Episode 529: Ann & Billy Woodward

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2024.

It's like some of them probably have come out in the New year, but it hasn't been the new year.

And we never know when episodes come out.

No.

I think, you know this, we know this.

We all know it, we all know. I think this one comes out in like two weeks from now, is my assumption.

So you know what, you guys are well into the New year, how's it going?

I hope it's going great. Tell us how it's going. Yeah, our last year ended just perfectly for what the year was.

A crescendo of shit, but, you know.

Literally.

2024 is going to be great.

It's going to be so much better.

Everybody's walking into 2024.

I like that, Do you know something about me? I don't think I am going to have a villain era.

I don't think you are either, but I don't think you should. I don't think I want to like it makes sense.

I think I'm just walking into, like, maybe like, how about a hot girl era? I like that.

I feel like you've been in your hot girl era.

I want to continue my hot girl era like better, and like, I need to get more steps in. Yeah, so I can really be amongst these hot girls.

There you go, I just need to start moving again.

Well, that's the thing.

We're a little-.

We're a little bit sedentary.

A little sedentary lately.

A little sedentary, we did buy walking pads, but they're still over there. Oops, right under my couch right now. Well, I ring in the New Year watching Married at First Sight Australia.

Wow.

Married at First Sight Australia. Drew and I binged almost the entire season yesterday.

Damn.

It is so good, if you have Hulu, you can watch it. I don't know what else it's on, but the drums.

Well, I mean Australia, I love Australia, we're just better, I love Australian people, yeah.

And they say, The best things have you ever heard? I'm not trying to fuck spiders.

No, but I agree with that sentiment.

Or they say, like, I'm not going to fuck spiders. Suri doesn't know how to respond to that, she said. I-.

Suri's like, I don't understand.

I also am not going to fuck spiders, it means like, I'm not trying to mess around.

I'm not trying to fuck spiders.

That's what they say, like, I'm not going to fuck spiders, or like, I'm not here to fuck spiders.

Oh, I'm, can I Australian listeners? Is it okay if I use that? Yeah, because that's fun.

I will give you credit Lindal, who is my favorite on this season. I'm watching season 10 of Married at First Sight. She said that during her wedding vows, and I was like, That's a Queen right there.

That's just that's an elite person.

It's so good, and they have, have you ever seen, like the Married at first Sight, like American version?

I think, yeah, I've seen like that one, that one episode that everyone's seen, or that one season that everyone's seen. I think is that I don't know if that's season one or not, it's one of the very early ones.

Jamie and Doug, right?

This person's like, I'd like to leave, and you're like, too bad.

I know when I first saw that, I was like, shit, but damn, it's wild, yeah, and there's a cheating scandal. Oh my god.

I just went to Disney on Ice this weekend, so.

That's different, it's different, that's different for you especially. Was that triggering?

It was a little bit, but I will tell you the girls faces the cutest thing I've ever seen. Like. It was by far the best part of the weekend.

I also think that's just like, as soon as you become a parent, you just do that, yeah, like Disney on parent, Disney on ice.

Yeah, absolutely.

Everyone I know or follow on Instagram that is a parent has been to Disney on Ice in the past two weeks.

The kids love it and they do a great job with it. I can't wait to go. It's wonderful. I mean, I love ice skaters.

That was always my favorite part of the Olympics, me too, all right.

So that was fun. I'm so happy it was a not wholesome moment in an otherwise stressful end of the year.

Yeah.

My God, but very wholesome.

At the end of the year, it just keeps flashing through my brain. I got food poisoning, so we'll just leave it at that, yeah.

But it's, you know, fun, fun, fun for everyone, fun, fun, fun. But 2024, we're all here.

It's going to be great.

Let's all just like, you know, I think, just like everybody's resolution should be, just don't be an asshole, yeah, and worry about yourself and stop worrying about everybody else. Mine should be that's mine, that's my take out.

Hell yeah, rock on brother.

You know, just take care of your own. I'm into it, that's what I'm saying. All right, I think we'd all be happier.

I think that's a theme of this story is take care of your own. But that was not their resolution.

No, no.

This is just a very tragic, sad story. But it has high society, and, you know, I'm a sucker for that, so.

I mean, I love listening to your stories about high society. I am a great Gatsby fangirl. Oh yes, so like, I do love, just like, like, sitting, sitting and watching from the outside, from the outside.

Oh, just on a quick note of high society. Have you watched Saltburn yet?

