Betty had a voice that sounded as if she gargled with glass. "Ethel Merman on acid," one passer-by said later of her belting style, which she used whether singing "Born Free," or her own bittersweet composition, "Red Velvet Roses."
She appeared on a bench on New York's upper West Side in the late 1980s. Even in a city filled with homeless men and women, Betty stood out. Warm and bubbly, she looked older than her 60-odd years, with her missing teeth and a deeply lined face. But she still cared about her looks, polishing her nails and dying her hair a purple she found attractive.
She told anyone who would listen that she used to be a showgirl. She said she went to Hollywood for a screen test. She also said she was Elizabeth Taylor. So everyone figured she was just another crazy bag lady.
Then at moments, Betty would cock her hat at a jaunty angle, and the ghost of her younger, prettier self flitted across her face. Was there a grain of truth in her stories?
There was. In fact, Betty's story was more fantastic than anyone could guess, even Betty. The key to her past was a piece of paper 200 miles away, in a yellowed binder at the Anne Arundel County Health Department in Annapolis.
The document, a birth certificate, wasn't supposed to be there. As part of an adoption record, it belonged under seal in Baltimore, locked away from prying eyes. Yet it stayed in Annapolis for 25 years, waiting for the one person who would care -- Betty's daughter.
In 1989, Lee Anderson went to work in that office as a temp. She was 25, broke, and still looking for something to anchor her life.
Yet it was this dead-end job that changed her life. She'd been there less than two weeks when a supervisor said: Let me teach you how to look up birth certificates. We'll use yours as an example.
And Lee, who knew she was adopted, saw her biological mother's name for the first time: Betty Wehmeier of Ohio.
The birth certificate gave her two other significant facts: Betty was 39 when Lee was born. And she was a resident of Crownsville State Hospital, as the mental hospital was called then.
Suddenly, after years of wondering, Lee Anderson knew who her mother was. Her stomach flip-flopped, and she felt dizzy -- and confused.
"I said, 'What kind of woman gives up a baby at 39?' " Lee recalls. And she vowed to find out.
In six months, working from the scant clues on the birth certificate, Lee Anderson found her mother in Manhattan. But the reunion was heartbreakingly brief. Betty died in her sleep just 13 days later, leaving Lee reeling with frustration.
She still had so many questions about her mother's life. Her search for the answers continues to consume her five years after she stumbled onto her birth certificate.
Where is her father, a man Betty identified as Pat Duffy, a one-time Baltimore bartender? Where are the records from the first mental hospitals that treated her?
And what happened to Betty when she went to Hollywood, the apparent beginning of her long unraveling? That part of Betty's life remains stubbornly obscure to this day.
Show business dreams
Throughout her life, Betty told people how beautiful she had been, and how talented. Psychiatrist after psychiatrist dutifully jotted down her rambling blend of fact and fiction, ascribing it all to her diagnosis: schizophrenia.
"She is still rather loose and very circumstantial, all in her grandiose 'Hollywoodesque' delusions," one psychiatrist wrote in December 1974, when Betty was hospitalized in New York state.
He should have seen her in 1954 when she arrived in New York with vague dreams of making it in show business. She was at the height of her beauty, a leggy, platinum blonde so striking that a cabdriver told her she belonged in the Latin Quarter. Betty, who at 29 was almost a decade older than the typical showgirl, took his advice.
Picked from a cattle call of hundreds of girls, Betty was one of the 32 showgirls at Lou Walters' Latin Quarter, featured on the marquee, in advertisements and programs. When Life magazine shot a photograph of Jackie Gleason at the famous nightclub, there was Betty in the foreground.
Not bad for a daughter of the Depression, whose fame in her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, was derived primarily from three brief, failed marriages and a beauty contest in which she finished as first runner-up. Born in May 1925 to Herman and Edith Wehmeier, Betty was the only daughter, sandwiched between two brothers, Joe and Herman Jr. Indifferent to school, she had a hard time getting her parents' attention, especially when young Herman was signed as a pitcher by the St. Louis Cardinals.
