April 2, 2018 • 26 mins
In 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression, the Nevada legislature passed two bills: one to legalize gambling, the other to legalize a six-week waiting period for a divorce. Over the next few decades, hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, would journey to the desert state for a quickie divorce, a chance to forget their problems and a shot at reinvention.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Why Uzzy Media productions. You know, we just had the
revolutionary idea of working for a magazine we read. The
dream was relatively small. I just wanted to do a
magazine that I believed in and it would be successful
enough so I could keep doing it. And what came
afterwards I could not have imagined. That is what I
(00:24):
would like to accomplish. I would like to be a
good actress. Nineteen year old Norma Jean Doherty drove her
Ford coupe from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada, in
the summer of nineteen forty six. She went to obtain
a divorce from her first husband. He didn't support her
career and she had no chance of making it in
(00:46):
Hollywood as a married starlet. Six weeks later, with a
quickie Nevada divorce in hand, she was a free woman.
Norma Jean became Hollywood's Marilyn mone and years later she
returned to Nevada to start in a movie called The Misfits.
It was the last picture she completed before her death.
(01:08):
She played a woman who, like her younger self, comes
to Nevada for a divorce. Well, cheer up, I will.
I just hate to fight with anybody. When you win,
you lose, you know in your heart. The Misfits was
set against the backdrop of what some historians called the
Golden Age of divorce. In the center of that golden
(01:28):
age was the state of Nevada. Well is to Nevada.
Believe it state, the state, believe it state. You got money,
you want to gamble, Leave it here. You got a
wife you want to get rid of. Get rid of
her here, extra adam bomb. You don't need blow it
up here. Nobody's gonna mind. In the slightest Marilyn Monroe
was just one of thousands of women who traveled to
(01:49):
the leave it state to take advantage of its liberal
divorce laws between nineteen thirty and nineteen seventy. Without that
Nevada divorce, Monroe might never have become a star. Many
came to Nevada, like Monroe, obtained more than just a
decree from the courthouse. They won something far more valuable,
their freedom Rush Nevada. I'm Sean Braswell, and this is
(02:20):
the Thread. This season. On the Thread, we are traveling
through history again, turning the clock back one story at
a time to reveal the surprising series of events behind
a modern icon, the feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinham.
If you're joining us for the first time, we encourage
you to go back and listen to episode one. So far,
our journey has taken us through the lives of three
(02:42):
American legends. We've been to the Playboy Club in New
York City, where Gloria Steinham stent as an undercover bunny
helped ignite her career as a leader in the women's movement.
We peeked behind the walls of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's
mansion and empire to learn how he got his start.
And we ran with the wolves in Hollywood alongside the
(03:02):
unforgettable woman whose nude photograph helped launch Playboy, Marilyn Monroe.
Today we hear about the place that set Monroe on
her path to stardom. It is said that one out
of every five or six marriages and the United States
ends in divorce, and the mecca of the disillusion bride
(03:23):
is Renal, the gay little metropolis of Nevada. In the
nineteen twenties and thirties, Reno, Nevada became known as the
divorce capital of the world. The Immortal wedding marches of
Wagner and Mendelssohn become sadly distorted here in the arts
of the countless Brides and common Gold. Freed of their
marriagal obligations would completely disillusion and their dreams of conjugal felicity.
(03:51):
Why did so many people come to Reno for a divorce, Well,
for starters, it was not that easy to end the marriage,
and most other states at the time there were long
waiting periods in very few grounds for divorce. If you
wanted a divorce in New York, for example, you had
to prove that your spouse had committed adultery, which usually
meant hiring a private investigator. The migratory divorce trade or
(04:12):
people traveling to get a divorce, arose to give divorce
seekers an easier path. But the shift to easier divorces
was prompted by more than restrictive laws. There was a
lot of change going on in society. This is Mela Harman,
an expert on Nevada divorce and a former curator of
history at the Nevada Historical Society. Families were undergoing change.
(04:32):
There was talk about birth control, women's suffrage, all sorts
of changes in society. But by the twentieth century things
were really changing and it just happened to land on
Nevada's doorstep. It helped that Nevada put out a big
welcome mat one that at first was not designed with
(04:54):
divorce seekers in mind. The period of time required to
become a bona fide citizen, which meant you could file
a lawsuit, which a divorce is, was six months, which
was relatively short. And the reason it was short was
Nevada was this little, tiny state. It didn't have a
whole lot going on. It was trying to attract a population.
(05:15):
The state attracted not only new residents but also wealthy
outsiders who wanted a more convenient end to their inconvenient marriages.
And what really put Reno on the divorce map was
a single, unhappy couple, a very rich and well known one.
In nineteen o five, the wife of William Corey, who
was the president of the United States Steel Corporation, which
(05:38):
would sort of be the equivalent of somebody like Bill Gates.
