Let's read a bit of the fan mail Edith Mae Patterson received 100 years ago.
Friend Reader will recall that the 19-year-old Pine Bluff schoolteacher won the title Most Beautiful Girl in America in 1921 after an aunt sent her photo to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, without asking.
Oct. 25, Old News saw the suddenly famous young woman christen a hydroelectric plant (see arkansasonline.com/1122edith) and, Nov. 22, we read how the little girls of Monticello threw flowers at her before she spudded-in an oil well (see arkansasonline.com/1206edith).
That long-ago fall, the postman brought her bags full of unsolicited revelations and typographical errors from lovelorn admirers around the nation and Canada. For instance, here's part of a letter from Michigan:
"I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you wasn't beginning to wonder who I am. I happen to be one of the many thousands who saw your picture in the paper, and seeing that you didn't care to go in the movies, but are still teaching school, which shows you are not to hyfuluten to be human. Wonder if this is in the wastepaper basket by now.
"Well, to go on about old man Spencer's favorite son, I was born and raised in Texas, been up here three months, like everything but the cold weather, smoke Camels cigarets, play poker, mandolin and guitar when I feel like it, sing a little when the pain strikes me, been thru Pine Bluff three times, awful fond of fruit cake and music, and I get along with brunetts fine. I don't suppose you get over a wagon load of letters a day, and what is bothering me is how will I gain your interest? I have been trying to inoculate this letter with a little personality. The paper stated you had brains. Isn't that astounding. I always thought a person's head was to keep their backbone from unraveling. ..."
SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
"My dear Miss Patterson: Believe you deserve the title, but doubt if you should spend your sweet life in theatrical lines. Why not allow one of your admirers to insist that you form a partnership of two? Don't wait to become 'fair and 40.'"
FROM NORTH CAROLINA
"I have you picture and I believe it is the prettiest girl I ever saw. Now is their any hopes of a blue-eyed fair-complected dark-haired man of about 30 summers ever winning your affections. Please give me some encouragement; 5 ½ feet, weight 125 pounds. This completes my description and heir of a millionair. Cince I saw the Picture I have recently had some delightful thought on the subject of Love to Whoom I ever felt in earnest and tender regards. Please give me some Definet answer. I have always wanted to come to Pine Bluff and now I think I will go next spring to see the country and would be more than delighted to see you."
FROM WASHINGTON STATE
"Even to this remote northwest corner of the good old U.S.A., the fame of your beauty has pervaded, and I am one of your humble admirers who would like to do homage. All I ask of you: Will you accept it? Please don't think that I am conceited enough to ever hear from you personally. But whether I do or not, a reproduction of your picture is adorning the place of honor on my dresser. 'The Most Beautiful Girl in America.' Are you not proud? May God bless you with all the luck and happiness and — true love for some worthy man."
FROM IOWA
"I've always wanted to know a girl who was as smart as she was beautiful, and now that I have found her I am going to lose her because she is on a higher level than me being the most beautiful and intellectual girl in the United States and me a lowly admirer of hers. ... As you are a school teacher perhaps you can read this writing. ..."
FROM MISSOURI
"I am alone and would like to have a companion if I could get some that sooted me. You are a fine looking girl all right and I guess a good girl. I am 32 years old and am 5 ft 6 in tall, have blue eyes black hair and am a blacksmith by trade. I dont guess that would soot you but I am not going to tell you no but I guess this is all. Please answer this one anyway."
FROM OHIO
"Now please don't be shocked to death, or stick up your nose and say 'Well, that fellow must be out of his head,' cause I am not. I just happened to see your picture in the paper & noticed your address & thought it would be kind of exciting & something new to open up a correspondence with someone so far away. I hope you will agree with me. Now as you are a school teacher, I am afraid you will be awful crabby, but your picture doesn't look a bit that way. ... Now please don't fail to answer this dear teacher & I'll be good."
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These excerpts from her fan mail appeared Dec. 4. 1921, in the Gazette, along with the news that she and her girlfriends were having fun laughing at them. Meanwhile, that day's Arkansas Democrat reported that — oh, by the way — another Arkansan placed third in the same national beauty contest.
Twenty-one-year-old Deronda Rhea of Nashville was a student at the University of Arkansas and 5 feet, 6 ½ inches tall. She had brown eyes, golden brown hair in curls and had been awarded "the A.B. degree in Brenau College at Gainesville, Ga." That is, she had a bachelor's degree in liberal arts.
On Dec. 6, the Gazette reported that Patterson resigned from Lakeside Grammar School and accepted an offer to go on the stage, possibly in Dallas.
For starters, she appeared at the Crystal Theater in Little Rock before an assembly of automobile owners. On the agenda were the mayor, the governor and a Black-and-Tan Republican lawyer who also happened to be the Exalted Cyclops of the recently formalized Little Rock chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, James A. Comer.
A second generation Klan was on the rise in Arkansas and elsewhere.
About a week before the Gazette shared Patterson's mail, the Little Rock KKK gave Police Chief Burl Rotenberry $1,000 to support — among other things — the "protection of our womanhood" and "preventing the cause of mob violence and lynchings." The money was to fund rewards for information about any un-Americans who might besmirch pure womanhood.
Although he eventually rejected the Klan, at first Rotenberry was pleased as punch with that money, because in November and December 1921, the Klan looked like such a fun social club, and the local chapter was all bankers, businessmen, public officials and preachers.
Its support for Prohibition and costumed amusements were embraced by civic-minded Arkansans, including the members of certain Sunday School classes whose modern descendants would be, I expect, quite shocked.
Pick up a copy of Kenneth C. Barnes' new book, "The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Arkansas: How Protestant White Nationalism Came to Rule a State" (University of Arkansas Press, $34.95). And hang on to your hat.
Email:
cstorey@adgnewsroom.com