** Article published in World War I Illustrated, Spring 2021, No. 14: 4-10.**
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker ensured his place in history with actions taken during a surprisingly brief stretch, from September 25 to November 11, 1918. True, the fourteen preceding years of determined effort and self-improvement had made those pivotal weeks possible. Yet the life and career that came after would not have played out as they did but for the string of aerial victories Rickenbacker attained in the fall of 1918. Without first becoming America’s ace of aces, he would not have become Captain Eddie, president and chairman of Eastern Air Lines. Neither, likely, would he have become owner and director of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, nor advisor to the Army Air Forces chief and the Secretary of War in the next worldwide conflagration.
At the height of his prolific, six-and-a-half week stretch, on October 25, 1918, the Los Angeles Times fired its own gossipy salvo: “To Wed Famous Air Ace: Priscilla Dean Admits Engagement to Eddie Rickenbacker.”[1] It took just two days for the rumor to fly the Atlantic and reach Rickenbacker’s ear. On a day he registered his twenty-second and twenty-third victories and also witnessed the sobering sight of his squadron mate, Hamilton Coolidge, “all burnt to a crisp” on the ground, he felt compelled to add in his diary: “Newspaper prints account of my engagement to Miss Dean a movie queen which is not true.”[2]
The fabrication was hardly a threat to Rickenbacker’s reputation. To the contrary, it doubtlessly enhanced his growing celebrity. Yet the Rickenbacker-Dean storyline concealed a delicious irony. At the same time the press was speculating on ace and actress, Rickenbacker was carrying on an actual dalliance with another aspiring star of stage and screen. As he was leading the Hat-in-the-Ring gang to greatness, flying more sorties than any other pilot in the First Pursuit Group, and racking up nineteen of his twenty-six victories, he had time for eight social visits with Lois Meredith of the Over There Theatre League. Eight dates.
But let’s back up.
The Dean wedding rumor was not first to dog Rickenbacker. That occurred almost ten years earlier when he was nineteen-years-old. As Columbus Buggy Company’s chief troubleshooter in Texas (“salesman, demonstrator, mechanic, chief engineer, experimenter—in short, the whole ball of wax”[3]), Rickenbacker made enough money to splurge on a diamond ring for his childhood sweetheart, Blanche Calhoun. He later downplayed the purchase, saying it came from a second-hand jewelry shop in Dallas and “couldn’t have cost a helluva lot.”[4] Even so, the gift was surely meant to impress. It announced the erstwhile “black sheep” from the “wrong side of the tracks” had made good.[5] Very, very, good. Rickenbacker was taking home $125 a week, or an annualized salary of $150,000 in today’s money.
Poor Blanche was nonplussed by the offhand way Rickenbacker seemed to be proposing marriage. Nevertheless, “within 48 hours it was all over the neighborhood”[6] that Eddie and Blanche were getting hitched. “Scared as hell,”[7] Rickenbacker caught a train to Omaha, where he was engaged to begin work anyway, without a word of explanation to Miss Calhoun.
At the same time, Rickenbacker purchased a much more consequential gift for his mother: paying off the balance of her mortgage. Since the death of his father when Rickenbacker was thirteen-years-old, the son had felt a special responsibility to fill the paternal shoes. He had dropped out of school, put aside childish ways, and vowed to become a man. Now, just five years later, he had made good his vow and assured his mother’s financial security.
His own security was of secondary importance. The thrill of the chase, the pursuit of excellence, the camaraderie of other men: these were his primary motivations. “I wanted to drive good cars fast,” he said later of his decision to quit a high-paying automobile sales career for a high-risk, low-security future in automobile racing, “to pit my automobile knowledge and driving skill and plain old guts against the world’s best.” Besides, he added, “I liked the racing fraternity. I wanted to be a part of it.”[8]
In the lean years, 1912-1914, engineering and racing Duesenbergs, Rickenbacker thrived in an environment of dedicated teamwork. In the heady years, 1915-1916, managing the Maxwell/Prest-O-Lite team, he enjoyed his first taste of leadership. These formative experiences provided the training he put to good use at Meuse-Argonne in October, 1918.
