Had Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad come along 100 years later they'd probably have their own television series. Instead, their arrest got them only as far as the vaudeville stage. Willie Hammerstein is the person responsible for the short, unsuccessful show business career of "The Shooting Show Girls" (who also were called "Those Two Girls" and "The Shooting Stars"). He bailed Graham and Conrad out of jail and put them to work almost immediately.
And who is Willie Hammerstein? He is the link between theater impressario Oscar Hammerstein I and the more famous Oscar Hammerstein II, being the son of the first and the father of the second. Were Willie Hammerstein alive today he'd probably be producing TV reality shows. (His son, Oscar, of course, was the lyricist for such hit musicals as "The Sound of Music," "Oklahoma!," "South Pacific" and others.)
To further digress, a word about Joe Laurie Jr., who wrote the book from which the excerpt (below) was taken. Laurie was a humorist who for several years was a regular on a show called "Can You Top This?" and featured a panel of joke tellers who were called upon to tell a funnier joke than had been selected from the thousands sent in by listeners every week. The panelists almost always topped the listeners, but few ever topped Laurie. |
About Willie Hammerstein
His sense of humor and of the ridiculous just fit him for the task of managing Hammerstein's. As a headline hunter he had no equal. He inaugurated the "freak act" in vaudeville. He booked all the prominent fighters, wrestlers, and bicycle and running champions. He played the killers and near killers. A couple of comely girls, Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad, shot at W. E. D. Stokes, a socialite realtor. The bullet struck the three-initialed gentleman in the leg and he promptly had the gals arrested. The newspapers were filled with the accounts of the shooting, Willie went bail for the girls and booked them for Hammerstein's, billing them as 'The Shooting Stars." They couldn't sing, dance, or act, but jammed the house. After seeing the act, Junie McCree (a noted wit) remarked, "They'll be lucky if they finish the week without someone taking a shot at theml"
– From "Vaudeville From the Honky Tonks to the Palace" by Joe Laurie Jr. (Henry Holt, 1953) |
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The championship fight mentioned in the ad above was a lightweight title contest between Ad Wolgast ("The Michigan Wildcat") and England's Owen Moran. Wolgast successfully defended his title by knocking out Moran in the 13th round. Moran had beaten Wolgast a few years earlier when both fighters were launching their careers.
Okay, back to the subject. Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad made debut as a vaudeville team before they went on trial. They weren't the first "freak act" and they wouldn't be the last. In 1912 they managed to take their show on the road, at least through several cities scattered around New York State, which extended their fifteen minutes of fame, but they were soon undone by a lack of talent.
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Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad got most of the attention in the 1911 newspaper ad, which must have frosted Sophie Tucker, who went on to become a show business legend whose nickname was "Last of the Red Hot Mamas." I remember her mostly from her several appearances on Ed Sullivan's television show.
ANYWAY, a strange thing happened a week or so after that newspaper ad appeared. One can only guess that "those two pretty show girls" were not attracting enough attention on stage. Perhaps they were in need of a publicity stunt. How else to explain who and why Lillian Graham abruptly disappeared ... only to be found a day later cooped up by herself in a Poughkeepsie hotel room? |
New York Sun, July 26, 1911
Lillian Graham Rescued
Lillian Graham, the missing member of the song and dance team of Graham and Conrad that won an engagement at Hammerstein's by shooting W. E. D. Stokes in the legs, was found yesterday afternoon at Poughkeepsie in the Morgan House.
After inquiry if any reporters were snooping around, Miss Graham told Chief of Police Charles McCabe that it was all true; she had been kidnapped, and her dreadful experience had left her so bewildered and upset that although she arrived at Poughkeepsie on Sunday morning she didn't think about coming back to New York or telegraphing her friends.
As it was late on Saturday night when she disappeared she hadn't really been missing long to her own consciousness.
Something prompted Clark L. Jordan, her lawyer, to telegraph to Chief McCabe yesterday afternoon that he had received information that Miss Graham had been seen getting off a train at Poughkeepsie early Sunday morning. He sent along a description and asked McCabe to rescue her.
The chief made the rounds of the hotels, and at the Morgan House the clerks told him that a young woman arrived there at 2 o'clock last Sunday morning, registered as "Lillian Clark," went to her room and had remained in the room ever since.
