Sing a song of sixpence,
A pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds
Baked in a pie.
So begins “Sing a Song of Sixpence,” the 18th century (maybe) nursery rhyme attributed to Mother Goose. The origins of, meaning, and date it came to be, are still argued about to this day. Shakespeare? Some guy named George Steevens? Henry VIII? Regardless, long before the maybe-date, there really were grand medieval events known as Sotelties/Subtleties where live animals were snuck into pies. Thankfully, the poor creatures were not actually baked into them, rather they were secreted into an already cooked base and then hidden by another layer of pastry that would be ceremoniously cut open, freeing the surely panicked animals. And humans…
On February 17th, 1454, 28 live musicians popped out of a pie for the infamous, “Feast of the Pheasant”. An Italian cookbook dated to 1549 includes a recipe “to make pies so that birds may be alive in them and fly out when it is cut up”, and The Accomplished Cook from 1660 suggested frogs to “make the ladies to skip and shreek.” Oh, and in 1626, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, “a famous dwarf,” was gifted (alive) inside a pie to Charles I (Rich people).
Nothing much topped those lavish celebrations until 1895. Why so precise? That was the date of the first, and most infamous, girl in a baked good event in history, one where we meet a cadre of rich, spoiled men and a young girl (yes, girl) named Susie Johnson. Or Susan. Or Sadie. Or Edna La Salle. But I’ll get to that.
Ages ago, I read the book American Eve which tells the twisted true story of Gilded Age lechery featuring 19th century icon Evelyn Nesbit (she a model and star of stage and screen) and architect Stanford White (he of the Washington Square Arch and Madison Square Garden II, among others). It was White’s murder in 1906—and the subsequent trials of his killer—that would capture the public’s attention for decades to come and be the focus of multiple books and publications.
Slipped into the tale of the bigger, tabloid-fodder murder, was a story that hooked me and didn’t let go, that of “The Girl in the Pie” dinner. On May 20, 1895, a party put on by Wall Street Broker Henry W. Poor to celebrate the 10th wedding anniversary of his pal John Elliot Codwin (“Mrs. Cowdin was absent in Europe.”1) took place at the Carbon Studio, the atelier of photographer James L. Breese at 5 West 19th street. The 32 guests attending this $3500 dinner (approx. $139,164 today)—and downing an astounding 144 bottles of champagne—included Nicola Tesla, Charles Dana Gibson, Cooper Hewitt, and Stanford White. Not on the memorialized guest list: those brought in to serve as the evening’s entertainment, including a 16-year-old girl named Susie Johnson.
White is said to have taken the credit for the news-worthy spectacle that took place that evening. Following 16 courses of french haute cuisine, as the guests “were beginning to light their cigars”2, a massive pie was carried in by “half a dozen sturdy waiters.”3 Described by attendees as more spherical in shape than an ordinary pie, it was ceremoniously set upon a table. The head waiter came forward and, with a gleaming silver knife, sliced into the top “crust.” Out flew 24 live canaries. But also hidden in the pie, clad in nothing more than diaphanous black gauze with a faux-blackbird perched in her hair, was young Susie Johnson. Upon her grand entrance, the orchestra struck up “Sing a Song of Sixpence.” “An unreal fairyland of luxury opened like a dream before her eyes, and she yielded.”4
To what exactly, no one seems to be sure. The rumor mill whispered that Susie had been whisked off into captivity by Stanford White immediately following the early summer dinner, but others said that, rather than leading to her downfall, her newfound popularity propelled her to sittings at all of the big artist studios of the day. Talk of the evening itself was quiet until months later when an article in the October 13, 1895 issue of New York World declared:
MISSING—An artist’s model.
The piece spoke of Susie’s mother, desperate to find her daughter, scouring the city for any news, any sightings. “Somewhere in the big studio buildings of New York the girl is hidden.”4 Her disappearance was big news, until the next front-page moment slid in to take her place. Anything shouting Found! eludes me but two years later, an article shows up in the December 29, 1897 issue of the New York Sun reporting that Susie asked the District Attorney to indict one of the party guests for assault, one which led to her becoming a mother. The identity of the guest was never revealed in media of the day. Stanford White?
