Sometimes when conducting research one stumbles upon a little gem of a story buried within withered documents or obscure archives. This happened to me recently while digging deeper into the life of Jessie Reed, above, the gold-digging Ziegfeld showgirl who married my grandfather Leonard Reno. Tucked among some yellowed newspaper clippings was an item about her and a young heiress who had an affair with Jessie’s second husband, Dan Caswell, scion of a notable family in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a Roaring 20s fable with unexpected twists and turnarounds.

The rival girl’s name was Katherine Stevens. She was married to Dick Fagan, a handsome Dartmouth grad, but their marriage was on the rocks. She had gone to Reno to get a divorce, met Caswell along the way, flirted with him until Jessie and she had a cat-fight which became fodder for the tabloids. The affair caused Fagan to have a change of heart and he won his wife back. Jessie was left with Dan who turned out to be a spendthrift and a drunk. She divorced him and began an affair with Russell G. Colt, the heir to the arms fortune, and husband of Ethel Barrymore. So something good came of the scandal with Kate Stevens after all.

But what of young Kate? I was curious to know more about this two-timing heiress. Thanks to the internet I was able to delve into her past and uncover some interesting tales of her family. Perhaps the basic facts will be of little interest to anyone else, but I find it fascinating to glean tidbits of yesteryear’s scandals. The stories are at enough of a remove to make them harmless and amusing, rather than tragic and libelous. They are glimpses into a lost world of Jazz Age glamour, but also of the follies of fame and vanity.

Katherine’s story really begins with her notorious father, the miserly C. Amory Stevens. Long before she ran off with Dan Caswell, Kate had endured an enormous amount of press coverage relating to her father’s peculiar habit of residing in a rundown office building. Despite his reputation as the wizard of Wall Street, with millions in the bank, he chose to sleep on a cheap cot, with little or no furnishings. His clothes were threadbare; his grooming unkempt. Stevens’ wife, the socially conscious Jessie Prendergast Stevens, lived in high style in a lavish home. Why did he choose to hide out as a pauper? The press speculated it was because he was pathologically cheap. A deranged skinflint. But the truth was a bit weirder than that.

Calvin Amory Stevens had a history of provoking controversy, once hiring a female detective to masquerade as a woman of the night to lure a business rival to a house of ill repute, so that Stevens could lay claim to a fortune he had hoped to inherit outright. Stevens and his sister, a battle-ax named Mary Richardson, wrestled over family assets. His father had been a millionaire and an adventurous soul (he is mentioned in the Mormon Chronicles from 1875) who went out West to make his mark. But his legacy was tainted by scandal.

In 1885 C. Amory Stevens was sued by his sister for mismanagement of his father’s estate. But over time he was rumored to have accumulated millions of his own through investments and real estate. Or so it seemed. When his daughter Kate ran off with Fagan in a shocking elopement, Stevens was constantly described as being worth $25 million (the equivalent of a billion today). But when old man Stevens died shortly afterward, it was discovered that he had run through his vast fortune and had nothing to show for it. He had been living in squalor not because he was mad, but because he was literally broke.  On April 15, 1925, Stevens’ will was valued at a negative $15,000 in debts. His mining interests in Nova Scotia, New Mexico and Virginia were worthless.

Kate’s story doesn’t end there, however. After a divorce from Fagan and a second marriage to someone named Hofer, she ended up marrying Prince Ibrahim Fazil, a wealthy Egyptian, son of Prince Ali Fazil, cousin of King Fuad. His mother was the Baroness Marthe de Carnap of Naples. A glamorous figure, he’d been involved in a juicy scandal of his own in 1922 when as a young man of 17, he had been accused of having an affair with Marie Cadman Mourilyan, the wife of his Walpole House school chum, Edmund Irvine Mourilyan. When he suspected his wife of infidelity, Mourilyan beat her, then attempted suicide. She took morphine. The case dominated the British press for several weeks as the salacious details of the suit (the husband apparently had venereal disease and collected “indecent photographs”) were splashed across the papers.

Fazil protested his innocence, claiming that he was just a friend of the lady in question. But a maid’s testimony that she’d seen him in pyjamas, kissing her mistress in bed, raised more than eyebrows. In the end, however, he was acquitted of the charges and her honor was restored. Fazil profited from his newfound reputation as a dashing ladies man. He married Kate Stevens in a lavish wedding in London. By then Prince Ibrahim was a lieutenant in the British Royal Artillery. The couple, below, remained married, as far as I know, and had children. At some point they adopted the name Foxwood.

The story was perhaps not a happily-ever-after scenario (Kate was arrested for driving under the influence in 1939), but one that was certainly a far cry from the unfortunate series of events that overtook her youthful rival, lovely Jessie Reed, who ended up in a charity hospital in Chicago, alone and destitute. Jessie died in 1940, so broke that the Ziegfeld Club had to raise funds to pay for her funeral. And where was my grandfather? According to press reports at the time, he came to visit Jessie in the hospital, bringing his latest wife along. I can’t imagine that he lingered long or that Jessie was glad to see him. He probably wanted some of his things back.

