Mary McDougal Axelson (August 15, 1891-November 28, 1973)

“Oklahoma Mary” Part One: Life Begins

Mary Carmack McDougal was born on August 15, 1891. Mary is one of the daughters of one of Sapulpa’s first mayors, Daniel Archibald McDougal, “In early years [of the 20th] century, the ‘Home Seekers Excursion’ train departed twice a month from the deep South…One of its scheduled stops was Sapulpa, Indian Territory…On a day in June 1904, Myrtle Archer McDougal, and her three young daughters, Jennie Myrtle, Mary, and Violet, disembarked from the passenger car…waiting eagerly for his family was D.A. McDougal.

The family coming to Sapulpa, to Indian Territory, would make history.

“[In 1903, D.A.] had journeyed west to Sapulpa, where he had a wooden sign, ‘attorney-at-law’ in front of a Main St office…reunited with his family in anew from a shabby cottage on Sapulpa’s South Elm St.*’”

*Note: The McDougals lived at 217 S Elm St; the residence is long gone, however.

D.A. moved to Sapulpa for an opportunity. D.A. was mayor from 1908 to 1910. He was an attorney and judge for our district. “Attorney McDougal won his case for the Clantons, a Muscogee Creek family who were petitioning to have their name registered on the Creek Tribal rolls in order to be eligible for a share of the Native lands then being distributed. He accepted forty acres of land in lieu of a fee and acting on a ‘hunch’ hired a wild-cat well dug on his new land…he found himself an oil millionaire.”

Mary would later write in her book about her father, Thirteenth Child: the Store of D.A. McDougal, “We waited - forever it seemed. I knew I would die if something didn’t happen soon. Then suddenly there was a roaring and the men yelled and scattered in every direction, running for their lives. And there it came out of the pipe at the side - black oil glittering in the slanting sun! Now we had oil, we wouldn’t have to scrimp and do without anymore. Colle! Fudge parties! Midnight feasts! Kodaks and chafing dishes! Kansas City! Colorado, Niagara Falls, maybe! Even New York! And books - all we wanted!”

After the money came in, the family moved to what Mary referred to as “the 13 room house in Sapulpa that oil bought.” Mary wrote, “oil bought us one of the largest and most imposing homes in Sapulpa - on nearby South Oak Street…we built on to this house until it soon had thirteen rooms - dad’s lucky number.*”

*Note: The big house was located at 216 S Oak St.

Myrtle McDougal, like her husband, became a leader in the area. She became a pioneer in Indian Territory-turning-Oklahoma statehood. “The national press hailed her as a ‘suffragette and crusading leader and organizer whose work in political, literary, and women’s groups spanned nearly a century’…she was a leading figure in women’s club movement, suffrage, democratic party politics, health reform, and the world peace campaign.” Myrtle McDougal went on to lead or begin over 40 organizations.

“Arch and Myrtle enjoyed these house parties with great gusto and were a happy part of the groups that were reading poetry or arguing over some favorite or hated author or some artistic theory her and there over the big house.*”

*Note: Mary referred to her father as Arch, but many townsfolk knew him as D.A.

Mary recalled her parents entertaining guests in Sapulpa. “If you come to Sapulpa at all, the McDougals will entertain you one way or another - in their home, or in the McDougal jail (the city had rented one of my father’s buildings for a temporary jail), or in the McDougal cemetery (my father had helped a friend in financing a cemetery).”

It is unsure if Mary graduated or attended Sapulpa schools. One of her sisters, Jennie Myrtle, graduated from Sapulpa High School in 1907. “Oil sent the three McDougal girls to ‘finishing school’ and to university.”

Mary enrolled at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, during the First Great War. With Myrtle and D.A. as parents, Mary and her sisters took an interest in economics, education, writing, women’s rights, and motherhood. At the University, Mary became a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

Mary would often stay in Sapulpa and be a part of her community. This week in Sapulpa history, in 1915, “one of the crowning events of the forthcoming Creek County Fair is the Better Babies Contest, which is to be put on and which is being looked after Mrs. George Weztel, Mrs. Bassett, and Miss Mary McDougal.” It was a competition held in state fairs during the early 20th century, judging for their health.
At the University, Mary began her journey for the love of writing and poetry. She often published articles in Oklahoma; many of these articles could be found in magazines across the country.

