Broken Doll

Sparse has been the comment upon individual losses in the Stockmarket crash fortnight ago. Few people have had the temerity to expose the amount of their trading losses, fearful of jeopardizing their credit standing. Gleeful, therefore, were newsgatherers last week to find one person who admitted her losses, flaunted the amount, even named the stocks she had had. She, a Miss Margaret Shotwell. 19, of Omaha, said that she had lost more than $1,000,000 in Montgomery Ward, Paramount, Cities Service, General Motors.

With the revelation of Miss Shotwell's identity her cheery confession became more understandable. She is a pianist. When she was 12, her father brought home his friend John Neal, to hear her play. So impressed was John Neal that upon his death in 1923 he left her $1,000,000 in Reynolds Tobacco stock. She sewed in her chinchilla coat a bar of the song she had played for John Neal, Liszt's Liebestraum.

From her press agent, subsequent fragments of the Shotwell saga appear:

At 13 the "Tobacco Heiress" began to smoke cigarets. Miss Shotwell's appearance in Vienna was a triumph. . . . Miss Shotwell's tour . . . was the event of the Riviera season. . . . The outstanding surprise of the concert world is the American debut of Margaret Shotwell. . . . Though her fortune is founded on Camel Cigarets she is being importuned to recommend Lucky Strikes. . . Beautiful . . charming . . . gowns to match the moods of her composers . . . Charming . . . buoyant. . . . She exhibits her diary as simply as a little girl exhibits a broken doll.

Taking a long farewell to amateur piano playing, Pianist Shotwell shrewdly announced, that she might henceforth be heard in vaudeville.