Audrey Munson Biography

Audrey Marie Munson (June 8, 1891 - February 20, 1996) was an American artist's model and film actress, known variously as "Miss Manhattan", the "Panama-Pacific Girl", the "Exposition Girl" and "American Venus". She was the model or inspiration for more than 15 statues in New York City and appeared in four silent films.

Biography

</ref>}} Audrey Marie Munson was born in Rochester, New York, on June 8, 1891. Her father was from Mexico, New York, and she later lived there. Her parents, Edgar Munson and Katherine "Kittie" Mahaney, divorced when she was young, and Audrey and her mother moved to New York City.

In 1906, when Munson was 15 years old, she was spotted on the street by photographer Ralph Draper, who introduced her to his friend, sculptor Isidore Konti. Konti persuaded her to model for him. For the next decade, Munson became the model of choice for a host of sculptors and painters in New York. By 1915, she was so well established that Alexander Stirling Calder's model of choice for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition held that year. She posed for three-fifths of the sculpture created for the event and earned fame as the "Panama-Pacific Girl".

Her new-found celebrity helped launch her career in the nascent film industry and she starred in four silent films. In the first, Inspiration (1915), the story of a sculptor's model, she appeared fully nude, the first woman to do so in an American motion picture. The censors were reluctant to ban the film, fearing they would also have to ban Renaissance art. Munson's films were a box office success, although the critics were divided. Only one of Munson's films, Purity (1916), has survived.

Munson returned to New York in 1919 and lived with her mother in a boarding house owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins. Wilkins fell in love with Munson and murdered his wife, Julia, so he could be available for marriage. Although Munson and her mother had left New York before the murder, the police sought them for questioning. After a nationwide hunt, they were finally questioned in Toronto, Canada, where they testified that they had moved out because Mrs. Wilkins had requested it. This satisfied the police, but the negative publicity generated by the case effectively ended Munson's career as a model and actress. Wilkins was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to the electric chair. He hanged himself in his prison cell before the sentence could be carried out.

By 1920 Munson, unable to find work anywhere, was living in Syracuse, New York, supported by her mother who sold kitchen utensils door to door. In February 1921, Perry Plays, Inc. paid Munson $27,500 to star in Heedless Moths. The 1921 film was based on her life story, which was then being serialized in dozens of newspapers, and on short stories and other articles she had written for Hearst's Sunday Magazine.

On May 27, 1922, Munson attempted to commit suicide by swallowing a solution of bichloride of mercury.

In 1931, a judge ordered Munson into a psychiatric facility for treatment. She remained in the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg for 65 years, until her death at the age of 104. Munson died February 20, 1996.

Sculpture

</ref> | image2 =Straussmemorial.jpg | alt2 = | caption2 =Isidor and Ida Straus Memorial (1913) by Augustus Lukeman | image3 =2008-05-04 CanonS3 IMG 3076 Civic Fame crop.jpg | alt3 = | caption3 =Civic Fame (1913) by Adolph Alexander Weinman | image4 =StarASC.jpg | alt4 = | caption4 =Star Maiden (1915) by Alexander Stirling Calder | image5 =AutumnFP.jpg | alt5 = | caption5 =Autumn (1915) by Furio Piccirilli | image6 =Eagle Scout Memorial Fountain Kansas City MO.jpg | alt6 = | caption6 =Day and Night clock surround (1906) by Weinman for Pennsylvania Station, now at the Eagle Scout Memorial Fountain, Kansas City, Missouri }}

Herbert Adams

• Priestess of Culture (1914) – PPIE, now in Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Robert Ingersoll Aitken

• Earth (1915) – PPIE - Court of the Universe
• Panama-Pacific International Exposition medal (1915)
• Figure on doors of the Greenhut & John W. Gates Mausoleums

Karl Bitter

• Pomona or Abundance (1915) – Pulitzer Fountain in Grand Army Plaza, NYC
• Venus de Milo ("Venus with arms") for Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands

