Lucky in love, but a struggle on the stage
Polish opera singer had many suitors; they were not conductors, however
You've probably never heard of Ganna Walska. But 99 years ago, the Polish-born opera singer was at the centre of one of the great scandals of her age.
Walska was a great beauty, but not a great singer — she is believed to be the inspiration for Susan Alexander's ill-fated opera singer in the Orson Welles movie Citizen Kane.
Nonetheless, she had no shortage of suitors — she was married six times, usually to very wealthy men.
A wire feature in the Oct. 23, 1921 edition of The Vancouver Sun was delightfully salacious.
“Walska hinted at her fame in Europe, but the truth is she was brought up almost in poverty, a child victim of an unhappy marriage at 17, (who) spent years knocking around one cabaret and music hall to another,” said the story.
“In Kiev she appeared as the Merry Widow, but Moscow, Warsaw and other Russian cities of prewar gaiety have only a vague memory of a black-eyed girl with the grace of a panther and the temper of a tiger.
When she hit New York all she had was a bandbox and a letter from Anna Held to Diamond Jim Brady. She interested a multimillionaire, married a world-famous scientist, and became the protégé of another multimillionaire.
“Finally she married the richest bachelor on earth, almost wrecked the world's greatest opera company, unwittingly boosted a rival prima donna into becoming its impresario and skyrocketed off to Europe in a tantrum. And those are only the highlights in her little skit.”
Diamond Jim Brady was a famous businessman and philanthropist in the Gilded Age in the late 19th century. The world famous scientist was “noted nerve specialist” Dr. Joseph Fraenkel, who met Walska when she was singing at a club in New York, died in 1920, leaving her a fortune ($350,000, which is about $4.2 million today).
The multimillionaire who took her on as his protégé was Harold Mccormick, scion of the International Harvester farm equipment company. Mccormick was the biggest patron of the Chicago Opera company, and was married to Edith Rockefeller, daughter of America's richest man, John D. Rockefeller.
Mccormick pressed Chicago Opera to cast Walska in the opera Zaza, then took Walska on an ocean liner to rehearse in Europe. On board, they came across the rich bachelor Alexander Smith Cochran, who had an estimated $80-million fortune. (That's about $1.16 billion today.)
“Fellow passengers on the voyage across report a fast and furious courtship,” said the Sun story. “Not many weeks later wedding bells
rang out in the American church in Paris, and Mrs. Alexander Smith Cochran left the church on Mr. Cochran's arm for their luxurious home in the Rue de Lubeck.”
Back in Chicago, Walska “arrived with all the trumpeting of a Roman conqueror” to play Zaza. But rehearsals were a disaster — the conductor quit after “pleading in vain for the prima donna to `sing out.'”
A new conductor “silenced his musicians when she declared the orchestra drowned her voice,” but this led Walska to have a meltdown. After “rushing out in a frenzy and denouncing everybody,” she went back to Paris.
She then announced she wanted a divorce from Cochran. Tongues wagged because she was staying at the same hotel as Mccormick, whose estranged wife had been living in Switzerland for eight years, running a psychology institution.
The divorce with Cochrane went through in the spring of 1922, and on Aug. 11, 1922 she married McCormick, who promoted her career.
But the reviews weren't kind.
“A critic described her voice as `thin, sharp, wiry, metallic,'” said a 1924 story in the Louisville Courier-journal. “She is unskilled and insensitive in the arts and means of song — line, phrase, modulation, transition, climax. With pace and rhythm she exhibits neither intelligence, intuition nor the fruits of study.”
She divorced Mccormick in 1931. Her last husband was a yoga master 21 years her junior, Theos Barnard, who was known as “the white lama.” After they divorced in 1946, a wag for King Features wrote “he can stand on his head for three hours, but he can't work.”
While married to Barnard, Walska purchased a lovely property in Montecito, Cal., near Santa Barbara, that was supposed to be a retreat for Tibetan monks. Barnard called it “the penthouse of the gods.”
After divorcing Barnard, Walska turned it into an acclaimed botanical garden named Lotusland, which is now a park. She died on March 2, 1984 at 96.
She is unskilled and insensitive in the arts and means of song — line, phrase, modulation, transition, climax.