Karen Abbotts first book was Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for Americas Soul, which needles to say, was not the kind of history book you read in school. Centered around the Everleigh Sisters who ran a prominent Chicago brothel for more than a decade, Abbott explored not just the sisters and their many famous clients, but the religious and political figures who collaborated with, fought against, and made their names, locally and nationally, around this issue. Abbotts most recent book which has just been released in paperback is American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee.
You know Gypsy Rose Lee. The legendary striptease artist and burlesque performer, author of the novel The G-String Murders, which was turned into the Barbara Stanwyck film Lady of Burlesque, who authored a largely fictional memoir (before writing such a tome became popular) that was turned into one of the great musicals. Whats clear from reading her book, is how much we dont know Gypsy Rose Lee.
American Rose isnt a biography, but uses Lee and her career as a way to look at the thirties when vaudeville died and burlesque took over and when culture as a whole was in a state of flux. Its fascinating portrait of the theater-owning Minsky Brothers, moralist New York City mayor Fiorella La Guardia, author Carson McCullers and America in the midst of an economic Depression but a cultural revolution.
ALEX DUEBEN: You use Gypsy Rose Lees life as a way of exploring this period and this milieu similar to how the Everleigh Sisters were at the center of your previous book. What makes you interested in writing history books like this as opposed to writing biographies?
KAREN ABBOTT: First, thanks for recognizing that American Rose isn't a biography. My intention was to write a microcosm of Twentieth Century America, told through this fascinating, dramatic, and tumultuous life. It's a twisted Cinderella tale, sort of Horatio Alger-meets-Tim Burton, set against the backdrop of some of the most formative events in our nation's history: World Wars I and II, The Roaring Twenties, The advent of talkies, Prohibition, The Great Depression, The Red Scare, and even Vietnam, where Gypsy often traveled to entertain troops. Researching the trends and idiosyncrasies of a particular era is so fascinating; I love discovering what people found charming or humorous or horrifying or scandalous or reprehensible or sexy. I was inspired to write American Rose after a story my grandmother told me about a cousin who saw Gypsy perform in 1935. The cousin reported, She took 15 minutes to peel off her glove, and she was so damned good at it I would've given her 15 more. Which I think says as much about the time as it does about Gypsy's legendary teasing skills.
AD: What was the challenge of writing about a woman like Gypsy Rose Lee who didnt just avoid revealing herself but actively lied about her past and wrote journals that arent revealing.
KA: Interesting question, and one I've often asked myself, considering that both the Everleigh sisters and Gypsy were fantastic liars and revisionist historians. It is challenging, but I think that the mechanics of self-mythologywhat truths people decide to rewrite or blur or exaggerate or omit altogetherare just as relevant to their story and telling about their character as facts that can be independently verified.One of the first things I came across while researching Gypsy was an article in Life magazine that called her "the most private public figure of her time," which I thought perfectly captured her complexity and her immense capacity for contradiction. Here was this woman who literally exposed herself for a living, and yet managed to keep a good bit of herself hidden. Her memoir is revealing for what she doesnt mention at all: three failed marriages, seedy affairs with violent bootleggers (for example, she portrays gangster Waxey Gordon as a sort of avuncular benefactor), and the sordid details of her lost year when she first began her burlesque careera very dark and terrifying time for her.The Gypsy Rose Lee made famous on Broadway has very little to do with who Gypsy Rose Lee really was.
And while her memoir is somewhat flawed as source material, Gypsy kept everything, and her extensive archives are housed at Lincoln Center. I spent countless hours there sifting through Gypsy's papers, and I was most fascinated by the transformation of Rose Louise Hovick, the girl, into Gypsy Rose Lee, the creation, which was a very deliberate, calculated process.Theres a scene inAmerican Rosethat portrays the moment Louise Hovick becomes Gypsy Rose Lee: In that moment Louise Hovick traded in the last piece of herself, and when she opened her mouth it was Gypsy Rose Lee who spoke. She told the manager that she could fill in for his missing lead, strip scenes and all, and then she sat before her dressing room mirror and met her creation for the very first time.Gypsy the person had a conflicted, tortured relationship with Gypsy Rose Lee the creation. She was forever caught between her humble roots and her ambition to be accepted by New Yorks cultural and literary elite. And for all of Gypsys mental fortitude and steely nerve, she was physically weak and oddly susceptible to illness. The body reacted, her sister, June Havoc, told me, because the soul protested. Taking just one aspirin could upset her stomach, and she suffered from severe ulcers that made her vomit blood. She adored her creation because it gave her the things shed always wantedfame, money, securitybut she loathed its limitations, either real or perceived. She lived in an exquisite trap she herself had set.