No, but I've heard many, many things about it.

You have to be in the right headspace to watch that movie. That's what I've heard, let me tell you, and you know what you will. You have to be in the right headspace, and you will never be in the right headspace all at the same time.

Okay.

It's also very long, it's a commitment, but.

Yeah, I don't know when I'm going to be ready for that, but.

Cinematically, it's beautiful.

I've heard great things, I've heard interesting things.

But oh, my god.

Yeah, who knows? Maybe I'll have time for that at some point.

It's cuckoo nuts, bananas. But I said high society, so I thought of it. But anyway, sorry, let's go back to the story.

High society.

My story today, much like Saltburn, is highly tragic. But other than that, it doesn't really have any correlation. We're going to be talking about Anne and Billy Woodward today. And if you know anything about Truman Capote and that new show, that new Ryan Murphy show feud that's coming out, then you will. You will probably know about this a little bit.

Because that's what it is, right? It's feud, Is it a new season of feud? because it's like an anthology like American horror story, where it's a new feud every season, okay?

So this lady was, like, never friends with him at all, but he ended up doing her so dirty, like real bad. But before all of that came, we got to go back to the beginning. So Anne Woodward, we're going to focus on her and Billy Woodward, but we'll start with Anne. To say that Anne Woodward came from humble beginnings would be the profoundest of understatements. Oh boy.

The farthest cry.

Yes, her father, Jesse Claude Crowell. He was an occasional farmer and railway driver who spent more of his time looking for money than he did actually trying to earn it. He was just looking for quick, easy money.

Yeah.

But her mom, Ethel Crowell, couldn't have been any different from her husband. She was an incredibly hard worker and she had a very stubborn personality. Not only did she take care of her and Jesse's two small children, she took care of his parents and really, for all intents and purposes, took care of him too.

Oh, Ethel, Ethel had a lot on her shoulders.

And at the time, she was also taking correspondence courses and teaching WOW through the State Manual Training Normal School. Look at this bad-ass, she's just doing it all.

So I feel like you can't win. No, because you're either single and a spinster, or you're married and shunned anyways because you're not supposed to be married.

Isn't that strange that if you were a school teacher, you weren't supposed to be married?

That's incredibly dumb.

Yeah, 1913, man.

Don't get that.

But despite her work ethic and commitment to providing for others, Ethel Crowell believed that Kansas was just a desert. And she wanted way more for her children than what they were going to have. Working the family's already struggling farm, I love Ethel, I do, too. And she didn't know it at the time, unfortunately. But her near obsession with self-improvement and disdain for poverty would have a considerable influence, specifically on her daughter, Anne Ah.

Oh my god.

But today, most likely, we would assume that he probably had pneumonia and didn't have the proper treatment at the time.

That's horrific.

But the death of her child caused Ethel to turn away from her family, first emotionally and then physically. She was just distraught after losing a child, and she just had this unrelenting guilt that she thought her child's death was her fault in some way.

Yeah, I mean, I can understand it absolutely wasn't, but I can understand why she thought that.

And she convinced herself that if she had the money to take her son to a hospital, his death could have been prevented.

That's so sad.

It is, and that line of thinking eventually grew into the belief that the whole thing could have been avoided. If she was able to get out of Kansas and had never married a poor farmer.

Oh, all the guilt she put on herself.

She had so much guilt, and then because of that guilt, she just started resenting everything and everybody around her. Of course. And despite friends and family urging her to, you know, think of her husband, think of her daughter, think of what you do still have, and they desperately need you. She was like, I can't do this. And that's when she enrolled in the normal school and moved several hours away to pursue her education. Oh, wow.

Damn.

And maybe it was like the best thing for her at that point, because I don't know that she was going to be great at home. I think she needed to take that break, but at the same time, it's like, you kind of can't.

It's a tough one.

It's a catch-22, either way, now, the extreme poverty and emotional tumult of the early days or the early years, sadly, didn't improve much as Anne grew older. By the time she was 10, her parents relationship had just completely deteriorated. To the point that Jesse finally did ask Ethel for a divorce, which back then was huge, yeah, like nobody got divorced back then.

Yeah, I'm good, like bye.

So she packed up her daughter and their few belongings and moved back to Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh, Kansas. In the years that followed, Ethel met and married another man, whom she also divorced not long after. And she and Anne relocated again, this time to Kansas City, where Ethel actually opened her own taxi business that grew to employ several drivers and a ton of company-owned cars. Damn so she's taken hit after hit, but she's still chugging along.

