by Kate Corbett
Pollack
What happened to Roy
Pomeroy in the years preceding his Hollywood arrival? There is much more to his story, and
continued research has revealed more details.
After the death of
Roy’s father, William Henry Jobbins, Jeanette and the boys moved back to
England. Jeannette, then in her thirties, found herself a widow who needed to
provide for two young boys. She had been studying and developing her ideas on
aesthetics and cosmetology for many years, and in 1895 started a company using
the Pomeroy name she so cherished: Mrs.
Pomeroy. In an interview from the era, Jeannette said she wanted to be able
to give her boys a good education, which was the impetus for starting her
company.[i]It
was on Old Bond St. in London, and specialized in several areas of beauty,
including electrolysis, dermatology, and hair and nail care, and carried a line
of cosmetics. Her shop was right next to the Royal Arcade, a mall where Queen
Victoria’s tailor worked. Bond Street was known for its affluent, high society
patrons. By 1905, the company had become a success, and Jeannette was famous
for her ideas on improving one’s countenance without surgery using the powers
of the mind, a technique she claimed to have learned in India. Mrs. Pomeroy had
shops in Dublin, Glasgow, and Birmingham, and Cape Town and Johannesburg in
South Africa. Her advertisements promised that “Mrs. Pomeroy can do more for
your face than anyone else in the world.” [ii]
The Rome Daily
Sentinel (Rome, New York) announced in its November 24, 1905 edition that Mrs.
Jeannette Pomeroy, “female scientist” would be visiting the United States for a
tour. The article mentioned that Jeannette had studied “Asiatic and European
races”, and suggested that some of Jeannette’s thoughts on beauty were
controversial:
“As soon as Mrs. Pomeroy has
scientifically ascertained the percentage of beauty in the American women, a
purpose for which she intends making a tour of the continent, and has
discovered whether the trend of physical charms is progressive or retrogressive
she will conduct a series of free lectures in which she will point out the
racial faults in form and face, locate the causes and suggest the remedies.”
Jeannette’s
secretary, Charles Helmstreet, explained her intentions to the press in this
same article:
“This is altogether an aesthetic and not an
ethical movement…As a lover of the beautiful she desires that all people become
physically perfect. She spent years in India, where she was born and where she
learned how to direct the mind so that it may have an influence over physical
defects.”
During this time
period, it was not uncommon, even among progressives, to believe that certain
features and traits were genetic flaws and could be scientifically “corrected”
or eliminated in order to fit an idealized vision of human perfection. Ideas
like Jeannette’s parallel the Eugenics movement, which in the early 20th
Century was accepted as scientific by the United States and many European
continues.
By about 1906, the
company went into voluntary liquidation due to a hostile business takeover that
Jeanette had trouble navigating. A group of businessmen wished to capitalize
off her success, and were able to legally gain rights to Mrs. Pomeroy. A new company was formed by her rivals called Mrs. Pomeroy Ltd. Men hadn’t previously
been a large part of her business, which had a confidential nature due to women
wishing to keep their beauty rituals a secret. Jeannette likely faced backlash
from her loyal customers who did not wish for men to be involved. She separated
from James Scale at the time and started another business, attempting to
continue using the Pomeroy name and retain her original customer base. However,
she was not legally able to do so, despite the fact that she had her name and
that of her sons changed to Pomeroy. Jeanette
was ruined.
Defeated, Jeannette
and her sons boarded an ocean liner for America. Her mother lived in Delaware,
Ohio, where the family would stay. They arrived in America on March 30th, 1908.
Roy was 15 and Arthur was 17. Their grandmother, Jeanette Gallagher Shepard[iii],
was the matron of a house which boarded students on the Ohio Wesleyan College
of Liberal Arts campus. The family went to live at the house, which was home to
an eclectic mix of people including a family of four children whose parents
were missionaries to South America. Roy was shortly afterwards accepted to the
college.
Roy may not have
ever known his biological father, who died when he was a year old, but he did
inherit William’s artistic talent, as well as his mother’s scientific leanings.
