Madame Lydia Locke – The Life & Loves of an American Opera Diva

Lydia Locke was an outrageous American mezzo soprano who performed with Oscar Hammerstein's London Opera Company from 1911-12. She also gave many Operatic recitals in the USA and Europe, and made her New York stage debut in 1915, taking over the role of Marguerite in Faust at the Academy of Music in Brooklyn. 

However, it is not her stage performances which made her really famous – it was the amount of long-suffering husbands she married and divorced, a murder trial, a paternity scam, a suicide, and poison pen letters among other notorious actions, which  made her a household name in the press for many years. Her infamous marital exploits led numerous reporters to follow her every move and comment on all aspects of her  private and professional life– both the good and the bad. 

Despite her decadent celebrity lifestyle, Lydia Mae Locke actually came from very humble beginnings. She was born on August 1, 1884 in Liberty, Illinois, a rural community 17 miles west of Quincy and the Mississippi River. Her mother was called Lucy Ann Holcomb Locke and her father, Newton Bushnell Locke, was employed as farmer, teamster and day labourer. The Lock farm consisted of 160 acres that adjoined another farm belonging to Lydia’s paternal uncle. Lydia was the youngest of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. 

The Lock children attended Pin Oak school, a one-room school house located on the Lock farm. Lydia then attended public school in Hannibal, Missouri, when the Locks moved to a housing development on the city's west side. As a little girl she developed a singing voice of great range and power. Later it got her onto the concert platform and she had some success in the Western towns while she was still in her teens. At the age of 14, Lydia sailed to London to study voice. When she returned to the USA, she lived in St. Louis with her married sister, Polly Jane Schmidt, who was the wife of a local undertaker. 

In 1902, at the age 17, headstrong Lydia ran away and eloped to Denver, Colorado, to marry 43-year-old Al Talbot, a flashy gambler and borderline criminal, who was also the owner of the Gem bowling alley in Reno, Nevada. To his runaway teenage bride he had passed himself off as a Colorado silver mine magnate. It was Lydia’s first marriage, and Talbot’s fourth.

Alfred Edouard Talbot had been born in Quebec, on 1 September 1861. The Talbots were an old French-Canadian family with ancestral roots that could be traced right back to 16th century France. Talbot had arrived in the USA in 1878 and had become a naturalized citizen in 1892.  At first he called himself Edouard Talbot, but by the time he lived in Reno, he was known as Alfred E. Talbot,” The Prince of Gamblers”  due to his fondness for racehorses and his French-Canadian accented manner of speaking. 

Lydia often performed vaudeville and opera at the Wigwam Theatre, under her married stage name of “Madame Mae Talbot”. Albert Talbot supported his wife’s operatic career and was genuinely sympathetic towards helping her establish herself. Lydia studied opera in Milan, Italy at his expense. She debuted in Carmen, going on to appear in Rigoletto, La Gioconda, Il Trovatore, and Aida, both in Milan and Venice/ Albert had gone out and lived with her in Italy whilst she was training. Returning home, she appeared in concerts in San Francisco and in her husband’s homeland of Canada. 

Although Talbot was said to have led an exciting life as a gambler and raconteur, he demanded total peace and quiet at home and young Lydia was neither a silent nor an obedient wife. She refused to tolerate his bullying and voiced her own opinions very loudly, leading to Talbot inflicting severe beatings on her many times. On one occasion she responded with a pistol shot that missed its target, instead hitting a mattress and resulting in eviction from their hotel residence. The couple had a tumultuous, physically abusive relationship and despite several estrangements and separations, they remained legally married for seven years before Lydia finally filed for divorce. 

On October 28, 1909, after he had severely beaten and injured Lydia during yet another argument, Talbot was summoned to the office of Judge J.D. Jones, his wife's lawyer, on the second floor of the Clay Peters Building in Reno, Nevada, to discuss terms for a divorce settlement. Lydia wanted 50% on the basis that she claimed that she had helped Albert obtain all that he now owned.

With cool October weather in Reno, Lydia had arrived wearing fur and a muff, and still had her hands in the muff as they talked. As voices and emotions escalated, Lydia rose up over Albert, and when he stood up to face her, she pushed the muff into his chest and fired a shot from a small revolver. A second shot went into a door frame as Albert and Attorney Jones struggled to restrain her. Lydia then ran from the office, where Albert lay mortally wounded in the right lung. Lydia rushed to her apartment, informing the landlady that she was leaving, and to tell friends that she would not be returning. She then retired to a lady friend’s apartment, where Sheriff Farrell found her on a couch, wearing a kimono, denying any knowledge of the shooting.

This was front page news in Reno, and as Albert lingered in hospital for a week he maintained that, “She did not mean to shoot me. It was an accident. We’ve both been pretty hard on each other many times, we have both made mistakes, too.” He went on to say that should he die, it would merely be the culmination of a life wasted, and that his wife should be left alone.

Lydia Locke was arrested and stood trial for second degree murder in 1911.The prosecution tried to vilify the singer as a “drug user and a prostitute,” but thanks to a solid defense, and corroborating testimony from the couple’s house staff stating that Talbot was a serial abuser of his wife, Lydia Locke walked out of court a free woman. The prosecutor's case did not allow the jury to consider a manslaughter conviction. The Milwaukee Journal even said that the jury considered Talbot to have committed suicide. 

Newly liberated, Mrs Lydia Mae Talbot re-invented herself as the operatic soprano, Lydia Locke. Her old Reno life became non-existent. She told people that her late husband “Prince Albert” was a deceased English military officer named Reginald Talbot, and later in America he was elevated to the titled “Lord Reginald Talbot”.

 After her acquittal, Lydia Locke went to Chicago and Paris to work as a singer. Soon she would became acquainted with the man who would become her second husband -

Orville Harrold -  an American operatic tenor and musical theatre actor. 