She's getting back up.

The move to Kansas City got them out of the crushing poverty of Kansas farm life, but it did little to improve Anne, or Ethel's lives, like emotionally, Ethel was away, working day and night to comfort or to support herself and her daughter. So Anne found an escape. In the movie houses and film magazines of the day, all presenting this glamorous life in Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood.

She wants to be a star.

She wanted to be a star. See a name in lights.

Yes.

Now, that determination to find her way out of poverty was only strengthened then by the hardships and just terrible time that she saw her mother go through. Every single day. As a single woman and a female business owner, Ethel was subject to all kinds of misogyny and harassment. Oh, I'm sure. And most of which came from her male employees.

That's absurd.

It's like, Cool, you're fired.

You're tiny bye.

Now, by the time she reached her 21st birthday, Angie Crowell had reinvented herself as Anne Crowell, aspiring model and movie star. No longer content with the impoverished life in Kansas City that she was living, she took a move and decided to go to Denver to stay with her aunt and cousins. And while she lived in Denver, she actually managed to secure a few jobs modeling for before she eventually returned to Kansas City. Now more restless than ever, because she had a small taste of what she had been dreaming of.

New York City.

The big city, the big Apple. And she figured, you know, I did make some connections in Denver, maybe those will pay off once I get to New York. And Ethel obviously hated to see her daughter go, but at the same time, this was what she wanted for Anne to get out of Kansas and to experience big things and have the life that Ethel didn't get to have. So she talked to Anne before she left and told her Never talk to strange men, never look at them past daylight in the street.

I mean, that's good, good advice.

Sound advice, and with that advice dispensed, she gave Anne. I love this because I just picture, it's like a movie thing. She gave Anne this bag of $5 bills that totaled out to about $400. Oh my gosh, and one of the cars from the taxi company.

So she just handed her daughter this bag of cash that she'd been saving, yep.

And one of her taxi cabs.

So she could start a new. That's that's some mom shit, right? just like that's some mom shit, Ethel, here you go.

Take care of yourself.

Take this big bag of cash that I've been saving, make it happen. I love her, I love that.

I know.

She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. It's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back.

It's like a famous modeling agency.

It is, yeah. Nobody was expecting her at the agency, she didn't have an appointment or anything like that. She was walking good for her.

So she sat there the whole day.

And no one was coming out to talk to her, but she was committed, so she returned the next day and the next day, that's awesome.

John powers like head dude.

He didn't refuse to hire her, but he did tell her that she would need a nose job in order to succeed with his agency. He was like, the rest of you is fine, but your nose is a little off.

Oh, what an awful world.

Truly, but you know what? Anne said bet, and she borrowed some money from a friend and paid $500 for her nose job. Wow.

That is so cool sounding.

Isn't it just like you're making it in the big city, you're going to these nightclubs and you're like, you know what, I have an idea, just a DIY queen.

Like, and it just sounds so like. it sounds so like bohemian and cool. It does, you know, doesn't it?

It also reminds me of like, when we would put like, Abercrombie bags on our walls and be like, this is fashion.

This is the height of luxury.

We really thought, we all thought we really did during the day. And she modeled, of course, she worked the counter at Saks, and she took acting and dance classes.

Damn, she is hustling.

Hustling, and she had to.

We love to see it.

Yeah, she did, and it was all paid for by the powers agency. And it was because she was one of their more popular models in the space that she was, so they wanted to promote her more and more. That's badass, so she got to go to these fancy places. Her hard work finally paid off in November of 1938, when she landed a role as a chorus girl in a new musical review called Set to Music.

I was just going to say, that's the ethel.

She wanted more recognition, more fame, more wealth, more everything. She was tenacious.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, just as she was really coming into her own, things, back in Kansas took a turn.

Oh, no.

One morning, Ethel woke up with a really bad sore throat. And over the course of the next few weeks, it worsened into a cough and eventually, respiratory problems that landed her in the hospital. Eventually, Anne paid to have her mother transferred to a hospital in St. Louis, where she would have access to a specialist, but it did little good. According to the doctors, Ethel had, quote, developed a rare lung disease that was common in cattle.

Oh.

And sadly, they didn't have much hope that her condition was going to improve. Oh no, if anything, she was just going to slowly get worse.

Ethel.

