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After her marriage to Frederic McLaughlin,Irene ramped up her animal rights activities, denouncing cruelty at horse and dog shows, visiting animal shelters, speaking at the Maryland and New York Anti-Vivisection societies. She resigned in tears from the Humane Society in 930 after steamrolling over the gentler feelings of longtime members and demanding that those who were “no longer active and did not make material contributions ” take their names off the letterhead. At which, as one paper phrased it, “the ladies became unladylike, several arose and said harsh things about Mrs. McLaughlin.” Not used to being second-guessed and thwarted, Irene resigned from the group and stormed out in a fury. In September 93, she demanded the arrest of pig-farming neighbor William Schroeder on three charges of cruelty to his animals and for “maintaining a nuisance.” Schroeder, in turn, filed false-arrest charges to the tune of $0,000 against her. The case dragged out for two years before being decided in Irene’s favor. The only notable outcome of the case was the newspaper headline it generated: “Irene Castle in Pig Suit.” No one was safe from Irene’s righteous fury, not even macho writer Ernest Hemingway. Director Raoul Walsh recalled attending a party at San Simeon in the 930s, where William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies had gathered such political, performing, and literary stars as Winston Churchill, Somerset Maugham, J. Edgar Hoover, Will Rogers, and John Barrymore. At one point in the evening, Hemingway began regaling the guests with tales of bullfighting, one of his favorite manly sports.There was little left but a Hemingway-shaped spot on the floor when Irene got through with him.She described a bullfight she had witnessed wherein the bull had been stabbed and chased to the point of collapse: “Then your brave matador, Mr. Hemingway, strutted around like a prima donna, approached the exhausted animal, and killed the beast with one thrust of his ORPHANS OF THE STORM CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE 235 sword. If you call that a sport, you had better stop drinking Spanish brandy .” Several guests, and Hearst, applauded Irene’s outburst. “Mother would have agreed with PETA,” says William McLaughlin, although 930s photos show her holding puppies and speaking out for animal rights while wrapped in furs and wearing leather gloves.“Her view was you’ve got to be extreme, because your opposition is extreme. Maybe you can settle on a middle ground, but if you start on a middle ground, you’re going to end up over-compromising on their side.” In late 927, Irene announced plans to open a sanctuary for stray dogs in the Chicago area. Citing seventeen thousand dogs killed in Chicago each year for lack of holding space, she hoped that “we will eventually be able to place all of them.” Orphans of the Storm—named for the 92 French Revolution thriller starring the Gish sisters—opened in April 928, to the delight of the local media (“Kennel for Tramp Dogs Opens,” headlined the Chicago Daily News). Disaster struck in February 930, when an early morning fire, fanned by a brisk wind, destroyed two of the shelter’s kennels, the business office, the hay barn, and the cookhouse. Irene collapsed when she received word, then rushed to the site, where at least eighty-three dogs had perished. She demanded an investigation—claming to have received threatening letters —but no cause was determined.The shelter was rebuilt. Orphans of the Storm still exists in Deerfield, Illinois, and now offers cats as well as dogs for adoption.“The most important activity at Orphans of the Storm is the adoption process,” says the organization’s Web site, www.orphansofthestorm.org. “Orphans is the place where previously unwanted homeless dogs and cats are united with their new families. . . . We operate one of the country’s oldest and largest animal shelters, offering refuge and rehabilitation, finding warm and loving adoptive homes for thousands of stray and abandoned dogs and cats every year.” Irene’s family, friends, and servants often had to bear the brunt of her pet mania—especially the monkeys. Her son tells of having to carry Puddin ’ Head Jones, Irene’s woolly monkey, when the three of them went for walks. “The damn little monkey would suffer from diarrhea, and of course she knew this,which is why I had to be the one holding him!”McLaughlin recalls Puddin’also disrupted dinner parties: twelve...

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