Fifi Alsop ~ The Doomed Bride

 

Fifi Alsop was a Ziegfeld Follies showgirl who married a millionaire but died in poverty

She was born Effie Pope Hill on September 5, 1892 in Macon, Georgia. Her father, John Hill, was a physician who died when she was a child. While playing tennis in 1911 she was introduced to Edward Brown Alsop, a seventy-five year old widowed millionaire. The nineteen year old made headlines when she married him on February 15, 1912. Fifi told reporters "What is age when the heart is young?" Unfortunately Edward was very controlling and jealous. Just two months after the wedding she suffered a nervous breakdown. Her husband bought her a large mansion and expensive jewels but she remained unhappy. She asked for a separation 1914. Then she put together a vaudeville act with dancer Paul de Clairmont. They began having a passionate affair even though Paul was married with children.  When Fifi ended their romance Paul committed suicide by taking poison. He left a note saying "Effie My darling, I love you". Edward Alsop filed for divorce in March of 1915 claiming his wife had deserted him. Although he was worth more than twenty million dollars she received very little in the settlement.

 In 1916 she joined the cast of the Ziegfeld Follies where she became friends with Olive Thomas and Martha Mansfield. Sadly her show business career quickly stalled. Unable to find work in the theater Fifi was forced to take a low paying job at as a telephone operator. By the early 1920s she was bankrupt and suffering from alcoholism. She was hospitalized in October of 1922 due to alcohol and drug poisoning. While she was recovering in the hospital her ex-husband Edward Alsop died at age eighty-five. He left her nothing in his will. A few months later she wrote a newspaper article about her life and advised young women not to marry older men. Fifi would spend the next decade living in cheap boarding houses and struggling with her addiction. Tragically on June 14, 1932 she died in New York City at the young age of thirty-nine. Her remains went unclaimed at the morgue for several days. She was buried next to her father at Resthaven Cemetery in Washington, Georgia.