His wife came here and divorced him. She claimed that
Corey had deserted her for a showgirl, and that one
really hit the newspapers and all of a sudden, people
are going, what Reno, What is this all about? And
by nineteen o nine, a national magazine declared Reno the
(05:58):
new Divorce head Corps DS of the United States. Nevada's
new cottage industry was now open for business. This was
an economic boon for Nevada, which had very little in
the way of industry. Its main economic drivers were agriculture
and mining, which were boom and bust industries. Then other
(06:19):
states like Idaho and Arkansas liberalized their divorce laws, and
soon Nevada was losing business. And then things went from
bad to worse with the Great Depression. So leaders in
Nevada took some bold action. The state legislatures legalized gambling
in n It also lowered the residency requirement for getting
a divorce in the state to just six weeks, by
(06:40):
far the shortest in the nation. No other state in
the United States was willing to go that far. To
remain competitive, Nevada also tried to make divorce as painless
as possible. The new law ensued that divorce complaints could
be done in general terms without the petitioner having to
air any detailed or potentially embarrassing grievances. All proceedings took
(07:02):
place behind closed doors and all records were sealed. Nine
legal grounds for divorce were recognized. They included impotency, adultery, desertion, neglect,
habitual drunkenness, and mental cruelty Mela Harmon again, So it's
pretty wide array of possibility. So if you couldn't fit
(07:23):
your issue into one of those, you probably didn't deserve
a divorce. The most popular ground was mental cruelty, which
could cover a host of things. Harmon came across one
woman who saw a divorce because her husband criticized her
driving too much. Thanks to such leniency, however, Nevada was
back in business. Oh well, I guess divorce ain't much
(07:43):
more in the matter of traveling, you check out of
the state of matrimony and land in the state of Nevada.
That's a taxi driver welcoming a divorce seeker. In the
ninety eight film Charlie Chan and Rena, people poured into
the city after the law was enacted. Some were forced
to camp on the city's river banks. Reno would become
home to more than one divorce lawyers and raking millions
(08:04):
of dollars per year, and by gosh, it's the one
business that even the depression don't hit. How you take
week for instance, or cotton? How much bother to the hotel? Oh,
you know, no matter how soon I get you there, lady,
it still takes six weeks. Well. The people who came
to Nevada for a divorce were about as diverse a
(08:26):
lot as you could imagine, from the very poor to
the very very ultra rich and everything in between. Most
of war seekers were women, and most arrived in Reno
by train. The Transcontinental Railroad went right through the city.
The journey itself was a life changing experience for many
(08:46):
Mela Harmon. I mean, you can imagine someone coming from
say the East coast, who had never been to the
West couldn't imagine the vastness of nothingness that exists. It
must have been quite a shock to the system. Locals
called the train the Divorcee Special. It arrived at Reno's
(09:08):
little yellow station. The divorce seekers were often met by
their Reno lawyers. This is Sandra McGee, co author of
The Divorce Seekers. And for six weeks these people spent
their money in Reno. They spent it on accommodations, on
food on hairdressers, laundry taxis. Many of them bought western wear,
(09:29):
which they probably never wore once they went home, and
of course they also drank and gambled. Quite a lot
could happen in six weeks, and the VADA made sure
that those undergoing what came to be known as a
renovation had no shortage of options for passing the top. Yes,
sir is the biggest little city in the world, and
by gosh, is the liveliest. I guess these divorces figured
(09:52):
that as long as they're changing partners, that might just
as well danced. Well. They didn't actually have much choice
the va the law demanded the divorce seekers waited out
the entire six week period in the state. So now
Reno had all these temporary residents in town who needed
a place to stay. The locals were more than willing
(10:15):
to accommodate. Again Mela Harmon, people would do all sorts
of things like turn their homes into boarding houses. There
were instances where people would rent out bedrooms in their
private homes, you know, moved the kid onto the couch
while someone was living in their bedroom. But for those
with a little more money to spend than to hankering
(10:35):
to try the true Western lifestyle. The destination of choice
was the dude ranch or divorce ranch as they soon
became known. Divorce ranches came in all sizes. The more
expensive ranches, like the Flying m E Ranch outside of Reno,
offered large, comfortable guest rooms in a modern ranch house.
The divorce ranches were very interesting because, obviously being a
(10:58):
ranch and being in a remote area, there were lots
of interesting outdoor things for people to do. Many of
them had swimming pools, um Most of them had a
resident cowboy or two or three who would be more
or less responsible for entertaining the divorce seekers staying there.
They'd organize horseback riding trips, fishing trips, excursions into town
(11:25):
for shopping. There was always a cocktail hour every evening.
And what went on after that, I can only imagine.
I'm Bill McGee, famous cowboy from Montana. I'm only joking
a little bit here, but I spent a lot of
time with the various guests at the Flying Mmy and
(11:51):
loved a lot of them. Bill McGee co wrote the
book The Divorce Seekers with his wife Sandra, who you
heard earlier. McGee is now in his nine and possibly
the last living Nevada dude wrangler. He came to Reno
and the Flying Emmy Ranch during the nineteen forties. A
lot of guys that were very good cowboys grew up
(12:12):
on a ranch and knew all about ranching and horses
and cattle. They could not cut it as a as
a dude wrangler, because, well, the dude dranger you have
to have all those cowboys kills, but you also had
to have the skills with people. Dude wranglers were part ambassador,
part tour guide, part writing instructor, part therapist, and sometimes
(12:35):
part casanova. Six weeks in a strange new place with
its hunky help was a period of liberation and exploration
for many of the female divorce seekers who came to
Reno and its ranches. One of them was the Lazy
Me Ranch. Its nickname was Layy Easy for the devoted
services of its staff. That's one reason dude wrangler was
(12:56):
considered the best job in Reno, something that Bill McGee
found doubt on his very first night at the Flying
Emmy Ranch. The first damn night on there, I had
taken this lady for a ride up to Little Valley.
