Published in full on the front page of the Courier, the suicide note thrust Barbara Elliott into the spotlight. (See Appendix I for its full text.) Camden police were placed on alert and county detectives were told to be on the lookout for the deserted bride. A photograph of Barbara Elliott sitting on a wooden chair wearing a full-length fur coat and a hat popular among the flappers of the time was emblazoned on page one under the banner “Suicide.” Although the Courier noted that the authorities considered “the possibility that Mrs. Elliott’s unusual actions might be in the nature of a publicity stunt for a motion picture, play or book, etc.,”7 the police decided to err on the side of caution. Dubbed the “companionate bride,” her story spread to the New York newspapers and the wire services. The International Wire Service and United Press sent representatives to Camden to cover the impending tragedy.
At this point, the hard-bitten city journalists stepped in to verify Barbara Elliott’s story. The New York World attempted to confirm Barbara’s stated address but had no success. Other New York papers could not confirm details of the story. Nevertheless, the dramatic story took on a life of its own, transcending mere details, and the “companionate” bride’s command of the front page was not yet over.
At 7:30 a.m. on the morning of October 19, Officer William Basier of the Camden police department was patrolling the great bridge that spans the Delaware River, connecting Camden with Philadelphia. In the morning mist, the young policeman saw the figure of a woman on the bridge’s walkway. Within seconds, Basier saw her remove her coat and dangle her foot over the side rail. The bridge was a popular site for suicides, and the patrolman snapped into action.
By then the woman was straddling the rail and Basier grabbed her as she swung 135 feet above the icy river. Pulling her back from the rail, he soon realized that the disturbed girl did not want to be saved. Lashing out at her rescuer, she fought him off vigorously. Several other officers arrived to assist Basier and they soon had control of the flailing woman who screamed, “This is a free country and one ought to be able to do as one wants… If I am not allowed to jump off this bridge, I’ll jump off another!”8
The officers carried the distraught woman into the bridge’s security office. The policemen asked if she was Mrs. Barbara Elliott, the “companionate bride” of the newspaper. She denied it, but after further questioning finally admitted that she was the woman for whom all Camden had been searching. She moaned, “Oh, why didn’t you let me carry out my plans?”9
Barbara was taken to police headquarters for her own protection where she was met by an inquisitive press. Greeted by popping flashbulbs and peppered with questions, she and her background came under increasing scrutiny. She said she was an interior decorator by profession, and that she had attended the Art Students League and Ohio Wesleyan College. She had lived in a number of cities and claimed to have a number of “influential” relatives in Philadelphia and New York whom she didn’t wish to bother with her troubles.
Soon the pressure of the press inquisition in the court hallway began to affect her demeanor. She alternately sobbed and laughed hysterically when confronted with the speculation that her story was nothing more than a publicity stunt. When a Courier reporter asked her to comment on the allegation, Barbara was indignant: “You have no right to suggest such a thing to me. I am on the level. I admit I am in great trouble and I tried to take the easiest way out but I guess I’ve caused trouble for everyone.”10
Ushered into police court, Barbara beseeched the judge for mercy: “It doesn’t much matter what happens. I didn’t know I was committing an offense. I thought I could do as I wanted to. You have any promise that I won’t take my life here—I won’t say it won’t happen again however.”11
Crying, she told the judge that she had no money and nothing to live for, and insisted, “I refuse to bring an unwanted child into this world, and I was taking the easy way out.”12 It was Friday morning and the judge decided to put her in protective custody over the weekend. She would remain in jail until she was composed enough to guarantee that there would be no more suicide attempts.
