Status
Available
Publication
Random House (2010), Edition: 1st, 448 pages
Description
Biography & Autobiography. History. Performing Arts. Nonfiction. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER America was flying high in the Roaring Twenties. Then, almost overnight, the Great Depression brought it crashing down. When the dust settled, people were primed for a star who could distract them from reality. Enter Gypsy Rose Lee, a strutting, bawdy, erudite stripper who possessed a gift for delivering exactly what America needed. With her superb narrative skills and eye for detail, Karen Abbott brings to life an era of ambition, glamour, struggle, and survival. Using exclusive interviews and never-before-published material, she vividly delves into Gypsy�??s world, including her intense triangle relationship with her sister, actress June Havoc, and their formidable mother, Rose, a petite but ferocious woman who literally killed to get her daughters on the stage. Weaving in the compelling saga of the Minskys�??four scrappy brothers from New York City who would pave the way for Gypsy Rose Lee�??s bra… (more)
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Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul by Karen Abbott
Media reviews
But this book is confusing in much more important ways. It keeps on feinting and switching eras, quite jarringly. It often switches focus, dealing better with the “times” of Gypsy Rose Lee (as mentioned in its subtitle) than with the actual life. It relies on Gypsy’s own 1957 memoir, right
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down to paraphrasing the way she describes stripping off costumes that were fastened with straight pins, which made a plinking sound each time a pin landed in a nearby tuba. How Gypsy managed these pins without drawing blood is one of too many things left to the imagination. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member picardyrose
I would have liked this better if she hadn't jumped around in time. Someone who was dead on, say, page 90 took a turn for the better on page 100 because of a jump back in time. It was confusing. Also, she writes like this: "A hand tunneled out from the sheet. She coiled long, blade-thin fingers
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around my wrist." Show Less
LibraryThing member Groovybaby
I picked up this book because I thought it would be a fun romp, kind of like an old vaudville skit, silly and fun with perhaps a hint of tantilizing scandal thrown in just for fun.
I was wrong, very wrong. This book was not fun at all, (not by a long shot)but I do think it is an important work none
American Rose is a terrifying tale full of stomach churning abuse, glamorous costumes, celebrity party guests and outright murder. Much like the subject, a woman who went by several names, the fun image on the outside hides the horror on the inside. Perhaps this book was not what I expected and maybe I am a bit sorry that I read it for some of this information I now have in my brain is stuff that I never wanted to know about human nature, but I do recognise it as an important work. The author methodically researched her subject without bias and reported not only what appeared on the stage but the times she lived in and the America that so self righteously both condemed and created the legend of the very real, very sad woman known popularly as Gypsy Rose Lee.
I was wrong, very wrong. This book was not fun at all, (not by a long shot)but I do think it is an important work none
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the less. The truth behind the heavy curtain of the vaudville stage is more unpleasant than any of us wearing "Rose" tinted glasses could ever imagine in our wildest nightmares. I think it's the veil of age that makes me think I would never read a contemporary porn actor's biography because for sure it would contain unpleasant information, but somehow I assumed that the times of Gypsy Rose Lee were more innocent and thus her biography would be a happy comedy of errors that turned her into her generations Madonna. The truth is that this woman was not her generations pop star, she was in actuality her generations porn star, pretty and amusing on stage but horrific in reality on a day to day basis. Gypsy Rose Lee was a woman who came from desperately poor circumstances and was raised to believe that the only thing that counted in life was the image on the stage and the money that image brought in. She was the bookish, chunky older sister of a vaudville star that through anger, resentment and want of her Mother's twisted love turned herself into an even bigger "star" than her younger sibling, so big that her legend superceeds not only her sister's but her own her actual life. American Rose is a terrifying tale full of stomach churning abuse, glamorous costumes, celebrity party guests and outright murder. Much like the subject, a woman who went by several names, the fun image on the outside hides the horror on the inside. Perhaps this book was not what I expected and maybe I am a bit sorry that I read it for some of this information I now have in my brain is stuff that I never wanted to know about human nature, but I do recognise it as an important work. The author methodically researched her subject without bias and reported not only what appeared on the stage but the times she lived in and the America that so self righteously both condemed and created the legend of the very real, very sad woman known popularly as Gypsy Rose Lee.
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LibraryThing member girlsgonereading
As a child of the 80s, I have never entered a speakeasy, thought about vaudeville, or lived through the Depression. American Rose allowed me to enter into worlds I have never even thought of before. The genius of this book is that these unknown worlds were connected to our own, and I recognized
Gypsy was, for me, the first reality star. Selling a history and a talent that were not true, Gypsy reinvented herself and became the most famous woman in America. She lived by the idea that to achieve fame you should “discover what could make you famous, and then proclaim it already has.” Gypsy pretended her way to the top, and I found it fascinating that we have been pretending with our stars ever since.
Gypsy, her family, and the Minsky were characters in the truest sense of the word. They all created personas and never deviated from type. What made Abbott’s American Rose so unique was that eventually I sympathized with all these cold, self-serving people. I started to like them. I started to root for them. And even now, I am glad I learned about them.
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reality stars today in the genesis of Gypsy Rose Lee.Gypsy was, for me, the first reality star. Selling a history and a talent that were not true, Gypsy reinvented herself and became the most famous woman in America. She lived by the idea that to achieve fame you should “discover what could make you famous, and then proclaim it already has.” Gypsy pretended her way to the top, and I found it fascinating that we have been pretending with our stars ever since.
Gypsy, her family, and the Minsky were characters in the truest sense of the word. They all created personas and never deviated from type. What made Abbott’s American Rose so unique was that eventually I sympathized with all these cold, self-serving people. I started to like them. I started to root for them. And even now, I am glad I learned about them.
