31 Facts About Audrey Munson

Audrey Munson was one of the first American actresses to appear nude in a non-pornographic film.

Audrey Marie Munson was born in Rochester, New York, on June 8,1891, to Edgar Munson, who was a streetcar conductor and Western real estate speculator descended from English Puritans, and Katherine C "Kittie" Mahoney, a daughter of John and Cecilia Mahoney, Irish immigrants.

Audrey Munson's father was from Mexico, New York, and she later lived there.

Audrey Munson's parents divorced when she was eight, and Audrey and her mother moved to Providence, Rhode Island.

In 1909, mother and daughter moved to Washington Heights in New York City, where the 17-year-old Audrey Munson sought a career as an actress and chorus girl.

Audrey Munson appeared in The Girl and the Wizard, Girlies and La Belle Paree.

Audrey Munson posed for muralist William de Leftwich Dodge, who gave her a letter of introduction to Isidore Konti.

From this point, Audrey Munson would pose for a few well-known visual artists, including painter Francis Coates Jones, illustrators Harrison Fisher, Archie Gunn, and Charles Dana Gibson, and photographers Herzog and Arnold Genthe, but she was predominately a sculptors' model.

Audrey Munson's first acknowledged credit is Konti's marble statuary called Three Graces, unveiled in the new Grand Ballroom at the Hotel Astor in Times Square in September 1909.

Audrey Munson's figure was "ninety times repeated against the sky" on one building alone, atop the colonnades of the Court of the Universe, roughly modeled on St Peter's Square in the Vatican.

Audrey Munson's films were a box office success, although the critics were divided.

Thanhouser hired a lookalike named Jane Thomas to do Audrey Munson's acting scenes, while Audrey Munson did the scenes where she posed nude.

Audrey Munson returned to the East Coast by train via Syracuse in December 1916, having been involved with high society in New York and Newport, Rhode Island.

Audrey Munson said she planned to abandon the United States to restart her movie career in England.

In 1919, Audrey Munson was living with her mother in a boarding house at 164 West 65th Street, Manhattan, owned by Dr Walter Wilkins.

The contents of the affidavits they supplied have never been revealed, but Audrey Munson strongly denied that she had any romantic relationship with Dr Wilkins.

Audrey Munson hanged himself in his prison cell before the sentence could be carried out.

From January to May 1921, a series of twenty serialized articles ran in Hearst's Sunday Magazine in dozens of Sunday newspaper supplements, under Audrey Munson's name, entitled By the 'Queen of the Artists' Studios'.

Audrey Munson later said the $27,500 check was just a "publicity stunt," and she filed suit against Allen Rock.

On May 27,1922, Audrey Munson attempted suicide by swallowing a solution of bichloride of mercury.

On June 8,1931, Audrey Munson's mother petitioned a judge to commit her to a mental asylum.

The Oswego County judge ordered Audrey Munson be admitted into a psychiatric facility for treatment on her 40th birthday.

Audrey Munson remained in the St Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, New York, where she was treated for depression and schizophrenia for 65 years, until she died at the age of 104.

Audrey Munson had no visitors at the asylum for over 25 years after her mother died in 1958, until her half-niece, Darlene Bradley, rediscovered her in 1984, when Audrey Munson was 93.

Audrey Munson died on February 20,1996, at the age of 104.

Audrey Munson was buried at New Haven Cemetery in New Haven, New York, and she received a headstone on her grave on June 8,2016,20 years after her death and on what would have been her 125th birthday.

Audrey Munson posed for most of the sculptors who created architectural and fountain sculptures for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and for other sculptors who exhibited there.

Coverage of Audrey Munson's career contained inaccuracies during her lifetime, and errors about the works for which she modeled have been perpetuated.

Audrey Munson herself was inconsistent about her age and other matters.

All four films in which Audrey Munson appeared were thought to have been lost, until a copy of Purity was recovered in France in 2009.

In 2010, film director Roberto Serrini made a documentary about Audrey Munson which was featured in several news outlets including the New York Post.