AD: How important was it talking with June Havoc, her sister, and her son and do you think you could have written the book if they hadnt been willing to cooperate?
KA: They were both incredibly important to the story, filling in gaps and offering previously unknown details and anecdotes. Eric shared many stories about Gypsy's mother, the infamous Mama Rose, that thoroughly changed my perception of her. She wasn't the plucky, ambitious, eccentric woman portrayed on Broadway, but a raging, maniacal, deeply disturbed woman who literally killed to get her daughters onstageJune Havoc called her a beautiful little ornament that was damaged. And I was so grateful to have spoken with June; I was the last person to interview her before she passed. She was the only one who'd known Gypsy during her childhood and her early years in burlesque, when shefashioned the creation of Gypsy Rose Lee. She alone understood the toll being Gypsy Rose Lee had on her sister, and feared that this creation would ultimately kill her.
AD: The structure of the book was interesting. What was your thinking of telling the story this way with the 1940 Worlds Fair as the hinge?
KA: Gypsy was born in January 1911 and died in 1970, so 1940 was the exact midpoint of her life. The World's Fair also represented a crucial time in her career. At age 29, she'd enjoyed great success followed by crushing failure, and the fair represented a chance to start anew, to decide how to reinvent herself once again. As for the structure, I kept in mind that Gypsy was not a linear person, and did not live her life in a linear fashion. She moved backward as often as she did forward, with plenty of detours along the way. I thought I'd be doing her a great disservice to recount her story in standard, chronological fashion, and I wanted the structure to evoke one of Gypsy's stripteases: show a bit here, pull back, show more over there, pull back, until all is finally revealed at the end.
AD: You make the point that burlesque thrived during the Great Depression and was this great intersection of high brow and low brow. Do you see any similar phenomenon happening today?
KA: In order to understand why burlesque was such a 1930s phenomenon, you have to understand vaudeville, its PG-rated cousin. Vaudeville was characterized by sunny optimism, acts that were uplifting and cheerful and clean. If you had to stoop to get that laugh, June Havoc told me, then youre in the wrong theater. Many vaudeville performers incorporated animals into routines, like Lady Alice, who enticed trained rats to parade across her shoulders by slathering Cream of Wheat on her skin. If vaudevillians had no innate talent, they invented one. My favorite was a guy who called himself The Amazing Regurgitator. As his assistant set up a small metal castle onstage, The Amazing Regurgitator chugged a gallon of water followed by a pint of kerosene. He ejected the kerosene from his mouth in a six-foot arc and ignited the castle in flames, and then ejected the water to extinguish the fire.
Vaudeville provided a fanciful, magical escape, but after Black Friday, the tone of American entertainment changed almost overnight. Vaudevilles buoyant spirit no longer spoke to the countrys mood, but burlesque did, loudly and clearly. It was a different kind of escape; the darkness of the theaters provided anonymity, and the performers and audience were kindred spirits; they were all equally naked. Unemployed men would begin lining up at the afternoons to get into the evening shows. Few could afford to pay high ticket prices for Broadway productions, so the big producers lost businessand girlsto burlesque. Gypsy Rose Lee thrived because she was the first one to blend sex and comedy, to put on as much as she took off. She was a teaser more than a stripper and people responded to that; they wanted her precisely because she was so unobtainable.
As for todays flavor of burlesque, I was finishing American Rose just as the movie "Burlesque" (starring Cher and Christina Aguilera) was being released, and I wondered what Gypsy would've thought about the film. I think shewouldve unequivocally approved of the movieregardless of content or meritif it were titledGypsys Burlesque. (Gypsy lovedanythingthat put her name in lights; she even told Arthur Laurents he could tweak her character and story however he pleased as long as his play was calledGypsy.) But since her name isnt involved, I think her reaction to the film would reflect that of many modern-day burlesque performers. Theres a sense that the acts in the movie bear little resemblance to the burlesque that they all know and practice, and that Steve Antin (the director) sanitized the movie so it would earn a PG-13 rating and expand its audience to younger viewers. Since its inception in the 1800s, burlesque has been working class art form, employing base humor to lampoon so-called high culture, and stripping became a vital component of the experience. If burlesque itself strives to be high culture it ceases to connect with its core audience, and it ceases to be burlesque. Gypsy herself believed that the character of stripping depended on the performers attitude. Its all mental, she once said. If you think its vulgar, the audience will think its vulgar too. But if you approach your work with a clean, aesthetic viewpoint, the audience senses your attitude. As for Cher, I think Gypsy wouldve been incredibly jealous of her singing talentbut would never have admitted that out loud.