That night, the story of Barbara Elliott was again front-page news. As she sat in a holding cell in the Camden jail, the photograph of heroic Officer William Basier appeared on the Courier’s front page:
HE SPOILED HER SUICIDE
Deserted Bride, Foiled in Leap into Delaware
Cop Grabs Barbara Elliott As
She Climbs Over Span Rail
Sobs Out Her Story in Public Hearing
Begs to Die and Insists That She’ll Leap Off Some Other Bridge13
As the story of the seemingly well-bred woman with the cultivated accent spread on the news wires, the press demanded answers about her background and sought verification of her story. That same morning, a wire service reporter received word from his New York headquarters that she should be asked if she worked for a “moving picture producer known to be ready to release a film on companionate marriage.”14 Mrs. Elliott was unmoved, replying that she had never heard of the company. She stood her ground, “What I have told you and other newspapermen and the police here in Camden is the truth.”15 Despite the allegations, Barbara received several proposals from chivalrous men willing to marry the distressed mother-to-be.
On Saturday morning, Camden police investigators became even more suspicious of Barbara Elliott’s story when a young man walked into the offices of the Courier claiming that he was Charles Elliott. Questioned about his whirlwind courtship and marriage, the police soon discovered that his version of events did not correspond with Barbara’s. Accompanied by several newspapermen eager to witness the ecstatic reunion of two lovers, Captain John Golden, the Chief of Detectives, took Charles down to the detention area. The police captain quietly waited to gauge Barbara Elliott’s response to the obvious fraud. The Evening Courier described what happened next:
There, “Barbara Elliott” staged her last bit of realistic acting; she flung herself at “the long lost husband” the moment he loomed up in the corridor. She staged a faint almost equal in intensity to Sarah Bernhardt’s.
“Pretty good, little girl,” commented Captain Golden and newspapermen.
Revived, without the slightest need for first aid methods, she and her “companionate husband” were told plainly how their story had failed of verification in nearly every check-up.16
“Charles” quickly confessed that his real identity was John Ramsey, a New York writer. After some hesitation, “Barbara” admitted that she was a struggling New York actress named Mildred Gillars. Ramsey and Gillars had been college friends, both members of the dramatic arts fraternity Theta Alpha Phi at Ohio Wesleyan University. The now-impoverished pair had been offered $75 each to impersonate an abandoned mother-to-be and her caddish husband by a motion picture producer. The whole incident was a hoax designed to promote a new silent film entitled Unwelcome Children.
The phony couple was brought before the court of Judge Bernard Bertman who immediately sentenced them to three months in jail for contempt of court. Dozens of supporters gathered in court to observe the conclusion of the story. Some were “so touched that they had come to court prepared to offer her a home if the judge let her off.”17
With a dramatic flourish, Mildred Gillars tearfully apologized to the judge. The out-of-work actress said she had taken the job in financial desperation and told the court that neither she nor Ramsey had been paid the $75 promised to them by the movie company. Judge Bertram suspended their sentences, placing blame squarely on the film’s producers and pronouncing that “the movie men who are back of this ought to be before me.”18 The relieved 27-year-old rushed to the bench and grabbed the judge exclaiming, “You sweet thing!” Police restrained the defendant from kissing the surprised judge. Ordered by the judge to leave town, Mildred Gillars and John Ramsey did not have even the car fare to get home. Several newspaper reporters pooled their funds to finance their return trip. One of the contributing reporters told the hoaxers, “You did your best
to put it over. It was worth $12.75—car fare back to New York.”19
After this close brush with the law, Mildred Gillars could not possibly know that one day, far from America, she would assume a name and perform a role far more infamous than that of the “deserted bride”—it would be a name synonymous with treachery and anti-Semitism: Axis Sally.
As Mildred Gillars sat with the producers of Unwelcome Children to plan her portrayal of Mrs. Barbara Elliott, she built its foundation on memories of her own unhappy childhood and her desperate need for acceptance and acclaim. It was that same reckless search for fame and notoriety that led a star-struck Ohio teenager to wander far from home, abandon family and friends, and ultimately cast her lot with a murderous and tyrannical regime.
I know so bitterly the awful loneliness of a life without parental love. I have visualized completely the arrival of this baby of ours. I have seen myself watching it through the years. I know the agony I would suffer every time I would catch that wistful gleam in his eye when he saw another child happy in his father’s love.
Mildred Gillars, 1928
She was born Mildred Elizabeth Sisk, the daughter of Vincent Sisk, a Canadian, and Mary (Mae) Hewitson, a 23-year-old seamstress from Fredericton, New Brunswick. Born on November 29, 1900 in Portland, Maine, Mildred was raised with the fierce pride of an Irish nationalist and the anti-British prejudice that came with it.
