On the evening of March 5, 1926, fifty-one year old Manhattan millionaire Edward “Daddy” Browning, waltzed through the doors of the legendary Hotel McAlpin, and into the life of a fifteen year old high school girl named Frances “Peaches” Heenan. Thirty-seven days later, with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in close pursuit, they were married. Within ten months they would begin a courtroom drama that would capture the imagination of the American public, and cast their impassioned saga into a national scandal.
Against the backdrop of Prohibition, Hot Jazz and America’s “Era of Wonderful Nonsense,” the odd romance, marriage and ultimate legal battles waged by this publicity craving Manhattan couple would become fodder for a rampaging tabloid media and gossip for an eager public. Together, Peaches and Daddy would become one of the nation’s celebrated icons of the early twentieth century, and their story, a forgotten gem of American history.
The shattered romance of Peaches and Daddy would find its breathtaking climax in a small-town courtroom, packed to suffocation, and stalked through the crosshairs of an expectant world. For five breathless days, hundreds of clamoring newspaper reporters and a wide-eyed public heard “Peaches” make allegations of “depraved tastes” and “abnormal activity,” and they heard an indignant denial of it all from “Daddy.” To him, this was a case of “non-payment of kisses.” The bellowing press coverage and the ramifications of the final verdict would reverberate through the American conscience for years to come.
One commentator described it this way: “They were the most celebrated, if comic, couple of their oddity-obsessed times: He, a flamboyant multimillionaire named Edward West Browning, also known as ‘The Cinderella Man’ for his proclivity for lifting pretty, young girls into the lap of luxury; She, baby-faced Frances Heenan, young enough to be his granddaughter, and digging for his gold.”
To read more about Peaches and Daddy, pick up Michael Greenburg’s book, Peaches & Daddy, A story of the Roaring 20s, the Birth of Tabloid Media, and the Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public.
www.peachesanddaddy.com