the one thing about floyd collins (musical) that does disappoint me somewhat is that there aren’t very many women in it. i don’t really blame the writers for that, since they were kind of hamstrung by the historical fact of [there were a lot of men involved in this rescue effort & attendant media circus and not a lot of women] and made a heroic effort to whittle down the number of male roles and expand the few female roles as much as possible (if you read trapped!, it becomes kind of hilarious that nellie gets 2.5 songs to johnnie gerald’s Not In This Musical Or Even Remotely Acknowledged In It), but it is still a bit of a letdown.
of course, this raises the question of “were there any other women the writers could have included without fully making someone up,” and so far i think the best choice is anita mccormick blaine, a philanthropist and progressive activist from chicago who sent dr. hazlett to sand cave in hopes of helping floyd. (many sources call her “mrs. emmons blaine” in the typical sexist fashion of the time, which is especially unfair given that mr. emmons blaine, her husband, died in 1892 and she outlived him by about sixty years and was ultimately far more influential than he ever was.) here’s the only mention of her in trapped!:
Doctors who were present at the site also claimed that Floyd could still be alive and, if he could maneuver his mouth to catch dripping ground water, might survive for several more days. One of those holding this opinion was Dr. William H. Hazlett who had been at Sand Cave since Wednesday afternoon. A surgeon on the staff of St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago, he had first become interested in the Floyd Collins tragedy when a patient of his, Mrs. Emmons Blaine, offered to send him with all expenses paid to Cave City. Mrs. Blaine, wife of a prominent Chicago lawyer, was also the daughter of the inventor of the reaper, Cyrus McCormick, and a daughter-in-law of the well-known politician James G. Blaine. She had read of the need for a doctor to amputate Collins’s leg and wanted to supply her own physician.
several papers of the time mentioned anita in passing as “the wealthy woman from chicago who sent dr. hazlett to sand cave” (or variations thereof), but the daily worker, a leftist newspaper of the time, also mentioned that she had met floyd before in his work as a cave guide:
“Floyd Collins died of exhaustion, thirst, starvation and cold.”
This was the opinion Dr. William H. Hazlett, the only medical man to view the body of the Sand Cave explorer after it had been found gave today on his return to Chicago.
“Collins was doomed after the original cave-in of the natural passageway,” Dr. Hazlett said. “Even if it had been possible for me or another surgeon to have reached him, it would not have been possible to save him, in my opinion.
“Collins was held in such a way that even when I did get down into the passage, I could reach only his face and chest, it would have been impossible to have freed him by amputation.”
Dr. Hazlett’s trip to the cave was financed by Mrs. Emmons Blaine for whom Collins had once acted as a guide.
i recently checked out the life and death of floyd collins, homer’s biography of floyd, and it backs this story up with more detail about anita and floyd’s meeting (and also gets anita’s father’s name totally wrong somehow):
Floyd, like Edmund Turner, found cave business much rougher than cave exploring. But he was a shrewd businessman, and his bank account showed it. I do not recall anyone getting the best of him in a deal. He found one compensation for the difficulties of the business—meeting people. Each tourist was an interesting individual to him, a potential friend. This, and his enthusiasm about the cave, made him a very good guide. Many guides become bored and deliver their spiel like a phonograph record. Floyd spoke in earnest. He wanted people to appreciate the cave as he did, and he took their praises of his discovery as personal compliments. One of the friends Floyd made was Mrs. Emmons Blaine of Chicago, daughter of John McCormack. She sent Floyd a book on King Tut’s tomb. He had been following the accounts of that discovery and had mentioned it to her when she visited Crystal Cave. Mrs. Blaine did not forget Floyd, and she sent help to him when he was trapped in Sand Cave.
and an explanation of how anita came to offer her help when floyd was trapped:
On Sunday afternoon, Mrs. Emmons Blaine, whom Floyd had guided through Crystal Cave the previous summer, called from Chicago asking to speak to one of the Collinses. Like many other tourists, she had taken a liking to Floyd. I talked to her over the telephone at Bee Doyle’s house. She asked if there was any way that she could help, if there was anything we needed for the rescue that she might send. “What we need is some daredevils to go down there and help get Floyd out,” I said.
She told me that she would send a doctor to the scene to give any medical assistance that might be needed. Doctor William Hazlett arrived in Cave City by plane the next day.
i don’t think it would have been dramaturgically feasible to write anita into the musical, given that she stayed in chicago the whole time, but she could have at least been mentioned as “the woman who sent dr. hazlett to help floyd because she remembered that time floyd showed her around crystal cave.” (though the musical kind of skirts around the existence of crystal cave in its effort to play up sand cave as Floyd’s One Chance To End His Losing Streak And Achieve Glory, so that might have been a reason not to mention her.) in any case, she’s an interesting historical figure and it’s sweet to know that she was motivated not only by a general sense of altruism (which she did have — she gave huge amounts of money to a wide range of causes and individuals during her life) but by personally knowing and liking floyd.
