Strange Times 108: The Actress's Wrath

Strange Times is a newsletter that explores the weirdest news of 1921, one day at a time.

One last reminder that the Kickstarter campaign for my deeply delightful new game, Lost Ship, concludes on Thursday morning. Jump on board while you can!

And now, I present a story of an actress enraged and a convict inspired. Smash whatever displeases you on…

April 18, 1921

• Accused of neglecting his mother’s grave, evangelist Billy Sunday accuses anti-prohibition journalists of covering the tomb with refuse to make him look bad.

• Alleged bigamist Herbert Thornton Andrews returns to his first wife, claiming he and his second wife are through.

• Dunninger, the famous psychic, peers inside the mind of Babe Ruth during a performance and announces that the Yankee slugger’s greatest dream is to hit sixty home runs in the 1921 season.

• The Weather: Cloudy and continued cold today; fair, warmer tomorrow.

Three cheers for Cecile Sorel, who was not content simply to complain about the unfavorable caricature, and whose final quote in this article is something I want on a t-shirt.

I found several caricatures of Sorel online, but none from 1921. If it’s less flattering than this one, which she apparently did not try to smash, it must have really been horrifying. If you can find an image of the offending drawing, please share!

PARIS, April 17.—The Comédie Française star, Cecile Sorel, tried to obliterate the caricature of her yesterday at the Humorists’ exhibition, but only succeeded in breaking the glass of the picture without defacing it. Apparently the action was unpremeditated, as she attacked the portrait with nothing more deadly than a gold vanity bag.

The actress’s wrath was aroused as she stood looking at the picture by hearing a girl say, “Why, it’s quite like her.”

After breaking the glass the angry woman stalked through the crowd to her automobile, but returned shortly afterward to say that an eleven-carat ruby was missing from the clasp of her vanity bag, for which she offered a reward of 10,000 francs—the exact sum for which she is suing the artist Bib to avenge the insult to her charms. It was afterward that she learned that the chauffeur found the ruby on the floor of the automobile, but history does not relate whether he got the 10,000 francs.

The newspapers criticise Mlle. Sorel pretty severely and some of them suggest she is jealous of the notoriety of some of her colleagues who have been losing jewels or having law suits over a pearl necklace broken when two well-known stars came to blows.

Despite her agitation, Mlle. Sorel was able to make a declaration for the press before leaving the Humorists’ salon.

“It is horrible,” she said. “It is unworthy of a gentleman. You make ugliness because you are unable to create beauty. Why don’t you magnify beauty instead of destroying it?”

This is in keeping with her previous statement: “I am beautiful—only time has the right to disfigure me.”

I would read a biography of dandy Max Lynar, who was believed to be a German spy and bigamist as well as swindling war profiteer. I wonder if his airship ever got off the ground…

OSSINING, April 17.—Count Loudon, alias Max Lynar, Sing Sing’s titled inventor and international swindler, has completed the ocean-going airship he invented and has been working upon for a year, and is now planning to launch it in prison.

Loudon, who made $2,000,000 selling fake war munitions stock before imprisoned, made the craft in his spare time after doing his prison work. He has built a model of a dirigible, which he expects will be able to transport 1,000 passengers overseas, and has patented it. The model, which he built in the prison metal shop, of which Keeper John Van Wyck is foreman, is about twenty-five feet long and about nine feet in diameter. It is cylindrical in shape. Where it excels other dirigibles is in the horizontal airshaft through the centre of the bag. This enables the wind to pass through the centre of the bag and therefore greatly lessens the resistance of the wind against the head of the dirigible. The model will take aloft about 300 pounds.

“I’m expecting to get the gas to start it up,” said Count Loudon, “in a few days.” Warden Lawes will not permit the Count himself, or any other inmate, to experiment in launching for fear the pilot might be carried away or forget to return to serve the rest of his sentence.