Dear Constant Reader,
After reviewing Gypsy last week, I thought I would continue the theme and review a book about Gypsy.
Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee by Noralee Frankel (2010).
Ms. Frankel want to strip away (pun intended) the fictions Gypsy created and find the real woman under all the layers. One of her strong interests is Gypsy’s politics, although that’s not the bulk of the book. A lot of Gypsy’s childhood (which can be found in Gypsy) is skipped to concentrate on the events that shaped her personality. This biography has a fair amount of information about Gypsy’s husbands and lovers (she ends her memoir before her first marriage). She longed to be a legitimate entertainer, but Hollywood feared the wrath of the censors and wasted her talents on screen. Because of her left-leaning views she was labeled a Communist and advertisers were urged to drop their sponsorship of her radio programs. She wanted to be taken seriously as an author, but was constantly overshadowed by her history as a stripper. There’s a constant feeling of desperation for success. The author states that the more she learned about Gypsy “she came to interest me more and I came to like her less.” It’s about accurate.
Oh, The Glamourous Life! 