Yvonne Hughes

Yvonne Evelyn Hughes (1900 – December 26, 1950) was an American dancer, stage performer, and silent film actress whose career spanned the 1920s. She performed as a dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies and appeared on Broadway between 1927 and 1928, with credits in the musicals Rio Rita and Whoopee!

Hughes's film work was concentrated in 1923 and 1924, during which she appeared alongside Gloria Swanson and danced with Rudolph Valentino. Her screen credits from that period include Lawful Larceny, Zaza, A Society Scandal, Big Brother, and Monsieur Beaucaire.

In her personal life, Hughes married Charles Alvin Hamilton Feick on October 20, 1917, in Wellsburg, West Virginia. The couple divorced on November 6, 1920, and had one son, Charles A. Feick, Jr., born May 30, 1918, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, who died November 8, 1988, in Maryland. Hughes married Gordon Godowsky, son of pianist Leopold Godowsky, in 1928; the marriage ended after one year. Godowsky died by suicide in 1932 following financial difficulties.

Hughes was murdered on December 26, 1950, in a New York City hotel room. The circumstances involved Birger Nordkvist, a Swedish apple picker employed by a western New York cider firm, who had been brought to the Ashland Hotel by cab driver John McDonald, a man who had lived with Hughes for fourteen years. Hughes and Nordkvist spent the night drinking beer while McDonald worked his taxi shift. After Hughes rejected Nordkvist's advances, he strangled her using a handkerchief tied around her throat and a silk scarf stuffed into her mouth. Nordkvist was subsequently arrested in Utica, New York.