And what a like, what a disease that is common in cattle. a cattle disease. Oh damn, that's awful.

I was going to say, yeah.

So Anne called her mother regularly to check in, wondering if she should leave the show and go be by her side. But each time, Ethel insisted Nope, you do not leave the show, you finish it out.

She's just momming until the end she is. She's like, you're going to get something better than I did.

Exactly, and like, don't mess it up for me.

That's some true mom shit, like, don't worry about me, I'm fine. I want you to succeed and do what you want to do.

But you feel bad for Anne to be in that position because that's your mom.

Oh, I can't imagine.

Like you would feel so selfish being away from her, but then she's telling you, no, like you've got to do what you've got to do.

It's a near impossible choice to make.

It is, but she did finish it out. And when this tour of set to music came to an end, Anne caught a ride from New York to Missouri to be by her mother's side. By September of 1940. She was covering all of Ethel's medical bills and hospital bills. And she was spending almost all of her time by her mom's side to make up, I think for the time that she was away.

A mother-daughter duo right now, like, I'm loving it.

But the sad thing was because she was spending all this time by Ethel's side. All the progress she had made in New York and all the connections that she had were slowly slipping away. And now she was faced with a decision to stay in Kansas with her mom or return to New York. And Anne was like, I can't stay in Kansas like this is not what I want for myself.

I've made too much progress.

I've made too much progress. This isn't what my mom wants for me. So she borrowed money from a friend again, and she had Ethel transferred to a special unit at the New York Hospital.

Oh my goodness, and also these friends, I know, damn.

Which makes you think like, obviously, Anne had to be like, somewhat of a good person.

Yeah, at least at this point, you said, at least at this point.

At least at this point, maybe she was the whole way through, I don't know.

Who knows? But again, like you said, having friends like that does tell you who you are as a person. Yeah, you would think so, and that's how people see you.

Right, so in the short amount of time that she'd been away, unfortunately, like I said, things in New York had changed. For Anne, the medical bills had taken a serious financial toll, which forced her to give up her penthouse apartment on East 50th Street and move to a studio apartment on East 56th Street. Man, oh, man. And most of the personal and professional connections that she had made during her time in set to music had either moved on to other productions or gone out to Hollywood to try their luck in the film industry, which is what she really wanted to do.

I smell a little desperation here.

Well, as luck would have it, in December of 1942, Anne heard that the Monte Carlo.

The Monte Carlo.

The Monte Carlo, a small, exclusive nightclub just a few blocks from her apartment, so convenient. They were looking for chorus girls and dancers. Hell yeah, let's go. The work would be obviously a step down from the glamorous Broadway stage and the tour that she had just been on in the past. But it was steady work, and the evening hours meant that she would have her days free to spend with Ethel.

Oh, that's ideal.

So, through tenacity and the few connections that she did have left in the city. Anne managed to land the job as a dancing girl at the Monte Carlo, which would pay her $50 a week. Look at her back then, that's pretty good income.

Also, I love that. Her having to leave to take care of her ailing mother was like, Yeah, sorry, you're just going to lose your connections. No one was willing to be like, Yeah, she's just taking care of her dying mother.

Humans need to get better.

We all need to get better.

That's so industry.

And it's just so cold. You do have to realize people are humans, but people don't give a fuck, nope.

Now, working at the Monte Carlo was a far cry from the dreams of stardom that Anne had for herself. But as one of the premier nightclubs in New York, it did.

I was going to say, that was like the nightclub.

It was, and of course, because it was, it attracted a good amount of stars from stage and screen. Oh yeah, so she was still within that circle, even though she wasn't quite one of them.

Kind of just hanging on the fringes a little bit, but you were almost in there.

That's a perfect way to describe it now. It was during one of these late night floor shows that Anne caught the eye of a man called William Woodward Sr. He was a wealthy banker and racehorse enthusiast.

I recognize that last name.

Racehorses just keep making an appearance in my story.

You love a racehorse?

Yeah, I do.

You're living in a place of racehorse.

I really do, except I don't.

You're like, I don't actually.

I don't want fucks with that, but we'll talk about it. I feel like it's just part of high society.

Oh, 100. Especially back then, when everybody's just smoking cigars and racing horses.

Oh yeah, of course, you're just holding a giant bagel right now, and you were talking with your hand, so you're smoking cigars, just wagging your bagel.

Eating bagels?

That was great.

