/contortionist-mimes held most of the neighborhood in a reign of terror during the Communard. The gang members, mostly prepubescent boys with a predilection for wearing too much eye make-up, and dressing in their mothers' discarded foundation garments, mugged and robbed local merchants of odds and ends; day old croissants, manicure instruments, French postcards of farm animals and tattooed lady sailors smoking cigars, the usual stuff that kids like to trade and hide from Mother in their treasure-boxes under the bed! At the height of their mischief, they numbered perhaps 30 or so, but as the political fortunes of the 1871 Commune unraveled, angry parents raided their clubhouses and dragged them home for spankings and dinners of cold gruel, castor oil, and raisins found under the sofa…..

Well, decades and decades passed, and in 1922, about three weeks after I moved into my charming garret up in the dormered roof of our six-story townhouse, I became aware of a strange presence and a series of little occurrences, all innocent enough at the beginning... but as the days passed, the problem began to intensify. I thought I saw a face in the mirror one gray rainy morning, of an older woman with brown lipstick smeared way outside her lip line, and a unibrow that she kept raising and lowering at me... suddenly I realized it was me! I had been bingeing on expensive chocolates into the wee hours of the morning and there was a caterpillar crawling on my forehead! It wasn't the sight that startled me (well, not COMPLETELY!)... it was the soft chuckling that came from inside the walnut armoire in the corner, and continued even after I threw it open and tossed all my fine trousseau all over the floor. But no one was there, and the wall behind the armoire was an exterior one with the courtyard below. Even as I stood right there, the chuckling continued, hearty and actually quite charming, literally within inches of my face. I looked around convinced it had to be some acoustical trick of the architecture or the placement of the furniture or perhaps the building and the street, but no. It had to be something or some-ONE inside the room!

When I look back on it now, I marvel at the fact that I wasn't frightened exactly, only a little startled and more curious really... the sound was so pleasant, almost musical, and it rose and fell slightly as if the person was watching me in my confusion. It grew as I pulled open drawers, looked under the settee, pushed aside the heavily embroidered draperies, and almost roared when I screeched at the sight of a spider on the sash! Normally, I would have been furious at an actual person laughing at my fear of spiders, but the thought of a ghost laughing at me only made me chuckle myself, and I thought I could feel a warmth directed at my ability to laugh at my own foolishness, something I learned after years on stage in Vaudeville when my ukulele playing and novelty songs often got me paid only in thrown vegetables... (to be continued..)  

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