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LibraryThing member zimbawilson
I liked the story and it was well written by Karen Abbott, but the bouncing back and forth between eras was often annoying. Abbott starts in NY in 1940 then goes back to tell of Lee's birth, etc. and continues to bounce back and forth between the chapters for the rest of the book. Otherwise I found
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the story very well researched and quite fascinating. It covers the physcology factors of a bat shit crazy stage mom who resorted to anything (including murder) to advance her daughters careers. It's actually surprising Lee didn't wind up in an institution given her childhood but in many ways she became her mother. Show Less
LibraryThing member Kasthu
When Amazon Vine came out with their October newsletter, I told myself that I wouldn’t select anything; I’ve got way too many unread books lying around as it is! But when I saw that Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second City, had a new book out, I couldn’t resist. And who could? This
But I was disappointed. Clearly, the author is interested in her topic, but her approach to the book was all wrong to me. The flashes backwards and forwards in time were very distracting to the flow of the book. and I feel as though the author skipped over a lot of stuff in order to get to the racy bits. As a result, I felt that Gypsy Rose Lee’s relationship with Michael Todd could have been fleshed out a lot more—I get the feeling that a lot more was going on there than the author lets on.
The author gives her reader a fascinating account of the death of vaudeville and the rise of burlesque, but I got very little sense of Gypsy Rose Lee herself and what made her so attractive as a performer. In fact, the book isn’t just about her; it’s also about the Minsky brother, Billy Minsky in particular, who ran several burlesque houses in New York City (despite Mayor Laguardia’s attempts to shut them down).
As with many popular history books of this type, it reads like a novel, which I enjoyed, but I expected this book to be more about Gypsy Rose Lee than about the Minsky brothers, who don’t appear to have had much impact on her career (I don’t know much about Gypsy Rose Lee’s life apart from what I’ve read in this book). I enjoyed reading about Gypsy Rose/ Louise’s childhood in vaudeville; what a nightmare of a mother she had! I also enjoyed reading about the relationship between Louise and her sister June, who ran away as a teenager in order to escape their mother. I’d have loved to see an analysis of Rose Hovick’s character, too—despite the fact that she was so dysfunctional, I would love to know exactly what made that woman tick! But the book is well-researched and interesting, despite my criticisms of it.
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nonfictional account of the life of a famous burlesque dancer was begging to be read.But I was disappointed. Clearly, the author is interested in her topic, but her approach to the book was all wrong to me. The flashes backwards and forwards in time were very distracting to the flow of the book. and I feel as though the author skipped over a lot of stuff in order to get to the racy bits. As a result, I felt that Gypsy Rose Lee’s relationship with Michael Todd could have been fleshed out a lot more—I get the feeling that a lot more was going on there than the author lets on.
The author gives her reader a fascinating account of the death of vaudeville and the rise of burlesque, but I got very little sense of Gypsy Rose Lee herself and what made her so attractive as a performer. In fact, the book isn’t just about her; it’s also about the Minsky brother, Billy Minsky in particular, who ran several burlesque houses in New York City (despite Mayor Laguardia’s attempts to shut them down).
As with many popular history books of this type, it reads like a novel, which I enjoyed, but I expected this book to be more about Gypsy Rose Lee than about the Minsky brothers, who don’t appear to have had much impact on her career (I don’t know much about Gypsy Rose Lee’s life apart from what I’ve read in this book). I enjoyed reading about Gypsy Rose/ Louise’s childhood in vaudeville; what a nightmare of a mother she had! I also enjoyed reading about the relationship between Louise and her sister June, who ran away as a teenager in order to escape their mother. I’d have loved to see an analysis of Rose Hovick’s character, too—despite the fact that she was so dysfunctional, I would love to know exactly what made that woman tick! But the book is well-researched and interesting, despite my criticisms of it.
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LibraryThing member CSMcMahon
I confess when I started reading the book I knew very little about Gypsy Rose Lee. I picked up the book mainly because Abbott is an incredible storyteller and I knew I would be in for some adventurous tales. The book is well researched and she clearly loves her subject. But I found it missing
The descriptions of the relationships between the women, Gypsy, June, and Rose, were fascinating. They loved each other but they had a warped way of showing it. They caused each other grief and pain. Gypsy’s relationship with her son was also intriguing. He didn’t know who his father was until he was much older and she didn’t seem to think it was important. He traveled with her and was present back stage and saw things a small boy probably should never saw.
The book also contains a history of vaudeville and burlesque, focusing on the Minksy brothers who opened up theaters which were an affordable alternative for theater goers. I found the tales of raids and the threats of losing their license to operate interesting but I’m not sure how much they lent to understanding Gypsy.
My biggest complaint about this book is the order which I found more than a little distracting. In Chapter One it’s the World’s Fair in 1940, Chapter Two it’s Seattle in 1910. There was a lot of jumping around and it didn’t feel like a flash back which lent to the story. Instead it felt very disjointed.
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something.The descriptions of the relationships between the women, Gypsy, June, and Rose, were fascinating. They loved each other but they had a warped way of showing it. They caused each other grief and pain. Gypsy’s relationship with her son was also intriguing. He didn’t know who his father was until he was much older and she didn’t seem to think it was important. He traveled with her and was present back stage and saw things a small boy probably should never saw.
The book also contains a history of vaudeville and burlesque, focusing on the Minksy brothers who opened up theaters which were an affordable alternative for theater goers. I found the tales of raids and the threats of losing their license to operate interesting but I’m not sure how much they lent to understanding Gypsy.
My biggest complaint about this book is the order which I found more than a little distracting. In Chapter One it’s the World’s Fair in 1940, Chapter Two it’s Seattle in 1910. There was a lot of jumping around and it didn’t feel like a flash back which lent to the story. Instead it felt very disjointed.
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LibraryThing member Tasker
If you think your family's dysfunctional, wait until you read this book. This extensively-researched (a full notation of sources, a bibliography and a full index) "biography" of Gypsy Rose Lee is more than her life story - it highlights vaudeville, burlesque, gangsters, politicians and show
For me, it was easy to read since chapters weren't written chronologically. They flipped from the 1910's to the 40's, back to the 20's and 30's and then would forward to the 50's with numerous photographs.
I believe, and I could be wrong, that Ms. Abbott's next book will center around the Civil War and aspects of the criminal element in its wake. Given the subject matter of her first book, "Sin in the Second City", I believe she has a thing for gangsters.
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business characters of the first half of the twentieth century.For me, it was easy to read since chapters weren't written chronologically. They flipped from the 1910's to the 40's, back to the 20's and 30's and then would forward to the 50's with numerous photographs.