You know, fancy high society stuff? It's an Asiago bagel. Oh, Asiago, that's high society right there, it is high society.

So Anne knew just who Mr. Woodward was.

Mr. Woodward.

Mr. Woodward because she had read about him in the Society Pages, which bring back the Society pages. Motherfuckers, I want to read them, William.

Is that a euphemism?

You know?

You want to see my racehorse?

Yes, I would think, probably.

I think it probably.

That's deeply upsetting when you put it that way. It's deeply upsetting either way, to be honest, but it's really upsetting the other way.

It's very upsetting when you really think hard about it.

Yeah, so don't.

But you're probably doing it now.

Just romance, romance, romance. Anne, of course, knew that Woodward was married. Oh, but so were a lot of the men who bought her drinks and sent her jewelry, so she....

You should not be asking her to come see his fucking racehorse if you are married, sir.

Not in a euphemistic way.

Not in the real way.

Not in a physical way.

Oh, come on.

No, keep your racehorse to yourself.

That's right, keep it in its....

Track.

What is it? The stall? Keep it in its stable.

There you go, stall. I think you were correct, okay?

I don't know, go on with yours.

But the thing was a lot of the men who made advances on Anne or got her nice things. They were married, so she didn't see anything wrong with just going to the track to have a date.

AnnE I think there's something wrong. I'd say it's 2020..

When she was like, let me have those nice things.

Oh man.

So one afternoon in March 1941, Anne was visiting with her mother in her room at a New York hospital to celebrate Ethel's 45th birthday. Wow, Ethel's only 45, yeah, only 45. At this point. She had lived such a life that even I at this point, I was like, she's not like 70-something.

I thought she was 70.

45.

Damn, yeah.

Holy shit, exactly that just blew my mind, same, it blew mine too. But in the weeks leading up to the visit, Ethel's condition had gotten worse.

After she had left.

Right after she had left, like, she probably died while Anne was on her way home. Oh, which, like, I understand why that doctor thought that she should rest, but you're like, fuck.

Nobody could ever know, but it's like, fuck, and it's also. That's why it's like, don't even tell people to go home and rest, because you just don't know. Yeah, that's the thing.

So on March 20th, Anne boarded a train back to Kansas for her mother's funeral. The drab landscape and poverty of her hometown felt. It always felt suffocating to Anne, but this time specifically, it was just overwhelmingly suffocating. Oh, sure, and it wasn't that. She didn't love her family, her aunts and her cousins and everything. But being in their presence reminded her of where she had come from and where she desperately didn't want to return.

Oof, this really is like a movie.

It is, I know.

Or like some kind of like miniseries.

It will be.

Oh, there you go.

But she ended up spending a total of 48 hours in Kansas. She went to the funeral, she gave her mother's eulogy, visited with family and friends. The whole deal. But then she got the hell out of there. And before leaving, she asked her cousin Paul to keep an eye on Ethel's grave. For her. Make sure it was like, neat and tidy all the time. She was 45, damn.

Yeah, I could have told you that.

There was nothing in Kansas for Anne after that.

And what a terrible last memory to have burying your mom.

Yeah, exactly like you already pretty much hated this place so much, and then that's what you have to go back for.

And her mom believed in her, yeah, and like supported her, and like, really was just like a cheerleader for her.

Yeah, exactly, that's really sad.

And she should have had many, many years of that ahead of her, you know?

Her mom should have been able to see her success, you know? But back in New York, Anne resumed her routine of performing at the Monte Carlo in the evenings and auditioning during the day. And eventually, she landed a recurring role as a nurse on an afternoon radio called Joyce Jordan. Girl Intern, I love that girl, intern.

Not boy intern, girl intern.

And that led to other roles on other radio programs like Lincoln Highway.

Radio programs, I love it.

You know, just tune into the radio.

Just gather around the radio, folks.

Turn that up, pop, I can't hear. drink your Ovaltine. Oh Ovaltine, that's adorable.

He's married, Anne.

Yeah, Anne, he's a married, high society man.

Yeah, that's a scandalo.

Exactly, you are on the right track. The fact that this was getting a little more hot and heavy threatened a serious scandal to the wealthy family, if anyone were to find out. And it was one thing for a man of Woodward status to, you know, have an occasional dalliance with a showgirl.

I love that. It's like, that shit happens.

Of course.

Of course, guys are going to fuck showgirls when they're married.

Have your quiet little affair with a showgirl.