As he accumulated victories on the track and his fame grew, so did the press’s interest in his personal life. Here was a strong, handsome sports celebrity. So where were the women? Rickenbacker deflected reporters’ inquiries, saying, not untruthfully, “I have always had…the most wonderful sweetheart in the world, my little mother.”[9] To the outside world, Rickenbacker appeared too serious, too focused on winning, to be seduced by a woman’s charms. The Chicago Tribune summed him up as “a speed-mad, matrimony-insulated bachelor, [who] has but one love, and that the thoroughbred of steel with which he pursues prize money.”[10]
Was he really so chaste? Probably not.
We know from Rickenbacker that he developed at least a passing friendship with hard-partying Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle and that he attended parties at the Beverly Hills home of Clifford Durant, fellow race driver and wayward son of GM founder William Crapo Durant. Biographer Finis Farr claimed (without footnote) that Rickenbacker “drove his young ladies from one seaside resort to another, from Santa Monica to Ocean Park, Venice, Playa del Rey, Hermosa, Redondo, and Corona del Mar.”[11]
Priscilla Dean might well have been one of these young ladies. Put on stage at age four and in front of the camera at fourteen, Dean was still working in the Hollywood trenches when she met the racecar driver in 1916.
The two apparently met on the race track at Santa Monica, he “tuning up his motor” for a race, she “in make-up” for a scene in another B-list short.[12] As the Los Angeles Times columnist imagined it in 1918, in over-wrought prose: “A hasty introduction started a sturdy friendship in which lurked the germ of love.” Rickenbacker may well have taken the starlet on a date, or six. Whatever the case, when Dean purchased a car of her own, Rickenbacker reportedly helped her with the mechanics. He taught her how to “adjust her carburetor” for speed.
The United States’ entry into the European war forestalled what might have been Rickenbacker’s career year on the track. (He ended the 1916 season in third place.) Yet the war offered an irresistible opportunity to operate a new speed machine: the aeroplane.
Rickenbacker managed to get himself stationed in France, attend five weeks of French flight school, and become the construction engineer for Issoudun Aerodrome, the A.E.F.’s new flight training center. But the incoming, college-educated cadets would have nothing to do with him. He was a mere mechanic—and an ill-mannered, rough-speaking one at that. Theirs was class prejudice, pure and simple.
How Rickenbacker managed to teach himself aerial maneuvers in the Nieuport 28, finagle his way into gunnery school, and earn the respect of the Ivy Leaguers has been told elsewhere. It is enough to know that, by April, 1918, he was a full-fledged member of the Hat-in-the-Ring gang and by June, America’s second homegrown ace.
Then came the setback. Between June 26 and September 6, Rickenbacker spent more days in the hospital (one fever, two ear surgeries) than he did days in the air, at least four times more. He did not add a single victory to the five he had garnered to date (a sixth from May 7 would be confirmed after the war ended).
Hospitalization did give him time to reflect on the mistakes he had made in the air, any one of which could have cut his career, or his life, short. Rickenbacker biographers have inferred that, from his hospital bed in Paris, the ace developed a set of principles, Dicta Rickenbacker, if you will, that would guide him to a total twenty-six confirmed victories, more than any American aviator in the war.
Frustratingly, Rickenbacker’s diary provides no evidence of this self-reflection. Its contents, rather, give updates on his health, news of the war’s progress…and mentions of encounters with “fine,” “dear,” “sweet”[13] young women both in hospital and, while convalescing, around Paris. The longest and most suggestive entry, dated August 22, reads, in full: “While sitting on the balcony listening, a little girl who is nursing here came up and ask [sic] me to go down with her. Would I? Gee, ten years of my life for the chance. Have seen her only a few times before but always came into me a thrill such as has been unknown in my past life. Then, after dinner she bought me some ice cream. Hardly let myself feel she may care. (Yet)”[14]
Three days later Rickenbacker followed up: “My little girl friend came to the room and we had a very interesting chat. She’s a Little Dear, certainly would be a happy boy to have such a girl wonder about me now and then.”[15] At twenty-seven, human nature was catching up with Rickenbacker. He apparently felt a longing for female companionship—or, perhaps, for their attention and admiration.
When Rickenbacker rejoined the Hat-in-the-Ring gang, he was a new man, no longer plagued by either ear pain or doubts. Rested, reflected, renewed, Rickenbacker also benefitted from a more powerful and reliable machine beneath him, the Spad XIII. Such was his performance in September’s St. Mihiel offensive that he, a mere lieutenant, was selected over several college-educated captains to command the 94th Aero Squadron. He quickly proved worthy of his superior’s confidence. He led by example, executed decisively, and inspired loyalty.
