(2 of 2)
United Press, impressed by the national demand for the
story, set out to get all they could of it. Believing that reporters on
the case were using wrong strategy, they simply asked for, and with the
immediately parents. obtained, a They won private Faithfull's interview
confidence, persuaded him that a full explanation of Starr's makeup
would mitigate the impression of promiscuity which had gone forth. The
result, an "exclusive" for the U. P., was the full details of
how the girl had been induced to unnatural sexual antics at the age of
eleven by the elderly man, a trusted friend of the fam ily; how he had
repeatedly over a period of years taken her on automobile trips,
stopping at hotels, with knowledge and consent of the parents who never
dreamed that his interest was other than fatherly: how Starr, who was
emotionally unbalanced as a result, finally made known the facts to
her parents; how they obtained a $20,000 settlement from the despoiler
to pay for treatment of Starr by psychiatrists and neurologists. For
all their effort, they said, Starr never fully recovered nor mality.
With their full knowledge if not their consent she had run around with
(and after) all kinds of men in all kinds of places "looking for
happiness." In return for the story, Faithfull insisted only on a
letter which would prove that no payment was being made for it to him
or his family.
The New York World-Telegram and other United Press
subscribers embellished Father Faithfull's sad story with facsimiles
of erotic pages from Starr's memory book, letters, telegrams. Star
writers were put on the lurid story to treat it as an epic of injured
innocence, a cause celebre of the decade. Fresh interest, fresh
front-page stories (again including the Times) were supplied by the arrival
from England of a Cunard Line doctor who revealed that Heroine
Faithfull had come to see him on shipboard just before she disappeared
from home, that he had sent her away because she was drunk, that she
had written him she was going to commit suicide. The doctor's picture
now made display material as the epic passed into its third week.
Observers marveled at what the great U. S. Press could do with the
conjunction of a perfect front-page name, a sexy death mystery and a
spell of hot weather.
