A Quick Reno-vation

BRIAN: If you’re just joining us, this is BackStory, and we’re racing through an hour that’s all about speed– in American history, of course. Now, if I say “quickie marriage,” there’s probably one place that you think of above all others– Las Vegas. But before the lights went up on the famous Vegas strip, Nevada had a different Sin City.

There were certainly many people who thought that Reno, Nevada was the next thing to Sodom and Gomorrah.

ED: This is historian Mella Harmon. She says Reno’s sinful reputation stemmed not from casinos or clubs, but rather from courthouses. For the first few decades of the 20th century, Reno was where people came if they wanted to untie the knot– in a hurry.

MELLA HARMON: Around the turn of the 20th century, Reno was picked as the site for a divorce for a very high profile individual named Laura Corey, who was the wife of William Corey, who was the president of the United States Steel Corporation, which was huge at the time. The media coverage of this event was huge. So Reno immediately caught on as the next great place to go to get a divorce.

BRIAN: The reason people like Mrs. Corey would travel to Reno was simple. In most states, divorce was incredibly difficult. Many states had lengthy waiting periods before divorce could take effect. In New York, you had to have physical proof of infidelity to file. And in the Coreys’ home state of Pennsylvania, divorcees had to wait years just to remarry.

Nevada, on the other hand, made it easy. There was no waiting period. And state law laid out seven different grounds for divorce.

MELLA HARMON: Impotency, adultery, willful desertion, conviction of a felony, habitual gross drunkenness, neglect of the husband for the period of two years. The most common ground claimed was cruelty. And some of the explanations of what the cruelty consisted of was actually quite humorous.

One was a woman was divorcing her husband and he was cruel to her because he never wanted to have her as his partner when they played bridge with other couples. Another was a man was divorcing his wife because she wouldn’t let him listen to the radio in the house. She made him go to stay in the garage.

BRIAN: And these are upheld, I gather?

MELLA HARMON: Oh, yes. Yes, these were successful. I think my favorite was the woman who divorced her husband because he criticized her driving.

ED: There was only one potential snag. And that’s that anyone filing for divorce in Nevada had to prove they were a resident of that state. When Laura Corey got her divorce in 1905, that meant living in Nevada for six months. But sadly, lawmakers soon realized they could attract more would-be divorcees to the state if there were a shorter wait. By 1931, the residency requirement was just six weeks.

BRIAN: Those six weeks translated into big business for Reno. People came from all over the country and world to get their divorces. Hotels and boarding houses sprang up all over town to cater to them.

While the rest of the country slogged through the Depression, Reno enjoyed a housing boom. In the 1930s, Mella Harmon estimates, the divorce trade brought in $5 million a year to Nevada. That’s about $87 million in today’s dollars.

MALE SPEAKER: Oh, well. I guess divorce ain’t much more than a matter of traveling. You check out of the state of matrimony and land in the state of Nevada.

ED: This is from the 1939 film Charlie Chan in Reno, just one of the many free advertisements the city received, courtesy of Hollywood. Reno divorces appeared so often on the silver screen that the city’s name became a euphemism for the act.

FEMALE SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] character.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Well, yes. In a way.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Yes, and where did it get you? On the train for Reno.

FEMALE SPEAKER: On the train for Reno.

BRIAN: In real life, movie stars, as well as industrial magnates, were having their divorces splashed across the papers. But most of the tens of thousands of people who came seeking divorces lived far less glamorous lives.

BARBARA DAVIS: That was me. I wasn’t so rich.

BRIAN: Barbara Davis arrived in Reno in 1947. She’d been married in Brazil, but couldn’t separate from her husband there without his consent. So she headed home to California and from there up to a boarding house in Reno to get her residency.

BARBARA DAVIS: The place where I stayed was very modest. But there were people there from New York and from California and other states. I was the only one with a car.

BRIAN: Oh, you must have been popular.

BARBARA DAVIS: I was popular, yes. So I drove the car and some of the people, divorcees there, went with me. And we would sightsee.

BRIAN: A few years after her divorce, she returned to Reno, this time as a showgirl with a traveling review that just happened to book a hotel right across from the Washoe County Courthouse. Her second marriage was failing, and she decided to quietly establish Nevada residency again.

BARBARA DAVIS: That was kind of sneaky, wasn’t it?

BRIAN: That’s all right. I won’t tell anybody. Barbara, did you remarry?

BARBARA DAVIS: Not for a long time.

BRIAN: But you did.

BARBARA DAVIS: Oh, yeah. That was a hobby of mine.

[LAUGHTER]

BRIAN: Did that work out?

BARBARA DAVIS: That’s how I worked out. It was my hobby.

BRIAN: Are you looking around now?

BARBARA DAVIS: There’s not too many 90-year-old that are very spry.

[LAUGHTER]

BRIAN: Well, it sounds like someone would have to be pretty spry to keep up with you, Barbara.

BARBARA DAVIS: Yes, they would. They would.

BRIAN: If Barbara did find herself in need of another divorce today, she wouldn’t have to travel for it. And that’s not just because she now lives in Nevada. Few states now require a long waiting period to get a divorce or to remarry. And all 50 states offer no-fault divorce, meaning that couples who don’t like playing bridge together don’t have to plead cruelty to a sympathetic Nevada judge.

[MUSIC – TONY CHRISTIE, “DON’T GO TO RENO”]

ED: It’s time for another break. When we get back, Brown vs. Board of Education– the blockbuster case that made speed an entirely subjective matter.

BRIAN: You’re listening to BackStory. We’ll be back in a flash.
[MUSIC – TONY CHRISTIE, “DON’T GO TO RENO”]