I believe, and I could be wrong, that Ms. Abbott's next book will center around the Civil War and aspects of the criminal element in its wake. Given the subject matter of her first book, "Sin in the Second City", I believe she has a thing for gangsters.
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LibraryThing member melaniehope
American Rose is the story of Gypsy Rose Lee. She hit the vaudeville circuit at an early age and later was to become one of the most famous burlesque striptease artist of her time. The relationship between Gypsy, her sister, June and her mother, Rose was a huge part of this story. We find out early
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how driven and compulsive their mother was and how her behavior shaped Gypsy's life. Once you start this story, you can't help but hate Rose for how she used and forced her children into showbiz, no matter the cost. This was such a great book. The author does not tell the story chronologically, but goes back and forth between Gypsy Rose Lee's early life in one chapter and then the next chapter takes place decades later towards the middle of her career. So you get to see different fazes of Gypsy's life in each chapter. The author's note does state that a friend described Gypsy as the "most private public figure of her time." So I often wanted to find out more of how Gypsy thought and felt, but I think even her friends and sister never really knew the real Gypsy. However, this was such a fascinating read and I will now want to read Karen Abbott's first book, Sin in the Second City. Show Less
LibraryThing member horomnizon
Let me preface this by saying I'm 34...so much of my knowledge of Gypsy Rose Lee before reading this book came from the musical "Gypsy", which I quickly found out was quite a fabrication. I expected the book to be interesting, but I got pretty bored with it about half way through.
Honestly, it's
I finished the book, but it wasn't the best biography I've ever read (I loved Hillenbrand's Unbroken). It was rather depressing as well....Gypsy's life kind of sucked thanks in part to her mother. So I'd say people who remember her and want to learn more about burlesque and the Minsky's in NYC in the early 20th century will find this book informative, but I wouldn't consider it a 'good read'.
Honestly, it's
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also a biography of sorts on the Minsky Brothers as well. Not that they weren't important to Gypsy's story and filling readers in on that time period in general and the challenges facing burlesque as the political agenda changed and began shutting the houses down. But, it was confusing enough the way she jumped around in time and then having chapters interspersed that had nothing to do with Gypsy was kind of annoying. I finished the book, but it wasn't the best biography I've ever read (I loved Hillenbrand's Unbroken). It was rather depressing as well....Gypsy's life kind of sucked thanks in part to her mother. So I'd say people who remember her and want to learn more about burlesque and the Minsky's in NYC in the early 20th century will find this book informative, but I wouldn't consider it a 'good read'.
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LibraryThing member JanaRose1
Gypsy Rose Lee, known by her family as Louise, transformed herself from vaudeville to burlesque during the Great Depression. As a child, she took a backseat to her younger sister Jane, who was a magnificent dancer and singer. Jane, unable to adapt to the great depression was left behind when Louise
I thought this was a fascinating book. The childhood of Jane and Louise was particularly interesting. I enjoyed learning about vaudeville as well as the time period they lived and worked in. My only critique is that the book jumped in time. I wish it had been more chronological. Otherwise, I highly enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.
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decided to do whatever it took to succeed.I thought this was a fascinating book. The childhood of Jane and Louise was particularly interesting. I enjoyed learning about vaudeville as well as the time period they lived and worked in. My only critique is that the book jumped in time. I wish it had been more chronological. Otherwise, I highly enjoyed this book and recommend it to others.
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LibraryThing member TheLostEntwife
So when I began to read this book I knew absolutely nothing about Gypsy Rose Lee. Silly, naive me, I thought I’d be reading about a Broadway entertainer – maybe the female counterpart to Al Jolson. Oh, how wrong I was.
Gypsy Rose Lee was.. a stripteaser. You’ve seen Burlesque? Yup – Gypsy
So, taking the story with a grain of salt, I allowed myself to be entertained with stories of early New York and the vaudeville circuit and thoroughly enjoyed perusing the pictures provided as well.
American Rose is entertainment, pure and simple. It’s a guilty pleasure biographical read that reads more like fiction then a biography. I actually took more historical information from the descriptions of the others involved in the entertainment circle of Gypsy and that was fine by me.
Gypsy Rose Lee was.. a stripteaser. You’ve seen Burlesque? Yup – Gypsy
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was part of the earliest. The story of her life is a heart-breaking one, but I’m not really sure just how much of this story is accurate, however. Karen Abbott states in her authors note that the majority of the story came from Gypsy’s sister, and her son – but the relationship between Gypsy and her sister is not a flattering one, and her son wasn’t present for Gypsy’s younger life.So, taking the story with a grain of salt, I allowed myself to be entertained with stories of early New York and the vaudeville circuit and thoroughly enjoyed perusing the pictures provided as well.
American Rose is entertainment, pure and simple. It’s a guilty pleasure biographical read that reads more like fiction then a biography. I actually took more historical information from the descriptions of the others involved in the entertainment circle of Gypsy and that was fine by me.
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LibraryThing member NellieMc
As comprehensive a book about this subject - the real story behind the musical Gypsy - as we're likely to get, given the subject's propensity to make up stories about herself, the lack of written documentation, and now the death of all the active players. I was truly impressed with Abbott's attempt
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to dig out everything and it was fortunate that Gypsy's sister was still alive and willing to give interviews. I thought the story was fascinating, both as a character study and and as a cultural study. For anyone who likes biography, 20th century American history, or theater history, this is a worthwhile read. Show Less
LibraryThing member kathyhiester
With pop star Christina Aguilara’s movie Burlesque being at the forefront of America’s mind it is a perfect time for a book about the Queen of burlesque to release. American Rose brings America the genuine story of the woman, her struggles and her triumphs.
Karen Abbott shows us a multifaceted
Many Americas do not know that Gypsy Rose Lee was one of its greatest and well known artists she was elegant, well read, and stronger for all that she had gone through.
The only drawback was the very confusing time line.
Four stars for sure !!
Karen Abbott shows us a multifaceted
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Gypsy Rose Lee than the glamour of the musical starring Natalie Wood. By re-evaluating her life, through her family and the overbearing mother Rose Hovick, we see the timeline of how someone fights to become famous in America. Abbott provides the details of Gypsy’s life and the circumstance in which she was raised. Many Americas do not know that Gypsy Rose Lee was one of its greatest and well known artists she was elegant, well read, and stronger for all that she had gone through.
