Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World (35 page)

Thus did Wainwright, completely by accident and for the second year in a row, provide a solution to the quandary facing Trudy Ederle.

Trudy felt wronged by her experience in 1925 and wanted to try to swim the Channel again in 1926. Besides, after spending the past two years preparing first for the Olympics and then the English Channel, training to compete in races against schoolgirls didn't seem very exciting anymore, and Trudy had gained some fifteen pounds while overseas. Even if she wanted to, she was no longer in the proper shape to swim competitively at shorter distances. While she had been overseas another group of WSA swimming stars had taken over and were setting records nearly every time they entered the pool. Trudy had little left to prove competing for the WSA. From her perspective it made much more sense to use what she had learned about the Channel in 1925 and take aim on swimming the Channel in 1926.

Wainwright had come to a similar conclusion. Through no fault of her own, Trudy had received a chance that had first been offered to Wainwright. Now Helen Wainwright also wanted to take crack at the Channel.

That put the WSA in an awkward spot. In the end, Trudy's effort had cost the organization nine thousand dollars, an enormous sum of money, and more than the group had originally budgeted for the journey. While some in the organization felt that Trudy deserved another chance, the disagreement with Wolffe had soured some other members on financing another Channel quest at all, while still others thought it was only right that the organization send Wainwright, who was nearly as accomplished as Trudy.

Both women made their desire clear to the WSA, but while Trudy and Wainwright waited for the WSA to make a decision, the American Tobacco Company came to the rescue. English Channel or not, Helen Wainwright could not afford to refuse. She accepted its offer, thus becoming a professional and relieving the WSA of any responsibility for financing any attempt she might make to swim the Channel. If Wainwright ever did decide to swim the Channel, she would now have to do so on her own. And if she did, the contract with the American Tobacco Company provided her with the means.

Wainwright's decision to turn pro also pointed the way for Trudy. Thelda Bleibtrey had been the first WSA star to parlay her career into a professional engagement when she took a job as a swimming coach and agreed to take a screen test. But Trudy was already much more famous than Bleibtrey had ever been, and women's swimming was now much more established as a bona fide sport. As the Wainwright endorsement proved, there were now opportunities available to Trudy that just a few years before had been unthinkable.

Ederle was soon approached by the Deauville Casino and Hotel in Miami, Florida. The Miami area was booming, and beach resorts and casinos were all the rage. The new hotel, an enormous three-story structure on the beach that featured two large spires and an interior courtyard and pool, wanted to hire Trudy, Aileen Riggin, and several other WSA stars to give lessons, entertain guests with swimming and diving exhibitions, and generally be seen in swimwear around the pool. The money was good and the Florida sunshine tempting. Besides, it was becoming ever more apparent that the WSA was less than enthusiastic over sending Trudy back to the English Channel, and the casino led Trudy to believe that it just might decide to finance her trip in exchange for the publicity.

That was the clincher. Now there was absolutely no reason to remain an amateur. In November, Riggin, Trudy, and two other swimmers, Eleanor Coleman and Alma Wycoff, all signed contracts to spend the winter in Deauville, a decision that cost both Trudy and Riggin their amateur status. Wainwright took a similar position in Tampa.

On January 1, 1926, Trudy Ederle's contract went into effect, and she became a professional. The WSA, although disappointed to lose Riggin, Ederle, and Wainwright in such close proximity, was also a bit relieved not to have to choose who to support in another venture across the Channel. Both swimmers were made honorary members of the organization for life.

Trudy was now a professional, living on her own for the first time, although she had her old friend Aileen Riggin for support. Over the next few months she enjoyed her stay at Deauville, which gave her plenty of time to swim and required little else. Whenever possible she abandoned the hotel pool for the ocean and even found time to compete in the annual Miami River swim, a seven-mile race that she won in two hours and three minutes, boosting her self-confidence and proving she was still a swimmer of considerable talent. Like Wainwright, she also was approached by advertisers and agreed to lend her name and image to tout the new Reo Roadster, so named from the initials of Ransom E. Olds, president of Oldsmobile. In the ad Trudy stood on the running board in—what else?—a bathing suit, and the copy stated that when Trudy returned to America and went home to the Highlands after trying to swim the Channel, "she didn't walk to the scene of her first plunge ... She rode in a Reo Roadster, proving that her judgment, so keen in matters of the tides, waves and winds, is just as much alert when she is selecting her motor cars." She didn't earn nearly as much as Wainwright did for her tobacco ad, but for Trudy, who loved cars, it was easy money.