Born in Cowan, Indiana, on 17 November 1877, Harrold was the son of John William Harrold and his wife Emily. His parents were farmers and at the age of 9 he moved with his family, first to Lyons, then to Newton, Kansas. In Newton he began taking singing lessons with his school's music supervisor, Mrs. Gaston Boyd, who was a graduate of the New England Conservatory. In Kansas he sang with various community and church choirs and performed in a vocal quartet. He also won a local music competition and in 1893 he performed at the Chicago World's Fair. In 1894 he and his family returned to Cowan, Indiana where he also began taking violin lessons and played in band.

In 1898 he married his childhood friend, Euphemia Evelyn “Effie” Kiger with whom he had three children. Their first child, born in 1899 was named Adalene Patti Harrold, after the Italian American operatic soprano, Adelina Patti, who had rivalled Jenny Lind as one of the most famous 19th century singers. Their 2^nd daughter, Marjorie Modjeska Harrold was named after the Polish-born dramatic actress, Helena Modjeska and their son Paul Dereske Harrold was named after Polish-born Paris opera tenor Jean de Reske. Effie complained that she could not pronounce her own children’s names.

A former grocery clerk, Harrold began his professional singing career in 1906 as a performer in operettas in New York City, and was also seen during his early career in cabaret, musical theatre, and vaudeville performances. With the aid of Oscar Hammerstein he branched out into opera in 1910 as a leading tenor with Hammerstein's opera houses in New York City and Philadelphia. He spent much of his time on tour and very rarely saw his young wife or three children. 

Orville Harrold’s career appeared secure as an operatic tenor at the opening of 1913. Despite some near-term uncertainty during construction of the new Lexington Opera House, he had been regularly employed by Oscar Hammerstein for two years, who paid his star London tenor very well. One report of their five year contract arising from the opera franchise scheme stated that Hammerstein was to pay Orville $700 nightly, for forty nights per season, which in today’s values would approach a million dollars annually.

Orville Harrold was seated in a stage box, attending a production of The Firefly at the Casino Theatre, one evening in early January, 1913, when prima donna Emma Trentini invited him to entertain the audience after one of her curtain calls. He sang “I’m Falling in Love with Some One”, from Naughty Marietta, which had first brought him to public notice. At first he sang from the box without rising from his seat, but then he joined  Trentini onstage. He returned to his box seat, where his current female companion was seen to be former London Opera soprano, Lydia Locke.

When Lydia Locke came into his life, Harrold was still married to his first wife Effie. But now that he was a famous stat, Harrold was drawn to the vivacious and exciting Lydia Locke, just as she was drawn to him. 

Effie and Orville Harrold appeared in divorce court on February 17, 1913, with newspaper reports describing their circumstances all too vividly:

“Effie Harrold, wife of Orville Harrold, the tenor, obtained a decree of divorce from her husband this afternoon in the Delaware Superior Court on the ground of cruelty. Mrs. Harrold told the court that her husband on several occasions said he wanted nothing more to do with her. She produced letters in which he said he did not love her.

Mrs. Harrold testified that she and her husband were happy before he became famous as a singer. Since that time he had been in New York, Paris, and London, while she had remained here caring for their three children. She complained that his success had killed all his love for her. Mr. Harrold was in court with his attorney and admitted that he did not love his wife. Their stations in life, he said, had become widely separated. By the decree Mr. Harrold receives the custody of their oldest child, Adelene, 13. The singer was ordered to pay $25 a month each for support of the two younger children.”

In 1913, four days after Harrold had finalized his divorce from Effie, he and Lydia Locke wed in New York City Hall and the press again reported the events:

“HARROLD WEDS AGAIN – Tenor, Divorced Last Monday, Marries Lydia Talbot at City Hall – Orville Harrold, the operatic tenor, and Lydia Talbot, who gave her profession as a singer, obtained a marriage license yesterday afternoon at City Hall and were married shortly afterward by Alderman James Smith in the building……Harrold gave his age as 35 and his residence as 262 West Forty-sixth Street. His bride, who said she was a widow, gave her age as 25 and her address as 204 West 108th Street….”

Orville had been separated from Effie and the children for six years whilst he had been away touring and working in London and Lydia Locke, the statuesque new soprano from Hammerstein’s London Opera, was relatively still unknown in New York. While the New York Times wedding announcement introduced Orville by a single name as “the operatic tenor”, Lydia was somebody who simply “gave her profession as a singer.” Musical America stated that she and Orville had originally met while both were pupils of Oscar Saenger in New York when Orville was still an unknown. 

In London, Lydia had had to earn her place on her own merits, which were sufficient to garner a number of roles including: Hedwige in William Tell, Countess of Ceprano in Rigolleto, Alisa in Lucia, Inez in La Favourita, Gertrude in Romeo and Juliet, Martha in Faust, and Giuletta in Tales of Hoffman. 

Along with Orville, she had London portraits taken at the Dover Street Studio in Mayfair. Lydia went to New York in mid-1912, at about the same time that Orville left London. After attending a Halloween party with a theatrical agent, she was involved in a New York auto accident that injured eleven people, and kept her inactive for a period with internal injuries and a broken leg. Orville was touring for Hammerstein at this time. Arrayed in considerable amount of jewellery, she reportedly identified herself at Bellevue Hospital as Mrs. Lydia Harrold, and remained in the hospital recovering for several weeks. 

Their wedding announcement in the New York Herald, headlined “Orville Harrold, Four Days Divorced, Weds Singer After Opera Romance”, indicated that Orville had been her singing coach for two years, and everything suggests that Orville and Lydia had been building up to a wedding for much of the previous year.

Harrold’s eldest daughter, Patti had probably reached the same conclusion upon arriving in New York the previous fall. Patti had been reared for much of her life by her mother Effie, who still continued to care very deeply for Orville. For the adolescent daughter, Lydia was the woman who had divided her family, while Lydia’s auto accident perhaps placed Orville in a more protective stance towards his new wife, further exacerbating an awkward situation. It also turns out that Lydia may have been neither maternal nor receptive to female competition of any kind – even a step-daughter. The new family had a difficult start, whatever the circumstances, and Patti forever held a vitriolic view of Lydia while remaining quite in love with her father and New York theatre.

