Brenda Frazier

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Brenda Diana Duff Frazier (June 9, 1921 - May 3, 1982), was an American debutante popular during the Depression era. Her December 1938 coming-out party was so heavily publicized worldwide she eventually appeared on the cover of Life magazine for that reason alone.

Brenda's father, Frank Duff Frazier, came from a prosperous Boston family. Her mother, the former Brenda Germaine Henshaw Williams-Taylor, was the only daughter of Sir Frederick Williams-Taylor (a general manager of the Bank of Montreal who was knighted in 1910 and combined his middle name and birth surname into a new hyphenated surname) and his wife, the former Jane Fayrer Henshaw. Both parents drank heavily, caroused separately and eventually divorced, causing little Brenda to spend much time with her social-climbing maternal grandmother.

Her parents divorced when Brenda was 11, and both her mother and father remarried. Her mother's second and third husbands were Frederick N. Watriss and Henry Pierrepont Perry.

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[edit] Fame

Young Brenda completed her education at Miss Chapin's School for Girls and Miss Porter's School. Sent to almost every social obligation she was invited to, Brenda made great inroads in securing her picture everywhere. She had invented the famous “white-face” look. Powdered skin made a startling contrast to her very red painted lips combined with dark, dark hair, perfectly coifed (Brenda's hair has often been described as "blue-black"; in fact, it was naturally a very dark brown; under low nightclub lighting and in black-and-white press photographs it appeared much darker). Brenda often developed a stiff neck, as she feared moving her head lest a hair fall out of place. She sported strapless gowns and made a sensation with that trend as well. During the year of her debut Brenda was at the beck and call of press agents worldwide. She was most often written about by columnist Walter Winchell. Occasionally, she did stop to think about where all this was coming from. In "The Story of Brenda Frazier" by Gioia Diliberto, Frazier's daughter, Victoria Kelly, remembered her saying, “I’m not a celebrity,” she said, “I don’t deserve all this. I haven’t done anything at all. I’m just a debutante.” Her family was equally dumbfounded. "I fear Brenda's being spoiled", said a great-aunt at the time of her great-niece's debut. "I bemoan all this spectacular notoriety".[1]

The press, both awestruck and vindictive, constantly wrote of “Poor Little Rich Girls” – such as Brenda, Gloria Vanderbilt, Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton. As so many in Society lost their fortunes during the Depression, lineage was no longer the sole common denominator. “Publi-ciety” – a combination of money, social standing and news coverage also entered the Winchell lexicon. And then there were the “Glamour Girls.” In 1938 Brenda Frazier was dubbed Glamour Girl #1. In 1939 the word "celebutante" was coined to describe her.[1]

Leading the pack, she had become a cottage industry. She posed in ads for Woodbury soap and Studebaker cars (even though she couldn’t drive) among others. In November she achieved the apex of fame – her face on the cover of Life magazine. The article inside gave hardly a mention of Brenda but from it she secured international wattage.

The morning of her debut her face was puffy with fever and was suffering from painful edema in her legs. All in all, however, the debut was a success carried on the front page of newspapers around the world.

Brenda married football star John Sims Kelly (a.k.a Shipwreck Kelly) in New York in 1941. She gave birth to a daughter, Brenda Victoria, in 1945 and attempted a typical upper-class suburban marriage, however, the excessive nightlife and a natural disinclination to play the role of society hostess caught up with her. She experienced several nervous breakdowns, suffered from anorexia and bulimia and during the 1950s she and Kelly divorced.

After several tempestuous relationships, Brenda and daughter moved to a small town near Cape Cod where she married once more, to distant relation Robert Chatfield-Taylor. This marriage also ended in divorce.

In 1966, photographer Diane Arbus took a now-famous picture for Esquire magazine. Propped up in bed, a cigarette nearby, her face was haggard and worn. Arbus nakedly revealed the real Brenda Frazier - exhausted, the parade having passed her by.

Victimized by her own consumption of too much high living, Brenda retreated from the outside world and practically became a hermit. Still not forgotten however, she was mentioned in the Stephen Sondheim song, "I'm Still Here" (from Follies) while living in relative obscurity until her death from bone cancer in Boston, Massachusetts, aged 60.

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[edit] References

  1. ^ Oxford English Dictionary, citing Nevada State Journal April 11, 1939.
  • Diliberto, Gioia. Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987