Alexander Stirling Calder

• Star Maiden (1915) – PPIE - Court of the Universe, now in the Oakland Museum
• Eastern Hemisphere (1915) – PPIE - Fountain of Energy

Daniel Chester French

• Melvin Brothers Memorial (1908) – Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts
• Commerce and Jurisprudence (1910) – Federal Building, Cleveland Ohio
• Genius of Creation and Eve (1915) – PPIE, plaster now at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
• Brooklyn and Manhattan – Brooklyn Museum of Art, NYC
• Memory – Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
• Mourning Victory – Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC
• Spirit of Life (1914) – Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana. Newark Museum, Newark, New Jersey
• Evangeline, Longfellow Memorial (1912) – Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Trask Memorial (1915) – Saratoga Springs, New York
• Wisconsin (1912) – figure on top of Wisconsin State Capitol dome

Sherry Edmundson Fry

• Torch Bearer (1915) – PPIE
• Muse and Pan (1915) – PPIE
• Maidenhood – Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC; Brookgreen Gardens, South Carolina
• pediment (1913) – Frick Collection Building, NYC

Albert Jaegers

• Rain (1915) – PPIE
• Harvest (1915) – PPIE

Carl Augustus Heber

• Figures on tablet outside the Little Theatre
• Spirit of Commerce – Manhattan Bridge, NYC

Isidore Konti

• Mother and Child – private collection of Richard & Lydia Kaeyer
• Three Muses – Hudson River Museum
• Three Graces Y– lobby of the Hotel Astor, NYC
• Pomona – Konti finished the work after Karl Bitter was killed
• Figure within the Column of Progress (1915) – PPIE
• Widowhood
• Genius of Immortality (1911) – Hudson River Museum

Evelyn Beatrice Longman

• Fountain of Ceres (1915) – PPIE - Court of Four Seasons
• Consecration (1915) – PPIE, now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Augustus Lukeman

• Ida Straus and Isidor Straus Memorial – Straus Park, Manhattan, NYC

Frederick MacMonnies

• Niche figure – New York Public Library, NYC

Allen Newman

• Music of the Waters Fountain – Riverside Drive, NYC

Attilio Piccirilli

• Alone (1915) – PPIE
• Maine Memorial, figure on top and figure at base – Central Park, NYC
• Duty and Sacrifice (1913) – Firemen's Memorial, NYC

Firio Piccirilli

• Fountain of Spring (1915) – PPIE

Frederick Ruckstull

• South Carolina Women"?s Monument (1911) – Columbia, South Carolina

Adolph Alexander Weinman

• Descending Night – PPIE - Fountain of Setting Sun and various museums
• Civic Fame (1913) – figure on top of the Manhattan Municipal Building
• US Walking Liberty Half Dollar, and possible model for the Mercury dime (both 1916)
• Day and Night (1906) – figures from Pennsylvania Station, NYC

Albert G. Wenzel

• Madam Butterfly

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney

• The Fountain of El Dorado (1915) – PPIE

Others sculptures at Panama-Pacific International Exposition

• Fountain of Ceres, Court of Four Seasons
• Fountain of Rising Sun, Court of Universe
• Pedestal & Friezes, Columns of Human Progress
• Air, Court of Universe
• Spirit of Creation, Court of Universe
• Nature, Feast of Sacrifice, Court of Four Seasons
• Pylon Groups, Festival Hall
• Conception, Wonderment, and Contemplation, Palace of the Fine Arts

Filmography

The four films in which Munson appeared were thought to have been lost until a copy of Purity (1916) was recovered in France.

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1915	Inspiration	The Model	Reissued as The Perfect Model (1918)
1916	Purity	Purity / Virtue
1916	The Girl o' Dreams	Norma Hansen
1921	Heedless Moths	Audrey Munson	Based on Munson's stories and articles for Hearst's Sunday Magazine