“People are always bringing suits against me and printing scandals about me,” complained Clara Bow in June 1930. She wasn’t wrong. Clara, the original “It Girl” after her leading role in the film It (1927), was the most scandalous star of the 1920s and by the early 1930s she was about to experience her most scandalous – and her saddest – period yet.
In September 1930, Clara Bow was reported to owe a Cal Neva casino $13,900 in gambling debts, which raised many eyebrows in the Hollywood community. Word soon spread that the star had played and lost at the roulette wheel to such an extent that she had to write four cheques for her losses. Unfortunately for the casino, however, each one was returned to the resort as being “stopped” before payment was ever issued.
Clara denied this and laughed off the story, stating that she always paid honest debts promptly, and declaring, “If anyone in the world feels he has a rightful claim against me for any sum of money whatsoever, which I deny, I will gladly accept service of any legal documents.”
As described in an earlier chapter (“Clara Bow’s Scandalous Love Life”), “Crisis a Day Clara”, as she was known, had been in and out of the headlines for the past few years on account of her scandalous love life with a publicity-hungry nightclub-owner and a married doctor. Now happy with her new beau, Rex Bell, both she and the studio wanted to put the last two years behind them and hoped this new scandal – and any future ones – could disappear without incident. Unfortunately for Clara, however, the casino gossip was just the tip of the iceberg; less than two months later the scandal of all scandals would erupt, thanks to her long-time secretary Daisy DeVoe.
Clara had met DeVoe on the set of her movie, Wild Party, where the woman had been assigned to take care of the actress’s hair. They quickly became chummy, and Clara enjoyed her company so much that it was not long before DeVoe was asked to work for her full-time as a secretary.
“I studied it over for a day or two,” Daisy later said, “because everyone said Clara was kind of a hard girl to work for and I didn’t want to lose my job.”
It was true that Clara had something of a reputation, but still, the money was better than she was earning at the studio, so DeVoe was certainly interested.
“But if you discharge me, I probably won’t get my job back at the studio,” DeVoe warned the actress, to which Clara laughed.
“If you work for me you’ll never have to worry about your job at the studio,” she said. So despite her initial concerns, DeVoe did indeed give up her job, with a promise that Clara would employ her for five years as a personal assistant and companion, starting at $75 per week. However, they also agreed that she would receive a raise in the very near future, which unfortunately never materialized, no matter how much DeVoe reminded her boss.
“I asked her for it numerous times,” Daisy later complained. “She always said no.”
The working relationship gave her many responsibilities, some of which – as it turned out – were not related to being a secretary at all. This may have been okay if her salary had been raised as agreed, but as it wasn’t, DeVoe began to get more than a little irritated. “Clara is a funny child,” she later said. “She wanted my companionship and everything.”
It would seem that as well as being a secretary, DeVoe was also saddled with routine tasks such as doing Clara’s hair and nails, and dressing, undressing and inspecting the actress’s clothes every time she intended to go out. She was also given the task of shooing away unwanted male admirers; grocery shopping; mending clothes; and seeing to it that “her clothes were not left piled on the floor”.
The first real rumblings of just how much of an influence DeVoe was having on Clara’s life came when Bow was out of town for six weeks, and the secretary took it upon herself to have the entire house not only cleaned but completely reorganized too. “Her house was terribly dirty,” she said. “I had the drapes taken down and the rugs taken out and cleaned; floors polished; furniture gone over and everything.” What Bow thought of the matter remains unrecorded, but certainly it would seem that as far as a working relationship went, DeVoe had her feet well and truly under the newly polished table.
The biggest example of how much DeVoe took over Clara’s life comes in the discovery that the pair took the decision to set up a bank account together. They nicknamed it “The Clara Bow Special Account” and it was opened with $1,500 of Clara’s money, giving DeVoe the ability to take cash out for household expenses. She later explained the purpose of the account to police:
I couldn’t draw anything on Clara’s [personal] account unless I had a cheque with her signature, and each week I would take a cheque with her signature to the bank and put money into the special account for the household expenses. Almost all the money Clara spent was out of the household account. She very seldom wrote her own cheques.
But while it was nice for Clara to be looked after, the secretary went too far at times, such as the day when she found love letters to her employer from ex-boyfriends Dr Earl Pearson, Harry Richman, Gary Cooper and Victor Fleming. “She had two drawers of letters that she had gotten from them,” explained DeVoe. “I knew she would want them but I took them and burned them because I didn’t think it was advisable for a woman in her position to have things like that lying around.”