Roy studied electrical engineering at Ohio Wesleyan University, starting his
freshman year at age 15. Arthur, also highly intelligent, had gone to Illinois
to study entomology. By 1913, when he was 22 years old, Arthur was an
entomologist at the United States Bureau of Entomology in Washington, DC. While
Arthur had gone off on his own, Roy and his mother stuck together. She went
with him wherever he traveled.
In 1913 Roy and his
mother moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where Roy had a studio in the Union
Trust building. His illustrations appeared in the Indianapolis Star. Roy and
Jeannette had an apartment on Julian Avenue in that city. It appears that the
young man was taking care of and supporting his mother, who at this time was in
her 60s.
By 1915, Roy was
enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati in Ohio, where he would study under
Frank Duveneck, a talented artist who was a contemporary of Roy’s father and
James McNeill Whistler’s back in 1880s Venice. Duveneck had been in Venice with
a group of students at the time, and they had become enthralled with Whistler,
who relished the attention and volunteered to show them some of his techniques
(William Henry Jobbins, who disliked Whistler, was undoubtedly rolling his eyes
the entire time.) Duveneck became a
father-figure and mentor for Roy, and in his later biographies, Roy would
credit the college and Duveneck as major influences on his career.
While in Ohio, Roy
took a job as an artist for the Cincinnati Times-Star and the Dayton Journal,
and did illustrations for Scribner’s, one of the most popular magazines in the
country at the time. He also took a post-graduate course in “photographic
chemistry”, according to his bio in the 1940 issue of Camera Craft magazine.
Shortly after his graduation, Roy and Jeanette moved to New York. There Roy
began his work as a portrait painter and scenic artist, as outlined in Part I
of the story. However, there is much more to Roy’s New York years than initially
written about in that post.
After his return to
New York from WWI where he developed cameras for the Royal Air Force, Roy had
developed a friendship with a handsome, enterprising young man who had similar
interests: Nicholas Vladimir de Lippe Lipsky, a Russian prince who had arrived
in New York in 1920 as part of the ballet company of Anna Pavlova. Anna Pavlova
(1881-1931) was the first ballerina to tour the world, and founded her own
ballet company. Roy had been given $50,000 by the British government for his
camera inventions used during the war. He would have had the money at this time
to keep up with a crowd of aristocratic people.[iv]
deLipsky had studied
art, music and chemistry in Russia at the Imperial Universities, and had
exhibited his theatre lighting and designs for European royalty. He was a
master of innovative theatre lighting and used colored lights to create effects
never before seen on the stage. Due to complex circumstances in Europe
including the Russian Revolution, Lippe first traveled to Buckingham palace to
stay, and found his way to America from there with Anna’s company by 1920.
Nicholas de Lipsky
was well-received in New York, and designed sets for the Manhattan Opera House,
the Criterion Theatre, and the Greenwich Village Follies. He also studied
photography, and was able to transform negatives, using chemicals to make some
aspects of photographs appear and others to disappear. He used a similar
concept with his stage sets, making a scene change from night to day, inside to
outside, and wintertime to summer in a matter of seconds. This was highly
original and innovative for the early 20th century. An October, 1921 article in
the New York Evening Post reported that de Lipsky “revolutionized the concept
of stage setting in the theatre that has been built up laboriously in the last
fifty years.” deLipsky’s innovations in
photography were similar to Roy Pomeroy’s, and by 1921, local theatre news was
reporting that the two men had teamed up to create stage effects for the
Greenwich Village Follies . They also worked together on photoplays, which were
films taken of the stage. Their work was clearly impressive and often
astounding, according to newspaper and magazine articles from the era, which
covered many of their projects.