She was nice. She was an attorney actually from New
York City, and I didn't think anything of it. The
(13:19):
Flying Emmy's longtime owner, Emmy would discouraged cowboys from fraternizing
with guests. But later that night, after dinner and I'm
over in my bunkhouse getting ready to go to bed,
this lady knocks on the door, and it was sort
of like, what am I gonna do? Now? Am I
gonna tell her she can't come in because Emmy's got
(13:40):
a rule? Hell no. The amorous encounter would not be
McGee's last. It happened with quite quite a frequency. Part
of my job was taking him into Carson City or
up to Virginia City or somewhere to drink after dinner
at night, and that was a part of my job.
I got to know all these ladies. It's part of
(14:00):
my job. Thanks to folks like Bill and diversions like writing, dancing, gambling,
and sightseeing. Most of the women found it easy to
forget their troubles in Reno. But of course, each divorce
seekers stay always came to an end at the same place.
(14:22):
The Washoe County Courthouse became known as the House of
Divide for obvious reasons. The divorce seekers were required to
appear in court at the end of their six week
waiting period. You didn't have to prove anything, uh, you
just told your story and then you'd get your decree
and typically it was over within five minutes. Each divorce
(14:45):
also had to promise the court that they intended to
live in Nevada for the foreseeable future. Nobody, including the judge,
really expected them to do so. Most took the first
train out of town, but some some had other business
at the courthouse. This is so drew McGhee again. In fact,
it wasn't at all unusual for a woman, mostly a woman,
(15:05):
or a man to get divorced, walk out into the
courtroom hall, walked down a few steps to another courtroom,
and get married, all within an hour. Many divorce seekers
who got remarried and reno brought their new spouse with them.
They were called spares. But reno was not just a
place to swap one spouse for another, or to kick
off your boots and have fun. So yes, some of
(15:28):
the divorces and reno were frivolous, but on the serious side,
the liberalization of divorce laws has impacted the way that
women and men divorced today. Nevada made divorce easier to get,
which was important for women because before then women were
(15:48):
sometimes referred to as shadows as property of their husbands. Consequently,
women had very little saying getting out of a bad marriage.
Mella Harmon says Reno helped many of its female visitors
at a new chapter in life. Reno's open attitude towards
divorce served to empower women by giving them freedom from
bad marriages. It also gave them a sense of self sufficiency,
(16:12):
and if you could come to Reno and survive and
support yourself, you could do it back home as well.
Reno launched Nevada as a divorce mecha during the nineteen
thirties and forties, but it was just the opening act
for what would prove to be a much bigger draw
in the state Las Vegas, the desert town where Marilyn
Monroe obtained the divorce she needed to pursue her film career.
(16:34):
Monroe and thousands of other women might never have descended
on the divorce courts of Vegas if it wasn't for
another movie star, one just as famous as Monroe. Up next,
we learn more about the high profile divorce that kick
started the Vegas divorce business and helped launch the fabulous
Las Vegas we know today the bright lights of the
(17:14):
world's greatest gambling city, Las Vegas, a city in the desert,
the city that never sleeps. It's hard to believe now,
but Las Vegas wasn't always the destination of choice in Nevada.
Melaharmin again well, Rena was the largest city in Nevada.
For many years, Las Vegas was a tiny stop on
(17:35):
a railroad and had nothing. Really, it was just a
small town. Las Vegas was hit particularly hard by the depression.
The building of the Hoover Dam in the nineteen thirties helped.
It brought millions of dollars and thousands of workers to
the area, but once those damn workers left, the town
fell in hard times again. Legalized gambling had not taken
(17:56):
off yet, and it was hard to get tourists to
come out to the middle of nowhere to enjoy the
desert town's two blocks of nightlife. But local leaders were
determined to turn Vegas his fortunes around, and the divorce
business seemed the best bet. Las Vegas was very interested
in um their economy and the divorce that they could
(18:17):
see obviously that it was lucrative for a reno. They
just couldn't figure out how to get things started. Everything changed, however,
when in ninety nine, Rha Langham Gable chose to go
to Las Vegas to divorce her movie star husband, Clark Gable.
Clark Gable, the thirty eight year old actor, was one
of the most recognizable men on the planet. He was
(18:38):
the king of Hollywood. He was also a terrible husband.
Clark Gable's second marriage was very tumultuous. This is Anne
Helen Peterson, a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed and the
author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood. They fought a ton
and uh fought publicly, and he cheated on her like crazy,
so that probably had something to do with it. Clark
(19:00):
Gable had married Ria Langham, a wealthy Texas divorce before
he was famous. They were an odd match. She was
seventeen years his senior and a homely socialite next to
her dashing husband. By nineteen thirty six, the still married
Gable started seeing his next wife, the famous actress Carol Lombard.
One night at a party in Hollywood, Gable and Lombard
(19:22):
ran into his wife, Rhea Hey, Lombard quipped as they
passed her by. Doesn't that old bag belong to you? Yeah?