In March 1918, Mary’s first nationally recognized break occurred. “Miss Mary Carmack McDougal is now head of the magazine publicity work for the national fuel administration at Washington. Miss McDougal has spent several years attending the University of Oklahoma and was still a student there when appointed magazine publicity head. At the present time she is in Washington and will return to Norman when the war ends. Miss McDougal is the author of several articles which have already appeared in the Century Magazine, World’s Work, the Women’s Home Companion, and the Ladies’ Home Journal.”

With the 1920s just around the corner, Mary McDougal became a recognizable name in Oklahoma. “Mary’s own life evolved from serious of adventures that were in themselves made of the drama that theater relishes.” Frequently, Mary would as soon to visit the big house in Sapulpa, turn around and leave for Washington or New York.
With D.A. McDougal’s oil finances, D.A. also purchased acres in Florida. The family also would frequently vacation in Miami. Miami would soon become the headquarters for the McDougal family when they left Oklahoma for raising families and retirement for others.

The McDougal family would often vacation in Colorado, New York, and travel back to their roots in Tennessee. “Mary balanced several careers with originality and skill, becoming in turn, suffragist, author, social reformer, political activist, oil and land broker, and maverick.”

By 1921, the McDougals and Mary were regulars as featured speakers and writers for Oklahoma organizations. Being originally from Tennessee, the McDougals knew about their families' past of owning enslaved people. With many efforts, the family tracked down two former enslaved people of the family’s plantation. One lived in Tennessee, and the other lived in Indiana; both people had the McDougal last name*.
*Note: many enslaved people were named after the slave owners. Mary even wrote in her book, “I knew that the freed slaves took the name of their master.”

D.A. McDougal sought out these two people, bought food and medicine for them, and had a conversation before they died. The McDougals then returned to Oklahoma as the Ku Klux Klan began to rise.

In Mary’s book about her father, Mary writes about the Tulsa Race Massacre. “I was doing a story for an Eastern newspaper on the riots, so Dad and I were in Tulsa the next morning. We had to get a pass from the Governor to go where we wanted to go, for there was martial law in the devastated section and there were still a few instances of Negroes being shot that morning.”

Mary’s book went page after page describing how she and her father aided people from the devastation. One instance, Mary said, “we saw an old black woman there shivering in a flimsy kimona and old wet house slippers, and we offered to drive her to town to get clothes at a relief shop, but she reused to get out of the car and cross the sidewalk unless one us came with her, she was so afraid of being shot at! I took the woman’s arm and led her into the store, and found her a coat and some strong comfortable looking shoes.”

Mary went on to write about the similar situation in Sapulpa, just a little over a year later. Mary wrote, “it was not long after this terrible butchery of Negroes in Tulsa that the kind of thing happened in Sapulpa…no one knew what was going to happen. The Sapulpa Negroes, with the Tulsa massacre fresh in their minds, were panic-stricken.”

Mary said that they moved their cook to the “big house from the servants’ quarters on our back lawn.” Mary and her family went all over town and county,  urging people back to their homes. “My father promised them that they would be protected there. The Negroes trusted this promise and went home and stayed there safely. So decency prevailed; that is something I have always been proud of little Sapulpa for.”
For Mary, the aftermath of these events began an infatuation for caring for others. Including her career in writing, nursing was one of the many careers Mary took on as her passion. “The source of Mary’s story was the autobiographical journal that she kept…In the best tradition of the independent woman of her era, Mary eschewed marriage for a career…There in the center of the reform idealism of the 1910s and 20s, she filled scrapbooks with clippings of her published poetry and records of her activism.”

Mary kept writing and publishing, in New York, Washington, and Oklahoma.  By July 1923, “she is now at work on a poem which will be given the position of official state poem, expressive of the individuality of Oklahoma…Miss Mary McDougal is a poet of ability.”

Writing ran in her family's veins. Violet McDougal, Mary’s sister, too joined her sister in New York. In 1925, Violet and Mary published their poems. The poems were also published in New York Herald-Tribune, University of Oklahoma Magazine, New York Times, Daily Oklahoman, Kansas City Star, Miami Herald, and many others.