Around this time,
Roy met his future wife, Miss Sylvia Jewel, whose real name was Elizabeth
Whittaker. Sylvia had moved to the city from Kentucky. She was born in Paris,
Bourbon County, on 11 March 1894 to C. G. Whittaker and Sarah Newman. An
aspiring actress, Sylvia worked as an artist’s model, and was very well-known
as one of the most famous models around. In the April 24th, 1919
edition of the Fort Wayne News Sentinel of Indiana, Sylvia was called “the
perfect woman”:
“The perfect woman has been
found. At least that is the belief of many of the best known artists of New
York. She is Miss Sylvia Jewel and she lives in a tiny room on the top of one
of New York’s skyscrapers. Perhaps her wonderful golden hair has pleased you on
the cover of your favorite magazine or her pretty face in the illustrations of
the latest books.[v]
The couple most
likely met when Sylvia posed for one of Roy’s many illustrations at his
artist’s studio. Sylvia was part of a group of artists called “The Society of
Illustrators”, formed in 1901 to promote art and illustrations and have
occasional exhibits. Women were not initially allowed in the group, but Sylvia
had performed with them in a stage show at the Garden Theatre in 1919, the year
before they decided to admit women, and John Jacob Astor was in the audience.
It is possible Sylvia’s talent influenced the group’s decision. Among the
members was Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the Gibson Girl, and Frank Godwin,
illustrator and comic artist.
Sylvia was the
subject of American Impressionist Childe Hassam’s oil painting “Sylvia Jewell”
which was exhibited at the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York in
September of 1920.[vi] When Sylvia wasn’t modeling, according to the
1920 census, she worked in the movies. In 1922, she was working for the Spencer
Lens Company in New York. It is possible
that Sylvia’s connections led Roy to become introduced to Hollywood producer
Jesse L. Lasky.
Roy’s Hollywood
opportunity couldn’t have come at a better time: he had become embroiled in
highly publicized scandal involving Nicholas de Lipsky. The married prince had
been living with his mistress, Countess Claude de Montesse, in a rooming-house
on West 88th St in Manhattan, under the guise that they were brother and
sister. The Countess became pregnant, and an illegal abortion was performed by
a private doctor. The Countess as a result became septic. Abortion, illegal in
the United States before 1973, was sometimes performed in seclusion by a doctor
in a woman’s home for a few thousand dollars. Often, a doctor did not know how
to do one, and when the woman began to die, the doctor would flee the scene in
order to avoid prosecution. This is what happened in the case of the Countess.
As she languished, slowly and painfully dying, Roy and Nicholas frantically
rushed to find a doctor who would treat her. Roy called his own doctor, who
arrived at the scene, took one look at the dying Countess and refused to have
anything to do with it. He knew she had received an illegal abortion, so he
would not treat her. Nicholas managed to procure another doctor to operate, but
by then, it was too late. The Countess died from septic peritonitis. The story
would not have come to light if it hadn’t been for another brewing scandal:
Nicholas’ estranged wife, Elaine, began a divorce proceeding in 1923, alleging
that he had run off with her sister. Princess Elaine de Lipsky went to the
press, and told them every sordid detail involving the Prince that she could
think of, including the death of the Countess.[vii]
The story had so
many layers of scandal: royal intrigue, illegal abortion, adultery and death; newspapers
and tabloids pounced on it, running regular features. Roy Pomeroy’s name was
frequently mentioned in conjunction with the story. A December, 1923 New York
Times article reported that the police were looking to question him. Jesse L.
Lasky’s arrival in Roy’s life had occurred at the perfect time, and provided
him with a chance to leave New York for Hollywood at the height of the scandal.
Jeanette had
continued to live with Roy this entire time, and was even mentioned in part of
the scandal with Lipsky. She was the one who told de Lipsky’s landlord that he
and the countess were not brother and sister. It appears at this time that Roy
must have been out of money and unable to support his mother, because she was
deported third class back to England. Perhaps his extravagant lifestyle with de
Lipsky had drained his finances. Maintaining a studio in Manhattan, funding
inventions and dating the most sought-after artist’s model in the city most
likely contributed to his financial strains.
After arriving in
California, Roy and Sylvia were married in Los Angeles in 1922. It seems she
may have settled into married life at the time, because little is known about
her after this date. Roy’s mother retired in England, where she died in
Dartford, Kent in 1932. And in 1947, Roy took an overdose of sleeping pills.