The only drawback was the very confusing time line.
Four stars for sure !!
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LibraryThing member melissarochelle
Gypsy Rose Lee had one crazy life...it's too bad we're not sure what's fact vs fiction. As I mentioned in my blog post from earlier this week, the book goes back and forth in time - starts in 1940, then 1910s, then back again. That was fine until the last third of the book. People were dead then
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they were alive and the earlier sections caught up with the later sections so by the end I was just trying to figure out where I was in Gypsy's life. (I'm hoping all of that got fixed before the book was properly published - I was reading an Advanced Copy.) Bottom line: Interesting story. Now I want to know more! Show Less
LibraryThing member Mike-L
A good overview of the life and times of Gypsy Rose Lee, the culture that "created" her and the personal trials and demons that drove her to succeed. This is not a gossipy "tell-all" biography full of lurid information on celebrity affairs, there are a few brief mentions of such behavior as it
Ms. Abbott has an interesting way of structuring her books - she did something similar in her book Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul - she begins somewhere in the middle of the timeline of the story she wants to tell (in this case about halfway through Gypsy Rose Lee's life when she was at her Burlesque peak but not yet the iconic figure she would become in her lifetime) then time jumps back to the beginning in the next chapter (Gypsy's birth and hard early years) while in the third chapter the author builds up the backstory of the culture that created the opportunity for the subject to flourish (focusing in this case on the early years of the Minsky brothers and the new style of burlesque they helped cultivate). This cycle that goes back and forth and back every third chapter takes a little getting used to at first but it works pretty well for the most part. The structure of the narrative falls apart a little in later chapters. When the separate timelines start to converge - as when Gypsy joins Minsky's roster of performers and the two narrative lines begin to overlap. It gets a little confusing. Some of the Minsky chapters are very dry reading and slow the momentum of the book.
The best and most fascinating part of the book, by far, is the extensive telling of the early life and career of Mother Rose Hovick's two daughters - Baby June and Rose Louise (who would become Gypsy Rose Lee) - as they traveled across the country (like gypsies) performing anywhere and everywhere in their efforts to fulfill the dreams and ambitions of Mother Rose. The author does a great job of describing the atmosphere of the vaudeville circuit and the performers who worked it during those years.
The actual transformation of little Rose Louise into Gypsy Rose Lee is glossed over somewhat - apparently, like many other performers of the era, Gypsy was a master of creating her own myth, so much so that much of what is and isn't true is hard to establish and there are conflicting stories of some events and no information at all of others. The book doesn't provide much in depth information on Gypsy Rose Lee's more famous years other than her lifelong conflicted relationships with her mother and sister. If a reader doesn't already have at least a vague knowledge of who Gypsy Rose Lee was they might be left wondering why she became so famous and celebrated in her lifetime.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to know more about the vaudeville circuits, the child entertainers who performed on those stages, and the culture of burlesque that developed in the early 20th century.
The book is relatively free of any offensive language or explicit descriptions.
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relates to other aspects of Gypsy's life but it never devolves into tabloid-like sensationalism.Ms. Abbott has an interesting way of structuring her books - she did something similar in her book Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America's Soul - she begins somewhere in the middle of the timeline of the story she wants to tell (in this case about halfway through Gypsy Rose Lee's life when she was at her Burlesque peak but not yet the iconic figure she would become in her lifetime) then time jumps back to the beginning in the next chapter (Gypsy's birth and hard early years) while in the third chapter the author builds up the backstory of the culture that created the opportunity for the subject to flourish (focusing in this case on the early years of the Minsky brothers and the new style of burlesque they helped cultivate). This cycle that goes back and forth and back every third chapter takes a little getting used to at first but it works pretty well for the most part. The structure of the narrative falls apart a little in later chapters. When the separate timelines start to converge - as when Gypsy joins Minsky's roster of performers and the two narrative lines begin to overlap. It gets a little confusing. Some of the Minsky chapters are very dry reading and slow the momentum of the book.
The best and most fascinating part of the book, by far, is the extensive telling of the early life and career of Mother Rose Hovick's two daughters - Baby June and Rose Louise (who would become Gypsy Rose Lee) - as they traveled across the country (like gypsies) performing anywhere and everywhere in their efforts to fulfill the dreams and ambitions of Mother Rose. The author does a great job of describing the atmosphere of the vaudeville circuit and the performers who worked it during those years.
The actual transformation of little Rose Louise into Gypsy Rose Lee is glossed over somewhat - apparently, like many other performers of the era, Gypsy was a master of creating her own myth, so much so that much of what is and isn't true is hard to establish and there are conflicting stories of some events and no information at all of others. The book doesn't provide much in depth information on Gypsy Rose Lee's more famous years other than her lifelong conflicted relationships with her mother and sister. If a reader doesn't already have at least a vague knowledge of who Gypsy Rose Lee was they might be left wondering why she became so famous and celebrated in her lifetime.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wanted to know more about the vaudeville circuits, the child entertainers who performed on those stages, and the culture of burlesque that developed in the early 20th century.
The book is relatively free of any offensive language or explicit descriptions.
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LibraryThing member carl.rollyson
There is perhaps no better introduction to Gypsy Rose Lee than the epigraph to "American Rose," Karen Abbott's new bio graphy: "May your bare ass always be shining." These good wishes, sent to the First Lady of the Striptease by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt in 1959, suggest the magnitude of
A New Yorker cartoon reprinted in Lee's autobiography epitomizes her appeal: A pot-bellied, bald man shaving at the bathroom sink glances at his wife, who is speaking to him from behind a shower curtain. She wears an amused expression, her hands gripping the curtain as a covering for her breasts while she sticks one leg out, showing her calf and just a bit of thigh. The caption reads: "Hey, Sam—Gypsy Rose Lee!" Not only did women admire her humor and suggestive style, the nation as a whole celebrated a woman who could make sex into playful entertainment.