Gable responded, and from the look in those eyes, I
figured that her asking price for a divorce just went
up by a hundred grand. Gable was probably right. Rio
was not about to grant him his freedom for nothing,
(19:43):
and so it took the salary that Gable received for
Gone with the Wind to be able to finally offer
a settlement to a second wife that would satisfy her
and force her to grant the divorce. Ria Gable packed
her bags for Nevada to get a quickie divorce, and
Clark Gable began filming Gone with the Wind, a movie
(20:03):
in which the subject of divorce often comes up. Scarlett,
I've been thinking things all that, and I really believe
it would be better for both of us if we
admitted we made a mistake and got a divorce. Yeah.
There's no point in our holding onto each other, is there.
Nevada was no stranger to divorcing celebrities, but lots of
There were lots of celebrities who came to Reno for divorces.
(20:25):
Some of them came for multiple divorces. Mela Harmon again.
Franklin Roosevelt's sons came to Reno for a divorce. Rita Hayworth,
who had a very famous divorce there, Um Maureen O'Hara,
Mary Pickford, William Powell, Rudy Valley, Lana Turner. I mean
that the list is probably endless. The steady stream of
(20:47):
celebrity visitors brought with them flocks of reporters, so there
was always a keen interest in who was coming to Reno,
and in fact, Reno had press offices from many many
UH newspapers across the United States. The New York Times,
for example, had an office in Reno. Ranch owners tried
(21:10):
to shield their celebrity guests from unwanted publicity, but few
divorces remained secret from the press's prying eyes. Now the Gables,
the Gables were really famous, which is why Ria planned
to keep a low profile in the lesser known divorce
hub of Las Vegas. So she went to Las Vegas
and her lawyer uh leaked her presence to the to
(21:33):
the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Las Vegas
Review Journal. Sandra McGee. Again, Rio wasn't very happy about that.
She wanted to have a very quiet six weeks in
Las Vegas, so a deal was struck. Las Vegas leaders
were desperate to promote the city's divorce trade, so they
(21:53):
came to an arrangement with Real Langham Gable. They would
keep the reason for her Las Vegas visit out of
the news until you left. In return, Maria agreed to
let the press follow her around and photograph her having
fun on Lake Mead boating, fishing, gambling, and at the
Apache Club. After the Gables divorce was finalized, the Las
(22:17):
Vegas papers released the story nationwide. That was sort of
the first high profile divorce for Las Vegas, and from there,
of course, they built on that. Las Vegas granted more
divorces the following year than it ever had before, and
pretty soon people were running, you might say, to Las
Vegas to get a divorce, because everyone wanted to get
(22:40):
a divorce where the Gables had gotten theirs. So the
story goes, the Las Vegas divorce trade expanded throughout the
nineteen forties. They caught up to Reno and then became
the divorce destination of choice, especially for residents of Southern California,
including Hollywood celebrities. Mela Harmon Las Vegas was a lot
closer to Los Angeles, US then was Reno. So when
(23:02):
Las Vegas became uh sort of on everybody's radar as
a divorce center, uh, it was obviously better for people
in Hollywood. And so seven years after Clark Gable's divorce
put Las Vegas on the map, a nineteen year old
Marilyn Monroe turned up there to divorce her first husband
in the hopes of becoming an actress. And once Monroe's
(23:24):
acting career takes off, her stardom and her nude body
will help launch Shugh Heffner's Playboy Empire, which will in
turn open the eyes of a young reporter named Gloria Steinham.
Could Monroe of Gondarino or somewhere else for that divorce, sure,
but she didn't, Hince. Our thread runs through fabulous Las
Vegas as well and onto Clark Gable, and it is
(23:45):
rather fitting that it does. Gable was the young Monroe's
favorite actor, and he meant much more to her than that.
Here's how Monroe put it during an interview, and Clark Gable,
I'm sure he won't mind if I say it. I
used to always think of him as my father. I
pretended that he was my father. I was just seven
(24:09):
years old and he was a very young man, and um,
I thought, that's how I want my father to look.
Monroe used to loiter outside his Hollywood home, hoping to
catch a glimpse of him, and she would one day
get to share the screen with her hero in a
film about Nevada divorce. That's right, The Misfits, and which
Monroe plays a washed up starlett and Clark Gable plays Yep,
(24:32):
a reno cowboy. Here's one of their scenes together. I
think you're the saddest girl I ever met. The first
man never said that. I'm usually told her happy. I am.
That's because you make a man feel happy. I don't
(24:52):
feel that way. I don't get discouraged, girl. You might
in real life, Clark Gable was just as persistent when
it came to his pursuit of women. Next episode, we
continue our thread with Clark Gable, the man whose divorce
(25:14):
helped launch Las Vegas. His marriage to real Langham was
just one of many obligations the movie star would abandon
or avoid in his rise to the top of Hollywood.
And it is with this dog that we say farewell
to Romantic Nevada. The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman
(25:43):
and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
thanks to Cindy Carpi and Tracy Moran and James Watkins.
