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Atypical Deaths of these Historical Figures

Khalid Elhassan July 14, 2020 34 min

Gouverneur Morris - Founding Father of the United States

29. A Deadly Frilly Dress

The Warrens of Virginia was a 1924 romantic drama from the silent film era. Its plot revolved around a love story in which a man leaves his Southern sweetheart to fight for the Union in the Civil War. No known prints survive, making it a lost movie. The film is best known today for the death of its star, Martha Mansfield (1899 – 1923), in a freak accident on set, caused by a frilly dress.

Martha Mansfield was a New Yorker who set her mind from an early age on becoming an actress. At age fourteen, she secured a role in a Broadway play, and took side gigs as an artists’ model and a dancer in musicals. In 1917, she was signed up by a forerunner of Warner Bros. Studios, and performed in three short movies.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.