The divorce grew excruciatingly public and controversial, becoming syndicated news as a classic marital travesty of a husband abandoning his wife and family. A full page spread in the Salt Lake Sunday Tribune was headlined, How He “Outgrew” His Wife. While the article offered no editorial comment, Effie eloquently and simply described her distress and sorrow, as Orville clumsily declared that, “A man must fulfill his destiny” and concluded that, “I had to go on and she would not – that is all there is to it.” This perhaps caused few ripples in New York City, but left lasting negative impressions elsewhere.

The Hutchinson Kansas News, where Orville was a virtual native son, declared tongue in cheek, “SUCCESS FOR HARROLD – Caruso Has Nothing on the Kansas Singer Now.” While Orville had already been called an “American Caruso”, they were not referring to opera. Caruso had appeared before a New York court in 1906 on charges of pinching an unsuspecting lady in a crowd at the zoo. Orville had now surpassed Caruso by joining the “alimony class.” Dwelling on Effie’s tearful testimony of how fame had crushed their love, the article was relentlessly sarcastic of Orville’s “growth” from loving grocery clerk to callous opera star. But, the couple agreed that their relationship was beyond reconciliation. It was perhaps inevitable that the forces were just too great, given the two people, their circumstances, and their differences. All that was left was to live on.

While live on they did, it can be said that Orville paid far less child support than was commensurate with his earning power since entering Hammerstein’s employ in 1910. At $25 each for two children, Orville’s support payments were slightly above the $10 per week he had earned in Muncie, in that sense constituting a full average income level for the family. Effie’s and the children continued for a time in their Muncie duplex, with income solely from Orville and piano lessons, and then moved into the house of Effie’s sister, Emma Kiger, who was a single schoolteacher. Having stayed with Orville through the lean Bohemian years, the family remained in modest circumstances while Orville’s income elevated into the substantial level of successful New York entertainers.

As divorce scandal swirled on, Orville was back touring through the spring of 1913 - but without his new wife by his side. In mid-April he shared a double bill of classical music, the last in a series of Artist’s Concerts, in Portland, Oregon with noted Swiss pianist and conductor, Rudolph Ganz. This was part of a continuing tour, such that Orville reached Indianapolis from the west on May 31, for a large Wagner choral festival led by Alexander Ernestinoff. Lydia arrived from New York the same day, and the festival began the following afternoon. A very large combined chorus, derived from a variety of the region’s German choruses, presented several concerts. Soloists were Marie Rappold and Henri Scott, both of the Met, and Orville Harrold, singing individually and with the chorus.

The Indianapolis event concluded Orville’s spring obligations to Hammerstein, leaving the newlyweds to plan their summer. They considered a summerhouse at Bradley Beach, New Jersey but it appears that they opted for a honeymoon in Florence, Italy to study opera, as indicated at the time of their wedding. According to an article in Effie Kiger’s scrapbook, Orville studied intently in Italy on improving his French, German, and Italian, in addition to learning new operatic librettos. It also appears that they managed several concerts and opera engagements while there.

It is uncertain where Patti Harrold was during this time. Orville had formal custody of her, so she might have remained in New York alone, or she may have joined them on part of their Italian Honeymoon. Wherever she was at the time, Patti mentioned to her niece years later that Lydia had once fired a shot across a room at Orville, while the couple were in Italy on their honeymoon. Although this is hardly objective proof of the event happening, such an assertion is credible, given Lydia’s history with husbands and guns. It is difficult to guess how much Orville ever really knew about Lydia’s past, or when he learned of it, for she was an audaciously complex woman who wove a long and intricate history, but if true, the shooting suggests the marriage was already unstable and Lydia was back to her old ways. 

Lydia’s lowly Midwest farm origins were similar to Orville’s, but she probably did not portray these to him, as that image did not suit the sophisticated persona that she had evolved for herself. One wedding clipping described Lydia’s mother as on her way to New York from her “country home” near St. Louis.

Orville returned from Italy in 1913 with a cautious new view of his second wife and clouds were already building towards an eventual divorce. The couple spent early September at Bradley Beach, near Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, New Jersey, summering and practicing voice and opera roles for the coming New York winter season. 

Construction on the Lexington Opera House was lagging, so that the newlyweds were again touring the Midwest through late September and October 1913.

Beginning at Wysor Grand Theatre in Muncie, the group travelled through Indianapolis, Richmond, Anderson, and Terre Haute in Indiana, as well as Lima and Columbus, Ohio. Harry Paris’s sixty-voice Ensemble Club choir embellished their concerts in Muncie and Anderson. Their standard show, accompanied by Agnes Monroe, was expanded to include Lydia Locke solos and duets although she missed some shows because of illness.

Generally excellent reviews were not surprising, and Lydia was well received. Her voice was described as most pleasing in middle and lower registers, her acting was splendid, and their duet from Madame Butterfly was superb. Although her voice was less robust than Orville’s, reviews credited her with impressing audiences by her grace and personal charm. A Richmond newspaper reported that, “Mr. and Mrs. Harrold are engaged to sing in the Hammerstein opera winter season…”, indicating that Lydia may have remained on Hammerstein’s roster. She gave a motivational talk to girls in Terre Haute, stressing the virtues of study and hard work to achieve success, and was typically described off-stage as “delightful and proper”. After completing the tour, Orville returned west to San Francisco, where he was scheduled to appear at the Mechanics Fair.

In November 1913, Oscar Hammerstein announced that opera at his new Lexington Avenue Theatre would not be given in its native languages. He instead would present opera in English, opening January 15 with Romeo and Juliet, and Orville Harrold in the principal male role. The new organization would present two operas each week, rather than one for the whole week, and rehearsals had begun, but the second opening opera was not yet announced. 

This plan was slipping away by the first week of January, 1914. Progress was seen to have ceased on the building, as Oscar announced that construction delays prevented opening until at least the Autumn months. More seriously, an injunction brought by the Met prevented Hammerstein from presenting grand opera at all. He had soon paid off the chorus, placed several of the principal singers with other companies, and retained Orville, soprano Alice Gentle, and several other singers to present a traveling concert tour under the name of the Hammerstein Grand Opera Concert Company.

