Jessie Reed

Jessie Reed was an American model, showgirl, and Broadway performer whose stage career spanned the late 1910s and early 1920s. Her birth date is most commonly recorded as July 3, 1897, though she listed the year as 1898 on some documents. Her origins remain uncertain: contemporary sources placed her birthplace in or near Houston, Texas, while her death certificate identifies San Antonio, and her entry in the 1940 U.S. Census lists Alabama.

Reed's original surname is similarly difficult to establish. Her first marriage certificate, dated 1912, records her name as Jessie May Richardson, but her daughter's birth certificate the following year lists her as Jessie M. Richards. Her death certificate gives her father's name as Jessie Richard, suggesting Richards was her actual family name. The stage name Reed appears to have been borrowed from her friend Nora Reed, born Nora Flippen, with whom she traveled to New York in 1917 and with whom she posed as sisters. A separate performer, blues singer Jessie Hyman, also used the name Jessie Reed professionally after marrying vaudeville musician Lew Reed, born Louis Herzberg, in 1915, and the two women have frequently been confused in historical accounts.

Before relocating to New York, Reed's life in Texas was marked by a highly publicized scandal. On March 11, 1912, she married Ollie Debrow, born Oliver Durburrow, a Texas vaudeville performer who wrote the song "Yodlin' Blues." The couple had a daughter on November 29, 1913. In 1916, while Reed was performing at the Star Theatre in San Antonio, Debrow shot and killed a young chauffeur named Leslie Nash, claiming Nash had been involved with his wife. A trial in June 1917 ended in a hung jury; Debrow, defended by attorney Carlos Bee, was acquitted in a retrial the following month. Reed divorced Debrow in October 1917, leaving their daughter in his care, and moved to New York earlier that same year.

Reed's Broadway career began in 1917 and extended through 1923. Her verified stage credits include The Passing Show of 1912, the musical Sinbad, the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, and the Ziegfeld Follies of 1923 Summer Edition. In Sinbad, a Sigmund Romberg musical starring Al Jolson, she worked as a showgirl at the Winter Garden Theatre. Florenz Ziegfeld subsequently recruited her for his Midnight Frolic, the rooftop entertainment at the New Amsterdam Theatre, where performers included W.C. Fields, Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, and Eddie Cantor. In the summer of 1919, Reed appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies alongside Bert Williams and was cast as "Barcarolle" in the production number "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody." She continued as a Ziegfeld Girl through the mid-1920s and was regarded as the highest-paid showgirl at the Follies during that period. In 1923, she was also cast as a dancer in the film Enemies of Women.

Beyond the stage, Reed became a sought-after photographic subject. Photographers Alfred Cheney Johnston and Edward Thayer Monroe both made her a favored model, and she appeared in Vogue magazine as well as in advertisements.

Reed's personal life attracted sustained tabloid attention. Her second marriage, to Daniel Caswell, known as "Dashing Dan," took place on November 12, 1920, in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Caswell was the son of a wealthy Ohio real estate developer, and Reed had met him while traveling to Boston by train with her Follies company. The marriage, marked by accusations of cruelty and drunkenness, ended in divorce in January 1922. Caswell subsequently married June Castleton, another Ziegfeld Girl. In early 1924, rumors linked Reed to millionaire Russell Griswold Colt, whose family founded the Colt revolver company and who had previously been married to actress Ethel Barrymore; Colt denied any engagement. Shortly afterward, Reed eloped with William Tandy Young, Jr., an advertising executive based in Indiana. That marriage ended in divorce in 1927. In 1928, Reed married Leonard Minor Reno, a publishing executive who had served as a flying ace in the First World War. The couple settled in Chicago, but divorced in 1935.

Following her final divorce, Reed worked as a hostess at nightclubs in Chicago. By 1940, newspaper reports noted that she was ill and unable to pay her hotel bills, and she applied for public relief. The Ziegfeld Club, a charitable organization founded by Billie Burke to assist former Follies performers, raised funds on her behalf. Reed died of pneumonia at the Chicago Osteopathic Hospital on September 18, 1940, and is buried at Mt. Olivet Cemetery. Obituaries appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Variety.