Mary continued to devote her time to working and activism. “Hailed in the press as ‘Oklahoma Mary,’ she received notoriety for idiosyncrasies that included such habits as carrying a pistol and doing her automobile repairs, while she earned a reputation for her fiery speaking technique…”

Mary’s work pushed her from coast-to-coast. She also worked hard for the states in the between. “Mary was an organizer and publicist for the New York STate Women’s Suffrage Association during the ‘decisive battle’ period and an early volunteer of the Women’s trade Union League. Always a woman of many enthusiasms, she combined her feminist and political interests by becoming the first woman campaigner in a presidential election, when she was sent in 1916 to organize the women voters of the suffrage state of Kansas for the Democratic Party.”

While in her busy schedule, Mary found time to attend her sister’s and her niece’s wedding. “Lucky it was and happy it was to live in that [Sapulpa] house. Here, standing in front of the long rose velvet curtains that hung in the archway between the living and dining rooms. Jennie Myrtle married Hugh James McKay, oil geologist; Jennie Myrtle saw her own daughter, Myrtle, married to James Hocker, engineer.”

Mary would also marry at the home, too. In 1923, Mary met Ivar Axelson. “I married Ivar, an economist and darling.” Ivar secured a job at University of Oklahoma as a professor of economics. The two moved to Norman and got back to work.

“The subject of parenthood became a strong force in their lives. Although the physicians who examined Mary warned her that 37 was a dangerous age for a first pregnancy, she stubbornly preserved.” In 1928, Mary decided to keep a journal of her pregnancy and motherhood.

Mary and Ivar Axelson took a risky operation and decided to have a Cesarean operation. On February 12, 1929, a little girl was born in the Axelson family: Mary Ivonne Axelson.

With their new baby, the Axelsons moved back to New York. Ivar began to study for his Ph.D. at Columbia University. “Ivar suggested that [his wife] study playwriting, an idea that intrigued her enough to take a course at Columbia.”

Mary wanted to write while being a new mother. The meaning of motherhood became the inspiration for Mary's first play. “Hatcher Hughes, the theatrician and Mary’s teacher, recognized the potential of his student’s work, putting the play into production.”

‘Life Begins’ opened on Broadway on March 28, 1932. The Selwyn Theatre at 227 West 42nd Street, New York, had “full houses with an extended run to accommodate ticket purchasers. Birth is pretty raw stuff, competently enough written to be not all revolting i its depiction of the maternity ward of a hospital.’” It had “thoughtful reviews, but the public did not come.” It closed on April 1, 1932.

However, this did not stop Warner Brothers production contacting Mary. “Undismayed by the drama’s brief stage life, Warner’s embarked upon the filming with a stellar cast and plans for an extensive publicity campaign geared to bring the company out of its depression year decline by bringing in high-box office returns with ‘Life Begins.’

Warner Brothers introduced Loretta Young, Eric Linden, Aline MacMahon, Glenda Farrell, and many others to their new film production. It was released to theaters on September 10, 1932. 

Warner Brothers, in a sense, used the production to rebirth their business. “Warnes’ indicated the special expectations pinned on the film: ‘Make Life Begins the beginning of a new life in our business…we are doing a sincere job in trying to make the kind of entertainment that will make the country happier.’”

The adaptation swept the nation. “Held in over in movie houses throughout the nation, Life Begins became one of the major film successes of the era.” As it continued to grow in popularity in the United States, it, too, had some setbacks elsewhere. “It was banned in the United Kingdom until 1935” for its realistic portrayal of birth and motherhood.

Due to the setback, Mary and Ivar moved between New York and Los Angeles and back again. Mary continued to write, for screenplays, poetry, and articles. Warner Brothers reached out less than a decade later to relaunch Mary’s hit. “Warners’ was scheduling to re-make Life Begins with a new title: A Child is Born.”

It was released nearly exactly seven years later, January 1940. “This drama of woman’s great adventure boasts such screen players as Geraldine Fitzegerald, Jeffry Lynn, Gladys George,” and many others.

However, in less than ten years, the national perspective shifted. “There was less tolerance of ‘risque’ or ‘sacred’ (as in maternity) subjects in 1939 than in 1932.” The Motion Picture Code began in 1934 which added restrictions to those viewing pictures to a certain age. “In some communities audiences were segregated,” for men to view films at night, and women to view films at matinee.

“The film had an especially hard time in Mary’s home state of Oklahoma. Report Malvina Stephenson, of Sapulpa, sent a Central Press Association release to over five-hundred newspapers charging, ‘Best Sellers Arouse Oklahomans…two current best sellers are smearing Oklahoma - John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath and Mary McDougal Axelson’s A Child is Born.’”

