Miss
MARGUERITE "RITA" LUCILE JOLIVET, Saloon Class Passenger
images:
Jim Kalafus Collection
image:
Vogue, June 1912. Randy
Bryan Bigham Collection
Marguerite Lucile Jolivet, 25, was born in Paris, France in 1890.
As an actress, she made her name on Broadway and Hollywood as
"Rita Jolivet" under the guidance of Charles Frohman. She made her
Broadway debut on 25 December 1911 in the Edward Knoblauch play, Kismet.
Subsequently, she made appearances in Where Ignorance is Bliss
(3 Sept 1913), A Thousand Years Ago (6 Jan 1914), and What
it Means to a Woman (19 Nov 1914). Also in 1914, Rita made
her Hollywood debut in Fata Morgana (1914), but garnered much
more attention as Delight Warren in Cecil B. DeMille's The Unafraid
(1915).
Rita Jolivet was sailing on the Lusitania to see her brother in
France. He was on his way to the Western Front. Her friend
Ellen Terry had tried to persuade Rita to join Ellen and Isadora Duncan
on the American Liner New York, but Rita dismissed the concerns
and newspaper warnings and booked passage at 8 o' clock the morning of
the sailing. Upon reaching her cabin, D-15, she was disappointed
at its being inside and being small.
Being that Rita had booked passage on impluse, she had not counted on
meeting her brother-in-law, George Vernon,
also on board. He was married to her sister Inez.
Throughout the voyage, she kept company with George, her mentor Charles Frohman, fellow actress Josephine Brandell, the playwrights
Charles Klein and Justus Forman, Alfred
Vanderbilt, and admirer Wallace Phillips.
She had been in attendance at Charles Frohman's party in his
stateroom on Thursday afternoon, 6 May.
Rita and Josephine were at the ship's concert on the night
of 6 May but did not perform. They, professionals, did not think
it fitting to be performing with amateurs. Instead, they sat with
"men
friends they had met onboard" (Hickey/Smith, 154).
Rita had a terrible night's sleep following the concert, and feeling
awful after luncheon she went back to her cabin. She had just
arrived back in her room and shut the door when she felt the shock of
the torpedo. Looking out
into the cross passageway, she saw see Doris Charles put on her
lifebelt run out. Rita was
terrified of drowning. Before leaving her cabin not only did she
take her lifebelt, but also her pearl-handled pistol to shoot herself
in the worst case scenario.
Carrying her own lifebelt, she ran out on deck and found George Vernon,
Charles Frohman, and Captain Alick Scott. George helped Rita put
her lifebelt on while Captain Scott went below decks to look for
more lifebelts, which he later gave away. All in the group
offered
Scott their lifebelts, but Scott, being a strong swimmer, refused, and
was willing to face death.
The four agreed to stay together on the port side near the verandah
café as the ship was sinking. When the ship lurched,
Frohman told Rita to hang on to the railing and save her strength, as
if he were simply giving stage directions. To the end Charles
Frohman was calm, saying, "Why fear death? It is the most
beautiful adventure in life." Rita recognized that as a line from
one of Frohman's favorite plays, James Barrie's Peter Pan.* She was then seized by the
sudden fear that Frohman, who needed a cane to support himself, would
not be able to manage in the water. At that moment, a "green
cliff of water" forcibly parted the group (Preston, 237).
The water sucked the boots off her feet, and Rita rose and sank two
times. Coming up again, she grabbed onto a collapsible boat that
was on the verge of sinking due to the sheer number of people
clambering on it to get out of the water. Luckily, another
collapsible boat drifted out from underneath to redistribute the mass
of humanity clinging on for their lives. Rita looked around, saw Dr. Howard Fisher, and managed a weak
smile. During the ordeal she had completely forgotten about using
her
pistol. While adrift, Rita claimed that she saw the attacking
submarine, but most likely what she saw was another ship in the
distance, probably the Juno.
She was picked up by the S. S. Westborough, disguised as a
Greek steamer named Katrina. Upon reaching Queenstown,
she discovered that most of her traveling companions, including George
Vernon, were lost. That summer, her sister Inez, despondent over
George's death, committed suicide with a pistol shot through the head.
In 1916, Rita married a wealthy Venetian, Count Guiseppe de Cippico,
and changed her first name from Marguerite to Margherita. She
continued to make Hollywood movies, the most notable being Lest We
Forget (1918), a dramatization of the Lusitania disaster
starring herself, and Theodora (1919), where she played the
empress and wife of
the Byzantine emperor Justinian.
Rita's final film was Le Marchand de bonheur (1926), after
which she retired from the screen. Rita Jolivet only made 21
films, all silent, having retired just before the advent of sound in
1928. Previous information on Rita's death being on 26 July 1962
in Barcelona, Spain is erroneous. She, in fact, passed away on 2
March 1971 in Nice, France. On her deathbed she maintained that
she was 77, but she may have actually been closer to 81.
Broadway
Performances (from Internet
Broadway Database) Mrs. Boltay's Daughters 23 Oct 1915 - [unknown]
What It Means to a Woman 19 Nov 1914 - [unknown] A Thousand Years Ago 6 Jan 1914 - [unknown] Where Ignorance Is Bliss 3 Sep 1913 - [unknown]
Kismet 25 Dec 1911 - [unknown]
Filmography
(from Internet Movie Database) Le Marchand de bonheur (1926) Phi-Phi (1926) Le Mariage de minuit (1923) Messalina (aka The Fall of an Empress) (1922) Roger la Honte (1922) The Bride's Confession (1921) Teodora (aka Theodora, the Slave Princess) (1919), as
Teodora Lest We Forget (1918), as Rita Heriot National Red Cross Pageant (1917), as France Quello che videro i miei occhi (1917) One Law for Both (1917), as Elga Pulaski An International Marriage (1916), as Florence Brent Her Redemption (1916) Love's Sacrifice (1916) Cuore ed arte (1915) La Mano di Fatma (1915) Monna Vanna (1915) L'Onore di morire (1915) (aka The Masque of Life) Zvani (1915) The Unafraid (1915) (aka The Unexpected), as Delight
Warren Fata Morgana (1914)
*See the footnote under Charles
Frohman. Contributors: Jim Kalafus
Paul Latimer
Michael Poirier
References:
Hickey, Des and Gus Smith. Seven Days to Disaster.
G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1981.
Hoehling, A. A. and Mary Hoehling. The Last
Voyage of the Lusitania. Madison Books, 1956.
