Where’s the Real Mrs. Brown?

It was not long after the Titanic slowly sank into the Atlantic on April 15, 1912, that stories about Molly Brown began to surface in newspapers, magazines and, eventually, books.

They said that Brown had brazenly barked orders at the survivors in her lifeboat, taking over from the quartermaster and urging them to row toward the light of a rescue ship. When the women became paralyzed with fear and cold, she stripped to her corset, handing out her clothing while singing arias to calm them. When the quartermaster challenged Brown, she pulled out a pistol and told him to shut up or get shot.

Over the years, legend and fact about Brown became as twisted as the laces on her now-famous corset.

The Molly Brown audiences will see beginning Friday in the Fullerton Civic Light Opera’s “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” starring Susan Dohan, is the invention of Richard Morris and Meredith Willson. They picked up on these stories and turned them into the 1960 Tony-winning musical featuring Tammy Grimes in the title role. In 1964, MGM produced a film version with Debbie Reynolds. Both portray Brown as an uneducated, illiterate, uncouth tomboy who heads West to find a rich husband and gain entry into high society.

James Cameron’s current mega-hit “Titanic” paints a kinder but still distorted portrait of Brown, portrayed by Kathy Bates.

“I enjoyed [‘Titanic’],” said Leigh Grinstead, director of the Molly Brown House Museum in Denver, which opened in 1971. “It did a really nice job in portraying her warmth, intelligence and humor. But again, they changed the story significantly. [In the lifeboat] she did not sit down and take it. She told them to row, told [the quartermaster] to be quiet or she would throw him overboard. And the women did not run away from her at tea. She was completely accepted.

“The stories, musicals and films are interesting,” Grinstead added, “but I find the real Molly infinitely more interesting.”

So, apparently, does the public. Since the Dec. 19 release of “Titanic,” museum attendance has the staff “just blown out of the water,” Grinstead said. In January, 3,900 visitors (as compared to 300 in the same period last year) toured the house, which appears as it did when she lived there in 1910.

Brown’s great-grandson, Costa Mesa architect Lance Brown, said he’s amazed by the stories told on stage and screen.

Born in 1867 in Hannibal, Mo., Margaret Tobin later moved to Leadville, Colo., and married J.J. Brown, who eventually got rich through mining. She raised two children, became politically and socially active and traveled extensively before her death in New York in 1932.

“What was passed down [in my family] was her genuine effort to help people on the Titanic and elsewhere, that she wanted to fit in but didn’t want to compromise who she was, and that she was a genuinely kind person.

“Hollywood has just taken certain aspects of her personality and put an exclamation mark behind them,” he said.

Stan Oliner, curator of books and manuscripts at the Colorado Historical Society, agrees. But instead of finding fault with Hollywood, he revels in what he calls “the fantasy Molly Brown.”

Citing a lack a factual material, Oliner has taken a unusual stance for a historical society staffer and created what he calls the “fantasy Molly Brown collection.”

It starts with the pre-Broadway Willson script for the out-of-town run and contains everything from librettos and sketches of scenery to memorabilia from the 1964 film.

“Now I’ve started the film ‘Titanic’ collection and am trying to contact Kathy Bates [about a donation of a dress].”

Kristen Iversen, an English professor at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo., is taking the opposite approach. She is working on a biography of Brown, hoping to debunk the myths.

The first thing she would like to set straight is the name Molly, a creation of Morris and Willson.

“She was never called Molly in her lifetime,” Iversen said. “She preferred to be called either Margaret Tobin Brown or Mrs. J.J. Brown.”

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Iversen says most portrayals of Brown dismiss her position as an important historical figure, an educated suffragette who eschewed Victorian sensibilities that urged women “to keep quiet and keep their gloves on.” She blames the politics of the time for tarnishing Brown’s reputation.

“There was a backlash; people thought she was overstepping her bounds.” Iversen said. This was compounded by Brown being of Irish descent and Catholic, while Denver society was Protestant and “old money,” Iversen said.

Also, Iversen points out, Brown was accepted in high society, especially in Newport, R.I., where she sometimes lived, New York and Europe. She was one of the first women to run for U.S. Senate, a recipient of the Palm of the Academy of France award for her charity work in that country and a champion of miners’ rights.

Dohan said she has seen the films and once worked as the dresser for the actress playing Molly Brown in a summer stock production. While researching the part, Dohan said, she was surprised to discover the untruths in the musical.

“She could read and write; she didn’t strip to her corset, her two children are never mentioned, and she and Johnny don’t get back together,” Dohan said. (The Browns separated in 1909 but never divorced.)

“But you can’t put that in a musical, now can you?”

* “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Friday-Saturday at 8 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. beginning Feb. 19; Sundays and Feb. 28 at 2 p.m. and Feb. 22 at 2 and 7 p.m. Ends March 1. $14-$33. (714) 526-3832. Running time: Two hours, 30 minutes.