AD: June comes off as the most tragic character in the book in some ways. The musical Gypsy continues to be huge and she signed off on a completely inaccurate portrayal of herself in this fantasy of their life.
KA: Gypsy's archives also contain voluminouscorrespondence between Gypsy, June, and their mother, the letters reflected a constant whiplash back-and-forth of emotion between the three of them. Rose would blackmail Gypsy about her early days in burlesque and threaten to reveal her true nature to the press, and in the very next letter beg for forgiveness and tell Gypsy how much she loved her. Gypsy knew about all of Roses secrets, as wellincluding where the literal bodies were buried. It was a codependent relationship that neither one could relinquish. Theres a line in the book that sums up their relationship: It is a swooning, funhouse version of love, love concerned with appearances rather than intent, love both deprived and depraved, love that has to glimpse its distorted reflection in the mirror in order to exist at all.
I believe there was friendship and love between Gypsy and June, but it was incredibly fragile. When I interviewed June, she told me that she was no sister to Gypsy; she was nothing but a knot in her life. That was one of the last things she ever said to me, and she lived with that hurt until the day she died.Gypsy was a masterful storyteller, and her memoirand by extension, the musicalwerent only Gypsys monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism. Her sister said the musical portrayed who Gypsy wanted to be before the burlesque thing happened she wanted to be this beautiful, romantic person with dreams. Gypsy begged June to sign off on the musical, saying, in essence, "Do not fuck this up for me." Because June loved Gypsy, and because she alone understood what Gypsy had endured with their mother, she agreed.
AD: Talk a little if you would about the Minsky brothers, because I knew the name Minsky before picking up the book, but I didnt know anything about them and they really are fascinating characters.
KA: The four Minsky brothers started out in vaudeville, catering mostly to Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, but adapted quickly when burlesque took over. The ringleader, Billy Minsky, discovered Gypsy at a show in New Jersey. He knew he had never seen anything like her before and never would again, and brought her to New York. Every season, Minskys Burlesque crowned a Girl of the Year, and 1931 belonged to Gypsy. Billy recognized that burlesque was an art form, as distinctly American as baseball or jazz, and he wanted each of his girls to have a personal narrative that would infuse her with mystery, a persona that would capture the publics imagination. To that end, he was instrumental in helping to develop Gypsy Rose Lee, the creation. He commissioned airplanes to trail banners emblazoned with her name, and hired an unemployed ex-vaudevillian to climb onto stilts, wearing an illuminated shirtfront announcing the coming of Gypsy Rose Lee. For the first time in burlesque history a stripteasernot a comichad top billing. He told the press that Gypsy was a refined lady, a beauty contest veteran and a gifted painter. She was the only girl who used pins instead of zippers, tossing them to the audience as she stripped, and Billy decided that anyone lucky enough to catch one could redeem it for future admission. Billy thrived during the Depression while Florenz Ziegfeld and the Schubert brothers floundered. Much like Gypsy, he was a masterful and inventive self-promoter. I think Gypsy and Billy were kindred spirits in that they both knew how to use people in sly and cunning waysand of course they used each other. They were both, indisputably, the very best at what they did.
AD: I was fascinated to learn that Gypsy moved in such literary circles and was part of this artistic collective in Brooklyn in forties.
KA: I was intrigued by this period of her life, as well. She moved into the artists' colony in Brooklyn soon after performing at the World's Fair. The colony was the brainchild of recently fired Harper's Bazaareditor George Davis, whom Gypsy first met as a child on the vaudeville circuit, and she lived there withW.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers, and Paul and Jane Bowles. Shewas desperate to be taken seriously as a writer and intellectual, and eventually wrote essays forThe New Yorker,a play that was produced on Broadway, two novels, and, of course, her memoir. While living at the colony, working on her first novel, The G-String Murders (a murder mystery in which the preferred weapon was a g-string), shewas rumored to have had a fling with writer Carson McCullers. Each night Gypsy would feed Carson homemade apple strudel and then theyd snuggle in Gypsys bed. WhenThe G-String Murderswas released, she told her publicist, Ill do my striptease in Macys to sell a book. If you would prefer something a little more dignified, make it a Wannamakers window. Her stint at the writers colony cemented her place among New Yorks literati; H.L. Mencken even coined the word "ecdysiast" in her honor.
