Axis Sally: The American Voice of Nazi Germany

by Richard Lucas

  DR. GILLARS PAINLESS DENTIST

  Why don’t you have those old decayed teeth removed?

  You say you haven’t got the nerve. Well, let me tell you, I have the nerve already corked up in a bottle here in my office and it is NOT COCAINE.

  You can have them removed without the least particle of pain.

  I do all branches of up-to-date first class dentistry and at prices to suit all.

  Twenty-five years experience. All work guaranteed.

  By coming in the morning you can have your work done the same day.

  Examinations and Consultations Free36

  The dark side of Dr. Gillars extended beyond his love of liquor and money. John Bartlow Martin wrote a letter to his editor at McCall’s for his proposed article on the Axis Sally trial. In the letter, he described Mildred to his editor as “the wilful [sic] daughter of an indulgent mother; she grew up in the unhappy home of a drunken, incestuous father”37 (author’s italics). As the outline was written after his interview with Edna Mae, it raises disturbing questions about Mildred’s relationship with her stepfather.

  Martin suspected that all had not been well in the household. In the published article, he euphemistically described the dentist’s relationship with Mildred as “obscure,” claiming that while the younger Edna Mae defied her father, Mildred was “hurt by him.”38 She described her sister as “a little china doll” with “a beautiful disposition and her obedience was the bain of my existence. I used to wish she wouldn’t set such a high standard for me to be judged by.”39 That “beautiful disposition” would erode into a flirtatious arrogance and a thirst for attention and worldly acclaim as the years wore on. Dr. Gillars’ behavior may also explain her mother’s sudden unexplained decision to put Mildred in a Roman Catholic convent school in Maine prior to moving to Ohio in 1916. The good doctor was vigilant in making sure that boys from the high school were not pursuing his stepdaughter. But his controlling behavior only humiliated the comely teenager. Edna Mae did not understand her father’s concern: “For some reason, Father was so strict with Mildred in regards to dates, embarrassing her on several occasions [so] that she didn’t make many dates until after she went to college.”40 Now a young woman, Mildred longed to be independent from a stepfather she despised.

  CHAPTER 2

  In Front of the Footlights

  SEPTEMBER 1918–MAY 1928

  College provided some freedom from the shadow of Dr. Gillars and life in Conneaut. During her freshman year at Ohio Wesleyan in 1918, Mildred proved to be a popular girl but a poor student. Although she longed to be among the intelligentsia, she did not welcome the rigors of actual study. “Millie” wore a thick veneer of what passed for sophistication and worldliness in the days of the silent film star. In 1966, a fellow student summed up how her female classmates viewed her:

  Suffice it to say that she was not very bright, though she made a great pretense of being an intellectual; she loved to read poetry of what was then considered a far-out type; she was always using words of which she had only the vaguest idea of the meaning, but if they were unusual or highbrow, they were for her. “Esoteric” is one word, in particular, I remember her using incorrectly a good many times. She was really funny; she tried to be what she wasn’t. She was always posing or acting… she didn’t go to class if she didn’t feel like it. In fact, we all wondered how she got by with a lot of things she did.41

  Mildred Gillars was well known for being the most stylish and expensively dressed girl at the university. A trendsetter, she was the first to wear four-buckle galoshes. While the other girls looked down on the clunky shoes as something they “wouldn’t be caught dead in,” the galoshes became all the rage on campus a year later.42 Her stepfather’s financial success enabled her to be one of only two girls at the college with a fur coat. In 1919, she caused a sensation, strolling through campus in the luxurious fur. Three years later, fur was a common sight on campus. She wore her hair long and shoulder-length at a time when the average college girl wore her hair in a bun—long before the “bobbed” style became popular. Although she had striking black curly hair and a pristine complexion, Mildred’s face was symmetrical above the nose but spoiled by what one faculty member at Ohio Wesleyan uncharitably called “a simian jaw”—one that “spoiled the symmetry or beauty of her features.”43

  Her flirty manner and coquettish ways unnerved the other girls at Ohio Wesleyan. One fellow student remembered:

  She had almost no female friends among the women students; she was completely indifferent to girls, concentrating her attention upon members of the opposite sex. Yet with almost all the men on campus she soon became a subject of ridicule rather than of admiration; she was so evidently exerting her charm all the time. Those were the days of the movie “vamps” and Mildred tried to act like the exaggerated sirens of the screen at that time—Theda Bara, for instance.… Mildred even went so far as to adopt some of the more advertised poses of Theda—like resting her chin upon intertwined fingers, both elbows upon the table, and gazing with lower lids upon the male she was trying to seduce at the time.… Not that Milly was a real seducer; girls just didn’t go that far in those days! We never thought of Milly as immoral—just silly, affected. The men interlarded their conversations with malarkey—and she was so convinced of her irresistibility that she didn’t suspect that they were laughing behind her back.44

  One young freshman was not laughing. Calvin Gladding (“Kelly”) Elliott was immediately attracted to the young “vamp” with the affected manner. A dashing youth, Kelly was known as the bohemian of the class. An artistic “free spirit,” he caused a stir among the students when he became the first boy to grow a beard. He was so taken with Mildred that his friends justly feared that he was ruining his college career. One of Kelly’s fraternity brothers was Allen C. Long, whose wife also attended the university at the time and in 1966 recalled the romance:

  The men in the fraternity did everything possible to stop Kelly’s infatuation, as they recognized the fact that it was ruining his life; he could have been a brilliant student, but he spent so much time with Mildred, or day-dreaming about her, that his studies suffered and he, like Mildred, was unable to earn a degree…. Together Kelly and Mildred would sit in a booth at the college hangout for hours over a couple of nickel cokes, and read poetry to each other, cutting classes to do it; they would gaze into each other’s eyes and be lost to the crass world around them.45

  Mrs. Long remembered an incident that took place in those carefree college days. In the early hours of a spring evening, Kelly Elliott approached his love’s dormitory in the dark of night to serenade her. Breaking out in song, he awakened Mildred and the rest of the girls in the house. An annoyed, “old-maidish” type of girl who lived on the floor above Mildred decided to act. “I’ll cool his ardor,” she shouted and proceeded to dump a pitcher of cold water on his head.

  The young lovers were inseparable on campus, and Kelly Elliott gave Mildred his fraternity pin as a token of his affection. A few months later, he proposed marriage and she accepted. Despite Dr. Gillars’ resistance to boys courting his stepdaughter, the handsome young man became a regular guest at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. During summer and school breaks, Mildred returned to Conneaut whenever she could to visit her mother. With her stepfather working out of town, she would sit up until the small hours of the morning visiting with her closest friend, her mother Mae.46

  Laughing Gas

  The distance between Dr. Gillars and his family grew even further, when in 1922 he combined his practice with that of another dentist in Piqua, Ohio. The advances in dental science that brought “painless dentistry” to northern Ohio had a disastrous effect on the Gillars family. Mae remained in Conneaut with Edna Mae while Dr. Gillars plied his trade almost three hundred miles away. The couple was, for all intents and purposes, separated. His partner, Dr. Richard Shipley, described Gillars at that time as “a very unstable person addicted to the use of anesthesia and liquor.”47 Shipley rec
alled “the reason that the business dissolved is that Dr. Gillars went on an extended drunken spree and drew numerous checks on the firm’s bank account.”48 On July 5, 1923, Mae and Robert Gillars were divorced after fifteen years of marriage. It fell to Mae Gillars to go to Piqua and dissolve the failed business of her second ex-husband.

  Dr. Gillars lived only a few more years, relocating his office for a final time to Mansfield, Ohio in January 1927. An advanced alcoholic, he became gravely ill on March 30 and was diagnosed with appendicitis. Rushed to Mansfield General Hospital, the dentist underwent emergency surgery. Over the next five days, his condition worsened and he died on April 4, 1927.49 The body was sent to his native Pottsville, Pennsylvania for burial. Gillars’ sad last days in Mansfield were remembered by the local newspaper in 1949: “While several Mansfield professional men remember Axis Sally’s father during his short residence in Mansfield, none recalled either his wife or daughters visiting him here. As far as could be learned, his family maintained their residence in Pennsylvania, while the eldest daughter Edna Mae lived in Piqua, Ohio.”50

  Robert Bruce Gillars died alone and destitute at the age of fifty. His brother, who paid for his dental school education in 1897, also paid for his burial.