This episode features music by Writers in the Sky with
a song called Nevada. Check us out at assy dot
com or on Twitter and face Spook. If you love surprising,
engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback
(26:05):
section of Ausi dot Com. That's o z Y dot
com and There's Why Nervata Ranches and ghost Town's Nervatto
Mountains with snow grounds, brodeos and railroads, wild, rugged land, greed,
night Sky, the star like silver Sand Nevada
Why Uzzy Media productions. You know, we just had the
revolutionary idea of working for a magazine we read. The
dream was relatively small. I just wanted to do a
magazine that I believed in and it would be successful
enough so I could keep doing it. And what came
afterwards I could not have imagined. That is what I
(00:24):
would like to accomplish. I would like to be a
good actress. Nineteen year old Norma Jean Doherty drove her
Ford coupe from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, Nevada, in
the summer of nineteen forty six. She went to obtain
a divorce from her first husband. He didn't support her
career and she had no chance of making it in
(00:46):
Hollywood as a married starlet. Six weeks later, with a
quickie Nevada divorce in hand, she was a free woman.
Norma Jean became Hollywood's Marilyn mone and years later she
returned to Nevada to start in a movie called The Misfits.
It was the last picture she completed before her death.
(01:08):
She played a woman who, like her younger self, comes
to Nevada for a divorce. Well, cheer up, I will.
I just hate to fight with anybody. When you win,
you lose, you know in your heart. The Misfits was
set against the backdrop of what some historians called the
Golden Age of divorce. In the center of that golden
(01:28):
age was the state of Nevada. Well is to Nevada.
Believe it state, the state, believe it state. You got money,
you want to gamble, Leave it here. You got a
wife you want to get rid of. Get rid of
her here, extra adam bomb. You don't need blow it
up here. Nobody's gonna mind. In the slightest Marilyn Monroe
was just one of thousands of women who traveled to
(01:49):
the leave it state to take advantage of its liberal
divorce laws between nineteen thirty and nineteen seventy. Without that
Nevada divorce, Monroe might never have become a star. Many
came to Nevada, like Monroe, obtained more than just a
decree from the courthouse. They won something far more valuable,
their freedom Rush Nevada. I'm Sean Braswell, and this is
(02:20):
the Thread. This season. On the Thread, we are traveling
through history again, turning the clock back one story at
a time to reveal the surprising series of events behind
a modern icon, the feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinham.
If you're joining us for the first time, we encourage
you to go back and listen to episode one. So far,
our journey has taken us through the lives of three
(02:42):
American legends. We've been to the Playboy Club in New
York City, where Gloria Steinham stent as an undercover bunny
helped ignite her career as a leader in the women's movement.
We peeked behind the walls of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's
mansion and empire to learn how he got his start.
And we ran with the wolves in Hollywood alongside the
(03:02):
unforgettable woman whose nude photograph helped launch Playboy, Marilyn Monroe.
Today we hear about the place that set Monroe on
her path to stardom. It is said that one out
of every five or six marriages and the United States
ends in divorce, and the mecca of the disillusion bride
(03:23):
is Renal, the gay little metropolis of Nevada. In the
nineteen twenties and thirties, Reno, Nevada became known as the
divorce capital of the world. The Immortal wedding marches of
Wagner and Mendelssohn become sadly distorted here in the arts
of the countless Brides and common Gold. Freed of their
marriagal obligations would completely disillusion and their dreams of conjugal felicity.
(03:51):
Why did so many people come to Reno for a divorce, Well,
for starters, it was not that easy to end the marriage,
and most other states at the time there were long
waiting periods in very few grounds for divorce. If you
wanted a divorce in New York, for example, you had
to prove that your spouse had committed adultery, which usually
meant hiring a private investigator. The migratory divorce trade or
(04:12):
people traveling to get a divorce, arose to give divorce
seekers an easier path. But the shift to easier divorces
was prompted by more than restrictive laws. There was a
lot of change going on in society. This is Mela Harman,
an expert on Nevada divorce and a former curator of
history at the Nevada Historical Society. Families were undergoing change.
(04:32):
There was talk about birth control, women's suffrage, all sorts
of changes in society. But by the twentieth century things
were really changing and it just happened to land on
Nevada's doorstep. It helped that Nevada put out a big
welcome mat one that at first was not designed with
(04:54):
divorce seekers in mind. The period of time required to
become a bona fide citizen, which meant you could file
a lawsuit, which a divorce is, was six months, which
was relatively short. And the reason it was short was
Nevada was this little, tiny state. It didn't have a
whole lot going on. It was trying to attract a population.
(05:15):
The state attracted not only new residents but also wealthy
outsiders who wanted a more convenient end to their inconvenient marriages.
And what really put Reno on the divorce map was
a single, unhappy couple, a very rich and well known one.
In nineteen o five, the wife of William Corey, who
was the president of the United States Steel Corporation, which
(05:38):
would sort of be the equivalent of somebody like Bill Gates.