AD: Having written the book and having some time to reflect on it, Im curious what you think of Gypsy Rose Lee as a person and as a performer? I ask this because after reading your book, and having had some time to think about it, Im not sure what I think of her.
KA: Thats a good question, and I felt differently about her during every phase of the research and writing process, and my feelings still vacillate now. Often, I feel incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicatedto say the leastrelationship with her family.Other times, I greatly admire Gypsy for being able to rise above her circumstances. Im terrified of her; I think she was generous; I think she was brilliant; I think she was cruel. One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship. But there's no question she was an original and innovative performer. Gypsy was, asher sister put it, was the only one to climb out of the slime and offer something no one had ever seen before. A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very humanand eternalinstinct to always want most what well never have. She was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramaticpresence. If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it wouldve been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. Most of todays successful provocateurs draw from Gypsys playbook.
AD: What is the Wicked History blog and how it ties in with your books?
KA: The blog is just a chance for me to explore forgotten little corners and pockets of history, people and incidents that interest me but probably wouldn't sustain a full-length narrative. I was fortunate that the Smithsonian hired me for their history blog, "Past Imperfect"it gives me a chance to reach a wide audience with an innate appreciation for history of all kinds. I think my favorite post was about the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who were much more daring than their male comrades.
AD: Are you working on another book?
KA: Yes, and I'm really excited about it. It's atrue story of the Civil War told through the perspectives of four women (a few of whom were not entirely scrupulous) who risked everything for their cause. If I stay on schedule, it should be published sometime in 2014.
AD: Theres a line from Eleanor Roosevelt in the front of the book, which I think was more shocking than anything else in the book, what was the context of that?
KA: I found that in Gypsy's archives. The former first lady sent a telegram to Gypsy that read: "May your bare ass always be shining." It was in honor of the Broadway debut of Gypsy the musical, but I like to think that there might have been a more personal subtext to that note. With Gypsy, you never know...
You know Gypsy Rose Lee. The legendary striptease artist and burlesque performer, author of the novel The G-String Murders, which was turned into the Barbara Stanwyck film Lady of Burlesque, who authored a largely fictional memoir (before writing such a tome became popular) that was turned into one of the great musicals. Whats clear from reading her book, is how much we dont know Gypsy Rose Lee.
American Rose isnt a biography, but uses Lee and her career as a way to look at the thirties when vaudeville died and burlesque took over and when culture as a whole was in a state of flux. Its fascinating portrait of the theater-owning Minsky Brothers, moralist New York City mayor Fiorella La Guardia, author Carson McCullers and America in the midst of an economic Depression but a cultural revolution.
ALEX DUEBEN: You use Gypsy Rose Lees life as a way of exploring this period and this milieu similar to how the Everleigh Sisters were at the center of your previous book. What makes you interested in writing history books like this as opposed to writing biographies?
KAREN ABBOTT: First, thanks for recognizing that American Rose isn't a biography. My intention was to write a microcosm of Twentieth Century America, told through this fascinating, dramatic, and tumultuous life. It's a twisted Cinderella tale, sort of Horatio Alger-meets-Tim Burton, set against the backdrop of some of the most formative events in our nation's history: World Wars I and II, The Roaring Twenties, The advent of talkies, Prohibition, The Great Depression, The Red Scare, and even Vietnam, where Gypsy often traveled to entertain troops. Researching the trends and idiosyncrasies of a particular era is so fascinating; I love discovering what people found charming or humorous or horrifying or scandalous or reprehensible or sexy. I was inspired to write American Rose after a story my grandmother told me about a cousin who saw Gypsy perform in 1935. The cousin reported, She took 15 minutes to peel off her glove, and she was so damned good at it I would've given her 15 more. Which I think says as much about the time as it does about Gypsy's legendary teasing skills.
AD: What was the challenge of writing about a woman like Gypsy Rose Lee who didnt just avoid revealing herself but actively lied about her past and wrote journals that arent revealing.
