Kansas City, 1929: Myrtle and Jack Bennett sit down with another
couple for an evening of bridge. As the game intensifies, Myrtle
complains that Jack is a "bum bridge player." For such
insubordination, he slaps her hard in front of their stunned guests
and announces he is leaving. Moments later, sobbing, with a Colt
.32 pistol
in hand, Myrtle fires four shots, killing her husband.
The Roaring 1920s inspired nationwide fads-flagpole sitting,
marathon dancing, swimming-pool endurance floating. But of all the
mad games that cheered Americans between the wars, the least likely
was contract bridge. As the Barnum of the bridge craze, Ely
Culbertson, a tuxedoed boulevardier with a Russian accent, used
mystique, brilliance, and a certain madness to transform bridge
from a social pastime into a cultural movement that made him rich
and famous. In writings, in lectures, and on the radio, he used the
Bennett killing to dramatize bridge as the battle of the sexes.
Indeed, Myrtle Bennett's murder trial became a sensation because it
brought a beautiful housewife-and hints of her husband's
infidelity-from the bridge table into the national spotlight. James
A. Reed, Myrtle's high-powered lawyer and onetime Democratic
presidential candidate, delivered soaring, tear-filled courtroom
orations. As Reed waxed on about the sanctity of womanhood, he was
secretly conducting an extramarital romance with a feminist
trailblazer who lived next door.
To the public, bridge symbolized tossing aside the ideals of the
Puritans-who referred derisively to playing cards as "the Devil's
tickets"-and embracing the modern age. Ina time when such fearless
women as Amelia Earhart, Dorothy Parker, and Marlene Dietrich were
exalted for their boldness, Culbertson positioned his game as a
challenge to all housebound women. At the bridge table, he
insisted, a woman could be her husband's equal, and more. In the
gathering darkness of the Depression, Culbertson leveraged his own
ballyhoo and naughty innuendo for all it was worth, maneuvering
himself and his brilliant wife, Jo, his favorite bridge partner,
into a media spectacle dubbed the Bridge Battle of the Century.
Through these larger-than-life characters and the timeless
partnership game they played, "The Devil's Tickets" captures a
uniquely colorful age and a tension in marriage that is eternal.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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