Midinettes!

Learn more about William Wellman, Joan and James, and Maude Fulton -- my favorite latest discovery -- here. Although I'm thrilled to think of all those lovely William Wellman movies waiting in my DVR, it's the story of Maude Fulton that really grabbed my attention:

"Raised in the Kansas newspaper biz by her Dad, the editor of the local daily, she wrote a novel by the age of 15, “whose theme was ‘The Curse of Rum’”. She bounced from job to job, including singing pop songs at a department store, until she learned stenography and was hired by a railway office, where she likely soaked in the bravado of the train engineers that suffuses Other Men’s Women. Bored with office work, she soon lit out for the stage in NYC. She was performing in Mam’zelle Champagne on the roof of Madison Square Garden in 1906, when the millionaire Henry K. Thaw shot and killed architect Stanford White for fooling around with his young wife, Evelyn Nesbit (who was also romanced by John Barrymore). Thaw’s trial was the first to be dubbed 'The Trial of the Century.'"

I so want to be like Maude Fulton!