Inside Our Archives The Saturday Evening Post

Today the names of these cover girls are, for the most part, lost to us. One rare exception is the women seen on the April 8, 1911 cover: Dorothy Gibson.

We know her name because she was a favorite subject of Harrison Fisher. And we know her because of a fateful decision she made one year after this magazine cover appeared, when she chose to sail on the RMS Titanic.

Dorothy Gibson, born in Hoboken in 1889, was living with her mother in New York in 1910 when she began to earn a living singing and dancing. Soon she was offered work as a model.  After Harrison Fisher began painting her, Ms. Gibson became one of the iconic beauties of her time, rivaled only by the women drawn by Charles Dana Gibson (no relation).

It wasn’t long before she was approached by some New York film studios. She proved so successful that she was offered a generous contract by the Éclair Company. She starred in several dramas and comedies, including A Lucky Holdup, which premiered the same week she and her mother, returning from a European trip, boarded the RMS Titanic in Cherbourg.

She was walking on deck after an evening of card playing when she felt the deck lurch slightly. Seeing from the ship’s officers that something was wrong, she didn’t return to her cabin but headed straight for a lifeboat.

She was in the first lifeboat lowered to the water, one of just 19 people in a boat designed to hold 65. Another passenger in her life boat recalled, “the sea was perfectly calm—not even a ripple on the surface… suddenly all the lights dipped simultaneously to a pale glow. A moment or two later [we] saw, silhouetted against the star-lit sky, the stern of the ship rise perpendicularly into the air… Then, with a prolonged rush and a roar like ten thousand tons of coal sliding down a metal chute several hundred feet long, the great ship went down… A great cry arose on the air from the surface of the calm sea where the ship had been.”

Ms. Gibson recalled that sound: “I will never forget the terrible cry that rang out from people who were thrown into the sea and others who were afraid for their loved ones.”

Rescued by the Carpathia, she arrived in New York on April 18. Almost immediately she had agreed to a suggestion from the studio’s producer to make a movie of her experiences. Within a week, she was filming Saved from The Titanic, wearing the same evening gown, long sweater, and gloves she’d worn the night she escaped the sinking ship. The ten-minute ‘feature’ movie proved highly successful, but Ms. Gibson soon lost interest in the movies.

She was considering a career in opera when, in 1915, the producer of Éclair Studios was involved in an automobile accident that killed a man. During the subsequent inquiry, the court—and then the public—learned it was Dorothy Gibson, not the producer, who had been driving the car. Worse, she had been having an adulterous affair with the producer for several years.

In the wake of the scandal, the producer divorced his wife and married Gibson but they, too, were divorced just two years later.

Ms. Gibson, still with her mother in tow, lived on her movie residuals and alimony and eventually decided to move to Europe in 1927 where the cost of living was much less. She and her mother lived in France and Italy, ultimately settling in Paris. She was still there when World War II began.

We are unsure of what happened to her over the next few years; her account is vague and sometimes contradictory. Until America entered the war, she had been allowed to visit her mother in Italy. But in 1941, she was suddenly unable to return to her Paris home. At some point, she was arrested, then sent to San Vittore prison in Milan.

She surfaced again in 1944 when she tried to enter Switzerland. She told the American consul in Zurich she had escaped with the help of an Italian official. He had obtained her release by falsely informing Nazi officials in Italy that Ms. Gibson would enter Switzerland to spy for the fascists.

Apparently the allied authorities never determined whether she was pretending to be a spy or was, in fact, a spy for the German occupiers of Italy. She returned to Paris in 1945 and died there in 1946.

She was outlived by her mother, who survived her by 15 years. As Dorothy’s mother grew even more feeble, she grew vocal in her criticism of the allies. She often made antisemitic, pro-Nazi statements, which led some to infer that her daughter, Dorothy, had been a fascist sympathizer. As in so much of her later life, her political sympathies have never been determined.

The Cover Girl on the Titanic The Saturday Evening Post

In both cases, there was an intense hunger for news—any news—that would explain what had just happened. In 1912, thanks to the telegraphic internet, every major newspaper had most of the details by the next day: the RMS Titanic, the world’s largest ocean liner, sailing from Southampton to New York, had struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sunk within hours. Over 1,500 passengers and crew members had drowned.

In 1912, as in 2001, learning what had happened proved far easier than learning why.

Several explanations were offered by American and British newspapers: the helmsman steered the wrong course; the builders used a poor design and cheap steel; the ship was moving at top speed even though the officers had been warned of icebergs; no one saw the iceberg until it was too late because the company refused to issue binoculars to its officers.

But when the Post’s editor wrote about the Titanic deaths, they directed no blame at Captain Smith, the White Star Line, or the Belfast ship builders. They pointed straight at the American and British governments.

The Titanic carried enough lifeboats to hold one third of her full complement of crew and passengers. The question, “What would happen to the other two thirds if the ship sank?” was never raised until it was too late.

A word from the Governments of Great Britain and the United States would have compelled every liner to carry enough lifeboats for all on board. That word was not spoken. The Governments took the chance of an unnecessary loss of over sixteen hundred lives.

Technically, the Titanic broke no law. British ocean liners were only required to carry 16 lifeboats, which could hold 1060 people. (The Titanic had 2,200 passengers and crew members, but only 20 lifeboats, and many of these were lowered away only partly full.)

