de Valois, notorious for her involvement in the affair of the Diamond Necklace. Like de Valois, Sharp had a childhood of financial hardship, and Sharp's later boast of how she was related to the French noble family of de Montmorency could have been based on de Valois' own claims to have French royal blood in her veins. Gordon Ray suggested that the character of Sharp had no single source; rather, it was the combination of aspects of different women that Thackeray had observed and read about. Other possible models for the Sharp character have been suggested as Mary Anne Clarke and Harriette Wilson, two of the most well known English courtesans of the Regency era. Clarke was originally Mistress of the Regent's brother, the Duke of York, and in 1809 had been at the centre of a scandal in which she acknowledged selling officers' commissions with the duke's knowledge, who—being Commander-in-chief—subsequently resigned. Clarke attempted to publish her memoirs on the matter; they were suppressed, but she received a £10,000 payment and an annuity from the King. Harriette Wilson—described by Walter Scott as having "lived with half the gay world at hack and manger"—also published her memoirs. She too had profited from her liaisons with important society men, and had become mistress to the Earl of Craven at the age of 15; her memoirs went through over 30 editions in their year of publication. Says Frazee, "these two most celebrated courtesans of the Regency provided Thackeray with material which, when added to that he acquired from first-hand knowledge of women like Becky and from his reading of fiction" enabled him to create a realistic Regency courtesan in Sharp. Dramatic portrayals In 1899, Langdon Mitchell's production of Vanity Fair toured the United States with Minnie Maddern Fiske as Sharp, a role Fiske received critical praise for. The following year his production was plagiarised by Gertrude Coghlan's Delcher & Hennessy theatre company, with herself in the lead role, until Mitchell sued. The first film version of Vanity Fair was released in 1915. This was a silent movie directed by Charles Brabin and also starring Fiske in the main role. Another silent version, directed by Walter Courtney Rowden and starring Kyrie Bellew, was made and released in Britain seven years later. The following year saw another silent production released by Samuel Goldwyn; this was directed by Hugo Ballin and starred his wife, Mabel, as