September 14, 1927: The Death of Isadora Duncan

September 14, 1927: The life of Isadora Duncan, so often touched by unconventionality and tragedy, comes to an unconventional and tragic end.

Angela Isadora Duncan was born on May 26, 1877 in San Francisco, and began dancing as a child, finding it liberating from a life of poverty where girls were restricted. She moved to New York to further her career in 1896, but she soon became disillusioned with the tight control of the entertainment industry there. She thought American dance instruction was too tight: She later wrote, of anyone who wanted to dance, "Let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance."

She found a more receptive audience in Europe, especially in Paris, where innovation in art was established as a way of life. She gained large audiences at the Universal Exposition of 1900, attraction attention by wearing loose, flowing dresses that revealed her figure, and for dancing barefoot. A 1902 tour of Europe increased her fame.

She became the most famous dancer, and the most famous dance instructor, in the world. On June 20, 1912, French fashion designer Paul Poiret rented a mansion in the northern suburbs of France, and hosted La fête de Bacchus on June 20, 1912, re-creating the Bacchanalia hosted by King Louis XIV at his Palace at Versailles. Isadora wore a Greek evening gown designed by Poiret, and danced on tables among 300 guests. It was said that 900 bottles of champagne were consumed until the first light of day.

She returned to the U.S. in 1914, but her reputation preceded her, and work was hard to come by. She returned to Europe in 1915, initially planning to do so aboard the RMS Lusitania, but could not afford a luxurious crossing, and avoided the Germany sinking of that ship.

Her love-life was also complicated. Her affairs included one with theater designer Gordon Craig, resulting in the birth of her daughter Deirdre in 1906; and one with philanthropist Paris Singer, son of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer, resulting in the birth of her son Patrick in 1910. In 1913, both children died while riding in a car driven by their nanny, into the River Seine in Paris.

Isadora was driven by grief to the Greek island of Corfu, where her brother and sister were staying, and then to Viareggio, Italy, where her friend, the renowned actress Eleonora Duse, lived. While there, in 1914, she fell for the sculptor Romano Romanelli, and this affair led to the birth of a son, but he died after only a few days. She adopted 6 daughters, all of whom took the surname Duncan, and 3 of them also became dance instructors.

She only married once. In 1921, she moved to Moscow, where she met the poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years younger. They married in 1922, but separated the next year. In 1925, he hanged himself.

At some point, Isadora said he had had enough of love, lamenting that what men called "love," women only considered "possession." But, even in her 40s, she still wanted a child. A story which may be apocryphal says that she suggested to writer Anatole France, "Imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!" To which he Anatole responded, "Yes, but imagine a child with my beauty and your brains!

After Yesenin, she spent her time running up debts at various hotels around Europe, essentially a high-class homeless person. Friends urged her to save her financial situation by writing her memoirs. She did, and, by September 14, 1927, the manuscript for My Life was completed -- but not yet published.

That day, in Nice, on the French Riviera, she was staying at the home of her friend, singer Mary Desti, whose son, Preston Sturges, became a prominent film director. Isadora left in an Amilcar CGSS driven by Benoit Falchetto, a mechanic. She told Desti and the other guests, "Je vais à l'amour" ("I am off to love").

A 1927 Amilcar CGSS

Given what happened next, they didn't want those to go down in history as her last words, because it sounded like she was going off for a night of passion with Falchetto. So Desti told the press that Isadora told them, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire!" ("Farewell, my friends. I go to glory!")

She was wearing a long silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled, in the wheel well, around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, pulling her from the open car and breaking her neck. Desti said she called out to warn Duncan about the scarf almost immediately after the car left. Desti took Duncan to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead. She was only 50 years old.

She was buried at Paris' Père Lachaise Cemetery, as have been many other artists, writers and entertainers. Several dance schools with her name were founded, and some still survive.

She was played by Vivian Pickles in Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World, in 1966; Vanessa Redgrave in Isadora, 1968; and Lily-Rose Depp, daughter of Johnny Depp and Vanessa Paradis, in The Dancer, about Duncan's colleague Loie Fuller, in 2016.

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September 14, 1927 was a Wednesday. These baseball games were played:

* The New York Yankees beat the Cleveland Indians, 4-1 at Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth went 1-for-3 with a walk. Lou Gehrig did the same, and added an RBI.

* A doubleheader was split at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The St. Louis Cardinals won the opener, 6-3. Chick Hafey won it with a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning, making a winning pitcher out of Carlisle Littlejohn, who had relieved Grover Cleveland Alexander. The New York Giants won the nightcap, 9-3.

The previous off-season, the Giants had traded Frankie Frisch to the Cardinals for Rogers Hornsby. Over these 2 games, Frisch went 2-for-7 with 2 walks and an RBI on a sacrifice fly, Hornsby went 3-for-9, and Bill Terry went 6-for-11 with 3 RBIs.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers (or the Robins, as they were known under Wilbert Robinson's managing from 1914 to 1931) beat the Chicago Cubs, 10-6 at Wrigley Field in Chicago.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the St. Louis Browns, 9-6 at Fenway Park in Boston.

* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Chicago White Sox, 5-4 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Jimmie Foxx singled Walt French home with the winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning. Ty Cobb, running out the string, went 3-for-5.

* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 3-2 at Griffith Stadium in Washington.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates swept a doubleheader from the Boston Braves, 6-2 and 3-0 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Johnny Miljus pitched a 6-hit shutout in the 2nd game. Over the 2 games, Paul Waner went 3-for-9, and Lloyd Waner went 5-for-9 with an RBI.

* And the Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 7-6 at Redland Field (later Crosley Field) in Cincinnati.