  As her mother’s second marriage crumbled, so did Mildred’s academic career at Ohio Wesleyan. Although she had received steady Bs and Cs in the previous three years, even excelling at times with As in her favorite subject, Oratory, in 1921 there was a drastic downturn in her academic performance. She became immersed in the college theater and equally entranced by the charismatic Professor Charles M. Newcomb, who persuaded Mildred to abandon her studies and pursue a career in theater. At college, she had a series of lead and supporting roles in the Histrionic Club’s productions, Mrs. Dane’s Defense in December 1920 and The Truth in November 1921, and she capped off her college acting career playing the role of Rosalind in an open air production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It in June of 1922.51 Filled with dreams of success and stardom, Mildred returned home to Conneaut to tell her mother of her plans:

  “I told her that Professor Newcomb felt that I should pursue a dramatic career. My mother objected very, very strenuously, and I told her that Professor Newcomb had plans for me to attend the Chronicle House in Cleveland and there further preparation for the professional stage.”52 One can imagine Mae Gillars’ shock and dismay when her educated daughter, poised to graduate from a fine university, announced that she would not return to finish her final courses. Even more unnerving was that this foolish and reckless step was at the behest of a married man. Newcomb was leaving Ohio Wesleyan for a job in Cleveland, telling young Mildred that his salary was so poor that he was unable to send his own children to college.53 He encouraged his young protégée to abandon her university studies and claimed to know just the place to pursue her dreams of stardom.

  Chronicle House was a for-profit school that gave young actors the opportunity to play bit parts (and at times, lead roles) opposite the leading thespians of the New York and European stage. Newcomb was a friend of the owners, and Mildred was immediately accepted upon his recommendation. It was an exciting time for Chronicle House. The respected husband and wife team Julia Marlowe and E.H. Southern starred in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in 1923. In May of that year, the Charter Chroniclers of Chronicle House presented Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with several professional Scandinavian actors.

  At Newcomb’s urging, Mildred withdrew from Ohio Wesleyan in her senior year on June 19, 1922 without completing her degree. She had neither the blessing of her mother nor her financial assistance. With only $20 in her pocket and no means to pay for her schooling fees at Chronicle House, she went to Newcomb for help. The former professor introduced her to Samuel Halle, the owner of Halle Brothers, a leading department store in downtown Cleveland. Mr. Halle, the owner, gave her a job as a sales girl at $15 per week and allowed her to work on commission to assist her in her living expenses and fees. Ten dollars a week went to Chronicle House for her tuition while two dollars went to her rent. She lived in what she described as a “little room… it was really a closet, without any windows in it; just a kind of trap door which allowed a little air to come in, and there was just a cot.”54 Virtually penniless, she survived on a meager diet of apples and crackers.

  The shadow of her mother’s failed marriage hung heavily over Mildred and she was determined not to make the same mistakes. In June 1922 she broke off her engagement to Kelly Elliott. Her stepsister Edna Mae reflected that although Mildred was capable of love, she was afraid of marriage: “Seeing the many heartaches Mother experienced with her marriages, with none of them due to Mother’s fault, I believe gave Mildred a shocking picture of marriage. Sort of the idea Love wouldn’t last after the altar.”55

  It was only after Newcomb convinced his star student to pursue a life in the theater that she broke up with Kelly—a decision that Edna Mae attributed to the fact that her “stage ambitions were stronger than becoming a wife.”56 The end of her engagement coincided with the crisis in her mother’s marriage and the increasing influence of Professor Newcomb. Witnessing her mother’s pain had a decisive influence on her decision not to marry. Her relationship with Mae grew even stronger, and Edna Mae recalled that the two were so close that they were often taken for sisters.57

  Calvin (Kelly) Gladding Elliott, who spent his college career devoted to a woman who ultimately abandoned him, never graduated from Ohio Wesleyan. He withdrew from OWU the same year as Mildred and moved to New York City. He wandered Greenwich Village in the hope of becoming an artist. After a succession of jobs in New York, he became an interior decorator and married a woman who closely resembled his former fiancé. Never fully recovered from the failed romance of his college days, Kelly turned to drinking and reportedly committed suicide before the age of forty.58