McCabe went up to a small room in the rear of the third floor, rapped and was invited in. Miss Graham, reclining on the bed, spoke in a weak, uncertain voice, asking him what he wanted. McCabe told her that her lawyer had sent for her and she admitted at once that she was the girl in demand. Then, with frequent pauses as she appeared to rally her thoughts, she told the following tale:
"At 10:30 last Saturday night I left my sister's house at 100 West 110th street to get some headache powders and some butter. When I got to the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 110th Street a man suddenly jumped at me and threw over my head a bag or a cloth. It smelled of tar and made me quite faint. I tried to scream, but the cloth choked my cries. I was helpless.
"The man rushed me to a motor car, threw me in and drove away. I remembered nothing until I heard a man and a woman talking. Their voices sounded hazy and far away. Again I went into unconsciousness and did not regain my senses until the conductor of a New York Central train shook me by the shoulder and told me I had reached my station and that it was time to get off.
“Somehow I managed to stumble to the station platform. I didn't know what I was doing. I saw a taxicab, got in and told the chauffeur to drive me to a hotel. He took me to the Morgan House and left me there. Why I registered as Lillian Clark I don’t know, except that my mind wasn't working clearly. Everything was a mist to me.
“The shock had taken away all my strength. I just wanted to be quiet and away from the dreadful person who had kidnapped me."
The night clerk at the Morgan House told McCabe that when Miss Graham arrived there she said that she had made a mistake in trains, that she had started for Albany but had got on a train that stopped at Poughkeepsie, so she thought she had come to the end of her trip. She told the clerks also that she wanted all of her meals served in her room. She never stirred from the room until last evening, when McCabe took her to the police station.
He sent word to Lawyer Jordan that Miss Graham was ready to go home and Jordan telegraphed to keep her in the station house until he could get up from this city. With Mrs. Singleton, Miss Graham's sister. Jordan went up to complete the rescue. |
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Graham, her lawyer, her sister and Ethel Conrad insisted it was not a publicity stunt, so did the Hammerstein press agent. It's doubtful anyone believed them. In the absence of Graham, Conrad performed solo. How many performances that involved, I do not know. While neither had displayed much talent, Graham was considered a better performer than Conrad, which was faint praise. So those who saw Conrad, without Graham, may have asked for their money back.
There was something else about the incident ... something either oddly coincidental or outrageously offensive. It involved something that had happened in Poughkeepsie sixteen years earlier, an incident that attracted national attention and presented the city in a bad light. It was in March, 1895, that a nine-year-old actress playing the part of Little Eva in a traveling company production of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" at Poughkeepsie's Collingood Opera House, was stricken with diphtheria, which at the time was a much-feared disease, one that claimed many lives each year.
The girl's mother, who played Miss Ophelia in the play, had dropped out of the company in Chicago where she was hospitalized for consumption. When the acting company reached Poughkeepsie, the young girl was sick. A female member of the troupe took the girl to a hospital, but was advised the youngster couldn't be admitted without a doctor's recommendation. A local doctor was willing to make such a recommendation, but the Poughkeepsie health officer ordered the girl taken to the local pesthouse, a throwback to medieval times. The pesthouse was a small, unsanitary facility where victims of contagious diseases – particularly frightening diseases – were isolated.
The pesthouse was empty at the time, but the health officer dispatched someone to get it ready for the young patient. Unfortunately, the man had difficulty locating anyone who had a key for the building. As a result, the girl and the woman from the acting company arrived at the pesthouse first, and were stuck outside in the snow for an hour, until a Poughkeepsie police officer arrived and forced his way into the pesthouse and started a fire. The girl was put into a cold, dirty bed and given a dirty nightshirt to wear. Instead she opted to remain in her own clothes, which were damp. The situation couldn't have been much worse.
THE GIRL'S plight became news a few days later and the story attracted a lot of attention. For a while it was feared the little girl, like the character she played on stage, would die. The theater company sent its own doctors to treat her, asking that she be released to them. The Poughkeepsie health officer stubbornly refused and even tried to prevent visits from outside physicians. However, other doctors persisted and treated the young girl. Through the efforts of those doctors conditions at the pesthouse improved and so did the condition of the young actress, who recovered a few weeks later and rejoined the acting company.
The girl's stage name? Lillian Graham. No, she didn't grow up and become a "Shooting Show Girl," but for a few days she was known around town by the same name as the would-be actress who hid out in a Poughkeepsie hotel in 1911.