His wife came here and divorced him. She claimed that
Corey had deserted her for a showgirl, and that one
really hit the newspapers and all of a sudden, people
are going, what Reno, What is this all about? And
by nineteen o nine, a national magazine declared Reno the
(05:58):
new Divorce head Corps DS of the United States. Nevada's
new cottage industry was now open for business. This was
an economic boon for Nevada, which had very little in
the way of industry. Its main economic drivers were agriculture
and mining, which were boom and bust industries. Then other
(06:19):
states like Idaho and Arkansas liberalized their divorce laws, and
soon Nevada was losing business. And then things went from
bad to worse with the Great Depression. So leaders in
Nevada took some bold action. The state legislatures legalized gambling
in n It also lowered the residency requirement for getting
a divorce in the state to just six weeks, by
(06:40):
far the shortest in the nation. No other state in
the United States was willing to go that far. To
remain competitive, Nevada also tried to make divorce as painless
as possible. The new law ensued that divorce complaints could
be done in general terms without the petitioner having to
air any detailed or potentially embarrassing grievances. All proceedings took
(07:02):
place behind closed doors and all records were sealed. Nine
legal grounds for divorce were recognized. They included impotency, adultery, desertion, neglect,
habitual drunkenness, and mental cruelty Mela Harmon again, So it's
pretty wide array of possibility. So if you couldn't fit
(07:23):
your issue into one of those, you probably didn't deserve
a divorce. The most popular ground was mental cruelty, which
could cover a host of things. Harmon came across one
woman who saw a divorce because her husband criticized her
driving too much. Thanks to such leniency, however, Nevada was
back in business. Oh well, I guess divorce ain't much
(07:43):
more in the matter of traveling, you check out of
the state of matrimony and land in the state of Nevada.
That's a taxi driver welcoming a divorce seeker. In the
ninety eight film Charlie Chan and Rena, people poured into
the city after the law was enacted. Some were forced
to camp on the city's river banks. Reno would become
home to more than one divorce lawyers and raking millions
(08:04):
of dollars per year, and by gosh, it's the one
business that even the depression don't hit. How you take
week for instance, or cotton? How much bother to the hotel? Oh,
you know, no matter how soon I get you there, lady,
it still takes six weeks. Well. The people who came
to Nevada for a divorce were about as diverse a
(08:26):
lot as you could imagine, from the very poor to
the very very ultra rich and everything in between. Most
of war seekers were women, and most arrived in Reno
by train. The Transcontinental Railroad went right through the city.
The journey itself was a life changing experience for many
(08:46):
Mela Harmon. I mean, you can imagine someone coming from
say the East coast, who had never been to the
West couldn't imagine the vastness of nothingness that exists. It
must have been quite a shock to the system. Locals
called the train the Divorcee Special. It arrived at Reno's
(09:08):
little yellow station. The divorce seekers were often met by
their Reno lawyers. This is Sandra McGee, co author of
The Divorce Seekers. And for six weeks these people spent
their money in Reno. They spent it on accommodations, on
food on hairdressers, laundry taxis. Many of them bought western wear,
(09:29):
which they probably never wore once they went home, and
of course they also drank and gambled. Quite a lot
could happen in six weeks, and the VADA made sure
that those undergoing what came to be known as a
renovation had no shortage of options for passing the top. Yes,
sir is the biggest little city in the world, and
by gosh, is the liveliest. I guess these divorces figured
(09:52):
that as long as they're changing partners, that might just
as well danced. Well. They didn't actually have much choice
the va the law demanded the divorce seekers waited out
the entire six week period in the state. So now
Reno had all these temporary residents in town who needed
a place to stay. The locals were more than willing
(10:15):
to accommodate. Again Mela Harmon, people would do all sorts
of things like turn their homes into boarding houses. There
were instances where people would rent out bedrooms in their
private homes, you know, moved the kid onto the couch
while someone was living in their bedroom. But for those
with a little more money to spend than to hankering
(10:35):
to try the true Western lifestyle. The destination of choice
was the dude ranch or divorce ranch as they soon
became known. Divorce ranches came in all sizes. The more
expensive ranches, like the Flying m E Ranch outside of Reno,
offered large, comfortable guest rooms in a modern ranch house.
The divorce ranches were very interesting because, obviously being a
(10:58):
ranch and being in a remote area, there were lots
of interesting outdoor things for people to do. Many of
them had swimming pools, um Most of them had a
resident cowboy or two or three who would be more
or less responsible for entertaining the divorce seekers staying there.
They'd organize horseback riding trips, fishing trips, excursions into town
(11:25):
for shopping. There was always a cocktail hour every evening.
And what went on after that, I can only imagine.
I'm Bill McGee, famous cowboy from Montana. I'm only joking
a little bit here, but I spent a lot of
time with the various guests at the Flying Mmy and
(11:51):
loved a lot of them. Bill McGee co wrote the
book The Divorce Seekers with his wife Sandra, who you
heard earlier. McGee is now in his nine and possibly
the last living Nevada dude wrangler. He came to Reno
and the Flying Emmy Ranch during the nineteen forties. A
lot of guys that were very good cowboys grew up
(12:12):
on a ranch and knew all about ranching and horses
and cattle. They could not cut it as a as
a dude wrangler, because, well, the dude dranger you have
to have all those cowboys kills, but you also had
to have the skills with people. Dude wranglers were part ambassador,
part tour guide, part writing instructor, part therapist, and sometimes
(12:35):
part casanova. Six weeks in a strange new place with
its hunky help was a period of liberation and exploration
for many of the female divorce seekers who came to
Reno and its ranches. One of them was the Lazy
Me Ranch. Its nickname was Layy Easy for the devoted
services of its staff. That's one reason dude wrangler was
(12:56):
considered the best job in Reno, something that Bill McGee
found doubt on his very first night at the Flying
Emmy Ranch. The first damn night on there, I had
taken this lady for a ride up to Little Valley.