I’m not sure I’ve gained anything particularly valuable by peering into the lives of these curious souls, the Stevens and Fazil clans. Their role in my research into Jessie Reed is minimal at best. But for me these slivers of the past are like an old newsreel. The news may no longer be of any value, but one can’t help being entranced by the flickering lights and shadows of the passing parade.

Sometimes it takes a warm cadaver for people to take notice of forgotten novelists. I had hoped that would happen with James Purdy, above (photo by Robert Giard), who died on Friday the 13th, this past March. But even though the New York Times honored him with a perfunctory obituary, few others in the media paid homage. The “In Memoriam” segment of This Week with George Stephanopolous, for instance, cited several celebrity deaths that Sunday, but made no mention of James Purdy, whom some have argued was one of America’s finest authors. When I mentioned this to Alfred Corn, a writer and friend, he turned to me with obvious surprise and an unspoken “duh” and said “Well, of course not. He was gay.”

I guess that’s what it comes down to in the end, although James Purdy’s work covered a much wider and far more bizarre terrain than simply homosexuality. He wrote of serial killers, society misfits, and what New Directions cited as “the paradox of love and loneliness.” Perhaps you’ve never heard of him. I wouldn’t be surprised, even though he wrote numerous darkly comic novels, including the acclaimed Jeremy’s Version; The Nephew; Cabot Wright Returns; and Narrow Rooms. One of my favorite works of his is Colour of Darkness, an eerie short story first published as 63: Dream Palace. It was the first of his pieces that garnered accolades, thanks to a rousing recommendation from Dame Edith Sitwell who, only occasionally prone to hyperbole, claimed he was the most significant writer to come along in a hundred years.

John Powys called him “certainly the best kind of original genius of our day.” The Times of London said, vis a vis Malcolm, perhaps his best-known novel, “Mr. Purdy writes like an angel… a fallen angel, versed in the sinful ways of man.” Dorothy Parker, who knew a few things about humor, called Malcolm, “The most prodigiously funny book to streak across these heavy-hanging times.” Orville Prescott, who so famously dissed Gore Vidal, championed Malcolm’s young author, stating that “Mr. Purdy is in some danger of becoming the center of a literary cult.”

What also surprised me about Purdy’s death — certainly not unexpected since he was 94 — was that the New York Times obituary felt like it had been rushed into print, without any preparation. It left out two very prominent facts of his wide-ranging career. First, it made no mention of Edward Albee’s play version of Malcolm which opened on Broadway in 1966 and ran a scant seven performances. Not every writer can lay claim to such a monumental flop.

And second, William Grimes, who wrote the obit, completely overlooked the cult film In A Shallow Grave, directed by Kenneth Bowser, starring Michael Biehn and Patrick Dempsey, which was adapted from Purdy’s novel of the same name. It was produced by American Playhouse in 1988. As far as I know it has never been released on DVD.

As a tribute to James Purdy, who lived in Brooklyn and whom I once met briefly at a literary party, I decided to devote last night to rewatching In A Shallow Grave. Sadly, it’s not on Netflix; I had to make do with a scratchy old VHS copy. Of course, I’ve seen the film a dozen times. But I wanted to savor its dark, tortured mysteries yet again. Michael Biehn gives the performance of his career in it, as a soldier returned from the war with severe disfigurements to his face — a far cry from his Terminator beefcake roles. In fact, he is so unattractive in this film that you can hardly recognize him.

Categorized as a gay film when it came out, because it included some homoerotic themes, In A Shallow Grave is anything but. It’s a deeply disturbing film about war, race relations, male bonding, and the redeeming power of love. When the book was first released, the New York Times Book Review stated emphatically: “In A Shallow Grave is a funny…and touching book…a modern Book of Revelation, filled with prophesies, visions and demoniac landscapes. It will bring to Purdy the wider audience he deserves.” Perhaps it still can.

ADDENDUM

Here are links to two fascinating interviews that will illuminate much more than I can say about James Purdy: Here and There.

Each spring when the horse-racing world turns its eye to Louisville and the Kentucky Derby, I can’t help but reminisce about a trip I took there a decade ago to ferret out my family’s murky past. One of the key places on my list was Calumet Farm, above (courtesy of LIFE), the epitome of Bluegrass culture, synonymous with some of the most famous thoroughbred racehorses in history: Whirlaway and Citation. Ironically, in 1992, when Henryk deKwiatkowski purchased Calumet Farm at public auction, Quest asked me to interview him. At the time, I had no idea that distant ancestors of mine had once lived there.