None of which prevented him from pursuing a flirtation with actress Lois Meredith.
Born Sara Lois Neely in Pittsburgh,[16] the same year as Rickenbacker in Columbus, Meredith was six years older than Dean yet lagged behind her in the development of a screen career. Nevertheless, she was selected from among scores of applicants to perform with the Over There Theater League in France. Three troupes of six toured France, performing at YMCA canteens, Red Cross hospitals, and troop encampments. On September 22, Meredith’s troupe performed for the First Pursuit Group in a Rembercourt Aerodrome hangar. The event, which Rickenbacker claimed to have “arranged” himself, was “a howling success,” according to the ace.[17]
Two days later, after bringing down two German planes in his first solo patrol as commander of the 94th—an action that would later earn him the Congressional Medal of Honor—he attended a party in Major Hartney’s quarters, where he encountered one of the performers from two nights before. He recorded the meeting in his diary: “Am very fond of Lois Meredith and know she is in favor of my acquaintance.”[18] Fond indeed.
Foul weather kept the aviators grounded on September 27, so the ace, now twice over, drove thirty miles to Fleury-devant-Douaumont at the front to see his new heartthrob. A week-and-a-half later, it was down to Bar-le-Duc, just ten miles away, to see her again two days in a row. The two made plans to meet up in Paris when Rickenbacker was on leave. There, from October 12 through 14, they dined at Maxim’s, passed “a most delightful day,”[19] and went shopping. (Rickenbacker, shopping? The man had fallen hard.)
He returned to the front as America’s acknowledged ace of aces, with, he wrote, “one more Boche than any other American aviator ha[d] ever shot down.”[20] Shooting down Boches kept him occupied (when it wasn’t raining) for the next three weeks. Yet on November 4, with the intensity of the war winding down, Rickenbacker went back to Paris to see Meredith. The entry reveals both how far he had come since his Columbus street urchin days and for intimating how far he would go as Eastern Air Lines’ smartly dressed chief executive. (Also, perhaps, for showing how far gone he was with Miss Meredith in the present moment.) He wrote: “Made several purchases including a wonderful coat which cost 1450 [francs, or about $4,000 in today’s money]. Seems so foolish of me.” The pair enjoyed a nice dinner and “quite some ride around Paris.”[21]
The romance went nowhere after the war. Surprisingly, neither did the rumors. (Though New York Times theater critic Alexander Woollcott had come close to outing the ace in his fanciful October 27 column: “I saw Lois Meredith rounding the corner on the arm of one of our best fliers,” he wrote.[22])
When Rickenbacker returned to America in early 1919 he was a hero and a plum ripe for gossip. Which fair maiden would steal the ace’s heart?
Priscilla Dean was by no means out of the running. Carl Laemmle wanted to put her in a picture opposite Rickenbacker. (The would-be leading man declined.) A few months later, Rickenbacker happened onto Dean in the lobby of a Vancouver hotel and was hustled out a side entrance by his traveling companion. The aide knew gossip columnists would have had a field day if the two were caught together in public.[23]
Priscilla Dean did eventually get her aviator when she married, as her second husband, globe-circumnavigating Lieutenant Leslie P. Arnold. Arnold—Mr. Priscilla Dean—would go on to work at Eastern Air lines beginning in 1940 as assistant to the president. That president was, of course, Captain Edward V. Rickenbacker.
Meanwhile, Rickenbacker found love in Adelaide Frost Durant, whom he had first met in his racing days as the wife of Cliff Durant. Now, in 1922, with Eddie thirty-one and Adelaide thirty-six, their courtship was condensed, her divorce rushed to completion, and their wedding date set for September 16. Gossip columnists had a verifiable romance to report.
“Love Catches Up with Eddie Rickenbacker’s Heart,”[24] announced the headline of the Washington Times, accompanied by five alluring photographs. The inveterate bachelor had succumbed to love, and the old storyline was trotted out one last time: “Eddie Rickenbacker has driven faster than any other automobilist in the world, and has shot more German warplanes out of the sky than any other American, but although he has tried hard enough, he could not drive fast enough or fly high enough to escape Cupid’s arrow.”