February 16, 1926: Women's Tennis' "Match of the Century"

Suzanne Lenglen (left) and Helen Wills

February 16, 1926: The women's tennis final of the Carlton Club Tournament is held, at Cannes on the French Riviera. Tennis fans would call it "The Match of the Century."

This was at a time when France dominated tennis. Jean Borotra (1898-1994), Jacques Brugnon (1895-1978), Henri Cochet (1901-1987) and René Lacoste (1904-1996) were known as "The Four Musketeers." Between them, they won 8 French Opens, 5 Wimbledons, 4 U.S. Opens, and an Australian Open, won by Borotra.

Brugnon didn't win any of them. In fact, he never even made a singles' final at a major tournament. Cochet and Lacoste never even competed in the Australian Open: In those early days of commercial air travel, it was too dangerous, and going from Europe or America to Australia by ship took too long, so the Australian Open was the last of the modern majors to be recognized as such. These 4 men also helped France win the Davis Cup in 1927 and 1928. In 1933, Lacoste founded the sportswear company that bears his name, its logo his nickname: "The Crocodile."

The best female tennis player in the world was also French. Suzanne Lenglen was born on May 24, 1899 in Paris. In 1921, when individual tennis rankings were first issued, she was named the Number 1 women's player. They continued to rank her 1st through 1926, as she won Wimbledon 6 times and the French Open twice -- but never the U.S. or the Australian Open. Her career record in singles matches was 332 wins and 7 losses. That is not a misprint: Three hundred thirty-two and seven. The French press called her La Divine: "The Goddess."

Helen Newington Wills was born on October 6, 1905 in Fremont, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. She won the U.S. Open in 1923, 1924 and 1925. As Lenglen had won the Gold Medal in women's singles in tennis at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, Belgium, Wills won it in 1924, in Paris, Lenglen's hometown.

The hype for a match between Lenglen and Wills began in late 1923, following Wills' 1st U.S. Open title. Their 1st encounter was expected to take place in 1924, when Wills made her first trip to Europe to compete in the Wightman Cup against Great Britain, before partaking in Wimbledon and the Olympics later that Summer. However, Lenglen contracted jaundice, and, not fully recovered, withdrew from Wimbledon after winning the Quarterfinal, preventing a meeting with Wills in the Final, which Wills lost to Kitty McKane. Despite the Paris location, Lenglen did not defend her Olympic title, and Wills won it. Wills did not return to Europe in 1925, instead focusing on her college studies as a sophomore at the University of California at Berkeley.

But in 1926, both women entered the Carlton Club tournament. Each one approved the various officials for the Final, and those officials, in the interest of neutrality between the Frenchwoman and the American, were British. Most were, themselves, former tennis players, and one was a winner of the British Amateur golf tournament.

The 1st set saw Wills take a 2-1 lead, but Lenglen broke her service 3 times, to win the set, 6-3. Wills led the 2nd set  3-1, 4-3 and 5-4, before Lenglen took a 6-5 lead, before Wills forced a tiebreaker. But Lenglen won it, 8-6. After 1 hour and 3 minutes, the match was over, and Lenglen had won.

There was never a rematch. But Wills did find a match on the trip: She met Frederick S. Moody Jr., a San Francisco stockbroker. They married in 1929, and divorced in 1937. She married Aidan Roark, an Irish polo player, in 1939. She never had any children.

Nor did Lenglen, who never married, although she dated California heir Baldwin Baldwin for a few years. She wrote 3 tennis instruction manuals, and a romance novel, The Love Game: Being the Life Story of Marcelle Penrose. But she never won another major tournament, and died of pernicious anemia on July 4, 1938, at the age of 39. Antibiotics were not yet available to save her.

Wills succeeded Lenglen as the most dominant female tennis player in the world. In those days, not many tennis players (male or female) made the long trip to Australia to play their Open. If she had, she might have won the Grand Slam, because she won the other 3 in 1928 and 1929. Between 1923 and 1938, she won Wimbledon 8 times (a record until Martina Navratilova surpassed it in 1990), the U.S. Open 7 times, and the French Open 4 times -- but never entered the Australian Open. On 7 occasions, a Grand Slam Final came down to "The Two Helens," with Helen Wills Moody (she used her married name from 1930 onward) beating Helen Hull Jacobs in 6 of them.

She wrote an instruction manual in 1928 (titled simply Tennis), a memoir in 1937 (also with an ordinary title, Fifteen-Thirty: The Story of a Tennis Player), a mystery novel in 1939 (with more imagination, titled Death Serves an Ace), and articles for The Saturday Evening Post, and painted up until her death, on January 1, 1998, at 92.

In 1950, the Associated Press named Suzanne Lenglen the greatest female tennis player of the 1st half of the 20th Century, along with Bill Tilden as the greatest male tennis player. In the 2nd half of the 20th Century, she would be surpassed by many, including Margaret Court, Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova. In the 21st Century, they were all surpassed by Serena Williams.

Both Jack Kramer and Don Budge -- contemporaries who lived long enough to see Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf and Monica Seles -- called Helen Wills the best female tennis player ever. She was elected to the International Tennis and Bay Area Sports Halls of Fame.

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February 16, 1926 was a Monday. English film director John Schlesinger was born.

Baseball and football were out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 3 games in the NHL:

* The New York Americans lost to the Toronto St. Patricks, 3-2 at the brand-new building that would eventually be known as "the old Madison Square Garden." Bert McCaffrey scored the winning goal, with 1:25 left in regulation.

* The Ottawa Senators beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Mount Royal Arena in Montreal.

* And the Boston Bruins beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 3-2 at the Boston Arena (now the Matthews Arena). Lionel Hitchman scored the winning goal, 36 seconds into overtime.