On that particular occasion, Clara arrived home just in time to see her beloved letters burning to a crisp in the back yard. “What have you done?” she screamed at the secretary, but it seems that DeVoe was not in the least bit apologetic. Clara was furious that her secretary had not only found her letters, but had seemingly also decided to read and destroy them. The two women fought for days about the episode.
Unfortunately, although she was torn to pieces for touching Clara Bow’s personal property, astonishingly this still did not stop DeVoe from finding and destroying even more letters, without the knowledge of her employer. “As far as I know she doesn’t know it,” DeVoe later said. “She would be as mad as the devil about it.”
These shocking incidents proved once and for all that DeVoe was stepping over the line between a professional and an obsessive interest in her employer’s affairs. It is little wonder then that Clara’s boyfriend Rex Bell grew to dislike her immensely, and it would seem that the feeling was mutual, with both parties becoming extremely suspicious and jealous of the time spent with the vivacious Clara. Bell’s frustration came when he suspected that as well as general nosiness, DeVoe was also guilty of stealing from her employer, while in return DeVoe believed Bell was trying to persuade the actress to invest money in a phoney get-rich-quick scheme. To say that the hatred of one another was adding to Clara’s already heightened stress levels would be an understatement.
On 29 July 1930 – Clara’s birthday – DeVoe gave the actress a beautiful, silver dresser set with the initials CB engraved on it. Clara was absolutely delighted. “I thought she was being sweet and kind to me,” she later told police. However, sweet and kind wasn’t what she thought of her later, when it was claimed that the set had actually been paid for out of Clara’s “Special Account” using a cheque authorized by the actress herself. Although Bell did not know for sure that Clara’s money had bought her own present, he was suspicious enough about her behaviour to share his concerns with his girlfriend.
Clara was far more trusting, it would seem, and brushed away his comments, refusing to believe that her secretary was being in any way dishonest. However, when she later went to her safety deposit box and noticed several items had gone missing, the actress was mortified. When questioned later, DeVoe claimed to have removed Clara’s items from the box in a bid to protect her employer from Bell’s dodgy investment scheme. But that was later, and for now, on finding the items missing, Clara told Bell that he must be right; DeVoe really wasn’t as honest as she had once believed her to be.
Rex told Clara he thought she had no option but to fire DeVoe, but the conversation between the two was fraught; Clara did not want to let her secretary go, but at the same time she knew she could no longer trust her. The couple began a rather heated debate about how they should tell DeVoe the news . . .
“If you want her to go, Rex, you can tell her yourself, because I won’t tell her,” Clara told him.
“When will I tell her?” asked her boyfriend, to which Bow replied:
“Any time within the next few days.”
“Fine,” answered Bell. “I’ll tell her Saturday or Monday.”
But while this discussion was going on, what neither of them realized was that the secretary was actually resting in the next room. Lying down on her bed, DeVoe had overheard the entire conversation and was absolutely mortified. How dare Clara Bow plan to fire her after all they had been through and everything she had promised? DeVoe was confused but still believed that at the very heart of the matter lay her nemesis, Rex Bell, urging Clara on in matters that DeVoe frankly felt were nothing to do with him.
Later, as he had promised, Rex went to Daisy’s room in order to give her the news of her termination, which sent the furious secretary scuttling straight to Bow for an explanation. Shockingly for her, the actress did not deny that DeVoe was losing her job, and instead she told the woman that what Rex had told her was quite correct; she was to leave the house and Clara’s employ, effective immediately.
According to DeVoe, when she was ready to leave the Bow house, her employer was so drunk that she decided not to announce her departure; that it was “more ladylike” not to say anything at all. This decision was made, she said, for fear that “she would have tried to kill me”, before adding – quite dramatically – that the actress had actually tried to do that on a previous occasion. “I thought it would be better to walk out and later on straighten out her affairs. I wanted to get things settled as quietly as possible,” grumbled the secretary.
For DeVoe, “as quietly as possible” meant returning to the house once the dust had settled in order to demand her job back. The answer was a definite no. She was stunned, believing that once Bow had sobered up, she would have seen things differently. Furious, DeVoe then naively contacted Clara’s attorney in a misguided attempt to blackmail his client and demanded she receive $125,000 for the very items Daisy had illegally acquired in the first place. If they didn’t comply, she added, things could get “complicated”.