On the other hand, Tulsans reported “‘Women Leaders See Preview - a handpicked group of Tulsans, civic and social organizations, parent teacher associations, will view the film to see if the neurotic character of women Mary McDougal Axelson is portrayed.’ Apparently, it was not, since the women liked and approved the film for general viewing.”

In Sapulpa for the premiere, the Yale Theater “was filled with Sapulpans, most of them women. They applauded as Mrs. Axelson’s name flashed from the projection room and after the showing, they crowded around the author’s sister and nephew,” Mrs. Jennie Myrtle MacKay and Archie MacKay.

Mary’s novel “billed as a ‘woman’s story’ was a commercial success, even though the critics were enthusiastic.”

Mary Carmack McDougal Axelson was a woman, a writer, a wife, a columnist, a mother, a feminist, and nurse. She was given the nickname “Oklahoma Mary” for her dedication and her outstanding career. She kept Sapulpa in her mind and heart. In her own words, she signed her book about her father: “For the Sapulpa Historical Society, this book about a family who cherished Sapulpa, from a daughter of Sapulpa, Mary McDougal Axelson.”

One of Mary’s dreams was to be a writer. She also kept her dream of being a mother. “The irony of Mary McDougal Axelson’s life is that the inspiration behind the creation of her career work - the play, the movies, the book - the birth of her daughter, Mary Ivonne Axelson, would ultimately become the reason for her death.”

(Wandering Fires by Mary and Violet McDougal; Lonesome Angel and Other Poems by Mary McDougal Axelson; Last Dream and Other Poems by Mary McDougal Axelson; Thirteenth Child: the story of D.A. McDougal by Mary Carmack McDougal Axelson; A Child is Born by Mary McDougal Axelson; Life Begins by Mary McDougal Axelson)

(Yellow Brick Studio; IMDb; Playbill; Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1982; Sapulpa Herald, August 14, 1915, March 11, 1918, July 2, 1921, July 10, 1923; Creek County Republican, July 5, 1918; Tulsa World, January 25, 1940)



“Oklahoma Mary” Part Two: The Death of Birth

This is “‘Oklahoma Mary Part Two,” as it is the continuation of Part One. In “Oklahoma Mary Part One: Life Begins,” we described the life, the work, and the extraordinary life of Sapulpa’s author, Mary McDougal Axelson. We released Part One on Axelson’s birthday, August 13th, in celebration of her life. Part Two will focus on more of her work, activism, her motherhood, her daughter and her work, and the tragic end to the author’s life with cancer, on November 27th, 1973.

Backstory: Mary Carmack McDougal Axelson’s parents brought their three daughters to Sapulpa in 1904. D.A. McDougal, the father, became the town’s fourth mayor; he was also a lawyer and judge. Mary graduated boarding school in 1906; she went to University of Oklahoma, and became a journalist. She worked for many local newspapers, and at the age of 19 worked for a magazine in Washington. By 1923, she would marry an OU professor, Ivar Axelson.

They became parents at an older age, for that time. At age of 37, Mary gave birth via Cesarean, to their daughter, Mary Ivonne Axelson. The family moved to New York, and while Mr. Axelson worked on his Ph.D. at Columbia University, Mrs. Axelson began writing as a playwright about motherhood.

In just a few short years, Mary Axelson’s play would become a cinema film, showing all over the country in 1939 - the film and book: Life Begins.

At the end of her life, the family moved to Florida. She had leukemia and sadly spent the last two years of her life, in and out of the hospital.

Although Warner Brothers’ take on Life Begins (1932) was pretty well received in the box office, their remake, under the name A Child is Born (1939), was not a smash hit the studio was looking for. “The studios were eager for scripts, since 1939 was a time when depression weary people flocked to the inexpensive entertainment that films offered. The movie house was a place where national myths were upheld, giving citizens hope in the future, and a welcome respite from a dull and uncertain reality through a world of fantasy and dreams. In this case, a ‘formula’ that worked once was tried again.”

It seemed Mary’s wishes were rejected. “Mary was avid to have a role in the production, but Hollywood’s reputation for heartless cruelty was upheld when producer Sam Bischoff told a demoralized Mary that they would make the picture ‘horrible’ because that’s ‘box-office.’”