In mid-January, Orville sang backup in the chorus for his wife Lydia Locke, billed as leading soprano of Hammerstein’s London Opera, before a banquet of the Society of the Genesee at New York’s Biltmore Hotel. 

Having sung Romeo and Juliet with Hammerstein in London, Orville now played Romeo at the Century opposite Beatrice La Palme, a Canadian formerly of Covent Garden and the Montreal Opera. Orville sang several of his familiar roles with Century, before the company ended a shortened season in April. Besides Miss La Palme, he appeared regularly with Century’s principal soprano, Lois Ewell. 

The aggressive schedule of presenting seven or eight performances per week (both in English and original language), plus debuting frequent new operas, was wearing on the company and lowering presentation quality because of very limited rehearsal time. Lois Ewell seemed visibly tired and even robust Orville was wearing, not being fully himself during Martha, while young Beatrice La Palme permanently retired at the end of 1914, exhausted. 

The 1914 summer hiatus left Orville and Lydia free for other pursuits. This is when Orville produced his first recordings. Free from Hammerstein, he made an Edison Blue Amberol cylinder recording of The Secret one of his popular concert songs since 1910, along with The Sweetest Story Ever Told and four other pieces. Lydia did not have many singing engagements, and she is not mentioned in any reviews. 

Unfortunately, Lydia Locke’s life during her second marriage to Orville Harrold was no smoother than during her first marriage to Al Talbot. Lydia was involved in a number of physical altercations and disagreements with others, which later went to court - including punching a delivery man in the face when he couldn’t give her 25 cents in change, taking part in a physical tussle with a former landlady over rent, and suing the person who had hit her with his car, breaking her leg.

In June 1914 she was engaged in a court suit against a wealthy New York banker named Julian W. Robbins. He owned the car that had caused the October 1912 automobile accident that had broken her leg and caused internal injuries. On the night in question, his chauffeur had actually been driving the car. Lydia was suing him for $25,000 in compensation for both pain and suffering, and her loss of income from professional singing. The suit was apparently settled out of court.

Orville appeared in his usual role in June, as the Duke in a summer opera presentation of Rigoletto in Far Rockaway. A visiting Italian opera company provided most of the cast, while the chorus and orchestra were drawn primarily from the Met. The summer was otherwise quiet for both of them.

Lydia again made the news during the autumn, being called to court for disorderly conduct. The Harrold’s were moving from their Riverside Drive apartment to another on Central Park West, near the Century Theatre. Their old landlady, Mrs. Alice Miller, claimed eight day’s rent due for the interim from when they had agreed to rent the unit until they actually occupied it and signed the lease. Lydia claimed that Mrs. Miller called her out from a bath to collect the contested rent, and attacked her physically over the dispute, while Mrs. Miller counter - claimed that Lydia was the attacker. Both had filed court claims, but the judge managed to persuade both to drop charges. This made headline news back in Indianapolis, with a zesty salacious aspect for the supposed bathtub fight scene.

Orville and Lydia lived comfortably in the new tenth floor apartment on Central Park West, where their maid often walked Lydia’s dogs. Grand opera was a demanding and unsettled lifestyle that they understandably were less unwilling to pursue now married, so Orville went back to performing in Vaudeville. Vaudeville offered opportunities that had a large reliable patronage and it was steady employment for him. Opening at the Palace Theatre, Orville began with Pagliacci’s romantic “La Donna a Mobile”, sung offstage, then surprised the audience by appearing as the clown, singing Canio’s sob song, and finally presented his standard concert ballads. This was all popular enough to run for two weeks. New York critics welcomed Orville’s return to vaudeville, noting his range, versatility, his level of artistry, and that beyond singing the songs - he acted them. 

While Orville organized a more stable career during the spring of 1915, Lydia also received several of her own opera notices in newspapers. Her photo appeared in the arts section of the New York Morning Telegraph On April 18, along with those of Melanie Kurt, Blanche Arral, and Arturo Toscanini who had just conducted his last season at the Met. The group was captioned as “Notables in the Music World”, Lydia was pictured the same day in the New York Times, along with Toscanini, with no unifying description or article, but with the caption, “Lydia Locke – Aborn Opera Company, Brooklyn.”

 

The photos were all publicity shots provided to newspapers by promoters of upcoming events. In Lydia’s case the event was her long dreamed of American New York opera debut - appearing as Marguerite with the three-week production of Aborn Grand Opera Company’s presentation of Faust, with Richard Bonelli. Lydia had been studying since the previous fall with a New York singing coach named Frederick Haywood. Lydia’s performance received generally favourable reviews, although they also noted that she lacked some range and power, and that her tall stature was unmatched with the girlish character. Since Lydia’s Brooklyn debut, newspapers had suggested that she might become a war nurse, joining Mary Garden’s hospital reportedly opening in Paris for war wounded - but nothing came of this and it was just extra publicity. 

In May of 1915, the Century Opera filed for bankruptcy, with considerable sums owed to backers, vendors, and individuals. Of note, they owed approximately six thousand dollars to Orville Harrold for contracted appearances not yet performed, clearly showing that headliners in even second tier opera were commanding salaries that would be well into today’s six figures.

Not yet having branded herself as a notable singer, a May 4, 1915 column heading in the New York Times read, “Opera Tenor’s Wife Accuses Chauffeur – Mrs. Orville Harrold will appear in court today against Moses Small.” Lydia had again been summoned on charges of disorderly conduct. 

Suffering from bronchitis, her doctor had prescribed some “powders”, to be delivered by his chauffeur, Moses Small. When Small requested a 25¢ charge for delivering the medicine, Lydia, lacking a quarter, refused to pay and demanded he hand over the package. While she claimed that he then pulled her into the hall and struck her, he charged that she stepped forward wielding a high-heeled satin slipper and lacerated his face. Orville was away at the time, singing in Chicago. The case was dismissed as an unverifiable “he said, she said” morass, but it again suggests that there was an uncontrolled, tempestuous and violent temperament in Lydia. There was also, again, a risqué aspect to this drama, since Lydia had managed to get locked outside her door wearing only a brief gossamer negligee, while having attracted the attention of a large social event at Rabbi Levy’s across the hall. Lydia seemed prone to occasional news-making emotional flare-ups.