From the moment she first began performing in burlesque in the early 1930s, Lee was unusually inventive, pinning to her flesh-colored body suits articles of clothing that she could whisk off and throw into the orchestra pit or the audience. She specialized in breakaway dresses with removable panels. She paraded across the stage in prefabricated dresses, bridal gowns, black-net skirts and lacy negligees. What she wore and how she discarded it created the fascination.
It soon became clear that Lee was a world-class entertainer who just happened to be working in burlesque. In Broadway revues, and later one-woman shows, she tugged at garters and showed a line of leg bent at the knee, or crossed her silk-stockinged limbs and cocked her head in statuesque poses. She decked herself out in late Victorian garb and did a "bustle dance," mocking the propriety of an earlier age even as she maintained her own brand of decorum. Lee's intelligence was equally recognizable in her unusually witty banter with the audience (and authorities). "I wasn't naked," she once protested after a police raid. "I was completely covered by a blue spotlight." How many other striptease artists could hold down their own radio program, as she briefly did?
By the mid-1950s, Gypsy Rose Lee was famous across the country as a performer. But she made herself immortal by writing a book: her sensational 1957 autobiography, "Gypsy." She was so good at embellishing her own story— inventing a narrative that had only fitful commerce with the truth—that biographers have been kept busy fact-checking her ever since.
A revived interest in burlesque culture over the past few years has led to a series of new evaluations. In 2009, Noralee Frankel did her homework in the archives and produced "Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee," which restored some of the truth about her story—inevitably without the panache that made Lee's own life such a wonderful performance. Even better was Rachel Shteir's "Gypsy: The Art of the Tease" (also 2009), an elegant and insightful study of Lee's self-fashioning that Ms. Abbott relies on heavily.
So what does "American Rose" offer that is new? First, invaluable interviews with June Havoc, Gypsy's sister, a tormented observer who could never be sure when Lee was on the level. The author's story of how she got to know Havoc, and her account of the wary transactions between the bio grapher and her interviewee, provide real insight into how icons construct their lives and how biographers go about deconstructing them.
But Ms. Abbott has greater ambitions than just enlivening her biography with material from those who knew Lee. Like Lee herself, Ms. Abbott wants to show off her own intelligence and style. That's perhaps a good thing in a biographer dealing with a flamboyant subject. Even so, she tries too hard at times to evoke Lee's inner states. Ms. Abbott's sentences can read as if they came out of a novel, not a biography: "Not a day passes without her retelling, if just to her own ears, the densely woven and tightly knotted story of her own legend, and not a day passes when she doesn't wonder how its final line will read." It is always tempting for bio graphers to employ words that obscure the sad truth that they cannot know about every day of their subjects' lives.
Ms. Abbott also denies herself one of the great stodgy pleasures of biography: laying out the chronology of a subject's life in what impatient reviewers might call the plodding approach. Instead, she interrupts the sequence of Lee's life with key scenes from later years and from other lives connected with Lee's. Thus a chapter set in 1912 is followed by one in 1940. Readers of novels would not find this flash forward disconcerting, but in a biography—at least in this one—a shifting structure under mines the steady accumulation of detail that makes an account convincing.
After five chapters of Ms. Abbott, I started consulting Ms. Shteir's "Gypsy: The Art of the Tease." Its table of contents—with chapters on "Undressing the Family Romance," "The Queen of Striptease," "To Hollywood and Back," "The Rise and Fall of the Striptease Intellectual"— indicate the kind of analysis short biographies often provide so well. For those unfamiliar with the Lee biblio graphy, which comprises not merely her own memoirs but those of her sister and other family members, Ms. Shteir's is the book to pick up first.
Or perhaps second. Despite its flaws and fabrications, Lee's own autobiography is still the best guide to understanding the nature of her success. The story of her first strip act—no matter how many of its details are invented—is true to the woman that Rose Louise Hovick became when she changed her name to Gypsy Rose Lee at the Gayety Theater in Toledo, Ohio, in 1931. Her biographers, for all their skepticism, cannot resist relying on Lee's memoir. She always wanted to be taken seriously as a writer—she wrote two novels and once shared a house with W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Paul Bowles—and her autobiography is certainly a classic of the form.
Chapter 26 of "Gypsy: A Memoir" describes her family of starving, bedraggled vaudeville performers arriving at the Gayety Theater only to hear the show's producer telling the stage manager that the lead stripper has been jailed and no one is available to do her scenes. "My daughter does scenes," says Gypsy's mother, who is portrayed in the auto biography as the epitome of the pushy stage parent. Lee writes: "I wanted to hide somewhere. Mother pushed me toward the two men and I wanted the floor to open up and let me drop quietly through it."
Up to this point in the autobiography, Rose Louise, fat and untalented, has been overshadowed by her younger sister, June, who as a 3-year-old was already performing as a dancer. The producer asks about Rose Louise: "Does she strip?" As Lee reports: "Mother looked him straight in the eye and said yes." Afterward she assured her daughter that she would have to do no more than drop a shoulder strap at the end of her routine. And, at first, Lee suggests, she didn't.
Lee continues: "The full importance of what had happened suddenly hit me." She would soon be a star, playing to ever more enthusiastic crowds, and she decided to behave accordingly, changing her name, seeing to it that the marquee reflected the change, embellish ing her act by breaking from the chorus line and inventing her own moves. It is all, of course, worthy of the movies.
Over the years, Lee's bio graphers have diligently undermined parts of this tale. Ms. Abbott notes that June Havoc once did an interview in which she scoffed at her sister's version of her first strip: "She was never an ingenue. . . . And she never just dropped a shoulder strap. Ever." Equally valuable is Ms. Abbott's interview with Gypsy's son, Eric, who told the biographer: "I'm sure it was not an easy year [1931]. . . . There were rough girls, gangsters, prostitution. They had to eat. And she was perhaps forced to do things against her will." The scholarly Ms. Frankel, in "Stripping Gypsy," observes wryly in an endnote: "There is no record in Gypsy Rose Lee's scrapbook that her first strip was done in Toledo."
