03/03/2024
This is a story where Truth is Stranger than Fiction.
In the photo second on left is Hiram Abrams, He was one of the original owners of New Bedford's Orpheum Theater. He also was President of Paramount Pictures, was forced out because of a huge Hollywood S*x Scandal (and Boston too!) Afterwards he helped form and became the First President and founding member of United Artists!
Below is the low down story, It includes Movie Moguls, Mayor of Boston , Attorney General of Ma and lots of Illegal Booze and Racy women!
MOVIE LAMBS ARE FLEECED
Lawyers Lured Film Magnates to Primrose Path and Then Blackmailed Them Sinister Drama of Mishawum Manor. THAT MIDNIGHT O**Y Boston. July 22—Corruption, betrayal of high trust, debauchery of young •women, and blackmail —all these and still other sinister skeletons are being: dragged Into the light as the trial of Nathan A. Tufts. District Attorney of Middlesex county, of Massachusetts, proceeds day by day in the solemn and deliberate process of the law. One by one the unsavory details come forth, half disguised in their Tablet of legal formalism, but making up a mosaic of be******ty and deceit and greed. Men holding oaths of trust are accused of trafficking: with panderers: attorneys sworn to uphold the law are charged with using their efforts to defeat the ends of justice in return lor money extorted by threat. In the background of the picture stands a house in Woburn. Mass., once the center of a New England home. 'Children played around its gardens. Under the trees, buck from the road. Honest, open life ran its course within the walls. But it is no such homely drama that is playing itself out in this setting as presented before the five Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The honest home has become a dwelling of mysterious activities. By day all is silence. The place is shunned. Only after nightfall, when. honest folk are long asleep, does tho Woburn *lOllBO awake. Then the windows ; ,l)lar.e with light. The tre *« that och- : ohl with tho shouts ami laughtor of ichildren ring with the syncopated measures of "jazz." Young women enter the doors furtively. and men hoisbrously lurch out of automobile's and follow them In* side. For this one,' honest cottage has become a “manor." so-called. To he exBct. it* designation is “Brownie” Kennedy's Mishawum Manor. A roadhouse —a place of illicit pleasure. About this resort, with its music. Its or**es, its blatant clattering noises and its strange silences, the grizzly ctor.v revolves. "Fatty” Arbuekla never did c won thing in his life, but he is Indirectly responsible for one of the most ghastly scandals that has ever shaken official and social life of any American city. For the famous or infamous—depending upon your point of view—"chicken nnd champagne" dinner at "Brownie" Kennedy's Mishawum Manor in Woburn. Mass . grew out of the perfectly decent and docorus banquet given In ■honor of the stout film comedian. It was on the evening of March C, 1917. More than 150 guests of high estate gathered at the Copley Plaza Hotel to do honor to "Fatty.’’Arbuckle. There was an ex-attorney general of Massachusetts there, a member of the governor’s council, bankers, brokers, railroad executive*, attorneys past all counting, a member of Congress Boston. It ranked as a most dignified affair—almost too dignified. "Fatty" and the moving picture men like Adolph Zukor, Hiram Abrams and their friends alone saved It from becoming almost dull. And it broke up early- The speeches were short and to the point and when the last of them had said his say the party broke up. It was still the shank of the evening as one young attorney protested, and he got busy and gathered together "the live ones” of the party and suggested that the rest of the night might be pleasantly spent at "Brownie" Kennedy’s well known resort In Woburn. To the moving picture men who were all familiar with the place, this "listened good" and they joined in. The young attorney jumped to the telephone and in a few moments announced that the arrngements had been made. The party started In several automobiles. The staid guests at the Arbuckle 'banquet put on their coats and left for bed. Fatty among them. And that ended the first chapter. Meantime out at Mishawum Manor, where "Brownie” Kennedy—of the many aliases and unsavory reputation - was mistress, the telephone message from the young attorney started things humming. "Brownie" had a little hook hound in scarlet—an appropriate color which Hawthorne chose when He wanted to write of a woman who had started along the path "Brownie” Kennedy had deliberately chosen, but had not gone us far as "Brownie.’’ In that book, which hits since become notorious, "Brownie" kept a long list of names. There were girls recorded there -girls and not a few married women. And in another section of the ■book was a list of men—patrons she called them all. When she got the message from the young attorney who knew all about the night life of Boston. “Brownie" Kennedy got busy. Her own telephone "buzzed frantically for a time and presently there began to come a-trooplng under the trees that shaded the old home that hud once been the play *pot for happy children, furtive figures of women. Some of them came afoot, cloaked against the cold and wet. Others arrived In taxis. But all were young and all were pretty save for that strange hardened look that goes with the procession followed by "Brownie” Kennedy and her "girls." Hardly after the last of the girls, there were eighteen or twenty of them, according to most accounts of the affair. hurried thru the big doors of the manor and disappeared upstairs to make ready for the night, when a big public car dashed up to the front of
