FLASHBACK

Vanities

The Oedipus in All of Us

A Mother’s Broken Heart

And a Letter from Her Erring Daughter (Dated May 1916)

DEAREST MUZZER: Don’t blame me, my darling, but I am not engaged. I did every single thing you told me to do and did it extremely well. But Harry Stuyvesant, like so many rich bachelors, is a trifle wary and gun-shy. Heaven only knows what I have spent at Palm Beach and Tampa and Miami. I am down to hooks and buttons, so please—like an angel— send me a hundred dollars by return of post, as I must shell out my tips.

And only to think of it—he was on the verge of proposing to me, but the sport of Fate, or the fate of Sport, intervened. We were getting on swimmingly when he was suddenly swept off his feet by a wave (of water, not of passion). Good-by, my dearest muzzer. Send me the hundred quick.

Your broken hearted

SYBIL.

P.S. Don’t worry, dear. I shan’t give it up. I’ll get him yet, cither at Southampton or at Newport.

A1 Jolson, putting Mammy” on the map

The master minstrel, emoting in May 1925, two years before he made the movies talk— and sing!