What was my connection to this legendary stable? Well, it’s a bit convoluted. My mother Muriel Reno Peters died in 1993, leaving behind some scrapbooks belonging to her father Leonard Minor Reno, a noted aviator in the First World War. While perusing these diaries and photographs, I kept noticing pictures of him at a horse farm of some sort. No details were given. But as I began the slow and often difficult process of putting the pieces of his family tree together, I discovered that his mother, Linnie Daniel Reno, was the sister of Georgia Daniel Wright. Georgia had married the founder of Calumet Farm, William Monroe Wright. The two families were very tight and often traveled together.

Born in Dayton, Ohio in 1851 (although a passport I found states 1848), he first married Clara Lee Morrison of New York, and had a son, Warren Wright. A “kindly soul”, according to newspaper accounts, William was also an extremely savvy businessman. In the 1890s, he founded Calumet Baking Powder, which proved to be immensely popular with the growing middle class which still made its own biscuits at home. As his wealth increased, he poured his good fortune into real estate and horses.

In 1924 Wright bought the old 1,200 acre Fairland Farm in Lexington, on Versailles Pike, and renamed it after his firm, Calumet. He moved his family and started raising Standardbreds. In 1928, the Wrights sold their interest in the baking powder company to General Foods for $32 million and then turned their full attention to Calumet Farm and breeding champion trotters. Wright’s horse Calumet Butler won the Hambletonian Trotting Classic in 1931, but old man Wright by then was too sick to celebrate.

When William Wright died a month later, at the height of the Depression, he left an estate valued at $60 million. His son Warren inherited $55 million of that and went on to establish Calumet Farm as the premier Thoroughbred-producing stable of its time. My grandfather’s aunt Georgia, as Wright’s widow, was left a generous annual stipend and the right to live at the farm until her death. Sadly, she didn’t live much longer. She had a heart attack in 1936, leaving her stake in the fortune to her daughter, Lucile Page, also from a previous marriage. Sometime in the 1970s, when Lucile Page died, she left my mother a small bequest. None of us at the time knew where the money came from. But clearly it must have come from all those cans of Calumet Baking Powder.

The more I delved into Georgia Daniel Wright, above, and her own obscure roots, the more intrigued I became by my ancestry. Genealogy is one of those pastimes that only appeal to the person performing them. Eyes roll and jaws yawn the moment one brings it up to others. But I was determined to find out more about the Daniel clan and how these two sisters from the backwoods of Tennessee had risen to such heights.

Finding out anything about them was difficult and time-consuming. But eventually I was able to locate death certificates, passport applications, and census records that helped me contrive a spotty but accurate picture. Georgia and Linnie were the daughters of George W. Daniel and Mary Elizabeth Gardner of Weakley County, Tennessee, both of whom were born in the 1830s. Georgia was born in Bonham, Texas in 1861 when her father was stationed at Fort Concho, below, as a surgeon with the Confederate Army. Whether he was enlisted or not, I have not been able to ascertain. They stayed in Texas for a few years, then went back to Weakley County where Linnie was born, and eventually moved to Arkansas.

From there the trail grows cold until Linnie turns up married to Harry Otho Reno, below, in Jonesboro in 1893. Harry had started out as a bellhop at the posh old Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs and was nicknamed “Hot Springs Harry” by his pals. He bought one of the local papers and became a successful newspaperman. Eventually the Renos resettled in Chicago where he founded the H. O. Reno Co., a publishing firm which put out Furniture Age, a trade journal. An avid horseman, Reno most likely introduced his wife’s sister Georgia to William Monroe Wright while attending some horse-related event. The Wrights were married in 1897.

Since discovering these various links, I’ve traveled down to Gardner Station, Tennessee where my Gardner ancestors were from and traced their roots back to the early 1600s in Virginia, although there are some gaps in the Gardner tree that make it difficult to be absolutely certain. If some of these trees I’ve found are true, then I am not only related to Davy Crockett, but the infamous Bell Witch! From there I ventured north and east to Louisville and Lexington, and stopped off for good measure in Lawrenceburg where my father, who ran Austin, Nichols, & Co. used to make Wild Turkey bourbon!

I had less luck with the Daniel clan. George W. Daniel’s father James M. Daniel proved difficult to trace. He seems to have come out of North Carolina and died in 1836 in Weakley County. His wife Susan then appears to have married a much younger man named Josiah Carney and settled in Graves County, Kentucky, leaving her grown children to fend for themselves. It’s all based on census records, which are notoriously unreliable, and I’ve had to challenge some of the claims made by genealogists who have mistaken my Susan Carney with others, thereby muddying the waters further. But I’m pretty sure that I have the right couple as Graves County is just over the border from Weakley. I’d welcome any input from anyone out there taking notice.

Where does all this genealogical digging get me? Well, in the case of the Daniels, it led me to a branch of the family, descended from Georgia’s brothers, who lived in Texas and became multimillionaires in the oil business, via the Daniel Orifice Company. I’m hoping some day that one of them will leave me a fortune. And then there are the Gardners, some of whom I’ve befriended online and actually visited with in Tennessee. It’s fun to find out one has distant cousins. They have all the advantages of relatives but none of the downsides. They don’t expect presents on their birthdays.