In March she told reporters that she was training for another attempt at the Channel. As yet, however, she didn't quite know just how she was going to do that. Too many casinos and resorts had opened at nearly the same time. Crowds were smaller than anticipated that winter, and the swimmers hadn't proven to be quite as big a draw as the casino hoped, so it was now reneging on its promise to finance Trudy's swim. She'd have to find another way, and even if she could, without the support of the WSA, getting to Europe and making the many arrangements needed for the swim would be an enormous undertaking. Yet there was no time to wait, for it was becoming clear that if she were to attempt the Channel again, it would have to be in the summer of 1926. Although Helen Wainwright had decided to forgo the Channel, at least for the time being, inspired by Trudy's attempt of the previous year there were already upward of a dozen other female swimmers from America and elsewhere who had announced their intention to take a crack at the Channel, increasing the chances that one might be successful and making it imperative that Trudy get in the water as soon as possible.

This time Trudy would get to make the decisions—there would be no chance of ingesting any poison—if she ever got there. She wanted both her father and Meg to accompany her, and even though Meg had recently become Mrs. Margaret Deuschle, she had already agreed to go along. Furthermore Trudy wanted to train not in Dover, but in France, at Cape Gris-Nez, under the tutelage of Burgess. Since accommodations in Gris-Nez were limited and Burgess's services were in demand, if she were to swim the Channel in 1926 she needed to find a way to do so—and fast.

A swimmer from Baltimore provided some inspiration. Lillian Day, a professional lifeguard who also gave swimming and diving exhibitions and made occasional appearances in a vaudeville swim show under her maiden name, Lillian Cannon, had recently gained some local notoriety by swimming across Chesapeake Bay. The local newspaper, the
Baltimore Post,
had taken note of the way Trudy's story had dominated the newspapers the previous summer, and the Scripps-Howard syndicate, of which the
Post
was a part, signed Cannon to a contract. In exchange for exclusive rights to her story the syndicate agreed to provide financial support for her attempt to swim the Channel. It mattered little that the chances of Cannon succeeding were slim. She used a combination of the sidestroke and the breaststroke, and despite her swim across Chesapeake Bay, she was hardly in Trudy's class as a swimmer. But the mere fact that she was going to try guaranteed several months of breathless copy. The
Post
and other papers in the chain hoped that Lillian Cannon would prove to be their Floyd Collins.

The Scripps-Howard syndicate wasn't the only news operation that wanted to create its own Collins-like story, albeit one with a happier ending. In only a few short years since its founding in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson, the New York tabloid the
Daily News
had become one of the biggest newspapers in the country, selling nearly one million copies per day. Patterson, whose grandfather had served as both the editor of the
Chicago Tribune
and mayor of the city of Chicago, had previously operated the
Tribune,
and his family still retained a stake in the paper. An innovative publisher, Patterson brought the tabloid format to America from England, where subway commuters found the garish headlines and oversized pictures—many of attractive women—perfect for browsing on their way to work.

Patterson, who had been an avowed socialist as a young man, was possessed of a pronounced populist streak. He saw the value of a serialized story that appealed to the workingman. He could not have helped but notice the press attention Trudy's Channel effort had attracted in 1925. Her story was perfect for his paper—she was Floyd Collins in a swimsuit.

At about the same time, dismayed by the casino's broken promise, Trudy and her father engaged the services of an attorney, Dudley Field Malone. She and her father had signed the original professional contract with the Deauville Casino without fully examining the terms. Trudy had since learned that the contract also bound her to an agent who had no plans to do anything for her except take the bulk of her income. Enter Malone, who had been born in the same Upper West Side neighborhood as Trudy and was married to the suffragette Dorothy Stevens. He may well have been put in touch with the Ederles either through Henry Ederle's political connections on the West Side or through Charlotte Epstein, who herself was well known in suffragette circles.