Ms. Shteir, steeped in the history of striptease, provides a shrewd analysis of Gypsy's reminiscence, noting that it "conflates several stories from showbiz mythology": the show must go on, a star is born and my mother made me do it. The signal point, Ms. Shteir notes, is that Lee could not present herself as stripping of her own accord. That would be "too naughty" and "vulgar." Yet, Ms. Shteir observes, Gypsy did not protest her mother's brash maneuvering.
Ms. Abbott adds an important piece to this puzzle, uncovering a New York Daily News article (from Sept. 15, 1936) that quotes Gypsy Rose Lee just five years after the events in question and 20 years before she committed the myth to writing. "The shoulder strap led to one thing and another, if you know what I mean," Lee says matter-of-factly, "and that's how I started in the strip business."
Here Ms. Abbott is able to pin her subject down and suggest why the autobiography had to replace the facts: "It was beneath her to attach details to that 'one thing and another,' disrespectful to include such memories in her scrapbooks, sacrilege to admit that the singular, legendary Gypsy Rose Lee had begun just like everyone else."
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Lee's celebrity at that time. Through her stage perform ances, books and the musical "Gypsy" (based on her life story), she became not only a legendary show- business figure but part of the American mythos.A New Yorker cartoon reprinted in Lee's autobiography epitomizes her appeal: A pot-bellied, bald man shaving at the bathroom sink glances at his wife, who is speaking to him from behind a shower curtain. She wears an amused expression, her hands gripping the curtain as a covering for her breasts while she sticks one leg out, showing her calf and just a bit of thigh. The caption reads: "Hey, Sam—Gypsy Rose Lee!" Not only did women admire her humor and suggestive style, the nation as a whole celebrated a woman who could make sex into playful entertainment.
From the moment she first began performing in burlesque in the early 1930s, Lee was unusually inventive, pinning to her flesh-colored body suits articles of clothing that she could whisk off and throw into the orchestra pit or the audience. She specialized in breakaway dresses with removable panels. She paraded across the stage in prefabricated dresses, bridal gowns, black-net skirts and lacy negligees. What she wore and how she discarded it created the fascination.
It soon became clear that Lee was a world-class entertainer who just happened to be working in burlesque. In Broadway revues, and later one-woman shows, she tugged at garters and showed a line of leg bent at the knee, or crossed her silk-stockinged limbs and cocked her head in statuesque poses. She decked herself out in late Victorian garb and did a "bustle dance," mocking the propriety of an earlier age even as she maintained her own brand of decorum. Lee's intelligence was equally recognizable in her unusually witty banter with the audience (and authorities). "I wasn't naked," she once protested after a police raid. "I was completely covered by a blue spotlight." How many other striptease artists could hold down their own radio program, as she briefly did?
By the mid-1950s, Gypsy Rose Lee was famous across the country as a performer. But she made herself immortal by writing a book: her sensational 1957 autobiography, "Gypsy." She was so good at embellishing her own story— inventing a narrative that had only fitful commerce with the truth—that biographers have been kept busy fact-checking her ever since.
A revived interest in burlesque culture over the past few years has led to a series of new evaluations. In 2009, Noralee Frankel did her homework in the archives and produced "Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee," which restored some of the truth about her story—inevitably without the panache that made Lee's own life such a wonderful performance. Even better was Rachel Shteir's "Gypsy: The Art of the Tease" (also 2009), an elegant and insightful study of Lee's self-fashioning that Ms. Abbott relies on heavily.
So what does "American Rose" offer that is new? First, invaluable interviews with June Havoc, Gypsy's sister, a tormented observer who could never be sure when Lee was on the level. The author's story of how she got to know Havoc, and her account of the wary transactions between the bio grapher and her interviewee, provide real insight into how icons construct their lives and how biographers go about deconstructing them.
But Ms. Abbott has greater ambitions than just enlivening her biography with material from those who knew Lee. Like Lee herself, Ms. Abbott wants to show off her own intelligence and style. That's perhaps a good thing in a biographer dealing with a flamboyant subject. Even so, she tries too hard at times to evoke Lee's inner states. Ms. Abbott's sentences can read as if they came out of a novel, not a biography: "Not a day passes without her retelling, if just to her own ears, the densely woven and tightly knotted story of her own legend, and not a day passes when she doesn't wonder how its final line will read." It is always tempting for bio graphers to employ words that obscure the sad truth that they cannot know about every day of their subjects' lives.
Ms. Abbott also denies herself one of the great stodgy pleasures of biography: laying out the chronology of a subject's life in what impatient reviewers might call the plodding approach. Instead, she interrupts the sequence of Lee's life with key scenes from later years and from other lives connected with Lee's. Thus a chapter set in 1912 is followed by one in 1940. Readers of novels would not find this flash forward disconcerting, but in a biography—at least in this one—a shifting structure under mines the steady accumulation of detail that makes an account convincing.
After five chapters of Ms. Abbott, I started consulting Ms. Shteir's "Gypsy: The Art of the Tease." Its table of contents—with chapters on "Undressing the Family Romance," "The Queen of Striptease," "To Hollywood and Back," "The Rise and Fall of the Striptease Intellectual"— indicate the kind of analysis short biographies often provide so well. For those unfamiliar with the Lee biblio graphy, which comprises not merely her own memoirs but those of her sister and other family members, Ms. Shteir's is the book to pick up first.
Or perhaps second. Despite its flaws and fabrications, Lee's own autobiography is still the best guide to understanding the nature of her success. The story of her first strip act—no matter how many of its details are invented—is true to the woman that Rose Louise Hovick became when she changed her name to Gypsy Rose Lee at the Gayety Theater in Toledo, Ohio, in 1931. Her biographers, for all their skepticism, cannot resist relying on Lee's memoir. She always wanted to be taken seriously as a writer—she wrote two novels and once shared a house with W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers and Paul Bowles—and her autobiography is certainly a classic of the form.
Chapter 26 of "Gypsy: A Memoir" describes her family of starving, bedraggled vaudeville performers arriving at the Gayety Theater only to hear the show's producer telling the stage manager that the lead stripper has been jailed and no one is available to do her scenes. "My daughter does scenes," says Gypsy's mother, who is portrayed in the auto biography as the epitome of the pushy stage parent. Lee writes: "I wanted to hide somewhere. Mother pushed me toward the two men and I wanted the floor to open up and let me drop quietly through it."
