Evelyn McHale

Evelyn McHale

Photojournalism as Iconography

Before 10:30 in the morning, May 1, 1947, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale bought a ticket to the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building. Ten minutes later patrolman John Morrissey, who was directing traffic below, noticed a white scarf floating from the top floor of the building then heard a crash. Evelyn stepped out of the parapet, jumped, cleared the setbacks and landed on the roof of a United Nations limousine parked on 34th Street, about 200 hundred feet west of Fifth Avenue. Robert Wiles, a cabbie and “student of photography” saw the commotion and rushed across the street where, standing on the sidewalk just a few feet from the car, he took his
iconic photo said Evelyn just four minutes after his death.

Still clutching her pearl necklace with her gloved hand, Evelyn looked calm and composed—like she was just sleeping. Around him, however, the shattered glass and torn sheet metal of the car’s roof showed how brutal his 1040-foot jump had been. Wiles, perhaps unintentionally, managed to capture a picture of grace and beauty as well as horror and death. The image remains as frightening and affecting as it was some 60 years ago.

Wiles’ photo was first published as “Picture of the Week” on May 12, 1947.
ISSUES on
life magazine It has been reprinted in many photo annuals and more Best in Life anthologies and eventually transcended reportage to become a pop culture icon. Evelyn’s photography is inspired by everything from Andy Warhol
silkscreens in fashion layouts of album covers to Taylor Swift
videos.

Of course Evelyn never wanted to be an icon (in fact the idea probably scared her), she was just a young woman who was suicidal. The internet is full of speculations on her life and death, but what do we really know about this woman? Who is Evelyn really?

I am.

Evelyn Francis McHale was born on September 20, 1923 in Berkeley, California. He was the sixth of seven children of Vincent and Helen (Smith, then briefly Patterson) McHale. Vincent was a banker and in 1930 he accepted a position as a bond examiner for the Federal Farm Loan Board and moved the family to Washington, DC Later he accepted a job in New York City and moved the family to Tuckahoe, New York where Evelyn attended. Eastchester High School. As a junior, he said The Memory, school yearbook, that his favorite movie is The Girl of the Golden West.

If the constant moving is not difficult for a teenager, Evelyn also suffers from an unstable family life. His mother apparently suffered from depression—an illness that probably went undiagnosed, especially in treatment in the 1930s. This led to marital troubles and in 1940 Vincent left the family and moved to St. Louis where he became a stock broker. The couple divorced and Vincent was awarded custody of the minor children. Helen returned to California and Evelyn rejoined her father in St. Louis where he attended Normandy High School during his senior year. According to Saga, school yearbook, Evelyn “(is) quiet at times, but she (can) have an intelligent conversation about almost any subject.”

After her graduation, Ebby, as she was known to the family, joined the Women’s Army Corps, where “office machine operator” was listed as her occupation. He spent the war at Jefferson Barracks, near St. Apparently the military service did not agree with him; it is reported that after his service he burned his uniform.

In late 1944 he moved with his brother and sister-in-law to Baldwin, Long Island and worked as a bookkeeper for an engraving company in lower Manhattan. During a New Year’s Eve party in 1945 where he was celebrating his discharge he met another Baldwin resident, Barry Rhodes, an ex-Army navigator studying engineering under the GI Bill at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. They dated, married and planned a June, 1947 wedding at Barry’s brothers’ home in Troy, New York.

But things are not entirely as they thought. Evelyn inherited her mother’s depression. In the summer of 1946 Perry, Barry’s brother, got married and Evelyn was a bridesmaid. After the wedding she tore her dress and said “I don’t want to see this again.” Barry later told reporters that “She was (worried) for a silly reason because she was afraid she wasn’t good enough to be my wife. I thought I talked her out of that silly idea.”

II.

On April 30, 1947, Evelyn visited Barry in Easton, possibly to celebrate his 24th birthday. “She always expressed fear of not being a good wife,” Barry told reporters, “(but) when I kissed her goodbye she was as happy and normal as any woman about to get married.” Evelyn boarded the train back to New York at seven o’clock in the morning, May 1. “I don’t know what his last words were to me, he had to run for the train,” she said.

Evelyn arrived at Penn Station around nine in the morning then crossed the street to the Governor Clinton Hotel where she wrote a suicide note on their stationary. He then walked two blocks east where, just before 10:30 a.m., he bought a ticket to the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

After Evelyn jumped and landed on the roof of a Cadillac parked on 34th street, people began to gather around the scene. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported, “Morning shoppers on Fifth Avenue panicked.” That’s when Robert Wiles hurried across the street to take his picture. Although Wiles’ photo is the best remembered, several other photos taken from the Empire State Building or the building across the street also made it to the wire services:

Detective Frank Murray later finds his tan (or maybe gray—reports vary) cloth neatly folded against the wall of the observation deck, a brown make-up kit full of family photos and a black pocketbook with his suicide note that read:

“I don’t want anyone inside or outside my family to see any part of me. Can you destroy my body by burning? I am begging you and my family — do not serve me or wish for me.
My fiance asked me to marry him last June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anyone. He’s better off without me. Say my father, I have a lot of passion for my mother.”

His body was identified by his sister Helen Brenner and, according to his wishes, he was cremated. There is no grave.

III.

The construction of the Empire State Building began in the spring of 1930 and even before it was finished the first person jumped to their death. The building, like the Golden Gate Bridge—built seven years later—became a magnet for those contemplating suicide. Evelyn is the 12th person to jump from the building and the sixth to clear all setbacks. He was one of five people in a three-week period who attempted suicide from the observation deck. In response a 10-foot wire mesh fence was installed and guards were trained to spot potential jumpers. Unfortunately, after the barrier was completed people just jumped from other parts of the building, mostly from office windows.

Barry became an engineer and eventually moved south. He died in Melbourne, Florida on October 9, 2007 at the age of 86. He never married.

Robert Wiles has not published another photo.

—October 8, 2009. Updated July 28, 2017. Photography

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