His fault or not, on June 25, 1906, White was shot dead in the rooftop cabaret at Madison Square Garden by a man named Harry Thaw. The reason: vengeance for Thaw’s wife, Evelyn Nesbit, who herself had been drugged and assaulted by White as a young girl. Thaw also was reportedly jealous over the “relationship” between White and Nesbit that followed her attack. His first murder trial, deemed the “Trial of the Century,” took place between January 23 and April 12, 1907, and resulted in a hung jury. It was in 1907 that Susie again became fodder for reporters, only this time she was overwhelmingly declared dead. Her husband having “cast her off”5 after he learned of her past, she “now sleeps in a pauper’s grave.”6 But was that true? Not in the least.
Following Thaw’s second trial from January 6 - February 1, 1908, one that ended with not guilty by reason of insanity, Susie shows up again in print—decidedly alive. A story printed in the May 10, 1908 issue of San Antonio Light quotes Susan (as Sadie Johnson) “I have been married, and have lately been on the stage, because my husband lost his money and I was compelled to help myself.”
We know that she did indeed marry in the early aughts and later stories reference her marriage as making a splash in the press. That said, I have yet to find a primary source. What I do find are name changes, galore! In a November 28, 1908 article in The Cincinnati Post, Susie surfaces not as Sadie, but as Edna La Salle having “changed her name when detectives for the District Attorney and Harry Thaw were scouring the country for her at the time of the…trial”.
Finally, a 1919 piece about the engagement of a now 64-year-old James Breese (he of the 5 w. 16th st. studio) to 23-year-old Grace Momand fills in some blanks, reporting that Susie had worked at a braid factory in her early teens and served as governess for two years in Brooklyn during those initial missing days. I’ve just given you a few small tastes of the press at the time but the misinformation, supposition, and falsehoods surrounding her are astounding. Dead/Alive. Jilted/Supported. Susie/Sadie/Edna…what of her story is fact and what is fiction? Even in our modern world of genealogical testing, the internet, and true crime obsessives, she has mostly shown up as a side note in 21st century stories, still rife with conflicting reports and unanswered questions.
Having always felt since the hook took hold that there has to be more to her story, I followed the bread crumbs cast out by the various articles, and dug around in archives, census records, and city directories. Eventually I found a record from the 1880 census that seemed to check all of the boxes. But, that was just one record. I was ready to roll up my sleeves and make a “Susie board” when I stumbled upon a shockingly complete timeline for her created by a man named Steve Procko. Reaching out to him, I learned that he was working on a book about James Breese (the old lech) and while researching, discovered the truth about Susie. In an email he told me, “Through genealogical research I located living descendants of Susan Johnson’s family. After several conversations, we met in person, and they entrusted me with several boxes containing Susan’s original photographs, letters, newspaper clippings, and personal papers that she had preserved throughout her life. She had also saved a remarkable collection of newspaper clippings about herself, Stanford White, and James L. Breese, which she kept until her death in 1964.” Goldmine! His book, Gilded Breeze, will be out later in 2026 and promises to finally answer the questions that have been floating around for over 130 years.
Since so much will be revealed in Procko’s book, I decided to put my “Susie board” aside but before I move on I owe you a brief version of what I know of her story…
Susie was born Susan Johnson (name 4!) on April 26th, 1879 to William and Elizabeth “Lizzie” Johnson.
Various articles described her father as a “well-to-do” mechanic” though he’s listed as a lithographer in the 1880 census and as a Foreman in 1900 (the 1890 census was unfortunately lost in a massive fire in 1921). She had seven brothers and sisters and lived at various addresses throughout NYC and the surrounding boroughs. Procko’s timeline suggests that she married her first husband, Elias B. Weisberg, sometime in 1902. The two did eventually divorce, but if it was due to her past, I do not know. She toured the country for many years performing vaudeville under a variety of stage names and, in 1920, married again, this time to Frederick Petrovics. She would be Edna Petrovics for the remainder of her, hopefully happy, days. Fred passed away in 1958 and on June 27, 1964 she died in Queens and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Q. So, Jess, interesting or not, why all of this background on a girl who jumped out of a pie? Aren’t you a cake historian?
A. Well, yes. But we couldn’t get to the cake without discussing the pie. The erotic trope it has become was born during that fated dinner in 1895.
While Susie was off performing on stage well into the 20th century, her immortalized pop out pie routine morphed into the pop out cake we now know. There’s an unsubstantiated story of a 1927 performance at the Moulin Rouge wherein dozens of female dancers popped out of cakes. It was said that the props people had used real icing so the dancers could do little but slip when their feet hit the floor, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that the act itself became a pop culture cliché.
Most everyone can call to mind Gene Kelly’s lightpole moves in Singin’ in the Rain, but what about Debbie Reynolds popping out of a technicolor cake?