KA: Interesting question, and one I've often asked myself, considering that both the Everleigh sisters and Gypsy were fantastic liars and revisionist historians. It is challenging, but I think that the mechanics of self-mythologywhat truths people decide to rewrite or blur or exaggerate or omit altogetherare just as relevant to their story and telling about their character as facts that can be independently verified.One of the first things I came across while researching Gypsy was an article in Life magazine that called her "the most private public figure of her time," which I thought perfectly captured her complexity and her immense capacity for contradiction. Here was this woman who literally exposed herself for a living, and yet managed to keep a good bit of herself hidden. Her memoir is revealing for what she doesnt mention at all: three failed marriages, seedy affairs with violent bootleggers (for example, she portrays gangster Waxey Gordon as a sort of avuncular benefactor), and the sordid details of her lost year when she first began her burlesque careera very dark and terrifying time for her.The Gypsy Rose Lee made famous on Broadway has very little to do with who Gypsy Rose Lee really was.
And while her memoir is somewhat flawed as source material, Gypsy kept everything, and her extensive archives are housed at Lincoln Center. I spent countless hours there sifting through Gypsy's papers, and I was most fascinated by the transformation of Rose Louise Hovick, the girl, into Gypsy Rose Lee, the creation, which was a very deliberate, calculated process.Theres a scene inAmerican Rosethat portrays the moment Louise Hovick becomes Gypsy Rose Lee: In that moment Louise Hovick traded in the last piece of herself, and when she opened her mouth it was Gypsy Rose Lee who spoke. She told the manager that she could fill in for his missing lead, strip scenes and all, and then she sat before her dressing room mirror and met her creation for the very first time.Gypsy the person had a conflicted, tortured relationship with Gypsy Rose Lee the creation. She was forever caught between her humble roots and her ambition to be accepted by New Yorks cultural and literary elite. And for all of Gypsys mental fortitude and steely nerve, she was physically weak and oddly susceptible to illness. The body reacted, her sister, June Havoc, told me, because the soul protested. Taking just one aspirin could upset her stomach, and she suffered from severe ulcers that made her vomit blood. She adored her creation because it gave her the things shed always wantedfame, money, securitybut she loathed its limitations, either real or perceived. She lived in an exquisite trap she herself had set.
AD: How important was it talking with June Havoc, her sister, and her son and do you think you could have written the book if they hadnt been willing to cooperate?
KA: They were both incredibly important to the story, filling in gaps and offering previously unknown details and anecdotes. Eric shared many stories about Gypsy's mother, the infamous Mama Rose, that thoroughly changed my perception of her. She wasn't the plucky, ambitious, eccentric woman portrayed on Broadway, but a raging, maniacal, deeply disturbed woman who literally killed to get her daughters onstageJune Havoc called her a beautiful little ornament that was damaged. And I was so grateful to have spoken with June; I was the last person to interview her before she passed. She was the only one who'd known Gypsy during her childhood and her early years in burlesque, when shefashioned the creation of Gypsy Rose Lee. She alone understood the toll being Gypsy Rose Lee had on her sister, and feared that this creation would ultimately kill her.
AD: The structure of the book was interesting. What was your thinking of telling the story this way with the 1940 Worlds Fair as the hinge?
KA: Gypsy was born in January 1911 and died in 1970, so 1940 was the exact midpoint of her life. The World's Fair also represented a crucial time in her career. At age 29, she'd enjoyed great success followed by crushing failure, and the fair represented a chance to start anew, to decide how to reinvent herself once again. As for the structure, I kept in mind that Gypsy was not a linear person, and did not live her life in a linear fashion. She moved backward as often as she did forward, with plenty of detours along the way. I thought I'd be doing her a great disservice to recount her story in standard, chronological fashion, and I wanted the structure to evoke one of Gypsy's stripteases: show a bit here, pull back, show more over there, pull back, until all is finally revealed at the end.
AD: You make the point that burlesque thrived during the Great Depression and was this great intersection of high brow and low brow. Do you see any similar phenomenon happening today?
KA: In order to understand why burlesque was such a 1930s phenomenon, you have to understand vaudeville, its PG-rated cousin. Vaudeville was characterized by sunny optimism, acts that were uplifting and cheerful and clean. If you had to stoop to get that laugh, June Havoc told me, then youre in the wrong theater. Many vaudeville performers incorporated animals into routines, like Lady Alice, who enticed trained rats to parade across her shoulders by slathering Cream of Wheat on her skin. If vaudevillians had no innate talent, they invented one. My favorite was a guy who called himself The Amazing Regurgitator. As his assistant set up a small metal castle onstage, The Amazing Regurgitator chugged a gallon of water followed by a pint of kerosene. He ejected the kerosene from his mouth in a six-foot arc and ignited the castle in flames, and then ejected the water to extinguish the fire.