Malone was one of a kind, a hard-drinking yet pleasant and glib raconteur, the kind of man who appeared to lead several lives, each one more remarkable than the last. Malone's first wife was the daughter of Senator James O'Gorman, and Malone became a pro-tégé of Woodrow Wilson, parlaying his connections first into a role in Wilson's administration and then as collector of the Port of New York. In 1921, when he and his first wife decided to part, Malone traveled to Paris and managed to secure a divorce, something almost unheard of for two Catholics, and an act that brought him more business than he could imagine. For the remainder of the decade Malone was the world's "greatest international divorce lawyer." But while he was freeing couples from the bonds of matrimony he still found time to take on a host of liberal causes. He defended suffragettes—which is how he met his second wife—fought Tammany Hall and Prohibition, and in 1925 assisted Clarence Darrow in the famous Scopes "monkey" trial over the teaching of evolution. Later in his life he placed the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt before the delegates at the 1932 Democratic convention, and after World War II, due to his resemblance to Winston Churchill, he became an actor, playing Churchill in several films, and served as counsel for Twentieth Century Fox.

Yet even in the context of Malone's full life, his involvement with the affairs of Trudy Ederle would eventually come to represent a rare failure, although at first he seemed to work magic. In 1925 a theater manager named C. C. Pyle took over the affairs of University of Illinois football star Red Grange and made a killing in endorsements and other financial opportunities. Malone took note and fancied himself as another Pyle, viewing Trudy as the female equivalent of Grange.

Malone traveled all the way to Miami to meet with Trudy and used his legal magic to extricate her from her disadvantageous contract. Malone then started trying to peddle Trudy's story. In the spring of 1926, probably inspired by Cannon's arrangement with Scripps-Howard, several New York papers were grappling for the attention of Henry Ederle, all of them trying to secure the exclusive rights to the story of Trudy's attempt to swim the Channel in 1926, if she made such an attempt. Malone stepped in and made sure of that. He handled all the negotiations, getting Trudy a contract variously reported as either $5, 000 or $7, 500 from Joseph Medill Patterson and the
Tribune-News
syndicate, plus a bonus if she succeeded. Malone not only sealed the deal, but became Trudy's agent himself and advanced her five thousand dollars to help underwrite the cost of swimming the Channel, money he expected to earn back from his percentage of her earnings. Problem solved. Trudy was fond of Malone, at least at first, and understandably thrilled. She called him "Uncle Dudley."

Soon after Trudy returned to New York in April she and her father began to make arrangements for her to make another attempt to swim the Channel. They contacted Bill Burgess and hired him to serve as Trudy's trainer in 1926 for a sum reported to be ten thousands francs, a significant amount of money in postwar France but the equivalent of only 250 American dollars. They also made reservations to take the
Berengaria
to Cherbourg and planned to set sail on June 2. In the meantime Trudy continued to more than earn her keep, appearing in a popular water show at the Hippodrome, where she shared the billing with Aileen Riggin and Helen Wainwright.

The only loose end that needed to be tied up was for the
Tribune-News
syndicate to select a journalist to accompany Trudy on her journey to ghostwrite Trudy's dispatches. Joseph Medill Patterson wisely chose a woman: vivacious, twenty-nine-year-old Julia Harpman. A native of Memphis, Tennessee, Harpman had been a reporter with the
Commercial Appeal
in Knoxville before Patterson recruited her in 1919 to write for the
Daily News.
She was put on the crime beat, where her hard-boiled accounts often appeared under the nom de plume "The Investigator." The most notable crime she covered was the infamous murder of Joseph Elwell, a bridge champion and spy whose body was discovered in a room locked from the inside and whose murderer was never identified. The case inspired'S. S. Van Dyne's mystery novel
The Benson Murder Case,
the first in a series featuring the character Philo Vance. But Elwell's murder was notable to Harpman for another reason. While sitting on Elwell's front stoop, working the story, she met fellow journalist Westbrook Pegler.