Lotta Crabtree a.k.a. The Golden Girl was one of the biggest superstars of the last half of the 19th century. The best comparison to current times would be someone like Madonna. Lotta was the product of the Gold Rush in California during which she learnt her trade as dancer and entertainer from none other than the infamous Lola Montez, inventor of the ‘spider dance’ and courtesan to amongst other Ludwig I of Bavaria and Franz Liszt.
Lotta was legend, her ankle was reputed divine and she was probably the most sought after girl in all of America at the time, yet she never married. Speculation about her turbulent love life went so far that in 1883 the New York Times dedicated the better part of its front-page to an article on the matter with the headline “The Loves of Lotta.”
While discussing this with my dear brother ethnicallynot he claimed that no such thing would happen today. One thing led to another and I now have a discrete amount of Euros on that either the NYT or the Washington Post has dedicated a major front-page article to Madonna’s love life at some point in the last ten years. With front-page article we mean more than a mention or reference to the entertainment or people section. Since none of us have access in any easy way to the NYT and WP archives we thought we would turn it over to the impartial jury of the SDMB.
To settle the bet we shall need some kind of indication like a date when the supposed article appeared or at least what it was about with a link to a transcript or the like.
Did they stoop? I say they did, ETHIC says they didn’t.
Wah. You don’t do things halfway, do you? :eek: Just ask us to search through a combined total of 20 years of back issues of newspapers, that’s all…
Well, must start somewhere (I don’t want you to think we’re ignoring you ). A search of the Washington Post for 1992 under “Madonna” brought up this:
It’s not front page and it’s not about her personal “love life”…and I’ve now looked through 35 of the 200 hits and I’m tired of reading about the “sex” book, which is all that seems to be coming up for 1992, which is a blast from the past that didn’t really need to be re-blasted, IMO.
I tried it with Guy Ritchie, Sean Penn, and Lourdes at the two papers but no luck.
She apparently was on the front page of the USA Today, Dec. 11, 1996. While that is our largest paper by circulation, and is by no means a cheesy tabloid, it doesn’t have quite the same level of respect as the Times or the Post.
Warren Beaty comes close. We’re not looking necessarily for a flashy headline which mentions Madonna explicitly in the headline. The Warren Beaty story would possibly have counted (depending on its exact content) had it been on the front page. Thanks for the info SmackFu.
DMC also has an entry edging its way towards me loosing a few Euros. If USA Today has had her on the front page, I may be on thin ice! We shall see if the WP ans NYT maintain higher standards for news worthy items!
Only at the SDMB could you expect to find these kinds of dilligent efforts in fighting ignorance!
I just hadda butt in here and say how it warmed to cockles of my heart to see the name of Little Lotta Crabtree online here . . . I gotta start an Adah Isaacs Mencken thread one of these days . . .
I have no idea what the answer this will be (although I would bet in your direction), however I’m not sure that “stooped” would be correct. First I’d check and see if the structure of the newspapers of the time was similar to current structure and style. Were there multiple sections at the time? How many pages, where were things typically put, etc? It all goes to style of the journal.
You’re comparing apples and oranges – the New York Times of 1883 was not a distinguished national newspaper of record, but rather just one of many New York dailies. According to the following site, the Times didn’t really begin to accumulate its formidable journalistic reputation (and circulation) until the 1890s:
Ah, my law school dollars at work. Ran a simple Lexis search on the NY Times. I asked for articles that had at least five occurrences of “Madonna” and appeared in section ‘A’ with no date restriction. Below are the results.
When changing to at least 3 occurrences limited to page one (again no date restriction) I only got one pertinent hit:
Turning to the Washington Post:
The main search:
Limited to page 1 returned no hits.
I’m not saying that this is the end of searching, but Lexis is pretty thorough. If you’d like to suggest another way of searching, let me know.
Rhythmdvl,
Who doesn’t much care for Madonna, so is going to go listen to Whole Lotta Love
Ah, my law school dollars at work. Ran a simple Lexis search on the NY Times. I asked for articles that had at least five occurrences of “Madonna” and appeared in section ‘A’ with no date restriction. Below are the results.
When changing to at least 3 occurrences limited to page one (again no date restriction) I only got one pertinent hit:
Turning to the Washington Post:
The main search:
Limited to page 1 returned no hits.
I’m not saying that this is the end of searching, but Lexis is pretty thorough. If you’d like to suggest another way of searching, let me know.
Rhythmdvl,
Who doesn’t much care for Madonna, so is going to go listen to Whole Lotta Love
Thanks all of you for the informative responses. I am once again amazed at the SDMB membership’s capacity to clear out everything from the most trivial to the very advanced. This being mayhap on the trivial side of things it is nevertheless a hard task to prove that something didn’t happen, as anyone trying to debunk ULs has experienced. I once had the opportunity to delve into deep research of ULs for work reasons, I spent a year on it and I think a good portion of that year went into explaining to people what ‘lack of reliable first hand sources’ means and that no proof is sometimes the same thing as proof, just reverse.
Anyway, back to Lotta Crabtree and Madonna! Judging by Duck Duck Goose, SmackFu, DMC and Rhythmdvl’s research it looks like I loose the bet, eh! But it was worth it.
Meanwhile my ventures into the matter have given that I might have been a little hasty in my stakes. Going into this I was aware that NYT of 1883 was by no means the same kind of paper as it is today, as was pointed out by ShibbOleth, samclem, and Wumpus. However I was also aware that The New York Times already then aimed to be a notch above the tabloids of the time, such as Pulitzer’s The New York World. That’s where I was putting my money - serious then, serious now… why not an article about Madonna’s love life?
What I did not know was that the Lotta article seems to have appeared not in The Times, but in The World. Several articles that I found over the last two days reference an article about Lotta Crabtree in 1883, but attribute the article to Pulitzer and The World and has the headline as; ‘Little Lotta’s Lovers.’ The three articles I originally found the reference in appear to be adaptations of one original article. On the other hand the references to Pultizer as the origin are varied sources focused on journalism rather than Lotta Crabtree, which leads me to now believe more in the article being in The World than NYT. Egg on my face for not doing my research better I guess.
So ETHIC, I guess I’ll have to fork you some cash next time I am in New York or you come over here… sigh! (the bet was for trifles for those that are curious – more a matter of principle)
Once again thank you all for helping me loose my hard earned cash! (j/k) That being said, should anyone have some last moment indication that I can keep my wallet in my pocket it would be most welcome!