A strikingly lovely girl with porcelain white skin, dark eyes and raven hair, her early childhood was marred by her father’s alcoholism. Vincent and Mae were married on February 21, 1900, slightly more than nine months before their daughter’s birth, so it is likely that Mae’s pregnancy was the deciding factor in the pair’s union.
From the beginning of the marriage Sisk drank heavily, and his recreational pursuits included smoking opium. Mae was a strict Episcopalian from a middle-class Canadian home (her father was a magistrate in Fredericton) and her husband’s drinking and drug abuse were unbearable. Sisk was the tough son of a stonemason from rural Bathurst, New Brunswick—a mining and shipbuilding community on the province’s northeastern coast. The strapping blacksmith could deliver a punishing beating, and his wife was regularly the victim of his drunken rages.
After almost seven years of misery, Mae took six-year-old Mildred away from their Portland home. It would be the last time Mildred would ever see her natural father. Although Mae would return briefly three weeks later, the marriage was doomed and she would file for divorce in April 1907. Accusing Vincent Sisk of “cruel and abusive treatment,” the court awarded full custody of the child to Mae on October 31, 1907.20 While the divorce decree did not mention abuse directed at the child, the terrifying atmosphere in the home must have had a serious effect on the little girl, who was witnessing the effects of alcoholism and drug abuse firsthand in her most formative years. It would also cement a bond between mother and daughter that would be difficult to break.
Throughout Mildred’s childhood, Mae was close-mouthed about her ex-husband. As an adult, Mildred claimed to know “nothing about my father except his name.”21 Mae was likely shamed by her status as a divorced woman with a child, and never discussed the dark stain on her past. That she was willing to endure the gossip and stigma that followed a divorced woman in those days is testament to the severity of the abuse. She instilled that same strength and self-reliance in her daughter. Years later, Mildred’s stepsister Edna Mae marveled that her mother was “successful in keeping her feeling of a marriage failure from both of us, since neither of us knew this man Sisk was alive…”22 In the face of such an embarrassing family secret, Mae went on to raise Mildred as though her biological father never existed.
As her marriage collapsed, Mae became acquainted with a Portland couple named Dr. and Mrs. Twitchell. The Twitchells introduced her to an itinerant dentist from Pottsville, Pennsylvania named Robert Bruce Gillars. Gillars, also divorced, began courting Mae in earnest. Less than ten months after the finalization of her divorce from Vincent Sisk, Mae married Gillars in Woodstock, Ontario on July 8, 1908.23 Dr. Gillars was a markedly improved prospect for the young divorced mother. Educated at the Philadelphia College of Dentistry, he was a hardworking, traveling professional who was in the process of applying for a license to practice in the state of Maine. Three months after the wedding, Mae was pregnant again and on July 21, 1909, Edna Mae Gillars was born.24 Although the dentist never formally adopted Mae’s daughter, Gillars took the seven-year-old as his own. From that point on, she took the name Mildred Gillars.
Despite his boast to state officials that he had “pulled teeth from coast to coast,” Dr. Gillars was denied a license to practice in Maine.25 This reversal forced the dentist to move his family from town to town with breathtaking speed. Mildred attended schools in St. Johns, New Brunswick in 1910, then moved on to Halifax, Nova Scotia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By 1914, she was enrolled in the Bellevue, Ohio school district. Many of Dr. Gillars’ patients were railroad workers and laborers who moved wherever their occupation demanded.
For a short time, Mae and Edna Mae returned to Maine while Mildred, a teenager of growing beauty, was inexplicably sent to a convent. Her stepsister remembered that, “Mildred entered a convent as a child, despite the fact that her mother was not a Catholic. When the family left Maine for their new home in Conneaut, Ohio, she had to leave.”26 By 1916, Gillars had a large ten-room house built at 145 Grant Street in the small town of Conneaut. The town was a central point for Dr. Gillars to attend to his many regular and potential patients. Conneaut sits at the junction of several railroad lines where the Norfolk Southern, Norfolk & Western, Conrail and Bessemer & Lake Erie lines run today.
