American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [146]
A federal judge issued a writ of habeas corpus in Vera’s case, and she was released from Ellis Island after signing a $500 personal bond, which allowed her to remain free for ten days. Then, another federal judge ordered that Vera could stay in the country as long as she liked. Government lawyers, reeling under the embarrassing publicity of the case, did not put up much of a fight.
Vera could now attend to her theatrical career. The notoriety led a producer to offer her $5,000 for her play, as well as a percentage deal on gross receipts and motion picture rights. Ashes of Love premiered in London in mid-March, a month after her ordeal began. Her case brought publicity to a previously unknown talent, but it did not prevent negative reviews. One London critic called the play crude: “The dialogue, with few exceptions, is banal and the characters in the piece are wooden and lifeless as dummies.”
After London, the play then moved to Washington, D.C., with Vera taking over the lead role. American critics were no kinder. The Times called it a “naïve . . . rather childish and undramatic story.” Most of the audience seemed attracted only by the curiosity value of Cathcart’s story. The play ran for one week.
Angry at the reception her play received, Vera bought it back from the producer. She vowed to finish her play about her detention at Ellis Island. She was careful to remind the public that despite her title and lifestyle, she was not rich. Her stepfather was a wealthy businessman, but he had not given her any money and she was no longer married to the wealthy Earl of Cathcart. She was an independent woman of dependent means, dependent on her marginal literary talent and even more meager acting talent. Perhaps that is why, when Vera Cathcart sailed back to England at the end of March less than two months after her arrival, she told reporters that her treatment at Ellis Island was kind and generous when compared to what she received from critics. Immigration officials she could forgive; theater critics she could not.
Edward Corsi, who ran Ellis Island a few years after the Cathcart incident, admitted that officials probably were too zealous in “catching these wearers of the cloak of royalty in our immigration net. . . . We have used our democracy as a weapon to allow us deliberately to offend them.” Corsi may have been correct that democratically minded immigration officials enjoyed the chance to take down minor celebrities and members of high society, yet had Vera Cathcart been a poor peasant girl from Poland, the press would not have taken notice of her case, ambassadors would not have complained to Washington, and women’s groups would not have come to her rescue.
Women of all nationalities fell victim to the prying investigations of immigration officials, whether poor Jewish and Italian women or wealthy Englishwomen. There is little evidence to suggest that officials targeted women from eastern and southern Europe for increased scrutiny. In fact, it seemed that the one group most often profiled as potentially immoral was single French women arriving in first- and second-class passage. For Ellis Island officials, policing the border and enforcing the nation’s immigration laws often meant enforcing middleclass ideas of sexual morality.
G IULIA DEL FAVERO SAID she would rather jump into New York Harbor than submit to the medical exam. She did agree to have the male doctor examine her breasts, which he thought showed a peculiar appearance that might suggest pregnancy.
Giulia was taken out for special examination during the initial line inspection because an official thought that she looked pregnant. Through a translator, Giulia adamantly denied she was pregnant and declared herself to be a morally pure young woman. The breast exam was one thing, but there was no way that the twenty-three-year-old unmarried seamstress was going to let a male stranger give her a vaginal examination.
Ellis