The feature revived the old rumors, too. Amid the photographs of Eddie resting his hand lovingly on his bride’s shoulder and Adelaide demurely fingering a flower (as well as the one of the ace displaying his Nieuport 28’s torn wing) were photographs of two Other Women, alleged rivals for Eddie’s hand in marriage: Priscilla Dean, of course, and, curiously, Elsie Janis, “Sweetheart of the Doughboys.”[25] The former intrigue we know was almost certainly born of a publicity stunt. The latter was just as certainly a conflation of two troop entertainers, the famed Janis for the lesser-known Meredith. (In August, 1919, Janis had been forced to deny rumors she and Rickenbacker were engaged. “Why, I hardly know him,” Janis was reported to have said, “and I haven’t the slightest idea where the dear boy is. For all I know he may have a wife and three children somewhere.”[26])
Adelaide had the strength of character and maturity to match Eddie’s own, and the ace of aces was deeply in love. In his honeymoon diary, which he titled “The Opening of a New Chapter in My Book of Life”[27] Rickenbacker struggled to find the words to express his emotions: “Like a child with its first real toy am I, only the most beautiful toy, not in the true sense of the word but in the form of a wonderful Pall [sic] to share and suffer through life alike.”[28] A week later in France, he wrote, ingenuously, “It’s just a dream. I wonder at times if it can be true, there seems so much happiness in life.”[29]
The bliss did not endure, of course, but the marriage did, through life-threatening incidents and accidents of more than fifty years. Adelaide was a fierce advocate for her husband—twice her interventions helped keep him alive—yet she had the wisdom to abide the one mistress he could never give up: his work. The storyline that sportswriters and gossip columnists had created so many years before was, in essence, true. Though Rickenbacker was not “insulated” from women’s charms, nor from the attractions of matrimony, he did have “but one” overriding love: the pursuit, not so much of prizes, but of excellence and influence and the respect of other men.
Images courtesy of Auburn University Libraries Special Collections and Archives, acquisition numbers: 101-96-066-3-257, 101-96-066-3-312, 101-97-054-2-023
[1] Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1918.
[2] Rickenbacker, Edward V. “Eddie V. Rickenbacker WWI Diary,” October 27, 1918.
[3] Edward V. Rickenbacker, Life Story 1, 71.
[4] Rickenbacker, Life Story 2, 374-375.
[5] Rickenbacker, Life Story 1, 7, 19. Rickenbacker, “Let’s Appreciate Our Heritage,” Speeches and Addresses IV, November 13, 1949.
[6] Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker, 66.
[7] Rickenbacker, Life Story, 81-83.
[8] Rickenbacker, Rickenbacker, 73.
[9] Ibid., 171.
[10] “Dramatis Personae of the Speed Spectacle,” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1916.
[11] Finis Farr, Rickenbacker’s Luck, 24.
[12] “To Wed Famous Air Ace,” Los Angeles Times, October 25, 1918.
[13] Rickenbacker, WWI Diary, June 27, July 12, August 25, 1918.
[14] Ibid., August 22, 1918.
[15] Ibid., August 25, 1918.
[16] Dave Miller, “Lois Meredith 1919,” https://www.flickr.com/photos/puzzlemaster/14018646657.
[17] Rickenbacker, WWI Diary, September 22, 1918.
[18] Ibid., September 25, 1918.
[19] Ibid., WWI Diary, October 13.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid., November 4, 1918.
[22] Alexander Woollcott, “Entertainers Overseas,” New York Times, October 27, 1918.
[23] Rickenbacker, Life Story 1, 236.
[24] “Love Catches Up with Eddie Rickenbacker’s Heart,” Washington Times, September 3, 1922.
[25] Edward Lengle, “Elsie Janis Becomes ‘Sweetheart of the Doughboys,’” http://www.edwardlengel.com/elsie-janis-becomes-sweetheart-doughboys-1918/, April 23, 2018.
[26] “Here’s Tough One for Rickenbacker,” Detroit Free Press, August 13, 1919.
[27] Lewis, Eddie Rickenbacker, note 44, chapter 11, p. 597.
[28] Ibid., 260.
[29] Ibid., 261.
Leave a Reply