The Valentino Affair (14 page)

As discreetly as possible, Blanca set out to gather evidence of her husband’s adultery. First she tackled his valet, Julius Hadamek. The diminutive Austrian, displaying the best instincts of his calling, refused to say a word, much to Blanca’s annoyance. Unpicking the seams of this marriage, she realized, would require a much broader approach and probably a lot more money. A friend suggested she contact the Diamond Detective Agency, a discreet Fifth Avenue firm that specialized in obtaining divorce evidence for high-society couples. The detectives began to ask around, and soon their questions led them to Joan Sawyer’s dancing partner, Rodolfo Guglielmi.

In all likelihood it was Blanca herself who steered the detective agency in Rodolfo’s direction. Since their first meeting she and the young dancer had met often, usually in some after-hours cabaret when he was winding down from his nightly performance. Blanca needed to be ultracareful. If news of these secret assignations filtered back to her husband’s lover, it could be disastrous. For now, though, she was ready to run that risk in order to draw Rodolfo into her web. She began slowly, emphasizing their similarities. There was the kinship of a shared language—Guglielmi was able to speak Spanish—both were in their early twenties, and both were aliens in a foreign country. Rodolfo sat hypnotized, scarcely believing his good fortune. Blanca fulfilled all of his girl-woman fantasies: She was young, beautiful, and already the mother of a boy. For a young man raised in the Catholic faith, with deeply traditional views of womanhood, she was perfection in human form. As for Blanca, she had acquired far more than a sympathetic ear for her outpourings of domestic abuse and duplicity; she had enlisted an invaluable ally in the battle to rid herself of an unwanted husband. Because, as Blanca suspected, her adoring admirer had the inside track on Jack de Saulles’s highly colorful private life.

The two men first crossed paths in January 1916 when Rodolfo was still partnering Bonnie Glass. Jack’s reputation as a hell-raiser was already the talk of Broadway, and, when Rodolfo graduated to the role of Joan Sawyer’s dance partner, he quickly discovered that she and de Saulles were hitting the sack together, and had been for some time. Rodolfo had even attended wild parties at Jack’s apartment, giving him a chance to witness the riotous relationship firsthand. Now Blanca had come to him for help. And when she fixed Rodolfo with that yearning expression, he was helpless. Common sense and self-preservation were cast to the wind. Without regard for his own future, he agreed to provide the evidence that would draw a line under Blanca’s marriage.

Many have wondered if Blanca and Rodolfo became lovers at this time. No concrete evidence suggests that they did, and the balance of probabilities supports this view. Blanca was a hard-nosed negotiator and sharp as a tack. She knew she was playing a dangerous game. If she gave herself to the sensual Italian, not only was she risking a countersuit of adultery, but she would have had to contend with the possibility that, having once bedded her, Guglielmi would disappear without delivering the goods she so desperately needed. So, it is far more likely that Blanca dangled the carrot of postdivorce intimacy before her gullible admirer, promising that, once the divorce was signed and sealed, she would be his and his alone.

Rodolfo swallowed the bait. In a lengthy interview with the detective agency, he passed along every grubby detail of the affair between Jack and Joan. Once the agency’s dossier was complete, they put Blanca in touch with the law firm of Prince & Nathan, longtime specialists in the sexual antics of the affluent and the influential. On July 5, Blanca delivered advance notice of her intentions by taking her belongings from The Box and moving a few miles north to the village of Roslyn, where she had rented a cottage called Crossways. Two weeks later, on advice of counsel, she left Crossways and went into hiding. On July 27, with their client safely out of sight, Prince & Nathan filed suit for divorce, claiming that Jack had committed adultery with two women.

News of the split caused a sensation. Papers as far away as California carried the story. S
OUTH
A
MERICAN
B
EAUTY
D
EMANDS
H
ER
F
REEDOM
²⁰
cried the
Los Angeles Times.
Back in New York, hordes of journalists laid siege to Jack’s apartment. His only comment was: “It is a most unfortunate affair,”
²¹
but he warned his estranged wife that he would “fight her in every court in the country.”
²²

In the meantime: Where was Blanca? Reporters wanted to know. One possible answer to that tantalizing question was provided by dinner guests at the Majestic Hotel on West 72nd Street, who alternated glances at press photos of Mrs. de Saulles with sly peeks at the beautiful woman eating alone in the dining room. A call to the press did the rest. In short order reporters beseiged the front desk. The check-in clerk confirmed that a “Mrs. John Smythe” had checked in on July 20, that she did indeed bear a striking resemblance to the elusive Mrs. de Saulles, and that, yes, it was true that “Mrs. Smythe” had removed her wedding ring. Within days of Blanca taking up residence at the Majestic, she was joined by her sister. That Amalia had journeyed from Chile to be with Blanca suggests that Blanca’s decision to go into hiding had been no spur-of-the-moment decision, but rather a carefully planned exercise.

But others were also making plans. And what neither sister realized was that more than just inquisitive diners were monitoring their every movement at the Majestic. Jack had made good on his threat to torpedo Blanca’s suit by hiring a private detective, Harry V. Dougherty, to investigate persistent rumors that his estranged wife had been sleeping with some young Italian stud. Dougherty stationed a band of operatives at the Majestic, keeping Blanca’s room under round-the-clock surveillance. At the same time another team was staking out Guglielmi’s residence on West 57th Street, just two blocks from where de Saulles lived. Both teams came up empty-handed. If Blanca was conducting an affair with Rodolfo, both parties were displaying remarkable levels of discretion.