Once in New York, she seldom talked about her family, or the son she had left behind with her parents.
Jeannie Winding, 21 when Betty joined the show, remembers her as one of the ambitious ones. But she also seemed to reel from one small crisis to another.
"There was something very sad about her," says Ms. Winding, now an interior designer in Los Angeles. "Some underlying dark side that you really couldn't pinpoint. She came off as being a hard, crusty dame. If you talked to her, you found that wasn't the case at all. She was very sweet and kind."
Intent on glamour, Betty favored wild, flamboyant clothing, Ms. Winding says -- peasant skirts and off-the-shoulder blouses, lots of heavy makeup.
As for men -- "She had a lot of gentlemen seeking her favors." Ms. Winding remembers one called Pat Duffy, the man Betty later identified as her daughter's father.
"He was a Damon Runyon character, hanging around the stage door, hoping to latch onto a little piece of celebrity, you know the type? I remember him as being on the short side, not very tall, a prizefighterish kind of body, stocky."
Lou Walters also had a club outside Miami, so Betty, Jeannie and others migrated south in the winter of 1955. When the show was over, Betty also sang at an after-hours club and begged the other showgirls to come see her.
She sang "My Funny Valentine," a poignant Rodgers and Hart ballad, in a sweet, pure voice, Ms. Winding says.
"She was absolutely superb. I've never forgotten it," says Ms. Winding. "Certainly, she was good as some of the popular singers of the day, Connie Francis or Theresa Brewer."
Someone apparently agreed. Betty was summoned to Hollywood September 1955, for a Paramount screen test. And there, for reasons that remain a mystery, the showgirl with the distinctive voice began a long descent into mental illness that would eventually leave her homeless on a street corner in New York.
No one knows what happened to Betty in California. The screen test, if it took place, cannot be found. All anyone knows is that six months after she left for the coast, Betty arrived by bus in Big Spring, Texas, claiming to be Elizabeth Taylor.
"We think probably that whatever it was that pushed her over the edge probably blacked out that portion of her life in her own mind," says her brother, Joe Wehmeier. "She would never talk about it, she would never tell us what happened out there."
In Big Spring, Texas, no one had any idea who Betty was. She was taken to the state mental hospital, diagnosed as schizophrenic and given shock treatments. In June 1956, Betty's identity finally established, her parents put her son, 7-year-old Bobby, in an orphanage and went to fetch her.
For the rest of her life, Betty would be in and out of institutions, treated for schizophrenia and, eventually, alcoholism. Crownsville would hold Betty longer than any other institution, seven years. And she would give birth there to a baby girl named April Lee.
Solving the mystery
For some, the discovery that one's biological mother was a 39-year-old resident at Crownsville might seem a good place to stop. But Lee was convinced the accidental discovery was a sign. Betty was out there, waiting for her.
In the beginning, she kept the news about Betty from her family. Adopted when she was seven days old, Lee was the youngest of Howard and Lou Anderson's four children. She grew up in Riviera Beach, a happy and indulged child. She was especially close to her father, whom she describes as her soul mate.
When did she know she was adopted? "She always knew," says her adoptive mother, Lou Anderson. "When she was younger, she just didn't accept it. She kept saying: 'No, Mommy, I came out of your stomach.' "
Lee remembers it differently. At age 11, she found the family Bible with this notation: "November 1967 -- Lee's adoption is final." The revelation overwhelmed the little girl.
Like many adoptees, she spent long hours in front of the mirror. Whose eyes? Whose freckles? She wondered about her musical ability. Whose voice? Whose talent?
When she was 15, she swiped the key to her parents' safe deposit box and sauntered into the local branch of Maryland National. She picked among the stock certificates and legal documents there, looking for her adoption papers, and found her real name, albeit misspelled, April Lee Wehmeir. She put the box back and locked the name away in her mind.
