Only a few months after she signed a contract with Fox Studios, Joan Collins landed the coveted role of Evelyn Nesbit, in a story adapted from a notorious society murder in 1906, which had been billed 'the trial of the century'. Although the picture makes Ray Milland's Stanford White into a paragon of virtue (rather than a serial abuser), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing reminds viewers that Evelyn Nesbit survived the men who dragged her name through the mud. I share two brief excerpts from Nesbit's memoir 'Prodigal Days' (1934).