The lawyer retaliated by telling the secretary that instead of paying the ransom money, his advice to Clara would be to tell the entire, sorry story to the proper authorities. The disgruntled woman then left the office, but did not go home. Instead, she turned up at Clara Bow’s house once again, by which time the actress had been advised of the blackmail attempt.
“Give me back my job!” DeVoe screamed at Bow.
“Didn’t you just try to blackmail me?” Clara snapped. After which the shocked Daisy apparently admitted everything. “Yes, my best friend; that was the way she answered me,” Clara Bow later said in court.
The actress had no wish to give the woman her job back or pay the money being demanded; but at the same time she also had no desire to have a full-blown argument, and refused to listen to Daisy’s explanations as to how Clara’s personal items had ended up in her possession. Instead DeVoe was sent on her way; the locks to the house were quickly changed; and Clara brought in District Attorney Buron Fitts to investigate the entire matter.
The investigators listened to what Bow had to say, then travelled to the home of DeVoe’s sister to interview the secretary about the theft. They questioned her extensively and made notes as she gave her explanation of taking the items for safe keeping. Nobody believed her story and, instead of giving her a warning, they demanded she open her safety deposit box to let them see what was inside. DeVoe did as she was told and the police retrieved a stash of jewellery, a large amount of personal papers and a cashier’s cheque.
“I was never going to cash the cheque myself,” DeVoe cried. “Clara knows as well as everybody else that I could never have cashed it. I intended giving it back the same as everything I had that belonged to her.”
Also included in the box were telegrams from boyfriends Rex Bell, Earl Pearson and Harry Richman, which surprisingly had not been included in the burning ceremony that DeVoe had given the others. All of these remaining notes were of a loving nature, and bound to cause a sensation if publicly released, so when the police turned them back over to Clara, she was exceptionally relieved. Her only hope now was that DeVoe would just disappear quietly, never to be heard of again. Unfortunately for Bow, the former secretary had other ideas about her future.
Instead of putting the whole thing behind her and moving on with her life, DeVoe started grumbling that she wanted answers to why she was fired from Clara’s employ. This was surprising considering she had just been relieved of Bow’s personal belongings from her safe, and she must have been able to remember the numerous quarrels, the mutual dislike between her and Bell, the conversation she had overheard which explained most of her questions, and finally the threats of blackmail after she had heard her fate. Yet, quite bizarrely, none of this seemed to provide DeVoe with any idea of why she was no longer required in Bow’s home. It was all quite astonishing, particularly when, in a misguided effort to gain attention from Clara, DeVoe decided to contact the press to tell them her story – leaving out the parts about blackmail and theft, of course.
“For two years I have pulled Clara out of plenty of messes and saved her plenty of money,” she joyfully told them. She then turned her attention to the gambling debts in Nevada, claiming that, sure enough, Clara did indeed have debts there, as well as approximately $12,000 more at other resorts. And still the revelations went on: “She suffers from insomnia and she doesn’t sleep,” a gleeful DeVoe revealed. “As a result she kept me awake all night. I worked twenty-four hours a day for her and if there were forty-eight hours in a day I would have worked forty-eight . . . I could never leave her alone at any time.”
The reporters were riveted. “Crisis a Day Clara” was always good press, but with an insider now on their side, they were in heaven. Once the press conference was over, the reporters scuttled back to their typewriters to pen what they hoped would be the first of many juicy articles on the It Girl’s private life. The first article was published the next day and, needless to say, Clara was blindsided. Not only was she shocked that there were revelations about her private life in the papers, but also she was utterly gobsmacked that her former secretary could spill the beans in such a way.
Never one to be quiet when it came to commenting in the press, Clara decided to issue a short statement of her own, claiming:
The more I talk the worse it gets, so I’m not saying much. If I cannot let go a secretary without a lot of fuss why should I talk? I fired Daisy for a personal reason and this reason is nobody’s business but my own. So that’s that.
The star also denied a recent rumour that she had now employed a male secretary, and then privately hoped very much that the whole sorry affair could now be forgotten once and for all. But it was not going to be that easy. DeVoe was a woman scorned and she took no time in telling reporters that if the actress refused to see her and give an explanation about why she was fired, she would have no option but to visit a lawyer.
