Today we come up on the 80th anniversary of an unsolved death that marked a major scandal for a prominent political figure. The badly bruised body of beautiful 25-year old girl washed up on the beach at Long Island, her liver showing traces of Veronal (the first commercially available barbiturate). The body turned out to be one Starr Faithfull, a “good time girl” well known on the Boston social scene.
That would be interesting enough. But it turned out that Starr Faithfull kept a diary, in which she described having an affair with a prominent political figure. The figure turned out to be Boston Mayor Andrew James Peters, who denied the affair, but who ended up paying $20,000 worth of hush money to Starr Faithfull’s father.
John O’Hara would later use elements of the story in his novel BUtterfield 8, though set in New York rather than Boston, which lead to Elizabeth Taylor’s Academy Award winning performance in the movie of the same name.
But the movie (I haven’t read the book) changes one very big detail: the first time she had sex with Peters, Starr Faithfull was eleven years old.
As to whether she was murdered or not, that remains unresolved to this very day…
Tags: Andrew J. Peters, Boston, BUtterfield 8, crime, Elizabeth Taylor, John O'Hara, Starr Faithfull
Other than licensing his book, John O’Hara was not involved in the scriptwriting or filmmaking for the 1960 movie version of “BUtterfield 8”. Reviewers have noted that the movie bears only a passing resemblance to O’Hara’s book. I believe the movie also ends with Gloria (the character based on Starr Faithfull and played by Elizabeth Taylor) dying in an automobile accident rather than in any form of suicide or homicide involving water.
The book version of “BUtterfield 8” (which you really should have read if you were going to blog about it) indeed does have Gloria being corrupted as a child by an older, prominent man who is a friend of her family, which in turn leads to her becoming a promiscuous call girl with a drinking problem as an adult. She dies at the end by being swept under the wheel of a paddleboat.