Having now sung in American opera, Lydia was in Joplin, Missouri during mid-May, visiting family and performing a concert, after which she gave another “hard work” speech to some local girls. In June Orville was appearing at the New Brighton Theatre, a popular vaudeville venue at Brighton Beach, adjacent to Coney Island. On July 4, he sang the “Star Spangled Banner” for a benefit game between the Giants and Yankees at the Polo Grounds. Orville spent the summer of 1915 staying before the public, rehearsing his new production, and enjoying the Jersey shore, whilst carefully avoiding too much daily contact with his wife.

Orville and Lydia sang in concert before a full house during their second annual August appearance at Ocean Grove, New Jersey, near where they summered at Bradley Beach. Ocean Grove was among the most successful of summer church camps that had blossomed after the Civil War. In this case, the camp had a large auditorium seating 6000, that had hosted numerous notables and performers, including Caruso. In early September Orville and Lydia sang vaudeville together at the Palace Theatre, her first vaudeville appearance. The couple was well received and garnered numerous good reviews, as Orville headed into his main event.

New York’s largest theatre, the Hippodrome, had been built a decade earlier by the creators of Coney Island’s Luna Park, to present sight and sound spectaculars for audiences up to 5000, with casts of over 1000 and including live animals. There were circus rings, aquatic scenes, and a hydraulically raised “vanishing pool” in which actors exited the stage underwater. The massive building was a challenge to make profitable, and it had been operated since 1909 by the Shubert brothers, with mixed results. 

New management, having large money and large new ideas, arrived in 1915 with Charles Dillingham, who had been producing Broadway musicals by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin at the Globe Theatre. Dillingham’s new Hippodrome was scrubbed clean, soon to present massive musical reviews comprising cast, chorus, scenes, a myriad of acts, and John Philip Sousa’s band as the house orchestra. Each show was to run for about an eight-month season, from fall through the next spring.

Dillingham’s opening 1915-1916 season presented Hip! Hip! Hooray! - a musical review in three acts, with Orville Harrold its Hero and Belle Storey the Heroine. The three acts shifted from New York, to Panama, where America had just completed twenty years on the canal, to a winter wonderland in Switzerland. The show was written and directed by Robert H. Burnside and John Raymond Hubble, the Hippodrome’s music director, wrote much of the show’s music.

While a central unifying character, Orville was among a cast of over 1200 singers, dancers, entertainers, and comedians. The show was generally a rousing good time that lived up to its name, a large colourful spectacle with dashes of circus and vaudeville. Amid rumours that the vanishing pool had been removed, it actually arose in the third act as a large genuine ice rink, hosting a skating ballet entitled Flirting at St. Moritz, with falling snow and ending in a ski jump scene. 

Hip! Hip! Hooray! opened on September 30, 1915, with New York’s mayor in a special box, and played for 425 performances until June 3, 1916. The state governor attended on Election Day, the show continued breaking attendance records, and unlike vaudeville, also attracted upper-crust society patrons. 

This likely constituted the highest paying period of Orville’s career. He reportedly received a four-digit weekly salary, which may have netted him little more than one hundred dollars per performance, as the show can be seen to have run two performances per day. Orville also participated in Saturday night holiday concerts at the Hippodrome during December of 1915, with Sousa’s band and other operatic singers.

The Hip Hip Hooray! cast gave a benefit concert during March of 1916. The Hippodrome team of Charles Dillingham and Robert Burnside had been producing an Irving Berlin musical and dance show at the Globe Theatre, starring a popular Paris dancer named Gaby Deslys, and her partner, Harry Pilcer. As their show closed, during mid-March, the two casts combined for a performance to benefit the French Red Cross. 

Orville left the Hippodrome over the next few months. He was a powerful and energetic performer, but hours of addressing such a large theatre without electric amplification took a toll on his voice. Despite the lucrative income, Orville did not appear in Hip Hip Hooray! after May, 1916, although it is unclear on whose terms he left. Other opportunities were now developing, and he was endeavouring to preserve his operatic vocal capability.

During Hip Hip Hooray! Lydia Locke sang at a series of benefits and smaller engagements in early 1916. She was among entertainers at a benefit in February for Belgian war refugees held at the New York Automobile Club, and a week later in a concert at the Hotel Astor Theatre Club. Lydia gave a brief series of high society benefit concerts in Philadelphia during late February. Publicity for these described a tall, slender, stately, bejewelled woman of attractive manner, who had delighted the Romanoff’s at the Petrograd Imperial Opera. Both Lydia and Orville appeared at the Hotel Biltmore, along with Lillian Russell and others, at an April Shakespearian celebration held by the Professional Women’s League for a series of Shakespeare tercentenary events.

Lydia and Orville then gave several concerts in May of 1916, preceded by some unusual publicity. The concerts featured both solos and duets, with a number of Irish songs, and both accompaniment and solos by New York pianist, Emil Polak, who had performed with Orville in 1915 vaudeville appearances. The first was on Sunday May 7 at the Strand Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island, with a second on May 14 at the Park Theatre in Bridgeport, Connecticut, apparently sponsored by the Wisner Piano Company. Advertising for both reiterated that Lydia had sung opera in Russia. The Bridgeport Sunday Post ran an item in April stating that she had sung a season with the Russian Imperial Opera, and was then detained at the border when departing at the outbreak of the war. She was finally released after demonstrating that she was an opera diva. 

An unidentified article of the same period from Effie Kiger’s scrapbook describes Orville visiting a friend’s winter home in northern Mexico for some hunting and fishing. This being the period when General Pershing was pursuing Poncho Villa, Orville was detained while leaving the country and held in a Mexican jail as a suspicious person, until being released after the music-loving commandant heard Orville singing opera in his cell.

