“With the advent of spring I set forth
with all the ardor of youth and met Frances Heenan. It was a case of love at
first sight and is enthusiastically reciprocated.” Edward West Browning
In the late evening of March 5, 1926,
Edward West Browning waltzed through the doors of the legendary Hotel McAlpin
at the corner of 34th Street and Broadway. The peacock blue Rolls
Royce that had become the emblem of his opulent lifestyle remained at the front
of the building, engine purring, chauffer at the wheel.
On any given day the clatter of wealth
echoed through the marble-encased hotel lobby, as out-of-breath butlers carted
load upon load of clothing-filled trunks, and impatient nannies hurried
flawlessly mannered children through the walkways of the McAlpin’s
gender-restricted floors. Fashionable women strolled leisurely among tapestry
galleries and dined beneath the arched ceilings of ornate banquet rooms, while
their husbands reclined in Russian and Turkish baths amid plumes of cigar smoke
and the banter of high finance. Designed with the finest of classic pre-World
War I amenities to serve even the slightest caprice of its clientele, the Hotel
McAlpin, upon its construction, boasted it was the largest hotel in New York
and perhaps the world.
It was roughly 11:00 pm and although
the Phi Lambda Tau Sorority high school dance in the hotel’s lavish ballroom
was already several hours past primetime, the sweet-sounding rhythms of Ernie
Golden and his Hotel McAlpin Orchestra could still be heard from the ornate Marine Grill at the basement level of
the hotel. Edward Browning, dressed in his blue sack overcoat, snapped his
fingers to the familiar ditty as he strolled confidently toward the ballroom.
The tops of three rotund cigars stood prominently in the upper outside pocket
of his coat, like soldiers at attention during reveille.
“Pretentious” isn’t quite the word for Edward Browning. It might
have been entitlement that led him to The Hotel McAlpin on that late winter
night. Browning was a chief benefactor, some say the founder, of the local Phi
Lambda Tau chapter. The newspapers affectionately referred to the sorority as
P.L.T., or Pretty Little Things. Browning himself often presented dance
trophies and sorority pins to young ladies at school dances. People had become
accustomed to seeing him in the company of young females. They called him
Daddy—Daddy Browning.
Did his presence raise an eyebrow of
suspicion? For some, perhaps, but Daddy was well known to the girls attending
the dance, and they adoringly greeted him as he entered the room.
It was, of course, the Golden Age of
Hot Jazz, and the sleek sounds of the day flowed from dancehalls across the
nation and into the hearts and minds of flappers and gentlemen alike. The
Charleston, with its wildly shifting rhythms and heart-stopping tempo, captured
the defiant mood of the prohibition era. Enamored with ballroom dancing (and
the Charleston in particular), Edward Browning fancied himself a danseur
noble—and many an underage girl readily agreed. Hardly a weekend passed in
which he didn’t flutter like a schoolboy from one dance floor to the next,
unblushingly strutting his two-step like an aging peacock. Acquaintances aptly
described his utter thirst for attention:
He dearly loves the spotlight and when
it is turned in his direction it thrills him to the point where his balance, so
evident in business dealings, becomes wholly upset. He loves show. He would
rather appear as a person who had been put upon, deceived, outraged and fooled
beyond all belief than not to appear at all. He must be seen. When he attends
dances he always wants to be the master of ceremonies and offer loving cups to
the best dancers. He is absolutely harmless, as free from guile as a new-laid
egg and as innocent of evil thinking as an unshucked scallop.
He would joyously skip amongst groups
of teenage girls, “chucking chins, pinching cheeks and sometimes a derriere.”
For their part, the young flapper girls did their level best to appear chic and
urbane, brashly donning short shapeless skirts that revealed rolled stockings
and bony powdered knees. They wore peek-a-boo hats that fell dangerously over
the eye, and they coughed as they puckishly dragged smoke through sleek painted
cigarette holders. They gathered in likeminded circles and they slandered their
rivals as “Dumb Doras” and “flat tires,” but the “sheiks” were the “cat’s
meow.”Their chests were as flat as washboards, and “the intoxication of rouge,”
(as one period publication described the flapper penchant for makeup), became a
statement of their reckless rebellion.
Browning himself bore a perpetual red
glow which, despite his shamelessness in the public eye, might have been
mistaken for a blush of embarrassment. He looked like a young boy holding his
breath, or an overtaxed weightlifter. Some even thought his features suggested
an imprudent predilection to drink. His bulging eyes glistened within the deep
pouches that underscored them. To the delight of many, he spoke in a thick
Bowery accent—“bird” was “boid” and “perfect,” “poifect.” A pocket comb would
frequently find its way through the locks of wavy white hair that clung
tenuously to his pink and shedding scalp.
Edward Browning’s appraising eye was to
happen that night upon the round face of a particular young girl. Her name was
Frances Belle Heenan and she was fifteen years old. She was not a member of the
sorority and she knew only one of the sorority sisters in attendance. She had
not been on the list of invited guests and her unexpected arrival aroused some
resentment among some in the sorority.
Pitiless newspaper writers would later
describe Frances Heenan as a “chubby schoolgirl” and other even less flattering
things, but Daddy clearly saw something in her that attracted him. She was
sophisticated for her age. Though her face generally bore an expression of
haughty distaste and her mouth drooped in an unfortunate frown, when she chose
to smile, she was capable of lighting up a room. She spoke in affected tones
and she never answered a question with a simple “yes;” it was instead, “pos-i-tive-ly.”
As Allen Churchill wrote, “Though pudgy, pettish and only sweet fifteen,
Frances Belle had already proved herself the enviable possessor of the
mysterious something called It.”
Frances Heenan could not help but notice
as Daddy Browning flittered into the ballroom, holding court with the coterie
of young girls who were eagerly drawn to his side. She turned to a guest and
inquired, over the high pitches of trumpet and saxophone notes, “Who is that?”
It was Daddy Browning, she was told. He had millions, but no one to spend it
on. Frances smiled and pronounced, “Well he can pos-i-tive-ly spend it
on me.”
What happened next is the subject of
some speculation. Peaches would later testify that a mutual acquaintance introduced
them and that Daddy immediately pursued her. “You look like peaches and cream
to me,” he told her, grinning with foolish delight. “I’m going to call you
Peaches.” Daddy, however, maintained that the relationship began at Peaches’
hot insistence.
Whatever the circumstances of their
initial meeting, Edward Browning and Frances Heenan spent the balance of that
evening engaged in lighthearted conversation and the wild gyrations of the
Charleston. She listened with less than comprehending interest to his boastful
soliloquies and he fawned over her skillfully timed blushing giggles—all under
the jealous eyes of the sorority sisters and guests.
~~~~~~
On March 5, 1926, the temporary rally
in American stock prices was abruptly checked as violent swings in the market
led to heavy selling. In Paterson, New Jersey, forty thousand textile workers
prepared for a walkout among predictions of a nationwide sympathy strike. At
the White House, President Coolidge was recalling the Ambassador to Great
Britain and the Minister to Switzerland to discuss the approaching disarmament
conference of the League of Nations. And beneath the vaulted ceilings of a
fashionable Manhattan hotel, Peaches met Daddy.
Thirty-seven
days later they would be married, and 296 days after that they would begin the
legal battle that would turn their domestic drama into a national scandal.