The young girl's identity changed as more details were revealed about her situation. She had been placed in her mother's custody after her parents divorced. Her father had lost touch with her because the acting company was constantly on the road. He lived in White Plains, N.Y., where he read about his daughter's daughter's plight, then went to Poughkeepsie to see her. There he insisted the girl's real last name was Adams, same as his.
Unfortunately, I haven't found any mention of what happened next for the girl or either one of her parents ...
As for the shooting show girls, they went to trial in December and were acquitted. A few days later they were performing again. However, their days in the spotlight were numbered. They were headed for obscurity, though they didn't make the trip without putting up a bit of a fight. |
New York Sun, December 19, 1911
Shooters of Stokes Dance
Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad, acquitted last Friday of feloniously shooting W. E. D. Stokes, returned to vaudeville yesterday, appearing at the Victoria Theatre in a song and dance turn. The bill had it: “Lillian Graham and Ethel Conrad in songs – Miss Graham at the piano.”
Assistant District Attorney William Dean Embree, who was one of the prosecutors in the Stokes case, was in the audience. Mr. Embree spied Juror No. 7, Davis Tannenbum. He went over and asked Mr. Tannenbaum if the jurors had received complimentary tickets. Mr. Tannenbaum intimated that he had paid for his seat.
The Graham-Conrad act was the only one of the fourteen turns that was not liberally applauded. When Miss Conrad, in pale blue, and Miss Graham, in pink, sang “That Mysterious Rag” and presented their ideas of dancing some people laughed. A few hissed. There were catcalls. A large, strong person attached to the theatre walked up and down the aisles frowning. Finally he sat on the orchestra rail facing the audience ready, it appeared, to leap upon troublemakers.
His services were not required. The act was brief and quickly faded away. |
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New York Evening Telegram, January 31, 1912
Lillian Graham's Act Pays $400 a Week
Lillian Graham, recently acquitted on the charge of shooting W. E. D. Stokes, was examined in supplementary proceedings this morning by Anna L. Parsons, a woman lawyer, to determine why she has not satisfied a judgment for pictures taken by Otto Sarony & Co. While the original bill was only $28, the judgment levied in the City Court on December 28, last, was for $86.16.
Miss Graham was accompanied by her vaudeville partner, Ethel Conrad, and their counsel, Clarke I. Jordan. Miss Graham said she is now acting in vaudeville with Miss Conrad, under contract to Max Spiegel, who receives $400 weekly for the girls’ act. She said she did not receive any fixed compensation, and that the last real money that had come into her possession was $52 which Mr. Spiegel gave her about four weeks ago.
She said she is living at the Hotel Carlton, in West 54th Street, paying $21 rent weekly, and that she boards around in cafes and restaurants. |
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New York Sun, June 1, 1912
A suit for $100,000 for malicious prosecution was filed in the Supreme Court yesterday against W. E. D. Stokes by Lillian Graham, who with Ethel Conrad was tried and acquitted on a charge of shooting Stokes in the legs last June.
At the time there were acquitted, the young women announced that they intended to sue Stokes for damages. Miss Graham alleges that Stokes swore falsely against her and that there was no reasonable grounds to charge her with committing a crime.
Clark L. Jordan, counsel for Miss Graham, said that as soon as a guardian ad litem is appointed for Miss Conrad she will sue also, through Robert M. Moore, associate counsel in the case.
Lawyer Jordan said that his process server had some trouble getting access to Stokes with the summons in the case. Finally he decided to pose as a buyer for some of the Stokes real estate, and after familiarizing himself with some of the property, called Mr. Stokes at the Ansonia yesterday and arranged to meet the owner
The process server, Harry Rothenberg, said that when he handed Stokes the summons, the latter said:
“Well, I’m glad to get Lillian Graham into court again.”
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New York Sun, July 18, 1912
Ethel Conrad Found Bound and Gagged
Perhaps a Curly Haired Man
With a Mustache Did It
Ethel Conrad, the showgirl who with Lillian Graham shot W. E. D. Stokes of the Ansonia in the Varuna apartments at 225 West 80th Street on June 8, 1911, said she realized early yesterday that she had had an adventure when she was awakened by the falling of rain on her face and found she was lying on her side in a lot back of the Fort Washington Reformed Church in 181st Street near Fort Washington Avenue, with an empty chloroform bottle near her. She tried to get up, but couldn’t as her knees were bound together with a piece of clothes line, and she couldn’t scream because her mouth was stopped with a handkerchief.