Mary wrote in her diary, a journal she kept for her entire adulthood about her experience in motherhood, “The one bright monument of my writing career to be sullied and wrecked.”

With movie stars Geraldine Fitzgerald, Jeffrey Lynn, Gale Page, Gldys Geroge, and Spring Byington, Mary’s hope for a successful film was in place. “Mary haunted the studio each day, maneuvering her way onto the set. Fearful that if she left during the lunch brea, she would not be allowed back in, she hid and ate fudge. Ignored by the staff, she brooded, ‘I am flung out, pushed aside, forgotten as if I didn’t exist,’” she wrote in her diary.

“Mary worked exhaustingly to finish a draft which was submitted and rushed into print. The book jacket featured the film’s stars in an embrace with copy reading ‘The novel of every woman’s great adventure.’ In what was one of the original movie and novel marketing package tie-ins, readers were told, ‘Read the book - see the picture.’”

When the film was released, Mary thought Sapulpa, or the very least, Selmer, Tennessee, where she was born, but Sapulpa where she was raised, would be the ideal location for the premiere. However, Warner Brothers sent her to Kansas City. In her diary she wrote: “‘I am sick of being exploited for Warners’ benefit…They are making a fortune from the dream of my heart.’ She requested a salary for promotional work and when she was turned down, refused to attend” the world premiere. “As a final insult the studio sent out press releases saying Kansas City was Mary’s birthplace and that she would attend the opening.”

In Sapulpa for the premiere, the Yale Theater “was filled with Sapulpans, most of them women. They applauded as Mrs. Axelson’s name flashed from the projection room and after the showing, they crowded around the author’s sister and nephew,” Mrs. Jennie Myrtle MacKay and Archie MacKay.

As stated earlier, the journals Mary kept were about her experience into motherhood. The play was based on her journal entries, thus becoming a movie, and a remake of the film. Mary’s experience in motherhood intrigued many readers and movie-goers. “Women liked and approved the film for general viewing.” In her diary, Mary wrote: “‘The challenge of motherhood is precisely the same appeal to heroism that was felt by the young men who went to the trenches during the great war. Adventure, the gamble with fate - that is what motherhood means.’”

With A Child is Born, the novel, “many women enjoyed the novel,” and it was a success. The novel was translated into six languages. Mary wrote in her diary about the success as she looked back on her career, “‘I once had a taste of triumph when my first play was produced by Warner Brothers and shown all over the world.’”

In December 1941, just under two years after the movie came to Sapulpa, Mary McDougal Axelson came to visit Sapulpa. “When cowboy melodeer Gene Autry comes back home here soon to Saulpa to do his ‘old trick’ for a day at the railroad dispatcher’s office, according to his erstwhile pals here, there’s goin’ to be such a time in the old town that bronco bustin’ will look like a taffy pulling. And speaking of homecoming for notables, Sapulpa puts out its best foot when it greets Mary McDougal Axelson, author and playwright…”

Mary and her family would often visit Sapulpa. “Mary McDougal Axelson, Sapulpa’s own writer ‘who has made good in the big city,’ is back home making some of the old rounds and incidentally full of more ideas for stories and plays than you ever heard of!”

The family had made a home in Florida. D.A. McDougal had taken his wife and daughters to Florida as a second home as they lived in Sapulpa. But after his retirement, Judge McDougal and his wife moved to Florida to spend their late years in the south.

Mary, her husband, Ivar, and their daughter Mary Ivonne, would also live in Florida for some time. The three would often live between Miami, Florida, Washington, New York, Oklahoma (Norman and Sapulpa), and Los Angeles.

In 1945, Mary’s sister, Violet McDougal, and herself wrote a book of poems. These poems were read over the radio from Miami, Florida, and many listeners in Sapulpa got to listen to a local author read her own pieces. “Poems of Miss Violet McDougal and Mrs. Mary McDougal Axelson will be broadcast from Miami, Fla, this evening at 8 o’clock, Sapulpa time. Mrs. Axelson will read them at the request of the Miami station.”

In 1955, D.A. McDougal passed away in Coral Gables. “McDougal crusaded for prohibition and supported women’s suffrage in Oklahoma. During the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, McDougal assisted the legal advisor for the U.S. State Department. During the land boom of the early 1920s, McDougal came to Florida with his daughter, Mary McDougal Axelson. Here, he teamed up with her husband, Ivar, and began a permanent home in Coral Gables, and spent his last years fighting the expansion of the Everglades National Park and the retention of his oil rights.”