And in 1959’s Some Like It Hot, hit man Johnny Paradise (!) emerges not with birds but with a Tommy Gun, taking out the boss, Spats Colombo (again, !) and his gang. Not so erotic (to me, at least), but it did the job.
By the 1970’s, companies and individuals offering the performance were advertised from coast to coast.
Dan Valentine, a columnist for the Salt Lake Tribune, wrote in the May 12, 1977 issue about receiving a request for information on how to hire a “girl” to pop out of a birthday cake nude as a birthday surprise for his boss. “I suggested he call the Utah State Employment Office. ‘They just might have a nude cake popper-outer on their list.’ (FYI, they did not. Valentine ends by saying “You know how the vice squad boys are in town these days—you can’t even buy a magazine these days unless the girls in the pictures are wearing overcoats”)
Those lists certainly grew shorter as the 1970s bled into the latter part of the 20th century and popularity significantly waned. So where do we find ourselves in the 21st century? Showgirls and stage performers still employ that act. “Confessions of a Showgirl” columnist (and now star of a show of the same name) Marin Wade wrote in 2014 about her experience at a corporate birthday party. After popping out of the cake on stage and performing for a crowd, she expected to be helped out by someone from the crew. Only, she wasn’t. After a time, the cake was pushed to the side of the stage, but she was still stuck inside of the sweltering thing and “couldn’t step out…in my mini dress [or] risk flashing the audience.”7 Finally, her rescue came but, instead of a story or apology from the crew, she was told by one, with a laugh, that “We simply forgot.”7 Classic.
We also see pop out cakes as part of very public birthday celebrations, sometimes as a joke, sometimes not: James Franco and Seth Rogan celebrating Jimmy Fallon’s birthday in 2014; Bill Murray jumping out of a cake on David Letterman for the talk show host’s final episode in 2015; Kate Moss popping up as Marilyn Monroe for photographer Mert Alas’s birthday in 2018, and Javier Bardem surprising Daniel Craig in 2022.
There are a smattering of enterprises who still provide the cake and the beating-heart inside.
The above image is on the home page of the website for Linda Kaye’s Partymakers, “Party Planner to the Stars,” but all links to pop up cakes open to a 403 Forbidden message. Sign of the times? Maybe, but don’t fret! Thanks to Scarlett Entertainment “…you can still surprise the birthday person with this giant cake complete with a pop-out singer…[who] will burst out and perform [a] whole vocal set…in [an] explosion of glitter, dressed as Marilyn Monroe.” London-based act available for bookings worldwide! And if you’ve got a volunteer ready to curl up inside for a spell, you can rent a massive empty cake or DIY one using hula hoops and cardboard; mrgtfrench shows off the Hobbit-themed giant cake on Instagram that she made to pop out of as part of her 30th birthday celebration.
And, of course, they are available on Amazon.
So, yes, we do still have ladies (and gents) popping out of cakes, albeit with far less frequency than during the mid-20th century, but what about pop out pies? My most recent sighting of one of those was in 2014 during the second episode of season 4 of Game of Thrones when Joffrey (all these bad men!) cuts into his wedding cake and out fly doves. Perhaps, like the Gilded Age, they are a symbol of the past.
There is relief in having finally found the truth about Susie, that she didn’t die a terrible, lonely death, and that she went on to have a full life. Writing about the “Pie Girl Dinner” in her book Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America, Sarah Burns says that “[the dinner] became a sign for the decadence of art and high society, fatally twinned in the pursuit of erotic sensation and in the ruin of innocence.” That was true then about female-based entertainment, and it is often true now. We are lucky, at least, to have modern, empowered women choosing to take part in the act. I can only hope that when I finally get to read Gilded Breeze, the “Pie Girl” hook that sunk in years ago will loosen a little. Susie may be long gone, but her story, her true story, is just starting to pop out.
To learn more about Susie, the “Girl in the Pie” Dinner, and Stanford/Evelyn, check out:
Gilded Breeze by Steve Procko - available late 2026
American Eve by Paula Uruburu
The Girl on the Velvet Swing by Simon Baatz
Notations:
1. New York World - October 13, 1895
2. Los Angeles Herald - March 3, 1907
3. San Antonio Light - May 10, 1908
4. New York World - October 13, 1895
5. Los Angeles Herald - March 31, 1907
6. The Daily Sentinel - February 27, 1907
7. Las Vegas Weekly - July 23, 2014
So interesting! 👏Your pop out cake/pie is perfect!!