She was nice. She was an attorney actually from New
York City, and I didn't think anything of it. The
(13:19):
Flying Emmy's longtime owner, Emmy would discouraged cowboys from fraternizing
with guests. But later that night, after dinner and I'm
over in my bunkhouse getting ready to go to bed,
this lady knocks on the door, and it was sort
of like, what am I gonna do? Now? Am I
gonna tell her she can't come in because Emmy's got
(13:40):
a rule? Hell no. The amorous encounter would not be
McGee's last. It happened with quite quite a frequency. Part
of my job was taking him into Carson City or
up to Virginia City or somewhere to drink after dinner
at night, and that was a part of my job.
I got to know all these ladies. It's part of
(14:00):
my job. Thanks to folks like Bill and diversions like writing, dancing, gambling,
and sightseeing. Most of the women found it easy to
forget their troubles in Reno. But of course, each divorce
seekers stay always came to an end at the same place.
(14:22):
The Washoe County Courthouse became known as the House of
Divide for obvious reasons. The divorce seekers were required to
appear in court at the end of their six week
waiting period. You didn't have to prove anything, uh, you
just told your story and then you'd get your decree
and typically it was over within five minutes. Each divorce
(14:45):
also had to promise the court that they intended to
live in Nevada for the foreseeable future. Nobody, including the judge,
really expected them to do so. Most took the first
train out of town, but some some had other business
at the courthouse. This is so drew McGhee again. In fact,
it wasn't at all unusual for a woman, mostly a woman,
(15:05):
or a man to get divorced, walk out into the
courtroom hall, walked down a few steps to another courtroom,
and get married, all within an hour. Many divorce seekers
who got remarried and reno brought their new spouse with them.
They were called spares. But reno was not just a
place to swap one spouse for another, or to kick
off your boots and have fun. So yes, some of
(15:28):
the divorces and reno were frivolous, but on the serious side,
the liberalization of divorce laws has impacted the way that
women and men divorced today. Nevada made divorce easier to get,
which was important for women because before then women were
(15:48):
sometimes referred to as shadows as property of their husbands. Consequently,
women had very little saying getting out of a bad marriage.
Mella Harmon says Reno helped many of its female visitors
at a new chapter in life. Reno's open attitude towards
divorce served to empower women by giving them freedom from
bad marriages. It also gave them a sense of self sufficiency,
(16:12):
and if you could come to Reno and survive and
support yourself, you could do it back home as well.
Reno launched Nevada as a divorce mecha during the nineteen
thirties and forties, but it was just the opening act
for what would prove to be a much bigger draw
in the state Las Vegas, the desert town where Marilyn
Monroe obtained the divorce she needed to pursue her film career.
(16:34):
Monroe and thousands of other women might never have descended
on the divorce courts of Vegas if it wasn't for
another movie star, one just as famous as Monroe. Up next,
we learn more about the high profile divorce that kick
started the Vegas divorce business and helped launch the fabulous
Las Vegas we know today the bright lights of the
(17:14):
world's greatest gambling city, Las Vegas, a city in the desert,
the city that never sleeps. It's hard to believe now,
but Las Vegas wasn't always the destination of choice in Nevada.
Melaharmin again well, Rena was the largest city in Nevada.
For many years, Las Vegas was a tiny stop on
(17:35):
a railroad and had nothing. Really, it was just a
small town. Las Vegas was hit particularly hard by the depression.
The building of the Hoover Dam in the nineteen thirties helped.
It brought millions of dollars and thousands of workers to
the area, but once those damn workers left, the town
fell in hard times again. Legalized gambling had not taken
(17:56):
off yet, and it was hard to get tourists to
come out to the middle of nowhere to enjoy the
desert town's two blocks of nightlife. But local leaders were
determined to turn Vegas his fortunes around, and the divorce
business seemed the best bet. Las Vegas was very interested
in um their economy and the divorce that they could
(18:17):
see obviously that it was lucrative for a reno. They
just couldn't figure out how to get things started. Everything changed, however,
when in ninety nine, Rha Langham Gable chose to go
to Las Vegas to divorce her movie star husband, Clark Gable.
Clark Gable, the thirty eight year old actor, was one
of the most recognizable men on the planet. He was
(18:38):
the king of Hollywood. He was also a terrible husband.
Clark Gable's second marriage was very tumultuous. This is Anne
Helen Peterson, a senior culture writer for BuzzFeed and the
author of Scandals of Classic Hollywood. They fought a ton
and uh fought publicly, and he cheated on her like crazy,
so that probably had something to do with it. Clark
(19:00):
Gable had married Ria Langham, a wealthy Texas divorce before
he was famous. They were an odd match. She was
seventeen years his senior and a homely socialite next to
her dashing husband. By nineteen thirty six, the still married
Gable started seeing his next wife, the famous actress Carol Lombard.
One night at a party in Hollywood, Gable and Lombard
(19:22):
ran into his wife, Rhea Hey, Lombard quipped as they
passed her by. Doesn't that old bag belong to you? Yeah?