the house and disgorged Its load of laughing, frolicking men. Two other cars followed rapidly- " Brownie" Kennedy, a perfect hostess a of this sort, was waiting in the dimly lighted half. Some of the men know her and called her "Brownie." To others she was Lillian A. Kingston. She had as many names as she had records of arrest—this woman of the scarlet past. There was a moment or two-of that scramble that always attends the coming of a large party and then the fun began. Down the stairs came the pretty girls, some of them almost beautiful. What happened afterwards? It would take 11 Paul de Koch to tell the story as it should be told; altho. perhaps. tiny De Maupassant could turn the trick. Since then It has been denied that the moving picture men were Intoxicated. Witnesses had Insisted that “none of the gentlemen got rough." But the tales of what happened at the Manor that night when the "live ones" loft the Copley-Play 11 to "see the thing thru." was the talk of filmdom. from Boston to Hollywood for months. And then came the aftermath. There Is always an aftermath to "Brownie" Kennedy’s parties. Pretty soon there came to he whispered about In the studios here and In New York that “the big bosses got nipped out there at Woburn.” The rumors spread. Huge sums were mentioned and the amount of "hush money" the movie Rings had been forced to "pony up" to keep the thing out of the papers. They ran front $lOO,OOO to a cool million dollars. for moving picture people are used to dealing with huge figures. Long before the rumors had got as far as Los Angeles the things happening In Boston.
"Brownie" Kennedy, like the pitcher that goes too often to the wall, was nipped* Her perfect * system’’ -broke down and police officers raided her place. Like fire thru dry grass the story ran. One of the “girls" who had been promised $5O for her share in the night’s revels had not been paid and had “squealed." The “cat was out of the bag." One of the "girls." Bessie McDonald, claimed to have a husband living In Worcester. His name was Tierney. Another girl, who had played the jazz music for the party that night also had a "husband." His name, he said, was Lord. The first ripple of the flood that was soon to break against their d***s of silence so confidently regarded by the film men came lapping, lapping, their way. It was in the shape of a threat that unless "settlement'’ was made suits I for "alienation of affections" would be 'brought against certain of the moving picture crowd and that the others would he dragged in. There was u scurrying and frantic telephone and telegraphing between | (Jotham and the Hub. Men cringed at the thought of the pitiless publicity that would he theirs if the tiling "ever I comes to light." Married men began to remember that they had families and wives at home. They were frantic. Then gently, higher and high r. rose the flood toward the bursting point. Hiram Abrams was named as sort of representative at large of the frightened coterie. Big lawyers were engaged here. Money Was no object. Publicity must he stopped- "Buy off the girls; shut their mouths; get Brownie Kennedy out of the country and do # it quick." One hundred thousand dollars was the price asked by Attorney Daniel H. Coakley, in whose capable hands the "crowd" had placed its interests. It was his. The attorney for the husbands claiming damages for the loss of affections that could hardly have been worth quite as much. Coakley has testified that he himself paid no money personally. But his assistant, Sughrus, did, and got hell for the doing. Coakley told his clients they were safe. He had releases, signed by the names of the girls in whose behalf the suits had been threatened. No need to worry. The matter was "settled" for good and for all. It belonged In the limbo of the dead past. Cover it with cobwebs and forget it. It depends largely upon your point of view how you regard what followed. Some say it was dirty politics that Induced the crash. Others that bravo officials did their duty in bringing to book men who had violated their solemn obligations of office. No matter. The thing. from the standpoint of the man who attended the Mlshawum o**y, was that Attorney General Allen set Attorney Hurlhurt to work. Just how Mr. Hurlhurt got in touch with the story of Mishawum Manor and what happened there. and the, even more significant things that had happened later, has been kept secret, the there an- scores of rumors. For months the matter slumbered quietly. Then once more the rumors began seeping through the moving picture offices, from New York to Los Angeles "They are stung good this time —can't buy off the gang that's 05 their heels." So ran the rumors. And they were more or less correct, as rumors sometimes are. In the spring, more than a year after the dinner. Attorney-General Allen exploded his pctnrd. It burst with a blare that was heard to the most remote corner of fllmdom. And then came the strangest of the many strange features of the affair. Although they had paid $lOO,OOO to keep the mailer secret the moving picture men. once they realized that the Inevitable had overtaken them, that they were caught by the tide of publicity ’came thru.’ Those Interviewed by Attorney Hurlhurt made a ciean breast of the part they hud play 'd. They gave unifies and facts and figures. What the attorney general of Massachusetts knows no one outside his own Office and mighty few Inside can guess. But It is certain that for the ’general public the tale of the Mishavum Manor o**y and the conspiracy that followed has been made of common knowledge by the very men who paid most outrageously to keep it all hidden.