While fascinating stories, it is difficult to believe that Orville and Lydia had both sung their way out of captivity, in nearly identical incidents on separate continents. In Lydia’s case, circumstances place the event in 1914, when she was already married to Orville. He was then singing and traveling with the Century Opera, but Lydia made several court appearances during this period, the couple summered in New Jersey, and Lydia reportedly began studying with Frederick Haywood during the fall. Overall, it is not clear just when her Russian season fits into the timeline of Lydia’s life. If a fabrication, the claim would seem audacious, but not totally out of character, while Orville’s similar publicity contained blatant blarney. Promoting the May concerts, Orville was described as Irish born but American raised, and then American born of Irish origin, neither of which is remotely true, but both of which might have helped sell Irish concert music.

The May concerts were perhaps the last time that Orville and Lydia appeared together, either on or off the stage. Their public high point was the July 1916 release by Columbia Records of “Orville Harrold, the operatic tenor, in exquisite duets with Lydia Locke”. It appears that Orville had begun recording with Columbia at about the same time (1914) that he made cylinder recordings with Edison. Awake Dearest One and Sunshine of Your Smile, the two quite pleasing recordings with Lydia, were intricately intertwined duets of interesting character. However, Lydia’s volatile temperament, which surfaced during their honeymoon and had since earned her several court appearances for disorderly conduct, was wearing Orville down. Their careers were running thin, likely raising tensions, and Lydia was not seemingly one to suffer silently or suppress frustrations. Part of Orville’s weariness may well have been from domestic emotional battery.

By the time that the advertisement for Columbia’s new record catalogue appeared in local newspapers around the country, Orville had escaped from New York, and had physically distanced himself from Lydia. One news report stated that Orville was overweight during this period, drinking more than usual, and suffering from voice damage. In another report, the press stated that Lydia had met a music-loving millionaire on a train and she had begun a new relationship. 

It became public news on July 7, 1917, that Orville was suing Lydia for divorce, and that papers were delivered to Lydia’s attorney for a co-respondent. Lydia immediately began a counter-suit for divorce, also with named co-respondents. Harrold, ready to wash his hands of his marriage to Lydia Locke, conceded the divorce to her. According to a 1925 article in the American Weekly, a San Antonio paper, Harrold said, “I don’t care who gets it, so long as it is gotten.”

The Fort Wayne Indiana Daily News published a bitter piece entitled RETRIBUTION, noting that Orville’s second marriage was ending unhappily, and wishing him nothing better for the future. Orville’s divorce from Lydia was finalized on August 20, 1917, noting that they had been living apart for some time.

During their divorce proceedings, Arthur Marks, the man who Lydia Locke had met on a train, was named as her “co-respondent.” Arthur Marks was a wealthy former executive of a Rubber Company and shortly after Locke divorced Harrold, Marks became her third husband on December 22, 1917. The bride was given away by Andrea de Segurola, basso at the Metropolitan Opera while Countess Furulli was her matron of honour. The newly married couple held a wedding reception at the Ritz-Carlton. 

Arthur Marks had been born in Lynn, Massachusetts and was an inventor, researcher and developer of many chemical processes important to the early rubber industry. Marks' inventions included an alkali process for reclaiming rubber, another process for assuring the uniformity of plantation rubber, and methods for shortening rubber vulcanization time. He was also credited with introducing the cord tire to the United States in 1911 and had been the General Manager and a member of the board of directors with the Goodrich Rubber company in Akron, Ohio. 

Marks' father, William, worked in a clothing house, and his mother, Clara Beede, who had worked in a shoe factory before her marriage, died in 1890 when Arthur was about 16 years old. Marks was educated at the Lynn Classical School and attended Harvard for two years before leaving the university, he thought temporarily, to earn some money; Marks did not return but instead got a job at "ten per" as assistant chemist of the Boston Woven Hose and Rubber Co., where at the end of two years he became chief chemist for the Revere Rubber Co. In 1898, Marks became general superintendent of the Diamond Rubber Co., and two years later vice-president and general manager.

Working closely with fellow chemist George Oenslager, around 1905 Marks developed chemical processes and principles related to the rubber and tire industry that were of enormous commercial and national importance. Their work formed the basis for important procedures involving rubber that are still used today.

Regarding Marks' contribution to the rubber industry, according to an article that appeared in 1930 in the Journal of Chemical Education:

"Marks and Oenslager made the following direct contributions to the rubber business and allied industries: (1) created a market for plantation rubber by developing methods whereby it could be substituted for Fine Para for nearly all purposes, regardless of the methods of coagulation employed by planters. This made possible the continued development of the rubber-planting industry. Without the supply of rubber from plantations, rubber, automotive, and allied industries would have been seriously hampered in development. (2) Gave to the industry basic scientific methods which `still govern the compounding of its materials, especially as affecting strength of compounds and time of vulcanization. (3) By ``acceleration'' enormously reduced the rubber goods manufacturers' investment in equipment and in employees' time."

Marks had amassed a considerable fortune as vice president and general manager of the Goodrich Rubber Company. He had volunteered for the WWI war effort, taking the Naval Reserve rank of Lieutenant Commander to manage wartime shipbuilding. When he met Lydia Locke, Marks had also just divorced his first wife Florence, and had a young son Robert, who was away at school. 

Marks and his new wife Lydia occupied a new twenty-six room country estate on 1000 acres in Yorktown Heights, named Locke Ledge, which he had purchased as a wedding present for his wife. The Locke Ledge estate on Turkey Mountain had formerly been part of Griffen Farm and consisted of a large farmhouse surrounded by springs, streams, wooded meadows, barns, and an orchard.

The idea for buying Locke Ledge as a gift for his bride Lydia came from the following advertisement that Arthur Marks saw in the April, 1916, issue of Country Life in America magazine:

“Do You Want an Estate in Westchester County? Farm of 95 acres near Yorktown Heights is offered for sale, situated in the Croton Lake section about 30 miles from New York City and a half mile from railroad station. The neighbourhood is made up of some of the most beautiful estates in the metropolitan district, and this property is the last that is likely to be on the market. The High land is beautifully wooded, with plenty of water and springs and a young bearing apple orchard of about 10 acres. The Farm also contains a 14 room house which would be ideal for remodelling."

Sparing no expense, Lydia and Arthur Marks remodelled the original 14-room farmhouse and the surrounding grounds. Within four years, Griffen Farm was transformed into Locke Ledge, a dazzling residential show-place which was noted in period publications for its architecture and landscaping. 