She couldn’t recall what the adventure had been until several hours after she had been taken to the Washington Heights Hospital, and then she said that a man with curly black hair and a mustache, who had followed her in 181st Street, could tell more about the events of the morning than she possibly could. She had paid no attention to him, she said, until she smelled an overpowering odor of something sweetly fragrant and then she lost her senses.
The police of the St. Nicholas Avenue station, who investigated Miss Conrad’s story, will keep the clothes line, handkerchief and bottle as souvenirs, but they are not worrying about the mystery man with the curly mustache.
At 5:15 o’clock yesterday morning a watchman for the Billings estate and a milkman ran across of modishly dressed woman apparently enjoying a deep and refreshing sleep on the ground, 300 feet in the rear of the church. When they discovered the rope biting into her dainty skirt they hustled for a cop. Patrolman Barthold returned with them and sent in a hurry call to the hospital. While waiting for the arrival of Dr. O. H. Banton and an ambulance, the police tried to induce the girl to say something, but she sadly shook her head and closed her eyelids.
Dr. Banton took the young woman to the hospital and put her to bed. It was some time later that she said her name was Ethel and that she lived opposite a brick church in 181st Street, near which she had been followed by a man as she was returning home after calling on her friend Lillian.
Detectives Halligan, Regan and Trayor of the St. Nicholas Avenue station got on the job and found Mrs. Charles Nagle, who lives in the Jessica apartments opposite the brick church, was worrying because her daughter, Ethel Conrad, had not returned. Mrs. Nagle was sure that something dreadful had happened and her fears were confirmed when she learned from Miss Graham that Ethel was not with her. Mrs. Nagle went to the hospital and so did the detectives and Lillian, but the latter was the last one to see her.
The detectives kept Miss Graham away from Miss Conrad’s cot until she had related her version of the bound girl’s movements on the preceding night.
“Ethel has been living with me at 210 West 108th Street,” she said, “and she left me about 8:30 o’clock to take the subway up to her mother’s house.”
But Miss Conrad’s story of what she did before the strange man followed her, as soon as she was able to tell it to the detectives, ran like this:
“I left my mother’s home at 8:30 o’clock on Tuesday night and went to Lillian’s. I remained with her until nearly midnight and took the subway to the West 181st Street station. I walked west and discovered that I was being followed.” |
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Lillian Graham lost her false arrest lawsuit against W. E. D. Stokes, Ethel Conrad never filed hers. Conrad's bound-and-gagged bit was obviously another misguided publicity stunt in connection with a 1912 vaudeville tour that would take them to several towns in New York State. After that tour they dropped out of sight. Miss Graham apparently went back to the West Coast, settling near Seattle, where she lived as a child. I found two items that mentioned Lillian Graham after 1912: |
New York Dramatic Mirror, February 5, 1913
Chorus Girl Inherits $1
Lillian Graham Gets Love and
Affection — Sister Gets Estate
Lillian Graham, former chorus girl and chum of Ethel Conrad, who with her was acquitted of the charge of assault by shooting W. E. D. Stokes, inherits one dollar and his love and affection from her father, Patrick Graham, a pioneer of Renton, Washington, whose will was probated on Jan. 27.
Mrs. Stella Singleton, former wife of a Nevada millionaire and sister of Miss Graham, is left the same. The $2,000 estate is given unreservedly to another daughter, Mrs. Serena E. Galway of Ontario, Oregon.
Lillian Graham was raised in Renton and drifted to the East. Mrs. Singleton divorced her husband about the time Miss Graham got into trouble over the Stokes shooting. She is said to have been granted $90,000 alimony. |
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Utica Herald-Dispatch, February 7, 1914
SEATTLE, Wash., Feb. 7 – Wedding bells are soon to chime for Lillian Graham, New York showgirl who figured in the shooting of W. E. D. Stokes, New York millionaire, according to the announcement of her friends here today.
Miss Graham’s home is in Benton, this county. Her husband-to-be is a Frenchman – name is a secret for the time being, but he’s wealthy and prominent. The ceremony, it is said, will take place next month. |
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Whether Lillian Graham's marriage ever took place, I cannot say. As for Ethel Conrad, it appears she moved to Los Angeles where her sister, Frances Pierce, was an aspiring motion picture actress. Tragically, Ms. Pierce was killed in an automobile accident in November, 1913.
The following May, according to an item in the New York Clipper (May 23, 1914), Ethel Conrad attempted suicide by swallowing bichloride of mercury tablets. She survived, but that was the last mention I've found of her so far. |
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