Don't actually give a shit about someone.

Don't be in public with it, stop.

That's the thing.

But an ongoing secret romance, it was something else entirely. And it would not have been tolerated by New York's high society. High Society is a wild bitch, but it also definitely wouldn't have been tolerated by Woodward's wife, Elsie.

Yeah, no, I'm with Elsie here. I also wouldn't tolerate that retweet, retweet.

But not wanting. This is where shit is going to get. You're not even going to be able to stay on track with this at this point because it gets wildly fucked in here. Uh, oh, okay.

I'm here, I'm strapped in.

I'm glad. Hold on to your butt. So, not wanting to give up his relationship with Anne, but knowing that the two couldn't carry on as they had been, Woodward Sr. devised a wild ass plan. Uh, oh.

I'm sorry, what?

Why, you might ask?

I didn't, I don't even want to, what?

One might ask, why? Well, this would allow Anne and Woodward Sr. to go on spending time together under the guise of a strictly platonic relationship between a father and his son's girlfriend.

This is so fucked up, I can't even begin.

In what world is that going to work, motherfucker?

You two are having an affair, and because you want to keep having an affair, you have her. Date your son, so now you're going to fuck your son's girlfriend.

That's fucked.

That's even weirder. My guy just have the straight up affair. That's the thing, honestly, in the society papers, that's going to look better.

Exactly.

Than you fucking your son's girlfriend.

He figured, I should say that it wouldn't get into the society papers. That he was fucking his son's girlfriend. Because that would be behind closed doors, because now she'd have an excuse to be in his home, I think, was the thought, Oh yeah, of course, that's the thought process.

Because it's like, Oh, she can be around, we can still see each other.

Oh yeah, so just fuck up your son's life so that you can get your rocks off, that's good.

That's the thing because I'm like, are you going to let your son in on this, or is he just going to be allowed to potentially be heartbroken?

Well, you just wait, my dear.

Oh boy.

You just wait.

Oh boy.

For fucking some reason or another, I don't know which one, Anne agreed. I don't know. I've never had an affair with a high society man. Personally never checked that off my bingo card, but I could imagine that if I did. And he suggested my wife and everything, so just hang out with my son, I'd be like, Are you a loony tune?

I understand that there's a power dynamic here that is much imbalanced.

Totally come on, Anne. Keep dancing at the Monte Carlo meet, a single high society man. Dear God.

There's plenty of rich, older guys that I'm sure you can nab.

That are not going to ask you to date their sons.

I mean, she's beautiful.

Yeah, gorgeous.

She's tenacious, she's a hard worker, she's checking all the boxes.

Yeah.

So it's like, Honey, you can find someone better. You don't need this one, that's the thing, you don't need this one that's already taken, taken and is now wanting you to date his son.

This has been a great time. I don't want to get you into trouble, I definitely don't want to get your son wrapped up in this. So I'm going to keep dancing and meet some other cool guys.

Give Elsie my regards, see you later. Yeah, honestly, damn man.

When Anne agreed, it set into motion a chain of events that would forever alter the lives of literally every single person involved in this family.

I can imagine all of them. Yeah, I didn't think this was going to go smooth.

It goes way different than I think you would imagine.

Probably because I'm not even wrapping my brain around it.

Because I was like, Oh, this is going to end in like, knock down, drag out, fight. Not really. No. I mean, it ends horribly, but in a different way.

But Billy will be the young Woodward.

Yes, he is William Jr.

That makes sense.

Billy was home from Harvard, and his father asked him, Do you have a regular girl? which meant like, are you dating someone? you got a regular girl like, are you dating someone? like? consistently not. are you dating someone normal?

Not just someone regular.

His son was like, No pop, I don't. And Billy Woodward's extremely limited experience with women was of particular concern to his father, mostly because it had become the source of rumors amongst his peers. And I think that was a whole other, I think, Woodward Sr.

Yeah, he was taking away that whole the rumor mill there and also getting his cake too.

Exactly.

And it's like, again, I ask, I'm always going to ask this, who the fuck cares that much about somebody's romantic life?

High society.

It's like his peers are all upset about his limited experience with women. What the fuck do you care? What does it have to do with you? What does that matter? Worry about your own goddamn lawn.

They were all bored, I think that's what it all comes down to, and bored and gossipy.

Yeah, that's when shit pops off, which I love, when people are bored with nothing to do.

I love a good gossip, but like, don't be a bitch about it.