Vaudeville provided a fanciful, magical escape, but after Black Friday, the tone of American entertainment changed almost overnight. Vaudevilles buoyant spirit no longer spoke to the countrys mood, but burlesque did, loudly and clearly. It was a different kind of escape; the darkness of the theaters provided anonymity, and the performers and audience were kindred spirits; they were all equally naked. Unemployed men would begin lining up at the afternoons to get into the evening shows. Few could afford to pay high ticket prices for Broadway productions, so the big producers lost businessand girlsto burlesque. Gypsy Rose Lee thrived because she was the first one to blend sex and comedy, to put on as much as she took off. She was a teaser more than a stripper and people responded to that; they wanted her precisely because she was so unobtainable.
As for todays flavor of burlesque, I was finishing American Rose just as the movie "Burlesque" (starring Cher and Christina Aguilera) was being released, and I wondered what Gypsy would've thought about the film. I think shewouldve unequivocally approved of the movieregardless of content or meritif it were titledGypsys Burlesque. (Gypsy lovedanythingthat put her name in lights; she even told Arthur Laurents he could tweak her character and story however he pleased as long as his play was calledGypsy.) But since her name isnt involved, I think her reaction to the film would reflect that of many modern-day burlesque performers. Theres a sense that the acts in the movie bear little resemblance to the burlesque that they all know and practice, and that Steve Antin (the director) sanitized the movie so it would earn a PG-13 rating and expand its audience to younger viewers. Since its inception in the 1800s, burlesque has been working class art form, employing base humor to lampoon so-called high culture, and stripping became a vital component of the experience. If burlesque itself strives to be high culture it ceases to connect with its core audience, and it ceases to be burlesque. Gypsy herself believed that the character of stripping depended on the performers attitude. Its all mental, she once said. If you think its vulgar, the audience will think its vulgar too. But if you approach your work with a clean, aesthetic viewpoint, the audience senses your attitude. As for Cher, I think Gypsy wouldve been incredibly jealous of her singing talentbut would never have admitted that out loud.
AD: June comes off as the most tragic character in the book in some ways. The musical Gypsy continues to be huge and she signed off on a completely inaccurate portrayal of herself in this fantasy of their life.
KA: Gypsy's archives also contain voluminouscorrespondence between Gypsy, June, and their mother, the letters reflected a constant whiplash back-and-forth of emotion between the three of them. Rose would blackmail Gypsy about her early days in burlesque and threaten to reveal her true nature to the press, and in the very next letter beg for forgiveness and tell Gypsy how much she loved her. Gypsy knew about all of Roses secrets, as wellincluding where the literal bodies were buried. It was a codependent relationship that neither one could relinquish. Theres a line in the book that sums up their relationship: It is a swooning, funhouse version of love, love concerned with appearances rather than intent, love both deprived and depraved, love that has to glimpse its distorted reflection in the mirror in order to exist at all.
I believe there was friendship and love between Gypsy and June, but it was incredibly fragile. When I interviewed June, she told me that she was no sister to Gypsy; she was nothing but a knot in her life. That was one of the last things she ever said to me, and she lived with that hurt until the day she died.Gypsy was a masterful storyteller, and her memoirand by extension, the musicalwerent only Gypsys monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism. Her sister said the musical portrayed who Gypsy wanted to be before the burlesque thing happened she wanted to be this beautiful, romantic person with dreams. Gypsy begged June to sign off on the musical, saying, in essence, "Do not fuck this up for me." Because June loved Gypsy, and because she alone understood what Gypsy had endured with their mother, she agreed.
AD: Talk a little if you would about the Minsky brothers, because I knew the name Minsky before picking up the book, but I didnt know anything about them and they really are fascinating characters.