“Ivar Axelson served as president of the Everglades National Park Landowners Association and led the Association for the Best Use of Florida Lands. He crusaded for many years against the expansion of Everglades National Park in Monroe County where he and Daniel McDougal owned a great deal of land.”

The same year, the daughter of Mary and Ivar, Mary Ivonne, made her debut in show business. “In 1955, chosen out of 1,000 contestants to train at the exclusive Actors Studio under Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan. Sat between Marilyn Monroe and Eva Marie Saint in their first session. Became a member of the Actors Studio Theatre along with Sidney Poitier, Bruce Dern, Jane Fonda, Rod Steiger, Eli Wallach, Rip Torn, Burgess Meredity and dozens of other future mega-stars.”

Mary Ivonne went by her stage name, Sandra Stevens.

In 1958, the Axelson’s moved to a new home at 3590 Crystal View Court, Coconut Grove, Miami, FL. Some of Mary’s Sapulpa friends received a Christmas card from the family with their new address and picture of their new home. She also sent her poetry book “The Lonesome Angel.” The Sapulpa Herald praised her work “The poems are quite good, but then Mary is established well in the literary world, and everything she does is good!”

Now in her late 20s, Sandra Stevens or  “Mary Ivonne seemed to have had a promising future at one point.” Similar to her mother being nicknamed after where she’s from like “Oklahoma Mary,” the Miami Daily News named her a “Gables Girl.”
The article “cited her ‘meteoric rise,’ a phrase used in the title largely to reflect her accepting the risk of making the big leap to the big time of New York and Broadway.” From her supporters, “there is ‘no net to catch her.’”

Sadly, Broadway and Hollywood were not an easy career to begin or even keep. “But just as Mary Ivonne would allude in this same article, Broadway would prove impossible to break into. ‘New York is a tough nut to crack,’ she is quoted as saying, “Some theatrical agents use the same girls over and over again, and it’s useless to try to get in through them.’”

Sandra Stevens kept working. “‘I feel as if Broadway from 55th Street to 41st is all mine,’ she exclaimed. But it was noted that she had been featured in a film, ‘East of Broadway,’ and that she would appear in a movie, Sonny Tufts.”

The same article often boasted her optimism. “The article exudes with all of the overly optimistic dreams that Mary Ivonne must have possessed at the time. But the $100 that she left home with to strike out for fame and fortune would be gone in a week, and her sum total of official movie credits is relegated to the role in Cop Hater, a crime film noir movie made in 1958.”

Mary Ivonne married Harry Cropper in 1964. Mary Ivonne and her husband moved to New York. Mary Ivonne owned a club in New York, and was also a club singer.

The Axelson family, specifically both Marys, had an estranged relationship. “Mary McDougal’s later years were marred by misspent energies, family misfortunes, grief, and illness. Her own idealized dream of motherhood was shattered by a series of deplorable events in the life of Mary Ivonne, resulting in their estrangement.”

The turn of the new decade, the 1970s, were the hardest years for the family. In 1971, Mary McDougal was diagnosed with leukemia, at the age of 80. The following year, Mary McDougal’s husband, Ivar, passed away in Coral Gables, Florida. Mary McDougal was in and out of the hospital with her cancer.

Mary McDougal would die the following year in her hospital bed in Miami.

This week in Sapulpa history, on November 28, 1973, articles across not only Florida papers, not only Oklahoma papers, but across the country, read about the death of Mary McDougal Axelson.

“When Mary was 82, exhausted with life and incurably ill, she was hospitalized in Miami. Then, four days before she died, as though she herself were writing one of the contrived endings for more than twenty melodramas she authored - patients, nurses, and doctors were invited to Mary’s room to watch with her, a televised screening of A Child is Born.”

One of Mary’s dreams was to be a writer. She also kept her dream of being a mother. “The irony of Mary McDougal Axelson’s life is that the inspiration behind the creation of her career work - the play, the movies, the book - the birth of her daughter, Mary Ivonne Axelson, would ultimately become the reason for her death.”