Two years later, her father died from a never-explained illness. The loss was wrenching.
"I went from being a goodie-goodie to a baddie-baddie," Lee says ruefully. The kind of girl who tried to steal a street sign in a small North Carolina town, then almost punched out the arresting officer. The kind of girl who raced a friend's motorcycle along bridges -- in the wrong lane.
She made bad decisions, sabotaging herself at every turn. When she took the temporary job with the Anne Arundel Health Department, her car was about to be repossessed.
In September 1989, she found the birth certificate -- and a new purpose. Within weeks, she had located her relatives, simply by calling every Wehmeier in every major town in Ohio. That led to Uncle Joe in Florida.
At first, she disguised her own identity, claiming to be the daughter of an old friend of Betty's. When she gave her real name, Joe Wehmeier professed to be stunned. The family never knew she existed, he told Lee.
(Later, Lee would discover letters in her mother's Crownsville file that showed the family knew about her birth in 1964 and had asked that she be put up for adoption. "I had forgotten about that," Mr. Wehmeier said in an interview with The Sun.)
Elmer Wehmeier, Betty's uncle, sent Lee photographs of a young, beautiful Betty. Relatives shared other details, but they couldn't help her find Betty. With the exception of a phone call sometime in the 1970s, no one had heard from Betty for almost 20 years. They assumed she was dead.
"But I knew she was alive," Lee says. "I felt a terrible sense of urgency about finding her."
That urgency led Lee to blurt out her story to almost everyone she met. When she went to get her tires rotated in February 1990, she ended up confiding in the shop's owner, Skip Davis.
To her surprise, he offered to help. He proved to be a skilled accomplice, using his considerable charm to woo anyone with information about Betty.
They wheedled friends at Crownsville and Social Security, eventually winning access to Betty's records -- including the last address for Betty's Social Security checks, the Neponsit Home in Rockaway Beach, New York. The convalescent home sent Lee a Polaroid of her mother, a wispy-haired, pudgy woman who bore little resemblance to the glamorous shots sent by relatives.
Lee then tracked down a volunteer at Neponsit. Sure, he remembered Betty, but she had run away from the home on a trip into the city. He had last seen her six months ago, living at 72nd and Broadway.
"What's her address?" Lee asked.
"You don't get it, do you?" the volunteer replied, not unkindly. "She lives at 72nd and Broadway, on a bench. She's homeless."
On April 13, 1990 -- Good Friday -- Lee and Skip left for New York at 5:30 a.m. with photocopies of Betty's photograph. A heavy morning fog hung over Route 301 in Delaware, shot through with dawn's pink light. Suddenly, Skip threw on his brakes and the car skidded to a stop. Two deer were crossing the road, a doe and her fawn.
"Did you see that?" Skip asked.
OC "Yeah, I think it's an omen," Lee said. "A good omen, that is."
'You're just like me'
There are almost 8 million people in New York. Lee just wanted to find one.
About 9:30 a.m., Skip parked the car between Amsterdam and Broadway, near the bench that had been Betty's home. He and Lee canvassed the area, passing out Betty's picture to homeless people and merchants.
One man said: "Yeah, I remember her. She got hit by the subway train." A coffee shop owner said: "She used to sing with that guy," directing Lee and Skip back to the man who insisted Betty had died on the subway tracks. Others knew her, but said they had not seen her for several months.
Finally, a priest sent Lee to Project Reachout, several blocks to the north.
The staff there knew Betty. In fact, they had finally persuaded her to leave the streets and move into a nearby apartment building for homeless women. But they were suspicious of this woman claiming to be her daughter.
Lee was about to go into the director's office to plead for help in finding her mother when she saw a smiling old woman with bright red nails and a fake Gucci bag walk in. Lee recognized her instantly. It was Betty.
