“Peaches’ Act Postponed” blares the large-type headline in a New York daily from late march, 1928. Not long separated from her Daddy Browning in one of the most spectacular and widely-publicized marital spats of the Roaring Twenties, 17-year old Peaches was “at it” again with another man much older than she. Nary a penny came her way from her unsuccessful attempt to divorce Edward West Browning. But try and chain a teenager down…
Peaches vaudeville career blossomed under the agency of Edgar F. Allen as her agent. Celebrity photographer Cheney Johnston’s shots of her famous gams didn’t hurt:
Larchmont heiress Mrs. Katherine (nee Murray) Allen spotted a diamond bracelet on her husband’s client’s wrist one evening at a posh NYC night club and took it from there with private gumshoes on the trail. Returning home from a Florida trip in late February 1928, the sheets on Mrs. Allen’s purple-canopied bed seemed amiss. Someone had been sleeping in Momma Bear’s bed. Six nights, in fact.
Suit was commenced forthwith in White Plains, and the rags went nuts.
With crooked, moldy teeth and ruby-tinted lips below beneath a marcelled perm, Peaches plump visage glowed from the tabs. Quite the draw for the vaudeville crowds…
The legal spat was postponed until November but by the end of the winter, the Allens were no more. Score another for Peaches: what’s a girl to do? She’d remain married to Daddy Browning until his death in mid-1934. At age 23 she became free as a bird, and quickly, quickly made up for lost time, marrying and divorcing three more times before her untimely, booze-soaked death in 1956. Along the way her golden image never failed to attract the attention of the scribes. Here she is in 1934 and 1936, the second photo inscribed by her to her husband, Denver theater operator Bernie Hynes. Who know how many guys got nailed in between.
Bravo Peaches, and take that Daddy Browning, you gallus old codger. Think Pete in Mad Men hitting on the 17-year old in driving class. Double Pete’s age and swallow hard.
Peaches in a 1934 press photo
From Peaches to Dearest Bernie [Hynes] 1936