  In Cleveland, Halle assigned Mildred to the costume jewelry counter where she proved to be a successful saleswoman. During the Christmas season of 1922, she earned a large $89 commission check, and the owner offered to promote her to buyer. Mildred refused:

  “I finally received something like $89, only in commissions, and Mr. Halle was speechless. He said it never happened before and he sent for me, and asked me to report to his office, which was a very unusual procedure, and told me that in the whole history of his store that a beginner had ever received such a gigantic commission check. He said he was very pleased with my work and hoped in a short time that I would become a buyer, or at least, an assistant buyer. I informed him that with the $89 I intended to leave his store after Christmas because I wanted to devote my entire time to studies at Chronicle House.59

  Before going to work at Halle’s store, Mildred worked by day and rehearsed at night. The windfall of that Christmas led her to impetuously quit her job so that she could devote all her time to acting, but it was not long before she was again in dire need of funds. When she needed to economize, Mildred cut back on food. One night, she passed out from hunger in the middle of a rehearsal:

  “I fainted one night during the rehearsal. Afterwards, when I regained consciousness, everyone asked how that happened, and for the first time I explained the great sacrifice this has been for me, and so Mrs. Brown [the director of Chronicle House] reduced my tuition from $10 to five.”60

  As Mildred approached the end of her year at Chronicle House, she planned to move to New York City. Broadway was the place for young actors to make their mark and she could hardly wait to complete her studies and leave Cleveland. She needed a job to save up enough money for her move to New York. Mildred noticed that some of the female students were coming and going at very strange hours for young, unmarried women of that era. She approached Mrs. Brown and asked if these girls had some kind of employment. Mrs. Brown told her that she could not divulge the girls’ secret, so Mildred asked them.

  The young actresses were working as waitresses at diners and restaurants around the Cleveland area. She applied for a job at a restaurant on the outsk
irts of the city where she thought she would not be recognized. The other girls advised Mildred to tell prospective employers that she had prior experience as a waitress, but it became apparent on her first night on the job that she had exaggerated her qualifications when she dropped and shattered an armful of plates. Fortunately, the owner kept the hardworking student on the payroll and she was able to complete her studies.

  With her year at Chronicle House at an end, Mildred bade farewell to Cleveland and to Charles Newcomb. Armed with a series of bit roles on her resume and having worked with acting notables like Julia Marlowe, her expectations were high as she boarded a train east in the autumn of 1923 to conquer the Great White Way.

  On the Circuit

  The Broadway of 1923 was a thrilling, bustling place for a young actor or actress in love with the footlights. Although Mildred longed to perform the works of Shakespeare and Ibsen on the New York stage, she arrived that summer to find a theater scene dominated by musical comedies with plot lines ranging from fantasy to farce. The most popular shows of the year were lighthearted fare such as George M. Cohan’s Adrienne, Little Jessie James and Little Miss Bluebeard. By 1927, a record 264 shows and musicals were being presented on New York stages, an increase that led to an explosion of theater construction. Over the next ten years, twenty new houses were built in the area between West 40th and West 50th Streets alone.61

  In addition to “legitimate” theater, approximately half the New York houses were filled with the popular entertainment known as vaudeville. Singers, dancers, actors, musicians, magicians, ventriloquists, wirewalkers and showgirls all faced keen competition for places in the two to three shows per day variety revues. The Ziegfeld Follies, Music Box Revue, Artists and Models and Earl Carroll’s Vanities lit up the stage with beautiful showgirls revealing just the right (i.e. legal) amount of skin. Tightly controlled by owner/impresarios such as Marcus Loew, E.F. Albee, B.F. Keith, and the Shubert Brothers, performers honed their skills on the “circuit” where they traveled to second- and third-tier cities such as Yonkers, Jersey City, Norfolk and Toronto. These touring road shows were often painful experiences for performers who were greeted by primitive living conditions and little pay. A performing artist rarely rose to Broadway’s first-class venues without first experiencing the travails of the road.