Many impressive features were added to the property including a formal sitting garden containing a reflecting pool with a nude nymph statue, stone benches, brick walkways, and playful figurines of frogs and fanciful animals; trellised brick-paved walkways shaded by climbing vines; and two large additions consisting of a billiard room, with living quarters above. The additions were connected on the outside by an attached loggia - a narrow covered porch. A central element of Locke Ledge was Deer Pond, designed by Ossian C. Simonds one of the foremost landscape architects of that time. 

There was also and a large vaulted music room outfitted with a 2,044 pipe Skinner organ. Marks had re-entered industry at the war’s end by purchasing the foundering Skinner Organ Company of Boston, maker of large church, civic, and theatre organs. A chapel having a massive pipe organ made by that comapny was among the many outstanding features to be added by Marks and Lydia. 

Locke Ledge allegedly hosted parties for Caruso, four American presidents - Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding, and Calvin Coolidge – and also played host to many other notable guests. Although Lydia’s operatic career was waning, there was certainly some consolation to be had in her newly married domestic circumstances.

 

Outward tranquillity lasted some years at Locke Ledge. In 1922 the Marks’ adopted a one-year-old boy called Paul Carewe Haynor, whose float had won first prize in an Asbury Park, New Jersey baby parade, and whose father had died during the war. After the adoption, he was re-named Newton Locke after Lydia’s father. 

Lydia, Marks and their adopted son

Marks and Locke’s marriage would become the longest of the opera singer’s eventful life so far—but after six years of being wed to Lydia, Marks is said to have begun showing signs of extreme fatigue, and was checked into a sanatorium. Locke immediately began calling the sanatorium to speak to Marks, but his doctor deflected her calls. According to that same 1925 article in the American Weekly, the doctor told Marks, “You’d better pack up. I can’t do anything for you. What you need is a divorce.” Marks seemed to agree.

The divorce came in September of 1923 after Marks hired private detectives to research into his wife’s past. Marks reportedly pressured Lydia into the divorce by threatening to expose the real details of her first husband, Prince Albert’s Reno death by shooting in 1909. Such details would have upset Lydia’s social status, being as her first husband had always been billed as the deceased “Lord Reginald Talbot”, making Lydia the former “Lady Talbot”. Mark’s suspicions had arisen when his wife’s account of her first husband’s demise was somewhat inconsistent.

Under the divorce terms, Lydia received $300,000 outright, and also got to keep Locke Ledge - valued at a million dollars - plus their property in the city which was worth $30,000, and had full custody of their adopted son. Post-divorce, Locke began harassing Marks with near constant phone calls day and night. As a consequence, Marks also committed to pay an additional $100,000 after five years, if during that time Lydia did not pester him or cause either his or her names to appear unfavourably in newspapers. 

As in Orville’s case, there are few direct details of what really triggered Marks’ private detective researches and such protective reactions, but one surmises that married life with Lydia was very trying. Regarding their train ride introduction, Mr. Marks lamented that he should “sue the rail line for ever allowing such a thing to happen.”

Now comfortable toying with large sums of money, Lydia forfeited the $100,000 good conduct bonus in little more than a year. Having been gone for most of that time, she reappeared in New York during the fall of 1924 with an infant son, which she claimed to be a Marks heir by blood. Marks began preparing to care for the child, at least financially, but, wary of the strange time frame for the baby’s birth, he again set private detectives on the case.

In a November court hearing, Mr. Marks’ detectives divulged that the infant had actually been borrowed from a Kansas City orphanage, as a false prelude to adoption, and provided with a falsified birth certificate in St. Louis, through a manipulation of Lydia’s older sister and her doctor. Judge Edward J. Gavegan ordered the infant returned to Kansas City, but Lydia never really provided an explanation for the deceit, and Arthur Marks - now even more concerned than ever - offered a $50,000 appeasement for Lydia’s good behaviour during the remainder of the five years. The baby borrowing incident was sufficiently curious that the syndicated press circulated reports of it, which still referred to Lydia as “Lady Talbot, widow of Lord Reginald Talbot.”

 

During her 1923 Marks divorce, Lydia caught the attention of American Weekly, a syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement that appreciated her entertainment value and kept a running file of her ongoing life. Given their detailed information, they may have actually been fed information by someone very close to her. The magazine published jocular full-page spreads on various fascinating subjects, generally fact based and in something of a believe-it-or-not style. Besides the Marks divorce profile, American Weekly published four other Lydia updates, the last being for her 1939 posthumous lawsuit for the Marks inheritance.

Lydia remarried immediately after the baby caper - this time to her former personal secretary, Mr. Harry Dornblaser, who was about ten years younger than her, and was adept at investing her financial assets. Harry returned suddenly to America during their Paris honeymoon for reasons that are still unknown, and the couple never again lived together. Lydia, meanwhile, read a chance notice in Paris that Arthur Marks had also remarried. While their divorce prevented neither party from future relationships, the bride turned out to be Margaret Hoover, one of Lydia’s best friends and her personal advisor during the difficult divorce. 

 

Possibly feeling a bit emotionally unsound after Dornblaser’s sudden abandonment of her, Lydia quickly returned to New York, and the Marks’ soon received an anonymous letter, in handwriting that both believed they recognized, graphically - but falsely - accusing the new Mrs. Marks of the most vile sexual deeds. The Milwaukee Journal sensationally declared that the contents of the letter were “so obscene as to prohibit the publication of a single line.”

The latest Mrs. Marks retorted with a $250,000 libel suit, during which the Marks detectives showed that one of Lydia’s sisters, Mrs. Mary Frances Adams of Joplin, Missouri, had given a letter and a tip to a Pullman porter to mail her letter from Bellefontaine, Ohio, the same town postmarked on the Marks poison-pen letter. A Federal Grand Jury indicted Lydia in September of 1925, for using the mail to slander Mrs. Marks, although the case was never completed, and a defamation suit Marks’ new wife filed against Locke, never got to trial.

