Murderers, bigamists, suffragettes, and spies - The Titanic’s passenger list bursts with intrigue, not least among them US actress Dorothy Gibson who survived the shipwreck and was later accused of being a spy. SPYSCAPE recounts Dorothy Gibson’s incredible story.
‍

The sinking of The Titanic

Alongside Mary Pickford, Dorothy Gibson was Hollywood’s highest-paid actress in the early 1900s, so the 22-year-old decided to spend some of her good fortune in 1912 touring Italy for six weeks.

The studio urgently recalled her, however, which is how the starlet found herself seated on The Titanic’s upper deck playing bridge in the moonlight on April 14, 1912. As the clock ticked closer to midnight, Dorothy Gibson’s companion walked the actress back to her stateroom and they heard a peculiar crunching sound. It later proved to be an iceberg ripping open the side of the ship.

“As we turned to come toward the stern of the ship, we found ourselves, to our great surprise, walking uphill,” she told Moving Picture News. “Inside we found the steward, who assured us that nothing was the matter.”

Leaning over the rail, Dorothy saw water on the deck below. Without delay, she returned to her room and brought her mother back on deck in time to hear the cry of “All passengers to the life-preservers!” Within minutes, Dorothy Gibson was one of 26 passengers huddled in Lifeboat 2 looking back at the hull of The Titanic from the freezing cold Northern Atlantic. Their next few hours would be spent trying desperately to fix a faulty plug that allowed water to stream into the lifeboat. 

“We were about a mile from The Titanic when she sank, but I will never forget the terrible cry that rang out from people who were thrown in the sea and others who were afraid for their loved ones,” Gibson recalled. By 4 am, Dorothy Gibson and her mother were boarding the RMS Carpathia rescue ship, leaving behind some 1,500 passengers who died that evening. 

While she was saved from The Titanic, in many ways, Dorothy’s real problems were only just beginning. 

‍

‍

‍

New York, New York

Dorothy Gibson returned to Manhattan and her high-society life, starring in a sensationalized movie - Saved From The Titanic - just a month after the tragedy. She played herself, wearing the same white silk evening dress she had on that fateful evening. Is it any wonder Dorothy collapsed, crying in front of the crew?

“Perhaps she did feel some guilt, a sense of shame that she had survived,” Andrew Wilson writes in Shadow of the Titanic. “She had not only listened to the screams of 1,500 or so fellow passengers as they struggled in the freezing water but, while in the lifeboat, she had colluded in the refusal to go back to rescue the dying. She was indeed Saved from The Titanic, but, in some ways, she was also damned.”

Despite playing the ingenue, Dorothy Gibson was already a divorcee at the time and was carrying on a torrid affair with married movie tycoon Jules Brulatour, co-founder of Universal Pictures. Their affair was exposed a year after The Titanic disaster when Dorothy, driving Brulatour's sports car in New York, struck and killed a pedestrian. The court case and publicity led Brulatour to divorce his wife and marry Gibson, but it would be another brief liaison for the young actress.

Dorothy Gibson, now Dorothy Brulatour, escaped her messy divorce and fled to Europe with $10,000 a year in alimony, enough to live a comfortable Bohemian life in Paris during the Roaring Twenties. Dorothy’s mother, Pauline Boesen, joined her in Europe, eventually settling in Italy. Pauline, who was of German and Dutch descent, was bitter about the US treatment of German nationals during WWI and was happy to leave America behind. She was also, by all accounts, an admirer of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his Fascist politics.

‍

Europe and the rise of Fascism 

By 1930, Dorothy Brulatour had become, as one French society columnist wrote, “one of the smartest women arriving in the capital for the summer season”. She attended fashion shows with Diane de Rothschild and mingled with royalty, but there was an uneasy undercurrent beneath the frivolity. While Dorothy may not have shared her mother’s strong anti-Semitic and Fascist views, she supported Pauline’s extremist politics, according to Finding Dorothy author Randy Bryan Bigham.

“Is it possible Dorothy had forsaken America for the Fascist opinions of her mother and a new circle of dangerous friends? Dorothy could be highly susceptible,”  Bigham wrote. “It may never be known if there was a sinister dimension to her views, but her loyalties had obviously changed.” 

As WWII neared, Pauline began publicly commenting on her hatred of Jews and sympathy with Hitler. At one point, she was cited for ‘security violations’ and threatened with deportation.

Dorothy’s gracious life, meanwhile, allowed the actress to continue traveling and socializing in the right-wing subculture in which she now moved. Phillip Gowan, who researched Dorothy for an article in the British Titanic Society journal, described the actress as being “involved with a parade of personalities, including diplomats of European countries not entirely friendly with the United States”.

Dorothy was by this time also having an affair with Antonio Ramos, press attaché to the Spanish Embassy in Paris, which gave her access to state visits, embassy banquets, and - some speculate - espionage.

‍

‍

A life of intrigue‍

While it has never been firmly established to what extent Dorothy Gibson was involved in intelligence work for France and the Allies, or for the Germans, it is not a stretch to imagine the actress as an American Mata Hari, Bigham writes. Dorothy was constantly moving back and forth between her home in France, her mother’s home in Florence, Italy, and to Spain where her lover reported to the government. 

By September 1943, Italy - resentful of Hitler - laid down its arms and declared itself in support of the Allies but pockets of Nazis remained throughout the country. Movie stars Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida, who were allegedly recruiting spies for the Nazis, were executed - shot in the street by partisans because of their links with Fascism.

Dorothy, living in Italy with her mother in 1944, was fearful. She’d been informed by the Questura (Italian police) that she was being moved to the Fossoli Concentration Camp as an ‘undesirable’. Faced with imprisonment, Dorothy made a run for the Swiss border but was captured. She was jailed in Milan and several other prisons. While in Italy's San Vittore Prison, Dorothy and two other inmates devised a plan to escape with the help of a mysterious accomplice named 'Dr. Ugo'.

‍

‍Titanic: the escape

‍While it is difficult to separate fact from Hollywood fiction, Dorothy maintained that her escape was linked to her cover story as the financier of a spy network, according to the biography Finding Dorothy: “To this day, I do not know what all his [Dr. Ugo’s] lies were, but something to the effect that a General Zambone, who escaped with us, and Montanelli were to be spies and I was to help with money.”

Dorothy did manage to escape from her Italian prison, but she was detained by the US Vice-Consul in Switzerland on suspicion of being a real spy. In the end, however, Dorothy was found incapable of being involved in espionage because “the accused hardly seems bright enough to be useful in such a capacity”. Perhaps that is the moment Dorothy used her clever nature and survival instincts to her greatest advantage, however.

The actress rushed back to Paris and her apartment in the Hotel Ritz, free at last. Her good fortune would not last long, however. Dorothy Gibson died alone in February 1946 from a heart attack. She was buried in Saint Germain-en-Laye at the age of 56.