September 14, 1927
The ballroom of the Biltmore Hotel is being readied for the annual Southern California Dahlia Society exhibition, which is last year drew 7000 people. There’s just something about the Biltmore that attracts Dahlias, and Dahlia lovers.
In Nice, France, San Francisco girl Isadora Duncan — that free spirit danseuse whose corsetless physique and offbeat theories of health, movement and social mores made her at once the darling and the shame of thousands — perished in a grisly accident when her long scarf became entangled in the wheel of an open automobile. Duncan was pulled into the road, and died instantly of a broken neck. She was 50.
The fateful scarf was a gift of Mary Desti, Duncan’s dear friend and the mother of director Preston Sturges, who would go on to invent many a fascinating, madcap female in his motion pictures.
In Medford, Mass., Elizabeth Short, who will be remembered as the Dahlia of the Biltmore long after the flower show is forgotten, is three.