Gable responded, and from the look in those eyes, I
figured that her asking price for a divorce just went
up by a hundred grand. Gable was probably right. Rio
was not about to grant him his freedom for nothing,
(19:43):
and so it took the salary that Gable received for
Gone with the Wind to be able to finally offer
a settlement to a second wife that would satisfy her
and force her to grant the divorce. Ria Gable packed
her bags for Nevada to get a quickie divorce, and
Clark Gable began filming Gone with the Wind, a movie
(20:03):
in which the subject of divorce often comes up. Scarlett,
I've been thinking things all that, and I really believe
it would be better for both of us if we
admitted we made a mistake and got a divorce. Yeah.
There's no point in our holding onto each other, is there.
Nevada was no stranger to divorcing celebrities, but lots of
There were lots of celebrities who came to Reno for divorces.
(20:25):
Some of them came for multiple divorces. Mela Harmon again.
Franklin Roosevelt's sons came to Reno for a divorce. Rita Hayworth,
who had a very famous divorce there, Um Maureen O'Hara,
Mary Pickford, William Powell, Rudy Valley, Lana Turner. I mean
that the list is probably endless. The steady stream of
(20:47):
celebrity visitors brought with them flocks of reporters, so there
was always a keen interest in who was coming to Reno,
and in fact, Reno had press offices from many many
UH newspapers across the United States. The New York Times,
for example, had an office in Reno. Ranch owners tried
(21:10):
to shield their celebrity guests from unwanted publicity, but few
divorces remained secret from the press's prying eyes. Now the Gables,
the Gables were really famous, which is why Ria planned
to keep a low profile in the lesser known divorce
hub of Las Vegas. So she went to Las Vegas
and her lawyer uh leaked her presence to the to
(21:33):
the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce and the Las Vegas
Review Journal. Sandra McGee. Again, Rio wasn't very happy about that.
She wanted to have a very quiet six weeks in
Las Vegas, so a deal was struck. Las Vegas leaders
were desperate to promote the city's divorce trade, so they
(21:53):
came to an arrangement with Real Langham Gable. They would
keep the reason for her Las Vegas visit out of
the news until you left. In return, Maria agreed to
let the press follow her around and photograph her having
fun on Lake Mead boating, fishing, gambling, and at the
Apache Club. After the Gables divorce was finalized, the Las
(22:17):
Vegas papers released the story nationwide. That was sort of
the first high profile divorce for Las Vegas, and from there,
of course, they built on that. Las Vegas granted more
divorces the following year than it ever had before, and
pretty soon people were running, you might say, to Las
Vegas to get a divorce, because everyone wanted to get
(22:40):
a divorce where the Gables had gotten theirs. So the
story goes, the Las Vegas divorce trade expanded throughout the
nineteen forties. They caught up to Reno and then became
the divorce destination of choice, especially for residents of Southern California,
including Hollywood celebrities. Mela Harmon Las Vegas was a lot
closer to Los Angeles, US then was Reno. So when
(23:02):
Las Vegas became uh sort of on everybody's radar as
a divorce center, uh, it was obviously better for people
in Hollywood. And so seven years after Clark Gable's divorce
put Las Vegas on the map, a nineteen year old
Marilyn Monroe turned up there to divorce her first husband
in the hopes of becoming an actress. And once Monroe's
(23:24):
acting career takes off, her stardom and her nude body
will help launch Shugh Heffner's Playboy Empire, which will in
turn open the eyes of a young reporter named Gloria Steinham.
Could Monroe of Gondarino or somewhere else for that divorce, sure,
but she didn't, Hince. Our thread runs through fabulous Las
Vegas as well and onto Clark Gable, and it is
(23:45):
rather fitting that it does. Gable was the young Monroe's
favorite actor, and he meant much more to her than that.
Here's how Monroe put it during an interview, and Clark Gable,
I'm sure he won't mind if I say it. I
used to always think of him as my father. I
pretended that he was my father. I was just seven
(24:09):
years old and he was a very young man, and um,
I thought, that's how I want my father to look.
Monroe used to loiter outside his Hollywood home, hoping to
catch a glimpse of him, and she would one day
get to share the screen with her hero in a
film about Nevada divorce. That's right, The Misfits, and which
Monroe plays a washed up starlett and Clark Gable plays Yep,
(24:32):
a reno cowboy. Here's one of their scenes together. I
think you're the saddest girl I ever met. The first
man never said that. I'm usually told her happy. I am.
That's because you make a man feel happy. I don't
(24:52):
feel that way. I don't get discouraged, girl. You might
in real life, Clark Gable was just as persistent when
it came to his pursuit of women. Next episode, we
continue our thread with Clark Gable, the man whose divorce
(25:14):
helped launch Las Vegas. His marriage to real Langham was
just one of many obligations the movie star would abandon
or avoid in his rise to the top of Hollywood.
And it is with this dog that we say farewell
to Romantic Nevada. The Threat is produced by Libby Coleman
(25:43):
and me Sean Braswell. Chris Hoff engineered our show special
thanks to Cindy Carpi and Tracy Moran and James Watkins.
This episode features music by Writers in the Sky with
a song called Nevada. Check us out at assy dot
com or on Twitter and face Spook. If you love surprising,
engaging stories from history, look no further than the flashback
(26:05):
section of Ausi dot Com. That's o z Y dot
com and There's Why Nervata Ranches and ghost Town's Nervatto
Mountains with snow grounds, brodeos and railroads, wild, rugged land, greed,
night Sky, the star like silver Sand Nevada
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