Up to this point in the autobiography, Rose Louise, fat and untalented, has been overshadowed by her younger sister, June, who as a 3-year-old was already performing as a dancer. The producer asks about Rose Louise: "Does she strip?" As Lee reports: "Mother looked him straight in the eye and said yes." Afterward she assured her daughter that she would have to do no more than drop a shoulder strap at the end of her routine. And, at first, Lee suggests, she didn't.
Lee continues: "The full importance of what had happened suddenly hit me." She would soon be a star, playing to ever more enthusiastic crowds, and she decided to behave accordingly, changing her name, seeing to it that the marquee reflected the change, embellish ing her act by breaking from the chorus line and inventing her own moves. It is all, of course, worthy of the movies.
Over the years, Lee's bio graphers have diligently undermined parts of this tale. Ms. Abbott notes that June Havoc once did an interview in which she scoffed at her sister's version of her first strip: "She was never an ingenue. . . . And she never just dropped a shoulder strap. Ever." Equally valuable is Ms. Abbott's interview with Gypsy's son, Eric, who told the biographer: "I'm sure it was not an easy year [1931]. . . . There were rough girls, gangsters, prostitution. They had to eat. And she was perhaps forced to do things against her will." The scholarly Ms. Frankel, in "Stripping Gypsy," observes wryly in an endnote: "There is no record in Gypsy Rose Lee's scrapbook that her first strip was done in Toledo."
Ms. Shteir, steeped in the history of striptease, provides a shrewd analysis of Gypsy's reminiscence, noting that it "conflates several stories from showbiz mythology": the show must go on, a star is born and my mother made me do it. The signal point, Ms. Shteir notes, is that Lee could not present herself as stripping of her own accord. That would be "too naughty" and "vulgar." Yet, Ms. Shteir observes, Gypsy did not protest her mother's brash maneuvering.
Ms. Abbott adds an important piece to this puzzle, uncovering a New York Daily News article (from Sept. 15, 1936) that quotes Gypsy Rose Lee just five years after the events in question and 20 years before she committed the myth to writing. "The shoulder strap led to one thing and another, if you know what I mean," Lee says matter-of-factly, "and that's how I started in the strip business."
Here Ms. Abbott is able to pin her subject down and suggest why the autobiography had to replace the facts: "It was beneath her to attach details to that 'one thing and another,' disrespectful to include such memories in her scrapbooks, sacrilege to admit that the singular, legendary Gypsy Rose Lee had begun just like everyone else."
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LibraryThing member DeltaQueen50
I already knew the basics about Gypsy Rose Lee before I started American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott. I admire the author for tacking such a difficult subject, as Gypsy Rose Lee spend a lifetime inventing and re-inventing herself. It must have been
Born as Ellen June Hovick in Seattle, this youngster wasn’t even able to keep her name as her mother decided to bestow this favored choice on the next daughter. Ellen June then became Louise Rose Hovick and spent her growing up years in her sister’s shadow and trying to win her mother’s love. Anyone who has seen the movie Gypsy based on these years will know that the mother, Rose Hovick, was the ultimate stage-mother. The movie actually softened Rose and in real life she was a terror.
That Louise Hovick was able to become the superstar Gypsy Rose Lee had a lot to do with learning from her mother how to grab opportunity and ride it. I am old enough to remember seeing a slightly older Gypsy doing TV commercials in the 1950’s. I also remember her appearing on the TV show What’s My Line. That this complicated, secretive woman was able to pull herself from the seedy world of strip tease and become, at various times in her life, a novelist, an actress, and a television personality makes for a very interesting read. My one quibble with the book is that the timeline of her life jumped around so much that at times it was hard to keep track of exactly when things happened. Overall a fascinating look at a true American celebrity.
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very hard to separate the real woman from the myth. I did enjoy the book, I learned a little more about Gypsy Rose Lee and a lot about both the vaudeville circuit and burlesque in it’s heyday.Born as Ellen June Hovick in Seattle, this youngster wasn’t even able to keep her name as her mother decided to bestow this favored choice on the next daughter. Ellen June then became Louise Rose Hovick and spent her growing up years in her sister’s shadow and trying to win her mother’s love. Anyone who has seen the movie Gypsy based on these years will know that the mother, Rose Hovick, was the ultimate stage-mother. The movie actually softened Rose and in real life she was a terror.
That Louise Hovick was able to become the superstar Gypsy Rose Lee had a lot to do with learning from her mother how to grab opportunity and ride it. I am old enough to remember seeing a slightly older Gypsy doing TV commercials in the 1950’s. I also remember her appearing on the TV show What’s My Line. That this complicated, secretive woman was able to pull herself from the seedy world of strip tease and become, at various times in her life, a novelist, an actress, and a television personality makes for a very interesting read. My one quibble with the book is that the timeline of her life jumped around so much that at times it was hard to keep track of exactly when things happened. Overall a fascinating look at a true American celebrity.
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LibraryThing member ajarn7086
For those interested in “naughty” books, what could be better than a book about a striptease artist? Now that we have gone past the “prurient interest” stuff, let’s look at what else this book is about.
There are gangsters. Rothstein, Capone, Lucky Luciano, all seem to have had some
There is the history of the Minsky brothers. They are not gangsters, but they are thorns in the side of government as they explore the limits of what they can explore and get past the government censors. Folks who love to irritate the government will like these parts.
There are segments of fascinating history like that of the World’s Fair during WWII. The exhibits of many nations, like the nations themselves, were downsized. The invention of nylon stockings, displayed at the Fair would have later importance at the end of the war.
For psychology students, the Havoc family was a definition of dysfunctional, from “Big Lady”, through momma Rose, the relationship between Louise and June, the complete irrelevance of all men through several generations, and possible cannibalism on the part of earlier female ancestors.
The pandemic of influenza circa 1918 is described. Just when we thought we were the most afflicted generation with AIDS, Ebola, and Zika, it is informative to know what our grandparents (literally) faced, without the filter of the internet and CNN.