Dr. Gillars’ stepdaughter was a lonely, withdrawn and solitary youngster. A former neighbor recalled the little girl as “a very quiet, overdressed child who was never allowed to play with other children and who had the most beautiful black curls that I have ever seen on a child.”27 Although her younger stepsister idolized the cultured and pretty girl with porcelain skin, Mildred was emotionally distant. Edna Mae sadly recalled shortly before her death in 2002: “When we were kids, I would be downstairs making a racket and Mildred would be upstairs. Our lives never crossed.”28 The two girls were of completely different temperaments, with Mildred leading an almost separate existence from her stepsister. Edna Mae was a tomboy while Mildred was a delicate “little lady.” The younger girl was in awe of her older, more sophisticated sister, fearing even to interrupt her when she spoke. She also recalled that Mildred was so obedient and submissive that, if told to do so, she would sit in one place day and night.
The rootless nature of her childhood shaped Mildred’s restless and headstrong personality. It also intensified her need to stand out and gain acceptance, especially with the opposite sex. Nicknamed “Ronnie,” she arrived at Conneaut High School on November 28, 1916 and immediately made an impression on her fellow students by wearing brightly colored, stylish outfits that few of her peers could afford. The high school newspaper noted in 1917 that Mildred’s favorite song was “Won’t You Come and Love Me?” a title remarkably similar to the inviting selections she would play for American troops more than twenty years later.29 A mediocre student, she performed best in English and Domestic Science. Although she would later become a fluent German speaker who could read Goethe in his native tongue, she earned a D in German in her last semester. It was in high school that she developed her interest in the theater and perhaps her unhappiness at home propelled her toward the stage. At the end of her senior year, the high school publication The Tattler listed the features that each student was most known for. Mildred Gillars was noted not for her great love of theater or literature, but her hair.30
After graduation, Mildred briefly studied to become a dental assistant at Western Reserve University, but her love for the dramatic arts led her to abandon that path. Her mother had been assisting her stepfather in the dental office for years, but Mildred had no interest in the family business. In September 1918, she enro
lled at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio.
“I chose Ohio Wesleyan because of the excellent dramatic department, and I wished to study under Professor Charles M. Newcomb whose reputation I had already heard of,” she recalled. “I took every course that was possible to take and joined the dramatic club besides, and played the lead in practically every college production that we had.”31 The first of a series of intellectual older men whose influence shaped her fate, Newcomb was a charismatic married professor, who had a reputation as an engaging lecturer and drama coach. He grew to be a mentor, and more, to the young, impressionable girl with an absent father.
The Painless Dentist
While Mildred had no relationship with and little knowledge of her biological father, the activities and influence of her stepfather raise disturbing questions. Mildred’s stepsister Edna Mae described her father to John Bartlow Martin of McCall’s magazine in 1948 as an “exceptionally brilliant man, but he had a weakness.…” Ironically, it was the same weakness that plagued Vincent Sisk—alcoholism.32 Gillars worked extremely long hours, nights and weekends, visiting patients at their homes as was the custom in those days. She described the dentist with an unwieldy moustache and long beard as a doctor “who worked for the working man” and served railroad families of limited means. Charging 50 cents for a tooth extraction, Gillars was financially successful but not necessarily “an ethical man.”33 Although Edna Mae considered him a “wizard” at dentistry with an extensive knowledge of medicine, she told a troubling story about his practices.
A woman came to Dr. Gillars demanding that all of her teeth be extracted, claiming that her medical doctor recommended it. Despite the danger of infection in a time before antibiotics, Gillars obliged. The woman soon fell ill and died.34 By the standards of the early 1900s, Dr. Gillars had a thriving business, averaging, at times, $1,000 per week.35 In 1919, with Mildred at college, the dentist had opened another office in Elyria approximately one hundred miles away from the family home. Upon his arrival in town, he advertised heavily in the local newspaper as:
Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany Page 2