What caused Roy to
commit suicide? Both he and his mother reached very high levels of success,
only to have it taken away from them. Jeannette wasn’t able to ever recover her
success, and instead seemed to focus her attention on Roy, perhaps pushing him
to achieve instead. Roy was clearly a talented, hard worker who easily fell in
with similar people. However, their influence on him could be damaging. From his
experience with de Lipsky to his difficulties in Hollywood, Roy found trouble
interlaced with fame. He was never able to truly be a part of Hollywood royalty
and perhaps felt bitter. It is also possible that he suffered from depression. After things fell apart with Paramount, Roy
attempted to revive his career in England and help that country move into the
talking picture era. However, this endeavor was unsuccessful. Was it Roy’s
arrogant attitude that again led him to trouble in England? As we saw in Part I
of this story, Roy returned to America and worked for a spell at RKO. However,
he was unable to remain at any studio for long.
Like his mother,
Roy’s work and creations as a director and effects technician were usurped and
taken over by a group of people who did not originate them. Roy was pushed out
of his position as sound effects technician by William DeMille, in a takeover
masterminded by Jesse L. Lasky, just as his mother’s company had been
effectively stolen from her by savvy businessmen. Neither was ever able to
regain their former glory. Perhaps the disappointment was too much for Roy to
bear.
What was the nature
of Roy’s relationship with his mother? After her business failed, Jeannette
invested a lot of energy into being around Roy all the time. It is possible she
was trying to make him the success that she wasn’t. If this is so, it is
possible that Roy felt he had failed his mother, and perhaps his wife, who was
someone who also desired fame and success. For some reason Roy did not bring his
mother with him to Hollywood, and Sylvia did not seem to remember Jeannette’s name
on Roy’s death certificate despite the fact that Jeannette had lived with Roy
almost up to his removal to California with Sylvia. Did Roy simply not talk
about his mother with his wife? Roy could have continued to support his mother
after he and Sylvia moved to California and he started making real money. Did
he have her deported because he could no longer stand being around her?
Sylvia died on
February 26, 1965 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, an affluent area. She was 70.
It does not seem that she remarried.
There are many questions that
remain unanswered about Roy Pomeroy’s life. More research may be able to clear
some of them up. In the meantime, we welcome readers to speculate. It is interesting
also to note that Roy’s Oscar statuette for Engineering Effects for his work on
“Wings” is still missing. Roy and Sylvia did not have any children. Perhaps
there is a reader who has some information that could lead to the discovery of
Roy’s Oscar.
[i]“A Successful Business Woman. Mrs. Pomeroy.”
The Mail and Empire, Toronto, Saturday March 11, 1899. p. 5 col 4-7.
[ii]Mrs. Pomeroy. Advertisement.Who's Who 1905 1905: Ii. Print.
[iii]During the Civil War, “Soldier’s Fairs” were
held to raise money for the Union, promote enlistment, and endow orphan’s
asylums, among other things. Jeanette Gallagher Shepherd sent silk worms from
India to aid in this effort. She had her own silk-growing establishment there.
[iv]“Pomeroy Has Mastered Many Professions”, The
Standard Union, Brooklyn, NY. October 13, 1929 p.9 col 5.
[v] “Dainty 120-Pound, Five-Foot
Five New Yorker Considered By Many As Most Perfect Woman” article, Syracuse Journal, Syracuse, Onondaga
County, New York, 18 Apr 1919, p. 12/col. 1-3
[vi]Childe Hassom was a favorite artist of Brooke
Astor’s. A painting she had of his, “Up the Avenue from Thirty-Fourth Street”
was sold by her son Anthony Marshall in 2002 for $10,000,000. The painting was
then sold by the buyer almost immediately afterwards for $20,000,000.
Originally, Brooke had bequeathed the painting to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art.Anthony Marshall had conned his senile mother out of
her beloved painting so he could pocket the money, a scheme that was at the
height of the scandal involving the Astor family in the late 2000s. Anthony
Marshall was sentenced to prison.
[vii]
“Death of Countess Here Investigated”
article, The New York Times, New York
City, New York County, New York, 22 Dec 1923, p. 2/col. 2