And it's like, I don't care about things like that.

Oh, no, I don't care about shit like this.

Can you imagine worrying about, like, who, some like that kind of stuff?

Who somebody's dating or like or not dating.

Or if they haven't dated, you're like, why?

Yeah, that's stupid, that's none of my fucking business. Like rumors should be fun.

Inconsequential shit.

Right, but the thing was, Billy was a really handsome guy, he came, like we know, from a respectable, wealthy family. So as far as everybody saw it, he shouldn't have any trouble meeting women, but it seemed to many around him that he just wasn't interested in them.

Yeah, I mean, that's everybody's problem in everyone's business. Of course, truly, of course, it makes total sense.

And the thing was, like it or not, he was gay. And like many high society rumors, speculation about Billy Woodward's sexuality actually persisted long after his death. That's sad. It's unclear whether or not he was gay, and it actually has no bearing on the story. So we're going to move on.

Because who cares?

Like everybody else should have. But regardless of his orientation, William Woodward Sr. suggested while he was home for break, Billy might look up Ann Crowell.

Yeah, you know, you know.

He said I met her out at the Monte Carlo a few months earlier and I don't know, I think, why don't you take her for a date? She's cute.

I've known her for a while, I can tell you she's awesome, why don't you take her out?

To be clear, though, this was less of a suggestion than a command. Yeah, so Billy was like, Okay, I will do that.

He's like, you will ask this girl out, and he's like, Alrighty, pop.

I don't know what my thing is with pop, but it just feels right.

Pop, you're my pop, you're my pop.

So a few nights later, Billy took Ann to a dinner at 21, which was a popular speakeasy turned restaurant.

Oh my goodness, I love it.

On West 52nd Street, on West 52nd Street, Ann was on a diet, and Billy was, quote unquote, too nervous to eat.

Guys, it's dinner.

Guys eat up, eat up, but they still ordered an extravagant meal and a bottle of champagne. Billy was obviously completely unaware of Ann's relationship with his father, so he didn't know anything about this strategic setup.

Oh my god, this is so fucked.

But Ann was well aware of the plan for her to date Billy, and having to go through the motions kind of made her impatient. In short, with Billy.

Which I'm like, honey, it's not his fault, he doesn't know. Come on, this poor guy.

So a few glasses of champagne, luckily, did help soften her attitude.

I guess, luckily, I don't even know why I said that.

But eventually, she started to find his shy and experienced, somewhat charming Billy. On the other hand, he didn't need any champagne in order to enjoy Ann's company. He thought she was confident, forward, exciting. She was nothing like the society girls that his parents had steered him toward in the past. And he was like, Damn, why did my dad set me up with you?

I was just going to say, Well, shit, that wasn't part of the plan.

And, much to his chagrin, you can imagine, yeah. Billy, like we said, was instantly taken with Ann. He found her beautiful, He loved her assertive personality. He thought she lived her life without reservation. It was great.

They're getting different things out of it, but you know, they like each other.

They do so. The early days of their romance were spent at New York's finest restaurants, nightclubs, theaters, or with Ann just cooking meals for them at Billy's apartment. They were literally dating, yeah.

Straight up dating.

So the fantasy of Ann's extravagant and carefree relationship with Billy eventually collided with reality, as you can imagine. Yeah, and that happened in August of 1942, when Billy invited her to the races in Saratoga, where she was. To quote unquote. Meet his parents and extended family I think she had already met one of his parents.

That's going to get weird, yeah.

So when race day finally arrived, Billy and Ann drove the 150 miles to Saratoga Springs in his packard. Stopping for breakfast along the way and stopping for breakfast made them late to meet William and Elsie, which instantly got the day off on the wrong foot. You are not late to hot society functions.

Absolutely not, you can fuck showgirls, but don't you dare be late?

Exactly so. Things didn't get much better when they finally made their way inside the clubhouse at the racetrack, where they were surrounded by some of the wealthiest people in the country. Elsie Woodward shook Ann's hand politely, but she was barely able to hide her disapproval.

Yeah, I just feel for I'm like, Elsie just happened to shake her hand.

Yeah, and she's on to her.

I was going to say, I don't know if she knows or not, or you can always get a vibe she knew that's tough.

And she felt like Ann seemed to disregard nearly every convention of high society that Elsie had been raised in, so held dear to her heart.

Yeah, I was going to say, So she, you know, when you're raised in it, you hold it pretty high.