Harry Dornblaser then divorced Lydia shortly thereafter this, and in October of 1926 his body was found in an abandon log cabin in fashionable Shaker Heights, near Cleveland. He had apparently committed suicide with a revolver and had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound – but no foul play was suspected.

Through all of this, Lydia Locke had maintained her opera career and despite the years of unhappiness she’d had with Talbot, Harrold, Marks, and Dornblasser, Locke was still looking out for her next husband.

She thought she had found him when she married her next husband - Carlo Marinovic - in 1927. He was a shipping magnate from one of the Balkan states, who was reportedly a Count in his homeland before becoming a naturalized American. Locke’s marriage to the “Count” was no more easy than any of her others. After three years of marriage, Locke returned from a Parisian shopping trip to flaunt all her new purchases to her husband, but Marinovic apparently couldn’t take being married to her anymore, and began throwing all her new furs out the window before storming out and heading back to the Balkans. They were divorced in 1932 after she found out he had been sleeping with one of her best friends. There were no court cases, no elaborate paternity plots and no gunshots involved this time. Locke simply divorced him.

She still continued filing lawsuits against Arthur Marks - the last being in 1939 when she contested his will whilst his body was still fresh in the grave. Lydia claimed to be the rightful inheritor of his considerable estate, despite the fact that she and Marks had both married other spouses since their divorce. She claimed her share of his estate on the basis that her divorce was invalid because it had been coerced under threats of duress. 

Lydia Locke gained one more husband in her lifetime and continued to own Locke Ledge for many years - even if she did not live there.

Her last husband, Irwin Rose, was born in Monessen, Pennsylvania to Jewish parents, Bennie Rosenbloom, a baker, and his wife Elizabeth. Irwin's given name was Israel “Ezy” Rosenbloom. The Rosenbloom family had emigrated from Russia in 1903 with their three children: Rosa, Jacob and Morris.  Irwin and his brother William were the first children from the family to be born in Monessen, USA.  By 1916, the family had moved to Johnstown, Pennsylvania, where Irwin Rose's father was part owner of Rosenbloom Brothers bakery and Rosie's Cafe.

Irwin Rose played saxophone and violin in several bands in the Pittsburgh area before coming to New York, where he worked with the Ben Bernie Orchestra. Later on,  Rose was leader of an orchestra at the Hotel Pierre for 15 years and was also known for being a band leader in Baltimore, Maryland. Irwin used his birth surname of Rosenbloom until the late 1930s until after he moved from Pittsburgh, when he shortened it to Rose.  

On June 9, 1936, Rose had married Vaughn De Leath, who had been a well-known female jazz and blues singer in the 1910s and 1920s.  The secret wedding ceremony took place at Bel Air Methodist Episcopal church in Maryland.  Vaughn had previously been married to Artist Leon Geer whom she married in 1924 and divorced in 1935. On May 20, 1941, an uncontested divorce from Rose was granted to De Leath, filed under the name Lenore Rosenbloom, in Reno, Nevada on grounds of extreme cruelty.

By the 1940s, Irwin Rose was the manager of the Tune Toppers band, headed by renowned banjo player Eddie Peabody, until all its members joined the navy's submarine service in 1942.  Rose then managed small band and "cocktail circuit" bookings for Consolidated Radio Artists, Inc. in Chicago (1944) and MCA (Music Corporation of America) in Detroit (1945). 

In 1952, Rose rented the Circle-In-the-Square Theatre at Sheridan Square in New York City and produced off-Broadway plays and other live entertainment.  After 1952, Rose was in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he was the proprietor of a restaurant called the Driftwood Restaurant and Lounge, located at 900 State Road 84.  Rose was also connected with the syndicate of real estate developer Stephen A. Calder, a legendary Fort Lauderdale land developer.

Irwin Rose married Lydia Locke in Georgia in 1954, in another secret wedding ceremony.  With an eye on his new wife's still-sizable fortune, accumulated over each of Lydia's marriages, and the long-unoccupied Locke Ledge mansion in Westchester, Irwin Rose saw an opportunity to open the inn and nightclub at Locke Ledge that he had always dreamed about.

However, he had very little experience running a restaurant, aside from working in his family's Johnstown bakery and a few years managing the Driftwood in Fort Lauderdale.  Rose asked his business-seasoned associate, Stephen Calder, to travel to Yorktown from Florida to survey the property's economic potential as a nightclub.  Calder's candid assessment was that while the location was beautiful, it would be nuts to open a nightclub and restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Without much experience or a reasonable chance for success, Rose ploughed ahead with the project anyway.

By 1957, Rose and Lydia had formed the Lydroe Realty Company, which developed Lydia's Locke Ledge estate in Yorktown Heights into the Locke Ledge Inn.  The restaurant and night club opened in 1958, with eight weeks preparation, and became a year-round establishment the following year.

Despite good food and Rose's experience in booking high quality entertainment, the inn's remote location proved unprofitable, as Mr. Calder had predicted, and the inn was sold after the 1964 season to a group headed by Harry Lewis of White Plains.  After the sale of the inn, the new owners renamed the property "Loch Ledge."  Irwin Rose continued working for Loch Ledge management in some capacity. He attended Yorktown zoning board meetings on Lewis' behalf in matters related to the development of a golf course, ski runs, and swimming facilities. 

Known as a local Yorktown Heights “character “right up until her death, Lydia Locke was noted for being chauffeured about, clad in her full-length fur coat and little else - one such excursion being to attend a town meeting.

Lydia Locke and Rose remained together until Lydia’s death in 1966 of natural causes, aged 82 years. Soon after her death, the Davenport House museum in Yorktown acquired a collection of her stage costumes. They displayed one of her concert gowns on a life-sized cardboard figure of Locke, beside a piano in the drawing room. The original Loch Ledge burned down a year after Lydia Locke's death - an event which is still lamented by local preservationists.

Lydia Locke’s grave can still be visited on the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery’s “Murder and Mayhem” Tour. Her tabloid life lives on in archives, old newspapers, and the tour that visits her grave, but other than that her legacy is almost completely forgotten. 

Celebrity is fleeting; scandal lasts a lot longer it seems.