Delia Stacey never hesitated to blow smoke into the faces of male-dominated society over the proper way for a woman to live and act 125 years ago.
A Broadway actress who lived her last years in the Inland Empire, Stacey often found herself in the limelight for her adventures outside the theater around the turn of the 19th century.
Her most notable experience came Aug. 14, 1896, while sitting in a box one evening at the Roof Garden Theater in New York City talking with Herbert J. Meyer and Sam Freedman, both “well-known in theatrical circles,” reported the New York Journal the following day.
Stacey spared no words bemoaning the fact that “women were unjustly deprived of many pleasures,” wrote the Journal. “She was ready . . . to lead a movement of any kind calculated to free her sex from the bondage of custom.”
Her first step fighting female limitations in the Victorian Age brought her plenty of attention in newspapers all over the nation. (And while I can’t prove it, this whole episode smells a lot like a publicity stunt calculated to promote her and a new play.)
The story goes that Meyer, belittling Stacey’s determination, bet $5 that she wasn’t bold enough to smoke a cigarette on a New York City street car. As odd as that sounds, no respectable woman in those days was seen smoking in public, much less on a crowded streetcar (usually full of men polluting the air with smoke).
Admitting she was a bit scared, she nevertheless boarded a streetcar at 41st Street and Broadway, pulled out a cigarette and asked a man for a match. “The portly lady beside her showed signs of apoplexy,” said the Journal, after she lit up. The woman stormed off the car with a “Well, I never!”
But Stacey most certainly did. Everyone in the car crowded closer to stare at her shocking act of tobacco rebellion. The Journal said the conductor wouldn’t boot her off the car telling the other passengers that smoking was permitted for all.
“What a horrible thing to do!” Stacey said, once her stunt was over. “I never felt so mortified in my life. I’ll never make another such foolish wager.” But, breaking out laughing, she said, “At any rate, I started a fashion and perhaps others will take it up.”
Later that year in Atlanta, she was part of another scandalous experience that ran headlong into the “rules” governing women in those days. A photograph of her in a “bathing costume” was distributed to publicize her appearance in a coming comic opera. The region was soon in an uproar because the photo showed way too much for that era — a tattooed star on her ankle “where the lady’s knickerbockers terminated and where her slippers, had she had them on, would begin,” wrote an indignant Atlanta Constitution newspaper in July 1896.
Such widely publicized activities helped Stacey become a well-known actress in New York theaters and touring companies from 1890 until about 1913. It doesn’t appear she was a major star in the theater but often played leading roles, singing and dancing in light operas.
She had taken an odd road to Broadway, actually growing up on military forts in the Wild West — her father was a Civil War Army officer who later served in Arizona and California during the so-called Indian Wars. At one time, he commanded Fort Mohave on the Colorado River just upstream from today’s Needles.
When her father died, she came to Washington D.C. and studied acting, encouraged by Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, a friend of her father. Her first role (just shy of her 17th birthday) was in “Tom Craig’s Wife,” in the Dockstader Theater in New York on June 28, 1887. Sherman and his guests filled the theater, but few others joined them. The show bombed but it opened the door for her.
Then in 1893, she announced in entertainment columns that she planned to give up theater for love and marriage to umbrella manufacturer Thomas H. Burchell. After living a year in the suburb of New Rochelle, New York, she decided she wanted out of the marriage to return to the theater, reported the New York World of July 30, 1894. It was a couple of years before the marriage was formally dissolved.
Stacey captured national attention once again in 1902, as she came close to marrying again. She was engaged to former Colorado state Sen. J.H. Poole, a family friend twice her age. He gave her a large diamond ring, but later she broke off the engagement after realizing she didn’t want to give up the stage.
In Kansas City, where she was a “prima donna” in the play “The Beauty Doctor,” she received an order from Poole’s attorney on Oct. 28, 1903, demanding the ring be returned, which she initially refused to do. The story, naturally, reached the press and soon was on many newspaper pages, often with the headline, “She Says, ‘No Sir’.” It was never clear whether the ring was ever given back.
Between her romantic episodes and touring shows, Stacey often performed in vaudeville theaters, singing and dancing. A listing in the New York Times of Dec. 10, 1905, said she would perform at the Keith’s Theater. She shared the billing with a future national personality, Will Rogers, who was described as a “lariat thrower.”
She mostly gave up the stage after marrying William E. Muller in 1911 in West Virginia. They moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he was a partner in a confectionary store. It was here that Stacey — who took Muller’s name the rest of her life — opened Pinky’s Villa which was “a little tea room for the college boys” at nearby Northwestern University.
After eight years, and apparently after divorcing Muller, she opened a nightclub, called Pinky Villa, outside Kissimmee, Florida. It was built in the shape of a Spanish cantina she once saw in Barcelona, Spain, explained the Orlando Sentinel of April 4, 1926. The place apparently wasn’t much of a success, and after a year she was forced to give up the club.
Only a few scattered details about the rest of her life are available. In 1930, she lived in Indiana with a sister — the census listed her as a saleswoman. A Los Angeles directory placed her in Southern California in 1932, and she lived the final years of her life in Joshua Tree.
Seventy-five years ago this month, on Aug. 3, 1945, Delia Stacey Muller died of a heart ailment in San Bernardino, reported the Sun newspaper. She is buried at Hillside Memorial Park in Redlands.
Joe Blackstock writes on Inland Empire history. He can be reached at joe.blackstock@gmail.com or Twitter @JoeBlackstock.
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