Yeah, and William Sr.

To quote the Countess.

But so Elsie's like, So y'all have met before?

Yeah, like you guys, you guys did a real good job.

So the way he was acting, basically effectively confirmed Elsie's suspicions that they had indeed met before this.

Oh man.

Years later, she would tell her Bridge friends one look at Ann, and I knew the whole story. Oh boy, so you don't want to fuck with a lady like this? Eek to the Woodward family matriarch. Ann was a gold digging interloper who was trying to force her way into a world that one never welcomed her. And two, a world where Elsie didn't think she belonged.

Now here's the thing I understand. She's got a vibe here and she's like, I'm pretty sure you have met my husband before and there's something here. So I would be like, you're an asshole too, in that sense, yep.

Even though you worked harder than I did to land here, but they look at it as like, you didn't work as hard as I did. Because you don't know all the interworkings of this world.

It's just a bizarre line of thinking, and it's one that still exists, so it's just so weird.

It's just very exclusive.

Yeah, it's just strange and bizarre.

But the thing was, Elsie wasn't entirely wrong. Ann's relationship with both woodward men.

Yeah, I mean, that's where the black mark comes from.

Exactly, and her relationship with senior and junior were a calculated attempt to climb that ladder into high society. So, from Elsie's point of view, she's like, not only did you try to use my husband, but now you're using my son, so like, maybe stop infiltrating my family.

I can see, and I can see that frustration, for sure.

It's a mess. But none of this mattered to Billy, who absolutely reveled in Ann's ability to get under his mother's skin. He thought it was great.

That's some high society rebellion right there.

Truly. But regardless of how Billy felt about the impression Ann made on his mother, Ann herself was and would remain deeply self-conscious around her future mother-in-law. Yeah, I'm sure, which I might feel self-conscious, too, if I had, you know, slept with her husband.

You honestly should feel a little self-conscious if you sleep with someone's husband.

Definitely, and then date their son.

And then date their son and have to be around them at family dinners.

Yeah, that's just like a wild.

I mean, to me, you look at that part of it and you're like, she sounds pretty cool.

I would hang with her.

I would tell her to stop smoking, but back then they didn't know.

Back then, they were like, that's the cure to everything. You seem pretty awesome other than sleeping with a married, we don't even know if sleeping, but....

Other than hanging out with a married man. Yeah, not great. But other than that, all those things that pissed Elsie off, I'm like, I don't know. That makes her kind of cool.

But nevertheless, that race day was when Ann decided quote Billy was the main catch of their crowd. And she was determined that, no matter what, Elsie Woodward thought, she would become a proper society woman, no matter what it took, it's like, oof, uh-oh, what an enemy to make, yeah. So, as Ann and Billy's relationship continued to develop into something serious, Elsie Woodward hired a private detective to look into Ann's background.

Damn.

Also a common theme among my stories lately.

Oh, yes.

Now, she didn't really learn much about Ann's past in Kansas because Ann really hadn't revealed any clues to that. But the detective nonetheless confirmed Elsie's suspicions that Ann had a rich sexual history that was hardly befitting for a woman of class.

Oy.

But what made Elsie truly irate was learning that Billy had given Ann a gold bracelet passed down from his grandmother.

O.OF.

More than the affairs with multiple men or her past as a showgirl. This gifted family heirloom was the thing that caused Elsie to demand that her son stop seeing Ann immediately.

Oh boy.

Of course, that demand only made Billy want to see Ann way more.

That's a good way to get your kid to do something more is to forbid.

Exactly it just drove the two of them closer together. His mother could yell and scream, she could threaten disinheritance, all she want, and she very much did.

Oh, damn.

This was undeterred in his all-consuming passion for Ann, nothing that Elsie said was going to change that. Damn so. In January of 1943, Ann arrived at Billy's apartment, where, rather than lounging about in his pajamas like he usually would be, he was dressed in his Navy uniform. The U..S.

As she had done before.

As she had done before, as far as she was concerned, though, there was only one thing to be done. She told Billy And this is a quote Marry me now or go away forever.

This sounds like a movie, Marry Me Now or Go away forever, like it's you could just see somebody overacting that Marry me now or go away forever. And then just like slamming the door.

And also like, So, not romantic.

No, you're just giving him a straight up ultimatum, marry me or go away forever, that's it.

Luckily, Billy knew that Ann could be stubborn and had a flare for the dramatics.