Sure enough, the very next day Daisy hired attorney Nathan O. Freedman, who was instructed to file a suit against District Attorney Buron Fitts and his aides. This was a bold gesture, especially when it was revealed that the reason she hired him was to recover jewellery and items that she claimed had belonged to her, but were taken from her safety deposit box during the raid for Clara Bow’s belongings.
“I have returned everything that belonged to Clara,” she grumbled. “I also gave her back her fur coat, but why do they keep my cash and jewels and insurance papers? My attorney has made demand for them and they will not return them. We are going to sue.” She also assured reporters that not only would she go after the District Attorney’s office, but Clara Bow too, who she claimed had kept back salary and expenses owed to her.
In the end, the persistence of Daisy DeVoe led not to a lawsuit against Bow and Fitts, but to the arrest and prosecution of the secretary herself, who was accused of thirty-seven counts of grand theft, adding up to $16,000 in total. She was absolutely astounded and determined to fight her corner with all her might. She had lost her job; been accused of theft; and had her safety deposit box rummaged but DeVoe was a fighter and this time she was determined that if she was going to fall, she would be taking Clara Bow down with her.
The much publicized trial of Daisy DeVoe began in January 1931 and from the very beginning of proceedings, the world and waiting press were transfixed. DeVoe seemed to revel in the attention her stories brought, but for Clara, the trial would reveal much more about her personal life than she ever feared, and from day one, it was a stressful and at times hurtful episode.
From the very outset, Clara’s finances were brought into the frame when it was revealed that in a period of twenty months, the actress had spent $350,000 on everything from household expenses to cars to tips in restaurants and much more. This raised eyebrows, but audible gasps were heard when it was also argued that some of the money was not spent by Bow herself, but by Daisy DeVoe, who was accused of ordering jewellery for herself using her employer’s own money. This wasn’t all. It also transpired that a cheque for $400 was cashed for her benefit, and a glamorous fur coat had been purchased – all at the actress’s expense.
Clara Bow arrived at court wearing dark glasses, which friends later claimed were to hide a recent operation on her face. She was also suffering from a bad cold and was seen crying and frequently coughing during the proceedings, while the ex-secretary glowered and smirked from her position in court. It inevitably wasn’t long before Clara looked over and saw the faces being pulled by her former friend, and this drove the short-tempered actress to the point of explosion. Much to the shock of everyone, the actress suddenly shot forward in her chair and dramatically shouted at DeVoe, “Go ahead and sneer Daisy, that’s all right!” This impromptu outburst caused the shocked Deputy District Attorney to shoot to his feet in order to caution Bow for interrupting the court.
Once it was her turn to take to the stand, Clara was asked if she had ever authorized cheques to be written by Daisy DeVoe and in particular if she gave permission for a series of whisky purchases. “I authorized Miss DeVoe to spend whatever was necessary to maintain the household,” she replied, before adding, “I trusted her. If she wanted to buy whisky, why, I supposed she made out the checks and signed them.”
“Didn’t you ever check the books?” DeVoe’s attorney asked. To which Clara replied sadly, “No, that’s why I was so silly. I trusted her.”
When asked if her ex-secretary had ever spent her own money on household expenses, Clara could not believe her ears, resorting to her Brooklyn slang in order to answer the question.
“She never spent anything out of her dough for me!” she replied. “She didn’t have a cent until she worked for me.”
At one point Clara broke down when asked about the birthday present that had been bought with her own money, and a cheque for $825 which had been signed by the actress and used by DeVoe to buy herself a fur coat.
“That is my cheque, I signed it myself,” Clara sobbed. “But Miss DeVoe brought it to me and said it was to go on my income tax and I signed it because I trusted her.”
More sorrow and embarrassment came when the telegrams from various beaus were introduced into evidence and read aloud in court. Why the private contents had to be revealed was a mystery, and much to her dismay, Clara found that not only were the telegrams heard by everyone in attendance, but there were also plans to reproduce them in the newspapers the next morning. The actress was in obvious dismay; her private life with ex-partners were about to be made public and there was nothing at all she could do about it. But that wasn’t all, as later came a dramatic turn of events when a document was read to the court which apparently showed Daisy DeVoe being asked how much of Clara’s money she had appropriated for her own use. Shockingly she had boldly replied:
“About $35,000. I can’t tell exactly.”