"I stopped dead in my tracks. My jaw dropped. I was literally speechless. She smiled, said hello and got herself a cup of coffee. I said to someone who worked there: 'Whatever you do, don't let her leave.' "
Instead, Lee and Skip left so Betty's social worker, Madeline Adam, could prepare Betty for the reunion. The following is an abridged transcript, from a tape recording Lee made of their meeting.
Madeline: Betty, do you remember what we were talking about earlier, about where you were 25 years ago?
Betty: Yes, I was in Baltimore. I'm not going back to Baltimore, I don't like Baltimore, they gave me shock treatments in Baltimore.
Madeline: You don't have to go back to Baltimore, but do you remember talking about having a baby in Crownsville?
Betty: Yes.
.' Madeline: Do you remember what
you called that baby you had 25 years ago?
Betty: I named her April Lee, but she'd be all growed up by now.
Madeline: Betty, I'd like to introduce you to Lee. Yes, this is April Lee.
Lee: You're a very hard person to find. (Betty laughs).
Betty: You sure are pretty.
Lee: That's because I look like you.
Betty: Are you married?
Lee: No. I had a couple of offers, but I turned them down.
0 Betty: (Laughing) Yeah, you're just like me.
Time runs out
Lee, cautioned by the social worker, was careful. She didn't try to draw Betty out on anything painful. She didn't ask about California, or any of the gaps in Betty's past.
She did ask about her father, and Betty gave her his name, Pat Duffy, which also appears in the Crownsville file. Betty added: "You could meet him, but I don't think you'd want to. . . . I don't think you'd like him very much."
There would be time enough, Lee thought, to find out everything else. She left Betty in New York, planning to return in two weeks for Betty's birthday.
"I had it all worked out," Lee says. "I was going to take her out to dinner, maybe get her a make-over, take her to see a show."
Upon her return to Baltimore, Lee sent her mother a card: "Even if I hadn't found you, I would've kept looking."
Thirteen days after their reunion, Betty died in her sleep.
"I had been on cloud nine -- and I fell off," Lee says of this bleak time in her life. "I felt cheated, angry. I thought it wasn't fair."
Betty's death only made Lee more determined to find out everything about her mother's life -- something that would have been difficult even if Betty were still alive.
Married at least five times, Betty's full name was Betty Wehmeier Lippelman Mueller Hammann Edwards Moreland Sherman. Sometimes, she preferred the names of movie stars -- Elizabeth Taylor, Jennifer Jones, Doris Day. Or she took surnames from her doctors.
But whatever name Betty used, she had the same Social Security number, leaving a trail that Lee could follow from 1956 through 1990.
Through Social Security and medical files, Lee followed her mother from Big Spring, Texas, to Rollman Psychiatric Clinic in Cincinnati, then to nearby Longview State Hospital, which she left in October 1961.
Two years later, on the run from a Boston hospital, she wound up as the mail-order bride of Victor V. Sherman, who lived in Phoenixville, Pa.
It was a short marriage, even by Betty's standards. Within seven months, she was admitted to Spring Grove in Catonsville. After being discharged, she went to baby-sit for the two sons of a man named Pat Duffy. She also worked as a dancer at Murray's Show Bar on The Block, where Pat Duffy was believed to be a bartender.
In July 1964, Betty was admitted to Crownsville after she became hysterical in the downtown Greyhound bus station. Three months pregnant with Lee, she could no longer work as a dancer. The baby, born Dec. 7, 1964, was put up for adoption at the family's request, correspondence from the Crownsville file shows.
"My brother Herm, Mom and I got together and talked it over to see what could be done," says Joe Wehmeier. "Herm had six kids. My youngest was 9, I had three and I was traveling, my wife would have had it all by herself. We just didn't feel in the position to take the baby, we didn't think it would be fair to the baby."
In 1970, Crownsville officials decided Betty might be ready to return home. But her mother, Edith Wehmeier, then 67, asked the hospital to keep her daughter.
