Odette Valery

[1] In 1908, she caused a sensation in New York when she danced in the last act of Samson and Delilah at the Manhattan Opera House where she had been engaged by Oscar Hammerstein I.

[3] Her dance included the participation of one of three snakes (with fangs removed) which were cared for by their own groom, Robert, whom she had engaged in addition to other servants who traveled with her.

[4] She was found ill and starving in a cheap boarding house in Notting Hill, London where she was being cared for by her seven-year-old son Gaeton.

[3] She returned to Paris and although she was reputed to have had twenty-eight love affairs in one year at the height of her fame, she had few real friends and continued to live in poverty.

[5][6] It was a California heiress, Aimée Crocker, Mrs. Jackson Gouraud, who came to her aid on reading about her plight and gave a fund-raising ball in her honour at Martin's, New York.