The divorce suit was fast-tracked. And the provisional hearing, held before Referee Phoenix Ingraham, was packed with explosive evidence, much of it provided by Rodolfo Guglielmi. He testified that he and another woman had once attended a dinner party at Joan Sawyer’s apartment at which Jack was also a guest. The hostess and Jack had seemed on the coziest of terms. “He called her Joan, and she called him Jack and dear. He called her sweetheart.”
²³
Rodolfo told the court that he and Joan had first worked together in March 1916 at Keith’s Theatre in Washington, DC, and on this same visit they had danced before President Wilson. Afterward, instead of spending the night in Washington, the performers returned to New York by train. At Penn Station, Rodolfo and Joan caught a cab to Times Square, where Rodolfo alighted, telling the driver to take Joan to de Saulles’s apartment, where he would pick her up the following day at 8:45 a.m. The next morning, on schedule, Rodolfo arrived to collect Joan. As she got into the car, Rodolfo saw Jack in pajamas at his apartment window. “He waved at Miss Sawyer, and she waved at him as we rode off.”
²⁴

Another time, said Rodolfo, he and Joan worked together for a week in Providence, Rhode Island, dancing at the Albee Theatre. “I saw Mr. de Saulles in Providence at the Hotel Narragansett, closing night. . . . After a party in her honor, [Joan Sawyer] and Mr. de Saulles retired to her room upstairs. Her room had one large bed.”
²⁵
The next day they all returned on the same train to New York. “Mr. de Saulles and Miss Sawyer shared a drawing room on the train. I had an upper berth in the same car, opposite their drawing room.”
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From his vantage point he was able to spot a douche in Joan Sawyer’s traveling bag.

“How did you come to be looking through her dressing case on the train?”
²⁷
asked Jack’s lawyer, Lyttleton Fox.

“She just opened it in front of me.”
²⁸

When Fox pressed Rodolfo on whether he thought he was doing an ill turn to his dancing partner, he bizarrely replied, “No, I don’t think so.”
²⁹

“Are your relations friendly with Miss Sawyer?”

“They were friendly the last time I saw her; I don’t know now. I volunteered to testify here.”

“For what reason?”

“I have a special reason, but if you don’t mind I won’t go over the matter”
³⁰
was Rodolfo’s mysterious response.

Even more mysteriously, Fox didn’t press him on the point. This string of puzzling answers, however, does reveal the childlike naivety that would hallmark Guglielmi’s lifelong dealings with the opposite sex. In the months prior to the divorce hearing, he had been earning $240 a week dancing with Joan Sawyer ($4,100 in today’s dollars); for an immigrant barely two years off the boat it was a fortune, yet he was prepared to sacrifice it all to save a perceived damsel in distress. Playing the knight in shining armor might have done wonders for his self-esteem, but it made him an easy target for the strong-willed women to whom he was irresistibly drawn. He may have seen beleaguered damsels, but all they saw was some credulous dupe who could be manipulated like modeling clay.

Rodolfo wasn’t the only witness, though. The famously discreet Julius Hadamek, testifying under subpoena, admitted through gritted teeth that he had seen Miss Sawyer at his employer’s apartment many times during April, May, and June of 1916 “and that she remained there overnight, sleeping in defendant’s bedroom, which contained but one bed”
³¹
and in which he later found hairpins. Annie Curtis, Miss Sawyer’s cook, told of seeing her employer and Jack kissing passionately on several occasions.

Blanca’s own appearance on the stand was brief, merely to confirm that she had not condoned any of the acts of which she was complaining. Otherwise, she gave no direct evidence against her husband. Important though the testimony of Hadamek and Curtis had been, it was Rodolfo who provided the knockout blows that allowed Supreme Court Justice John M. Tierney to make a provisional award on August 14, pending further testimony, of three hundred dollars monthly alimony to Blanca. He also ordered that Jack pay Blanca’s legal fees of one thousand dollars.

Earlier that month Blanca had taken refuge with the Igleharts, some friends who also lived on Long Island. While there, her dependable sister Amalia and her brother, Guillermo, came to lend moral support. They reportedly found her laid up with “nervous prostration”
³²
and begged her to return with them to Chile.

“No,” said Blanca defiantly. “I won’t leave the boy.”
³³

The reality was rather different.

On August 26, right in the middle of divorce negotiations, Blanca, accompanied by her brother and sister, boarded the SS
St. Paul
, bound for Liverpool. The plan, after a stopover in London, called for traveling to Scotland, where Guillermo had a shooting box for the season. This was a bizarre decision for two reasons. First, the hostilities in Europe showed no signs of abating,
³⁴
and while the
St. Paul,
unlike the
Lusitania,
flew the American flag, there was still a very present danger of German U-boat activity in the North Atlantic. The second curiosity was purely domestic. For some reason, Blanca chose to leave Jack Jr. at Crossways in the care of Anna Mooney, even though, just recently, antagonism had been mounting between Blanca and the nursemaid.

According to Blanca, Mooney’s attitude had undergone a recent and profound change. She seemed far more proprietary in her attitude toward Jack Jr., almost as if “the child belonged to her.”
³⁵
Blanca suspected that Jack somehow had orchestrated this change to sabotage Blanca’s relationship with the boy. Just before leaving for Europe, Blanca poured out her heart in a string of letters to her former servant Ethel O’Neill (née Whitesides), complaining about “the perfectly horrible nightmare I have been going through.”
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Then she set sail.