March 14, 1998
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Not to be too morbid, but death, as ever, was at the center of
many stories in 1922. One, dating back a few millennia, was confirmed
in November as archaeologists discovered the tomb of pharaoh Tutankhamen
in Egypt's Valley of the Kings.
Some deaths would remain shrouded in mystery, even into to our
own time. In Hollywood, film director William Desmond Taylor was
found murdered. And closer to home, in Linden, in western New
York, 72-year-old Frances Kimball was battered to death in her
home. Two years later, in 1924, three other people were murdered
in the same small village. None of the four crimes was ever solved.
Giovanni Martini had cheated death once, by not being in the wrong
place at the right time. But Martini, George Armstrong Custer's
orderly at the Little Bighorn forty-six years previously, died
in Brooklyn this year.
There were other, relatively serene deaths. The literary world
lost several leading figures. In Paris the semi-invalid Marcel
Proust passed away at the age of 51. William Henry Hudson, born
in Argentina, also died this year. Most of the public would remember
him not as the naturalist he was by profession, but by his one
novel and its central character, Rima, the Bird Girl, of Green
Mansions .
One of the most mourned of those dying in 1922 was Mrs. Alexander
P. Moore. She was winding down from a long and varied career when
she died on June 6th. Her husband, her fourth actually, a Pittsburgh
newspaper publisher and Republican stalwart, had just helped put
Warren G. Harding in the White House. Mrs. M. had worked tirelessly
on the campaign as well, and Harding did not forget. Woodrow Wilson's
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had recently arrested 6,000
U. S. citizens on the grounds of Bolshevik sympathies and deported
close to a thousand, including Emma Goldman and Wobbly labor leader
"Big Bill" Haywood. Anti immigrant feelings were also
running high in these post-war years. Harding decided to send
Mrs. Moore to Europe to try and discover what compelled thousands
to flee their homeland and sail to American shores. She labored
mightily and came up with the unfortunate and simplistic conclusion
that "Alien infiltration wrecked Rome." Immigration
should be curbed. Continuing to lecture even though weakened by
a fall suffered on board ship while returning home, she soon wore
herself out and was dead a few weeks later. It was in this rather
bizarre scenario that the world lost one of its most colorful
characters, a woman who had sent male hearts racing in a series
of operettas, made audiences laugh in Weber and Fields vaudeville
skits, and turned Come Down My Evening Star into the favorite
song of thousands. To all of those thousands of fans Mrs. Moore,
born Helen Louise Leonard sixty years earlier, was far better
known as Lillian Russell.
OUTRO
For Classical ninety-one five, this is David Minor.
© 1998 avid Minor / Eagles Byte