"This is the problem we have lived with since 1957," Mrs. Wehmeier wrote. "We spent all our savings trying to help her. . . . After much thought and with deep regret, I must refuse to take Betty. I am unable, both physically and financially, to do it."
Because Betty's condition had improved, she began performing in shows at Crownsville and other institutions.
"She was what I would call the show-stopper," says Tea Arthur, director of recreational services at Crownsville at the time. "She would be the person we would make sure we ended the show with. She left people really wanting more."
On a stormy night in March 1971, Betty, decked out in a 1940s-style blue beaded dress, her hair in a French twist, delivered a rousing version of "There's No Business Like Show Business" to an audience at Clifton T. Perkins, the hospital for the criminally insane. She remarked to Lil Rollins, a musical therapist who has since died: "I look too pretty and too well to be in the hospital." Later that night, as the performers and staff unloaded equipment in the driving rain, she disappeared.
She would pull this same disappearing act at other hospitals throughout the 1970s and '80s. And whenever she escaped, she made a beeline for New York. If Betty couldn't be on Broadway, she could at least live there.
In 1987, social worker Madeline Adam met Betty on the benches along upper Broadway. By then, Betty -- who was using the name Polly -- had realized her long-held ambition. She was a movie star, of sorts, thanks to a 1977 student documentary called "Shopping Bag Ladies."
NB But Betty's greatest exposure would come only after her death.
Hollywood finally calls
It happened that Garry Trudeau, the "Doonesbury" cartoonist, was a volunteer at Project Reachout, and knew Betty from his work there. Mr. Trudeau mentioned the miraculous mother-daughter reunion to his wife, Jane Pauley, who featured the story on the first-ever episode of "Real Life With Jane Pauley."
Millions watched the NBC show on July 17, 1990, but some found the story especially fascinating.
In his living room in Baltimore, Tea Arthur stared at the screen in amazement. There was Betty, older and fatter, but still the woman he remembered from Crownsville.
In Cincinnati, Lee's half-brother, Bobby Mueller Jr., watched, too. Placed in an orphanage after Betty's breakdown in Texas, Mr. Mueller knew nothing of Lee or Betty's death until his uncle called him just before the show aired. Two days after the show, he met Lee in the Cincinnati airport, greeting her with a dozen red roses and a bottle of champagne.
Letters poured in from people who knew Betty as the singing bag lady and people who thought they might know the whereabouts of Pat Duffy, Lee's putative father.
Now Hollywood wanted Betty more than ever. Calls poured in from agents, producers, actresses and tabloid television shows. Lee, still broke, was offered dizzying amounts of money for her story. But she didn't trust anyone she met to do justice to Betty's story.
Then she was introduced to Patti White, a former "60 Minutes" producer and one of three partners in an independent production company.
Ms. White seemed to sense how fragile Lee was. In the fall of 1990, she helped Lee find a job in Arizona, working with VisionQuest, a program for juvenile delinquents. Lee stayed with the program until this fall, returning to Annapolis -- and to her quest.
Now it is Pat Duffy that Lee wants to find. She also is curious about the notation on her birth certificate indicating she had two living siblings at birth. Was it one of Betty's delusions, or was another child put up for adoption?
The months in California remain elusive, the one time in Betty's life that has yielded no records, and no acquaintances. Was Betty running from something other than her own demons when she boarded the bus to Big Spring?
Betty also confided to at least one social worker that she had been sexually abused when she was growing up. Although this would not explain her schizophrenia, according to experts in mental illness, it might explain her constant flight -- from her family, from institutions, from herself.
Lee still thinks there is a movie, or a book, in her mother's life, though progress on the project has been slow. While working out West in 1992, she was summoned to Hollywood for yet another round of meetings with another round of executives who just didn't get Betty's story.
But the trip wasn't a total loss. Lee took some of Betty's ashes with her, as she had taken them to New York, Crownsville and Cincinnati. She climbed to the top of the Hollywood sign and threw Betty's remains over the city she had hoped to conquer, the city that holds her secrets to this day.