Here we have the life and death of Gypsy Rose Lee. Also the life and death of Vaudeville, Burlesque, and the celebrities who inhabited the entertainment world. Tricks are revealed. How did the man turn molten lava into coins? Some reputations may be tarnished. Did Joan Blondell really say that about her husband just after his death? She probably did, as this is a well- researched book with an extensive bibliography.
This can be a disturbing read in some parts, but for me it was mostly fun.
There are gangsters. Rothstein, Capone, Lucky Luciano, all seem to have had some
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connection to Gypsy Rose Lee. Or maybe they were just in the audience.There is the history of the Minsky brothers. They are not gangsters, but they are thorns in the side of government as they explore the limits of what they can explore and get past the government censors. Folks who love to irritate the government will like these parts.
There are segments of fascinating history like that of the World’s Fair during WWII. The exhibits of many nations, like the nations themselves, were downsized. The invention of nylon stockings, displayed at the Fair would have later importance at the end of the war.
For psychology students, the Havoc family was a definition of dysfunctional, from “Big Lady”, through momma Rose, the relationship between Louise and June, the complete irrelevance of all men through several generations, and possible cannibalism on the part of earlier female ancestors.
The pandemic of influenza circa 1918 is described. Just when we thought we were the most afflicted generation with AIDS, Ebola, and Zika, it is informative to know what our grandparents (literally) faced, without the filter of the internet and CNN.
Here we have the life and death of Gypsy Rose Lee. Also the life and death of Vaudeville, Burlesque, and the celebrities who inhabited the entertainment world. Tricks are revealed. How did the man turn molten lava into coins? Some reputations may be tarnished. Did Joan Blondell really say that about her husband just after his death? She probably did, as this is a well- researched book with an extensive bibliography.
This can be a disturbing read in some parts, but for me it was mostly fun.
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LibraryThing member rlsalvati
Interesting but I wasn't comfortable with the time shifts in the narrative. Too much bouncing around.
LibraryThing member purseproblm
I won this Arc in a goodreads giveaway.Overall I enjoyed this immensely, but the back and forth in time feels choppy at points, especially when the Minsky brothers are added in.Even as the stories converge, it didn't seem as though the writing meshed them together well. The history of Vaudeville is
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interesting, as well as reading about some of the performers the sisters toured with. Reading about what Loise did as she became Gypsy, and her behavior toward others is interesting too. At the heart of the story seems to be the mother-daughter-sister dynamic, between GRL (Louise), her mother Rose, and her sister the familt bread winner June. Show Less
LibraryThing member purseproblm
I won this Arc in a goodreads giveaway.Overall I enjoyed this immensely, but the back and forth in time feels choppy at points, especially when the Minsky brothers are added in.Even as the stories converge, it didn't seem as though the writing meshed them together well. The history of Vaudeville is
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interesting, as well as reading about some of the performers the sisters toured with. Reading about what Loise did as she became Gypsy, and her behavior toward others is interesting too. At the heart of the story seems to be the mother-daughter-sister dynamic, between GRL (Louise), her mother Rose, and her sister the familt bread winner June. Show Less
LibraryThing member magicians_nephew
"Gypsy" the classic Musical Play about the life of Gypsy Rose Lee - is probably the ultimate Broadway Musical people talk about when it comes to Broadway Musicals.
Nominally based on Gypsy's autobiography Gypsy it tells the story of two girls and their demon stage mother in the waning years of
But Gypsy in her book didn't always tell the truth. And June Havoc her actress sister didn't like the parts of the play that reflected badly on her or on their mother. After lengthy re-writes and lengthy lawsuits the play went on with the subtitle "A Musical Fable".
So. If you really want to know what happened in those days to Mama Rose and to Gypsy and to June, you need to dig deeper.
In American Rose Karen Abbott got June to talk - and got a lot of people who knew the family to talk and did her homework on faded theatrical newspapers and posters and playbills. The real story is a lot more interesting.
This is the dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional familes. But there is love here too.
And the story about vaudeville when it was the biggest thing in America and how it came to an end. And how Gypsy rode the train right out of vaudeville into "burlesque" and into American folklore.
Helps to have Gypsy's book open next to it to compare. But even so an amazing biography.
Nominally based on Gypsy's autobiography Gypsy it tells the story of two girls and their demon stage mother in the waning years of
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vaudeville in America. Show people love stories about show people and this one is almost a vaudeville show itself. But Gypsy in her book didn't always tell the truth. And June Havoc her actress sister didn't like the parts of the play that reflected badly on her or on their mother. After lengthy re-writes and lengthy lawsuits the play went on with the subtitle "A Musical Fable".
So. If you really want to know what happened in those days to Mama Rose and to Gypsy and to June, you need to dig deeper.
In American Rose Karen Abbott got June to talk - and got a lot of people who knew the family to talk and did her homework on faded theatrical newspapers and posters and playbills. The real story is a lot more interesting.
This is the dysfunctional family to end all dysfunctional familes. But there is love here too.
And the story about vaudeville when it was the biggest thing in America and how it came to an end. And how Gypsy rode the train right out of vaudeville into "burlesque" and into American folklore.
Helps to have Gypsy's book open next to it to compare. But even so an amazing biography.
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LibraryThing member yukon92
Interesting book about the famouse Gypsy Rose Lee... only thing I found confusing was the constant switching of times with every chapter.... 1 chapter was chronological, next chapter was 30 years later, then again chronological....
I am sure there were other readers who were confused by this.
I am sure there were other readers who were confused by this.
LibraryThing member SandyAMcPherson
The subject matter was initially intriguing but the writing style detracted from the telling, with the changes from chapter to chapter, both in time and the main character. Too often, the narrative was overwhelmed by details about the Hovick Family story, then interrupted by the Minsky Family
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story. Eventually these threads are brought together but by then I didn't care anymore. While the author researched the life and times of Gypsy Rose Lee from difficult source material, the biographical sense never seemed to prevail. Show Less
LibraryThing member amandacb
My main critiques of the book are that it does flip back in forth from younger ages of the girls to older ages, which can get confusing (as they are called different names as youths and older women). Also, I felt the story tended to focus way more on her sister than Gypsy herself.
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2010
Physical description
422 p.; 6.12 inches
ISBN
1400066913 / 9781400066919