The relationship between both Marys became very toxic. “For after an estrangement between the two that might have encompassed most of her life, sometime on November 26, 1973, while visiting her elderly mother in the hospital as she lay in bed suffering from leukemia, Mary Ivonne beat her mother in a fit of rage and left the scene, leaving her mother on the floor bleeding from a head wound. Mary McDougal Axelson would die from her injuries the next day.”

According to the police report, “Mary McDougal Axelson died Tuesday, 22 hours after she was beaten in her hospital bed. Police said they were seeking Mrs. Axelson’s daughter, Mary Ivonne Cropper of New York, for questioning. Joseph McAloon, administrator at Doctor’s Hospital said Mrs. Axelson was admitted Nov 1. On Monday, McAloon said Mrs. Cropper visited her mother then left the room abruptly. Mrs. Axelson’s private nurse was sent out to ‘obtain something special for lunch.’ He said the attack occurred while the private nurse was out of the room. Mrs. Axelson called for an aide who found her bleeding badly from the mouth. An autopsy by the Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office showed Mrs. Axelson died from a brain hemorrhage caused by a blow to the head. According to McAloon, Mrs. Axelson told them before she died that her daughter had beaten her.”

Mary Ivonne was arrested for second degree murder December 3, 1973. “A former New York City nightclub singer has been jailed on second degree murder charges in the beating death of her mother. Mary Axelson Cropper, 44, surrendered to police and was booked into Dade County jail.

“Stories of the 1973 murder and the trial that ensued in 1975 were covered by dozens of newspapers across the United States.”

The newspapers announced that “Mrs. Axelson willed one-third of her $850,000 estate to her daughter.” This meant that Mary Ivonne Axelson Cropper would inherit $280,000 from her mother’s estate after Mary McDougal passed*.

*Note: today, $280,000 of the $850,000 is $1,886,657 of today's $5,727,353.

“A woman on trial for the murder of her mother could inherit, if acquitted or convicted of a lesser crime, more than $280,000, according to Robert Gunn, executor of the estate.”

In April 1975, witnesses, psychiatrists, and many others testified in the trial. “Psychiatrists testifying at her trial said that she suffered from chronic schizophrenia throughout her adult life, and had been under extreme emotional stress at the time of the incident.”

Mr. Harry Cropper, now ex-husband after their 1967 divorce, also testified. “Harry Cropper testified that Mary Ivonne told him she hit her mother because ‘she’d never in her whole life been able to touch her.’”

At the end of the trial, the verdict was read. “In another twist of fate, she was ultimately found innocent by reason of insanity. Later, she would inherit her parents’ estate.”

“Mary Ivonne died in New York in 2007,” just a few weeks before her 78th birthday. Today, her daughter in Florida is a psychiatrist. In addition, the University of Miami has a large collection of works, documents, letters, and photographs of the McDougal and Axelson family, and the Everglades Library and Museum keep their biographies and work.

In more recent development, Yellow Brick Studios and Legacy Vision Films announced two developments coming along for a piece titled The Death of Birth and another called Trials of Two Marys*.

*Note: the last update for both titles was in July 2023.

The Death of Birth: “Based on the life of Mary McDougal Axelson, whose experiences in giving birth inspired her to write a play that was made into the movie Life Begins, which was a hit in 1932.” There have been two drafts from 2018 and 2019. “Continuing research to this matter is being pursued for which a few more drafts of the script is likely to ensue before hopefully a premiere of this play can occur possibly in 2024 at TAG - The Actors’ Group.”

Trials of Two Marys: “Mary McDougal Axelson, the famous writer who inspired the Hollywood hit, Life Begins, is dead and is on trial in heaven for her failures as a mother to Mary Ivonne Axelson, her daughter, who is also on trial back on earth for the murder of her mother.” This is supposed to be an extension to The Death of Birth. “Principal photography is scheduled to commence either in December 2023 or January 2024.
​
(Yellow Brick Studio; IMDb; Playbill; Chronicles of Oklahoma, Vol. 60, No. 3, 1982; Sapulpa Herald, August 14, 1915, March 11, 1918, July 2, 1921, July 10, 1923; Creek County Republican, July 5, 1918; Tulsa World, January 25, 1940; Everglades Library and Museum; The Mercury, April 4, 1975; Oklahoma City Times, November 28, 1973; April 4, 1975; Oakland Tribune, December 4, 1973; Sapulpa Herald, November 28, 1973)