When the unapologetic woman was asked when she started to acquire the money, she revealed in the document that it had been around September or October 1929, and gave a halfhearted attempt at an explanation:
“It’s so hard to see a girl like Clara with everything and no respect for anything. It was her fault. If she had paid attention to business I wouldn’t have taken a dime from her because she would have known about everything.”
The woman then went on to complain that the actress refused to write her own cheques and as a result, “she put me in a position to take everything I wanted. Of course I didn’t blame her.”
One example of the “no respect” that DeVoe attributed to Clara came in the shape of a diamond-studded vanity case which the actress was said to have cared so little about that she let her dogs play with it. The secretary was horrified to see such an expensive item treated this way and took it upon herself to rescue it from their canine clutches and place it in her safety deposit box. It would appear, of course, that this was not after any negotiation with Bow, who seemed oblivious to the case ever being taken.
Then more damning testimony came when it was claimed that shortly before her arrest, DeVoe had arrived at the bank and drawn out $22,000 from the “Special Account”. She then told staff that she was withdrawing the money as she did not wish Clara to invest in any of Rex Bell’s “wild schemes”. “I’m going to place it in the safe deposit box where Clara can’t find it,” the secretary told an officer at the California Bank. It would appear that in this instance, the safety deposit box she was referring to belonged to Clara, though the money did not appear to have ended up there, as when Clara requested to see the box several days later, it was apparently empty.
All these revelations and titbits of information were compelling and the court was transfixed by what they had heard. However, this was nothing, as when Daisy DeVoe took to the witness stand herself, all hell broke loose. In the space of an hour Clara’s world imploded when the secretary declared that her employer played poker at least six nights a week; drank extreme amounts of alcohol; and bought jewellery as presents for a variety of different men. Of the latter, Daisy claimed that her ex-employer had spoiled married Earl Pearson with a $4,000 watch, while Harry Richman received a $2,000 ring. She also claimed that Clara bought herself a $10,000 engagement ring, though declined to tell the court to which man she planned to become betrothed.
All these revelations were too much for the fragile actress, who was still suffering from a serious cold. Sent to bed by her doctor, Wesley Hommel, her condition was described as “not serious”, though she was revealed to be running a high temperature and suffering from nervous exhaustion. Sadly, the emotional distress put upon Clara during the trial was very much the shape of things to come and it would seem that she never fully recovered from her days in court.
On 23 January 1931, after dozens of revelations about Clara Bow’s love life, personal habits and financial affairs, as well as two days of deliberation and disagreements, the jury were ready to give their verdict. It had been a hard slog, with many arguments behind the scenes, but finally Ralph H. Boynton, foreman of the jury, stood up to speak.
“Have you reached a verdict?” asked the judge.
“Yes sir, we have, your Honour,” replied Boynton.
Thirty-five slips of paper were then handed over to the judge, who read them to himself over the course of the next few minutes. Finally the drama of the court case and the stress of waiting for the verdict took its toll on the normally bolshie DeVoe, who lay her head on the table and sobbed uncontrollably to herself.
After reading the outcome, it was announced that the former secretary was not guilty of thirty-four of the counts brought against her, but was guilty of one: the charge that Daisy had bought herself a fur coat with money Clara believed was to pay her income tax bill. The jury pleaded for a recommendation of leniency, but even this was too much for DeVoe to handle. As the verdict was read out, her sobs became even more violent and then, unbelievably, members of the jury dissolved into tears too.
The entire episode was like something from a bad movie, and at this point many spectators jumped on to the backs of their seats in order to get a better look at what was going on. The whole court was erupting into hysteria and bailiffs tried to restore order and get people to sit down, but it was an almighty task. As bedlam ensued, Daisy’s sobs could be heard echoing all around the courtroom.
Then finally, her sobs began to turn into disgruntled words, and Daisy began shouting her displeasure between the tears.
“If they were going to convict me at all why didn’t they convict me of everything? I’m just as guilty on all counts as I am on one.”
Then the time came for her to leave the courtroom, which she did while leaning heavily on the arm of a bailiff and a newspaper reporter.
“I can’t stand it; I can’t stand it,” she cried, as she was led to the jail.