KA: The four Minsky brothers started out in vaudeville, catering mostly to Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, but adapted quickly when burlesque took over. The ringleader, Billy Minsky, discovered Gypsy at a show in New Jersey. He knew he had never seen anything like her before and never would again, and brought her to New York. Every season, Minskys Burlesque crowned a Girl of the Year, and 1931 belonged to Gypsy. Billy recognized that burlesque was an art form, as distinctly American as baseball or jazz, and he wanted each of his girls to have a personal narrative that would infuse her with mystery, a persona that would capture the publics imagination. To that end, he was instrumental in helping to develop Gypsy Rose Lee, the creation. He commissioned airplanes to trail banners emblazoned with her name, and hired an unemployed ex-vaudevillian to climb onto stilts, wearing an illuminated shirtfront announcing the coming of Gypsy Rose Lee. For the first time in burlesque history a stripteasernot a comichad top billing. He told the press that Gypsy was a refined lady, a beauty contest veteran and a gifted painter. She was the only girl who used pins instead of zippers, tossing them to the audience as she stripped, and Billy decided that anyone lucky enough to catch one could redeem it for future admission. Billy thrived during the Depression while Florenz Ziegfeld and the Schubert brothers floundered. Much like Gypsy, he was a masterful and inventive self-promoter. I think Gypsy and Billy were kindred spirits in that they both knew how to use people in sly and cunning waysand of course they used each other. They were both, indisputably, the very best at what they did.
AD: I was fascinated to learn that Gypsy moved in such literary circles and was part of this artistic collective in Brooklyn in forties.
KA: I was intrigued by this period of her life, as well. She moved into the artists' colony in Brooklyn soon after performing at the World's Fair. The colony was the brainchild of recently fired Harper's Bazaareditor George Davis, whom Gypsy first met as a child on the vaudeville circuit, and she lived there withW.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Carson McCullers, and Paul and Jane Bowles. Shewas desperate to be taken seriously as a writer and intellectual, and eventually wrote essays forThe New Yorker,a play that was produced on Broadway, two novels, and, of course, her memoir. While living at the colony, working on her first novel, The G-String Murders (a murder mystery in which the preferred weapon was a g-string), shewas rumored to have had a fling with writer Carson McCullers. Each night Gypsy would feed Carson homemade apple strudel and then theyd snuggle in Gypsys bed. WhenThe G-String Murderswas released, she told her publicist, Ill do my striptease in Macys to sell a book. If you would prefer something a little more dignified, make it a Wannamakers window. Her stint at the writers colony cemented her place among New Yorks literati; H.L. Mencken even coined the word "ecdysiast" in her honor.
AD: Having written the book and having some time to reflect on it, Im curious what you think of Gypsy Rose Lee as a person and as a performer? I ask this because after reading your book, and having had some time to think about it, Im not sure what I think of her.
KA: Thats a good question, and I felt differently about her during every phase of the research and writing process, and my feelings still vacillate now. Often, I feel incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicatedto say the leastrelationship with her family.Other times, I greatly admire Gypsy for being able to rise above her circumstances. Im terrified of her; I think she was generous; I think she was brilliant; I think she was cruel. One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship. But there's no question she was an original and innovative performer. Gypsy was, asher sister put it, was the only one to climb out of the slime and offer something no one had ever seen before. A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very humanand eternalinstinct to always want most what well never have. She was a sophisticated self-satirist with a contagious delight in the comedy of sex. She was coy; she was sly; she always had a witty quip; she had an intensely dramaticpresence. If Lady Gaga and Dorothy Parker had a secret love child, it wouldve been Gypsy Rose Lee. Gypsy arrived for opening nights at the Met wearing a full-length cape made entirely of orchids, while Lady Gaga shows up wearing a full-length cloak made of meat. Most of todays successful provocateurs draw from Gypsys playbook.
AD: What is the Wicked History blog and how it ties in with your books?
KA: The blog is just a chance for me to explore forgotten little corners and pockets of history, people and incidents that interest me but probably wouldn't sustain a full-length narrative. I was fortunate that the Smithsonian hired me for their history blog, "Past Imperfect"it gives me a chance to reach a wide audience with an innate appreciation for history of all kinds. I think my favorite post was about the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who were much more daring than their male comrades.
AD: Are you working on another book?
KA: Yes, and I'm really excited about it. It's atrue story of the Civil War told through the perspectives of four women (a few of whom were not entirely scrupulous) who risked everything for their cause. If I stay on schedule, it should be published sometime in 2014.
AD: Theres a line from Eleanor Roosevelt in the front of the book, which I think was more shocking than anything else in the book, what was the context of that?
KA: I found that in Gypsy's archives. The former first lady sent a telegram to Gypsy that read: "May your bare ass always be shining." It was in honor of the Broadway debut of Gypsy the musical, but I like to think that there might have been a more personal subtext to that note. With Gypsy, you never know...