Customer Reviews

Anna Held and the Birth of Ziegfeld's Broadway

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in Ms. Held's life and career as well as the development of Ziegfeld's Broadway. It is well-documented and researched but not the least bit dry--in fact, I couldn't put it down once I started. I highly recommend this book!

Those hoping for a trashy sensationalist bio from this author will be disappointed. That is not to say that they will not be entertained, enlightened and educated and even perhaps raise their future expectations of "show biz biographies". Ms.Golden's previous two biographies, on Jean Harlow and Theda Bara were witty, well-researched and humane investigations of two film figures whose public personas had been hidden behind decades of myth and melodrama. In Anna Held, Ms.Golden has rediscovered a figure in entertainment history who has been largely, and illogically forgotten. It is as if , in a century's time, Streisand had slipped from the public imagination. It would have been easy to write a melodramatic biography of Anna Held (her short life certainly justifies it) but Ms. Golden has gone deeper and placed her resolutely within her time, and therein lies the success of her book. Anna's times were turn-of-the-century Europe and the United States, and with her talent for bringing alive historical times, Ms.Golden presents a fascinating and insightful picture not only of Anna and the entertainment world she lived in, but of the bigger social context. want to know what the early days of motoring were really like? it's there. Want to know what wearing a corset actually entailed? It's there. Does this sound dry and over-scholarly? Fear not. Ms.Golden, known for her humorous column in Movieline magazine, has brought a dry and witty humour to Anna's story. Ms.Golden has, for this reader, achieved something really special: she has made me care deeply about an otherwise forgotten figure. Anna Held emerges from Ms.Golden's book alive and charming as all hell, and in doing so, the author has made a forgotten character unforgettable.

Not much has been written about the former music hall and vaudeville star, Anna Held, brought to fame in this country by Florenz Ziegfeld, and who turned out to be his first wife. I was surprised to learn of her early difficult childhood and her Jewish origins. Most interesting of all is how the author weaves in facts about the life in her times, especially early history of the automobile and of women's tortuous underwear, i.e. the corset! My lack of 4 or 5 stars is not for the content, but for the editor who missed a lot of spelling and syntax mistakes. It is a worthwhile read if you are interested in late 19th and early 20th century life and stage performers.

I GREW UP HEARING ABOUT MY GREAT,GREAT AUNT ANNA HELD. THOUGH THE FAMILY HAD PRESENT DAY TONY AND EMMY WINNERS,ANNA ALWAYS HAD THE BIG BROWN EYES,THE TINY WAIST AND UNCLE FLO. UNTIL I READ THIS BOOK I ONLY KNEW THE FANTASY NOT THE FEARLESS .....ANNA HELD

Having had a lifelong fascination with Ziegfeld, I was so thrilled so find such a meticulously researched and beautifully written biography of his first wife, Anna Held. Eve Golden brings Anna to life as more than just a "naughty" French showgirl. Golden makes Anna a three dimensional woman who was both strong and weak, loving and spiteful. It is sad that today Anna is not well remembered. In her time, she was a major trendsetter and a precursor to the free living flappers of the 20s. The highlight of the book is Golden's description of the Ziegfeld-Held marriage. She uses portions of Anna's autobiography but, like any good reporter/author, takes some claims in the book with a grain of salt (especially since Anna's autobiography was ediyed by her daughter, who happened to despise Ziegfeld). This makes the book even more compelling and thought provoking. I hope Even Golden writes many more books on theater and film history. She makes them interesting like no other author!

Eve Golden's book about Anna Held is an enjoyable light read. She provides a wealth of information about one of our first media celebrities. I liked the subject of this book tremendously, but had a big issue with the editing, or rather, the lack of it. Specifically, I was distracted by the inclusion of material in parentheses on nearly every page. Sometimes the verbiage in the parentheses was additional information and other time it was author's commentary. This material should have been moved to endnotes, incorporated in the text, or in the case of author commentary, eliminated. It was so distracting, that everyime I turned a page I found myself scanning for the multiple parentheses first! Ms. Golden is not a bad writer. In fact she is quite good. But honestly, were all the parentheses necessary?