Pepi Lederer

Born Josephine Rose Lederer in Chicago in 1910,[1] Lederer was the daughter of stage actress Reine Davies (née Douras)—the sister of Rosemary and Marion Davies—and her first husband George W. Lederer, a Broadway theatrical producer and director.[12] Lederer had a younger brother, Charles Lederer (known as "Charlie").[13] Charlie became a well-known Hollywood screenwriter who co-wrote The Front Page (1931), His Girl Friday (1940), and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).[1]

In early childhood, Lederer was nicknamed "Peppy" due to her high spirited personality. At the age of 18, she changed the spelling to "Pepi" and legally changed it to her first name.[3]

Due to her mother's alcoholism, Lederer and her brother were raised by their aunt, Marion Davies.[14] The children lived in Davies' luxurious Beverly Hills estate.[14] Lederer's mother, Reine, would occasionally appear uninvited and accuse Davies of having "robbed her of her children."[15]

When Davies became the mistress of publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, Lederer and her brother moved with Davies to the Hearst Castle where she spent much of her early youth during the 1920s.[16] Also at this time, Lederer attended the Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, California where she graduated in 1926.[2]

Lederer had romantic relationships with actresses Nina Mae McKinney and Louise Brooks.

As Lederer was "the only fixed reality in an endless procession of celebrities" at Hearst Castle, she often defied the rules set by Hearst and Davies regarding proper decorum and usually escaped unpunished.[17] She often played pranks on Hearst's important guests such as stealing actress Claire Windsor's "false bosom" and writer Elinor Glyn's red wig while they slept.[17] She delighted in inventing outlandish stories about fictitious events at Hearst Castle, and she planted these stories in Louella Parsons' syndicated gossip column much to Hearst's annoyance.[17]

Although Hearst and Davies took the ambitions of her brother Charles seriously and encouraged him to pursue a career as a screenwriter, they regarded Lederer's ambitions to be an actress far less seriously.[18][19] Nevertheless, Davies secured a part for her niece in her 1927 film The Fair Co-Ed.[20] Lederer was devastated when her part was cut from the film.[20] Her reaction surprised Davies who assumed Lederer's acting ambitions were fleeting.[20] Davies promised her niece a role in an upcoming film, but her acting career would consist only of a few small parts in Davies' films.[20]

In December 1929, Lederer upset Davies and Hearst after a mutual acquaintance told them she was involved in a sexual relationship with African-American actress Nina Mae McKinney.[4] During Pepi's affair with Nina Mae McKinney at Davies' Beverly Hills estate on Lexington Road, neighbors became irate at seeing black people on the adjacent premises and telephoned Davies.[4] Davies' sister Ethel visited the premises and found Lederer in bed with McKinney.[4] Outraged, Davies and Hearst shipped Lederer to New York City where she lived alone in an apartment at 42 West Fifty-fourth Street and continued having romantic relationships with women.[4] During this period of exile, Lederer became close friends with actress Alma Rubens, and both women allegedly shared an addiction to drugs including heroin and morphine.[21][22] Rubens died a year later in January 1931.[20]

Following a riotous New Year's Eve party in 1930, a male acquaintance drove an inebriated Lederer to her New York apartment and then raped her while she was unconscious.[23] At the end of March 1930, while still in New York, Lederer discovered she had become pregnant by her rapist.[23] As Lederer was an overt lesbian exclusively attracted to women, the news of her pregnancy shocked her friends and family.[23] Advised by her aunt Marion,[24] Lederer procured a black-market abortion.[25] The abortion resulted in severe complications which caused her lingering health problems.[26]

William Randolph Hearst had Lederer committed to a psychiatric ward.

After recovering from the abortion, Lederer traveled with her aunt and William Randolph Hearst to Europe in 1930.[27] While staying in England, Lederer convinced Hearst to hire her to work as a writer for one of his magazines, The Connoisseur.[27] Lederer enjoyed the job and would remain in London for the next five years. She was given a generous allowance from Davies and Hearst.[27] Lederer later told her friend, Louise Brooks, that she was happy living in London and felt that she was her own person for the first time in her life.[28]

In April 1935, Lederer returned to the United States with her new girlfriend, Monica Morris, whom she met in London.[29] The couple first arrived in New York City where they stayed at William Randolph Hearst’s suite at the Ritz Tower.[29]

After several weeks, Lederer and Morris departed for Los Angeles where they stayed at Marion Davies' Beverly Hills mansion on Lexington Road. Davies and Hearst remained at San Simeon but, in an unusual move, they did not contact Lederer or invite her to any parties at Hearst Castle.[30] At this point, Lederer had become persona non grata at San Simeon due to both her ingravescent drug addiction and overt lesbian relationships with many women.[30]

As a result of either her worsening drug addiction or her unconcealed sexual orientation,[5][6] Hearst had Lederer involuntarily committed to the psychiatric ward of Good Samaritan Hospital at 1212 Shatto Street in late May 1935.[31] On June 11, 1935, Lederer took her own life by distracting her nurse with a request for food and then jumping from the sixth floor window of her hospital room.[8][9][32] According to her nurse Marion Pope, Lederer had been sitting in her hospital bed reading a motion picture magazine and asked for something to eat.[33] "I turned just in time," Pope recalled, "to see Miss Lederer plunge against the window screen.... and she fell out."[8][34]

Lederer plummeted six stories to the shrubbery below the window, and she broke her neck upon striking the ground.[35] Hospital attendants rushed to the shrubbery, but she died within several minutes.[35] She was 25 years old.[33] In early newspaper obituaries, Lederer's suicide was ascribed to "acute melancholia" by her doctor, Samuel Hirshfeld.[35] Hirshfeld was a frequent visitor at San Simeon and a personal acquaintance of Hearst.[36] However, in a later obituary printed by Hearst's flagship newspaper The San Francisco Examiner, Lederer's suicide was instead depicted as an accidental mishap, and her involuntarily hospitalization was attributed to "a nervous breakdown caused by overstudy".[10]

Two days after her suicide, a funeral service was held in the Church of St. Mary of the Angels on June 13, 1935.[2] The Reverend Neal Dodd—who only a few weeks prior conducted funeral rites in the same church for Judge Bernard J. Douras, Pepi's grandfather—officiated the service.[37] Lederer's body was then interred in the family mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.[38] Her pallbearers included Harpo Marx, Buster Collier, Orry Kelly, Ted Draper, Harry Crocker, Matt Moore, William Haines, and Jimmie Shields—William Haines' longtime gay partner.[13] With the exception of Harpo Marx, nearly every pallbearer at Pepi Lederer's 1935 funeral was a prominent gay or bisexual figure in Jazz Age Hollywood.[13]

• Pepi Lederer at IMDb
• Pepi Lederer at Find a Grave