When the room eventually emptied, one of the jurors earned her fifteen minutes of fame by speaking to reporters outside the courtroom; telling them that “I’m sorry for Miss DeVoe, but I felt that pity should not be allowed to interfere with the necessity of upholding the laws of the State of California.” She then went on to speak for many minutes, declaring that DeVoe needed to be made an example of and that justice would only ever be served by a conviction. She then added, “In the end, Miss DeVoe will see herself that it was best for us to convict her”, though in reality it was pretty clear to everyone that Daisy would never agree with that remark.
Back in Beverly Hills, Clara was still ill as a result of flu and stress. Contacted by reporters, her statement was short and sweet: “I harbour no ill will against Miss DeVoe,” she said. “For Daisy’s sake, I hope the court will be lenient.”
For the next few months, Daisy DeVoe tried to obtain her release from prison and at one point was let out on bond, though she was soon carted back after she failed to win an appeal. Clara, meanwhile, was going through hell in her Beverly Hills home, fighting depression and collapsing on set – a move which was to lead to her being replaced in at least two separate movies. Then another disaster came when it was revealed that publisher Frederick Girnau had been arrested for sending an obscene article about Clara through the US mail service.
The article was full of lies – terrible at best and libellous at worst – but for Clara it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. She suffered a full-blown nervous breakdown and was immediately rushed to Glendale Sanatorium, where she was ordered to rest for six months, while at the same time being put through a series of cures to “relieve” her stress, including electric shock treatment and an abstinence from all visitors. “Absolute quiet is necessary for recuperation,” the doctor told concerned friends, while Clara herself managed to get word out that she was planning to retire from pictures indefinitely.
Studio boss B. P. Schulberg pretended not to be too worried; after all, his star had made threats to leave at various stages of her career in the past, and nothing had ever come of it. He told reporters that no decision would be made until Clara was well enough to talk, but that “she is in no condition to talk business at the present time”.
However, just days later came the shock news that Clara was adamant about her retirement and had requested that her contract be cancelled immediately. Paramount were beside themselves, as their star still had two more films to make before the projected end of her contract in October 1931. At the same time they knew that there was nothing they could ever do to control Clara Bow; they had never succeeded in doing so in the past, and they knew they wouldn’t in the future. It was with a heavy heart, therefore, that they reluctantly agreed on the termination and Schulberg released a statement: “In accordance with Clara’s wishes, we have consented to tear up her contract with Paramount.” He then went on to say how difficult it was to discard an association he had enjoyed for many years, “particularly with one who has earned our personal liking and admiration . . . I am sorry to see her leave Paramount for she is a great and popular screen star.”
While Paramount licked their wounds and wondered who would become the next It Girl, from her sick bed, Clara released her own statement:
“I am deeply grateful. Already I feel much better than I have for many weeks, as I struggled to regain my health so that I could carry on. I wanted my contract broken if Paramount saw fit, so that I might get back on my feet again . . . Now that this worry is over I can face the task of regaining my health with a free mind. It’s like leaving home to leave the studio after so many years, but I know it is the best thing for me to do.”
A few days later Clara Bow travelled to Nevada to spend time with Rex Bell and recuperate on his ranch, telling reporters, “I am going to forget anything and everything connected with pictures.” She then added, “as soon as I’m able, I will become what is known as a freelance player, contracting for a single production at a time”. She also denied rumours that she would sign with another studio, although she did admit to having various offers, all of which she had turned down, until the time was right that she could “stage a comeback”.
In the end, Clara Bow never did make the big comeback she hoped for, though she did marry Rex Bell and gave birth to two sons whom she adored. She was never far from scandal and health problems, with another threat of a lawsuit from a casino and several breakdowns adding to her problems in future years. She also never obtained the full happiness she had always looked for, and she was unable to recover from the Daisy DeVoe trial, which had sent her over the edge in the first place. She died of a heart attack on 27 September 1965 at the age of sixty, and ex-lover Harry Richman was chosen to be one of the pall-bearers at her funeral.
Clara’s life and career were over and, for some considerable years, her films were forgotten. However, in 2011 the producers of The Artist became inspired by the actress and looked at her style in order to create the look of one of the main characters in the film. Since then, interest in her has had something of a revival, with a new documentary broadcast in the UK during December 2012 and an exclusive showing of her movie It played to a packed-out audience in London in January 2013.
But what of Daisy DeVoe? Well, when she was released from prison in April 1933, the former secretary went to work in the aviation industry. Of her time in jail, she later declared, “I had a ball”, while explaining that the prison wardens had loved her as she always volunteered to polish their nails . . .