The rules weren’t changed because the maritime authorities believed modern ships were inherently safe. In the ten years prior to the Titanic’s launch, over 6,000,000 passengers had crossed the Atlantic, and just 6 had been lost at sea. The British Board of Trade had begun regarding lifeboats as unnecessary equipment that took up valuable deck space.

The Saturday Evening Post of 1912 was as strong an advocate of business and capitalism as any American magazine. But its editors believed the businesses, left to themselves, would carelessly endanger lives.

Artist's Version of the Iroquois Fire.

Chicago had a fire ordinance relating to theaters. To enforce it rigidly would have put the manager of the Iroquois Theater to quite a little trouble and expense. It was not rigidly enforce—and [605 customers] died when the theater burned.

From a score of sickening examples, New York knew the danger of firetraps like the Triangle shirtwaist factory; but it didn’t care to interfere with the profits of the landlord—until the catastrophe! [146 garment workers died.]

Many stores in the United States are fire-traps, with inadequate exits, narrow aisles, and counters piled with inflammable stuff that would go up like tinder if a fire started. The Government knows this, but, generally speaking, will do nothing about it—to the injury of profits—until a holocaust somewhere forces its hand.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.

The public never knows. It reads of the steamer’s tennis court and swimming pool, of the theater’s handsome decorations; of the store’s bargain. The public goes, as a matter of course, with a vague assurance that there are laws and inspectors to make things safe.

Congress proposes to find out where the blame for the Titanic tragedy rests.

It rests, first of all, upon the Governments of the United States and Great Britain.

In fact, the Post reported, the U.S. government had been given fair warning of the problem, in no uncertain terms, two years before the Titanic took 1,500 people to their deaths. In February, 1910, the president of the International Seamen’s Union told Congress:

"Which?— Fate? — Or economy in life boats?" A 1912 cartoon.

There is not sailing today on any ocean a passenger vessel carrying the number of boats needed to take care of the passengers and crew, or a sufficient number of skilled men to handle the boats that are carried…

The average ship-owner knows this; but he must… carry passengers as cheaply as the other fellow.

If vessels are lost the insurance—that is, the public—pays the loss.

If passengers are lost that is very bad, but there is God to be blamed!

If seamen are lost, why there are plenty more idle men to be had on shore. They cost nothing, not even in the training, because they need no training, no skill being required by law.

As to the passengers, are they satisfied with these conditions? The passengers do not know. They are told a lot of rot about bulkheads, vessels so built that they will not sink or burn. Of course, we seamen know this to be the veriest nonsense.”

The warning may have been ignored because it principally concerned sailors, not the public. But the welfare of workers and the public, the editors concluded, was the same thing.

 

We wish to make the moral as broad as possible. Every one of us, every minute of the day, is in the same boat with the workingman. If we ignore his just complaints it is at our own peril.

 

The Inevitable Tragedy of the Titanic The Saturday Evening Post

Artist Harrison Fisher

Harrison Fisher (right) in a November 1909 issue of the Post.

Harrison Fisher was known as “Father of a Thousand Girls” for his paintings of beautiful women. He was also the father of over eighty Saturday Evening Post covers.

“Lady in Oversized Hat with Flowers” by Harrison Fisher

August 7, 1909

Where, oh where did he find these hats? Harrison Fisher (1875-1934) was the son and grandson of artists, and by the time he was six, his father was teaching him about art.

Still in his teens, Fisher became a newspaper illustrator. In the days before photography was commonplace, newspapers depicted current events and stories in black and white sketches. Soon, however, it was clear that paintings of beautiful women were his forte and he found his ladies described as successors to the Gibson Girls.

“Paisley Turban” by Harrison Fisher

May 21, 1910

Much like the Gibson Girls, the Fisher Girls were the epitome of the All-American beauty with hourglass figures, delicate facial features and rich, lustrous hair. If you could see any of this beyond those hats, that is. This gorgeous paisley turban is from a 1910 cover.

“Woman in Hat” by Harrison Fisher

October 21, 1911

She was the American Girl, and being a Fisher model was the hot job. Fisher’s models ran in high society circles, motoring with millionaires and staying at luxury mansions. But one model was especially interesting…

“Big Black Hat” by Harrison Fisher

June 29, 1912

Her name was Dorothy Gibson. The story begins with a brief career as a vaudeville singer and dancer and continues with being Harrison Fisher’s favorite model. She’ll be covered in a Post web piece next week for something else she is famed for: she was a survivor of the Titanic. Believe it or not, her story grows even more interesting.

“Coffee and Conversation” by Harrison Fisher

January 20, 1912

It may be 1912, but this hat is worthy of Lady Gaga.

It is said that with his newspapers and magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, publisher William Randolph tried to keep Fisher so busy he couldn’t work for other publications. Indeed, he did most Cosmopolitan covers — nearly 300 — between 1913 and his death in 1934. It was Cosmo that gave him his “Father of a Thousand Girls,” nickname.

“Woman in Turban” by Harrison Fisher

October 21,1911

Fisher is reported in some sources to have an exclusive contract with Cosmopolitan magazine, which is either inaccurate, or the artist found a way around it, as he did over 80 Saturday Evening Post covers between 1900 and 1915.

Classic Covers: Harrison Fisher The Saturday Evening Post