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Some of my best friends are Leos. I'm sending the August newsletter a few days early to shine the spotlight on fellow Leo, the forever glamorous and young Marilu Norden, who turns 99 on July 28. She lived through the good old, bad old days when Reno was "Divorce Capital of the World". This is her story.
RENO, 1951. Singer/dancer Mary Lou Jones descends from an airplane at Hubbard Field (now Reno-Tahoe International Airport) with her young son, Philip. She's come from Connecticut to begin her six-week residency on the Pyramid Lake Ranch, 37 miles north of Reno in a location that was as remote then as it is today.
The divorce ranch is managed by the cowboy-and-lady couple, Harry and Joan Drackert. Harry is a gruff-around-the-edges rodeo cowboy from Pony, Montana, and Joan is a former Powers model from New York. Theirs is a story for another time.
After getting her divorce, Mary Lou moves to Denver and then Los Angeles to pursue her career. In 1957, she returns to Reno to perform as a singer at the Hotel Riverside under her professional name, Marilu Kent. In the caption to the above photo she writes, "In my show biz days, this was the costume I wore as lead singer in the Riverside showroom in Reno. I sang Blues in the Night, strolling a proscenium stage as eight chorus girls danced behind me.”
In 1959, Marilu Kent marries psychologist Tom Norden and is active as a singer and actress in the San Diego area for many years.
FAST FORWARD TO SCOTTSDALE, 2012. Marilu contacts Bill and me. She's read Bill's memoir, The Divorce Seekers, and she wants to tell us about her book, Unbridled - A Tale of a Divorce Ranch, a fictionalized account of her time on the Pyramid Lake Ranch.
Marilu and most of her family live in Scottsdale, AZ, and Bill and I suggest we meet her there. I pick the historic Hotel Valley Ho. The hotel opened in 1956 and was a popular destination for Hollywood – Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner had their wedding reception there.
Decorated in a fifties palette of turquoise, yellow, orange, and avocado green, the hotel sets the stage for Marilu and Bill to travel back in time. Theirs is a special meeting and her family and I know it. After all, how many people who lived through the Nevada divorce ranch era were still with us to tell their stories?
Lucky for us, Marilu Norden and Bill McGee took the time to write their stories. Their respective books are among the very few written by a former divorce seeker and a former divorce ranch wrangler.
I would've loved to experience a bit of those "frothy" days of the Nevada divorce ranches—when the East Coast elite met the Wild West. Picture it: Martinis and Manhattans, dinner, dancing and a show, and oh, there were those cowboys. L'amour, l'amour.
Best, Sandra
Co-author of The Divorce Seekers - The Intimate True Story of a Nevada Divorce Ranch Wrangler
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