This is the tragic story of Audrey Munson, a young woman who served as the muse for the Black Angel. Formally known as the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial, the statue is the translation of a recurring dream experienced by Mrs. Dodge. Ruth Anne recalled that a small boat with a beautiful angel appeared through the mist as she stood on the rocky shore. With one arm stretched out and the other holding a vessel filled with water, the angel asked Ruth Anne to take a drink. Doing so would result in both a promise and a blessing. Feeling unworthy, she refused to take that drink over the first two nights.
When Ruth Anne awoke the next morning, she relayed the dream to her daughters. She finally relented on the third night and took a drink of the water that she described as sparkling like millions of diamonds. Afterwards, she said it was like she had been lifted into the Kingdom of Heaven and was born again. She passed away shortly afterwards, joining her husband, Civil War General Grenville M. Dodge, who passed eight months earlier.
Daughters Lettie, Eleanor, and Anne described their mother as a spiritually minded woman who was a devoted and self-sacrificing person with a lofty mind filled with good thoughts. A passionate supporter of women’s suffrage, Ruth Anne enjoyed gardening, music, and reading and even helped found Council Bluffs’ first library. For a woman with such spiritual conviction, it was a fitting farewell.
To honor their mother, the daughters commissioned famed sculptor Daniel Chester French to create a memorial based on her vivid dream. It was an impressive commission as French, already an accomplished sculptor, would receive much more acclaim when he designed the statue in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
French hired Munson to serve as the model for the Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial. Of the famous actress and model, he said, “There is a certain ethereal atmosphere about her that is rare. She has a decidedly expressive face, always changing. There is no monotony in her expression, and still the dominant feeling is that she is just such a type as many of the early painters would have selected for a Madonna.”
Starting at the age of 18, Munson appeared in four Broadway shows, four silent films, and modeled for sculptors including French over a 10-year period. The sculptures for which she was the model appear all over the country and overseas. There are more than two dozen in New York City alone.
In 1919, Munson’s career came to an abrupt end. She was living with her mother, Kittie, in a boarding house in Manhattan. It was owned by Dr. Walter Wilkins, a man that became so obsessed with Munson that he murdered his wife to make himself available for marriage. Mother and daughter fled to Canada, which triggered a nationwide manhunt. When they were located, Munson strongly denied having a romantic relationship of any kind with Dr. Wilkins. He was later found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair but hanged himself beforehand. The publicity from the scandal ruined her career at the age of 29.
The event also caused much embarrassment for the Dodge family, who originally planned a public dedication of the statue in honor of their mother. As the sensational story circulated in newspapers across the country, they instead chose to install it privately on a plot of land dedicated by Council Bluffs’ Fairview Cemetery at 623 North 2nd Street.
Over time, the eight-foot Ruth Anne Dodge Memorial began to weather, causing the cast bronze to darken significantly, making it appear as though it were black. That resulted in its nickname, the Black Angel. Since then, it has been the subject of many urban legends stating that its eyes will follow you or that staring into her eyes or touching her at midnight will result in a curse. Some even claim that she takes flight at night when no one is watching.
It’s clear that Dr. Wilkins’ suicide prematurely ended Munson’s career. By 1920, she was supported by her mother, who sold kitchen utensils door-to-door in Syracuse, New York. Unable to make a living on her own, Munson attempted suicide by swallowing mercury bichloride in 1922. The stress caused Munson’s behavior to become more erratic and disturbing. Finding it increasingly difficult to care for her, Kittie petitioned a judge, who ordered her daughter to be treated for depression and schizophrenia at the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, New York. Munson spent the next 64 years of her life in the asylum. She was surprised in 1984 when her then-unknown half-niece, Darlene Bradley, paid her a visit. It was her first visit since her mother passed away in 1958. Twelve years after that visit, she passed away at 104 years old in 1996.
While Ruth and Grenville M. Dodge were laid to rest in a newly built mausoleum in Walnut Hill Cemetery in 1916, the woman described as America’s first supermodel was buried in an unmarked grave in New York’s New Haven Cemetery in 1996. Sadly, Audrey Munson, the woman whose likeness appears all over the world, was all but forgotten and waited another 20 years before her final resting place was marked with a simple headstone. It was a tragic end for the woman who posed for the Black Angel and countless other works of art a century earlier.
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Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audrey_Munson
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Anne_Dodge_Memorial
- https://www.spiritualtravels.info/spiritual-sites-around-the-world/north-america/the-black-angel-of-council-bluffs-the-ruth-anne-dodge-memorial/
- https://www.councilbluffs-ia.gov/2294/Black-Angel-Statue
- https://www.unleashcb.com/blog/uncover_the_history_the_black_angel/
- The Tragedy of Audrey Munson, America’s First Supermodel – New England Historical Society
- Honolulu Advertiser, Daniel Chester French on Audrey Munson, Mar 14, 1915.
- The Daily Nonpareil, Dodge House Doings, Aug 2, 1972.
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