Cline's Second Wife: Katharine Gridley

Katharine Gridley in 1927

Cline knew Katharine Doolittle Gridley (1895-1947) in the 1910s and early 1920s when he was on the staff of the Detroit News.  Katharine was soon living in New York, with her common-law husband Holger Cahill (1887-1960), but around 1923 they separated and Katherine paired up with Cline. (Cline's first wife divorced him for adultery in 1924.)  Katharine and Leonard were eventually married in Stamford, Connecticut, on 9 November 1926, but their relationship was frequently difficult. After Cline was charged with first degree murder in the shooting death of a friend visiting the Cline house in Willimantic, Connecticut, in the summer of 1927, Katharine deserted Cline and they were divorced in 1928.

Katharine worked as an artist, and as a newspaper illustrator and occasional writer. Cline's first novel, God Head (1925), is dedicated to her, and a sketch of Cline by Katharine (reproduced at right) appears alongside a review by Professor Warren Bower of the University of Michigan of God Head in The Lansing State Journal c. 19 March 1926.

After leaving Cline, Katharine returned to the Detroit area, where many members of her family lived, and in the 1930s she married a man surnamed Brown, but this marriage did not last. Katharine moved back to New York, where on 11 July 1942 she married a man named Daniel McMahon. Katharine was widowed before her death in Detroit at the age of 51 on 17 January 1947.