Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Icons of America) [Hardcover]

Rachel Shteir (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 24, 2009 | Series: Icons of America

A true icon of America at a turning point in its history, Gypsy Rose Lee was the first—and the only—stripper to become a household name, write novels, and win the adulation of intellectuals, bankers, socialites, and ordinary Americans. Her outrageous blend of funny-smart sex symbol with the aura of high culture—she boasted that she liked to read Great Books and listen to classical music while taking off her clothes on-stage—inspired a musical, memoirs, a portrait by Max Ernst, and a species of rose. Gypsy is the first book about Gypsy Rose Lee’s life, fame, and place in America not written by a family member, and it reveals her deep impact on the social and cultural transformations taking shape during her life.

Rachel Shteir, author of the prize-winning Striptease, gives us Gypsy’s story from her arrival in New York in 1931 to her sojourns in Hollywood, her friendships and rivalries with writers and artists, the Sondheim musical, family memoirs that retold her history in divergent ways, and a television biopic currently in the making. With verve, audacity, and native guile, Gypsy Rose Lee moved striptease from the margins of American life to Broadway, Hollywood, and Main Street. Gypsy tells how she did it, and why.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Shteir tries to show us more of Gypsy than the censors would allow—if not of her body, then of her mind and spirit…In Shteir''s hands, Gypsy becomes a working-class heroine, a feminist role model, a pioneer of contemporary sexuality, even an American icon.”—Adam Kirsch, BarnesandNobleReview.com

(Adam Kirsch )

"That [Gypsy''s] star rose during the economically catastrophic ''30s was no accident: Her demure flirtation—as sly a construct as her breakaway gowns—was not only sexy but wickedly funny, a tonic for the worst of times."--Cathleen
Medwick, O, The Oprah Magazine

(O, The Oprah Magazine )

“It is simply impossible…not fall in love with Gypsy''s tenacity, wit and confounding, beguiling, oh-so-American mix of self-mythology and self-awareness.”—Lily Burana, Washington Post

(Lily Burana )

“The best introductory book on the magnificent Gypsy Rose Lee, a woman whose name has come to connote the importance of the sexual gimmick and the eroticism of the undelivered promise.”—Toni Bentley, author of Sisters and Salome and The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir

 

(Toni Bentley )

“The best kind of cultural biography and the most serious history to date of the burlesque and striptease tradition.”—Francine du Plessix Gray

(Francine du Plessix Gray Blurb )

“Rachel Shteir is one of the fresh thinkers about things American that have usually been dismissed as vulgar and are too often responded to in kind. Hers is the gift for finding the humanity that always lies inside the encasements of the facts and the statistics. Consequently, the combination of subtlety, warmth, scholarship, and low-keyed wit make her work especially exceptional in a time like ours. It is perfect for the new era we entered in the last presidential election.”—Stanley Crouch

(Stanley Crouch )

“Shteir situates Gypsy Rose Lee’s various career metamorphoses in terms of parallel American social and cultural transformations, from the Great Depression through the first decade of the Sexual Revolution. The story of Gypsy’s multiple careers as a performer, stripper, Hollywood actor, activist, artist, writer and intellectual, provides a still pertinent and important commentary on America’s ‘Main Street’ view of sexuality and sexual display in general (at once hidden and covered, revered and disdained).”—Katherine Liepe-Levinson, author of Strip Show

(Katherine Liepe-Levinson )

About the Author

Rachel Shteir is associate professor, The Theatre School, DePaul University, and author of Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. She lives in Chicago.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (March 24, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300120400
• ISBN-13: 978-0300120400
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #198,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating study of an American icon, February 27, 2009

By 

a fan in Chicago - See all my reviews

This review is from: Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Icons of America) (Hardcover)

This is a brilliant study of the world's most famous stripper, though Gypsy Rose Lee was so much more than that. In her personality and long career, she symbolized a new era of feminism and sexual liberation, and the impact of her life on American culture still resonates. Stellar creative non-fiction is illusive; it is very hard to find a writer who combines the perseverance for research, the deep background knowledge of a subject, and sheer narrative skill. This author has it all. I was mesmerized from the first page to the last.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good solid work!, July 30, 2010

By 

Kenneth R. McLeod "Ken McLeod" (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Icons of America) (Hardcover)

Rachel Shteir is an academic who writes on popular enteratinment. (Her book on burlesque, for example, is very enjoyable.) She is solid in her research and focused on Gypsy's years in NYC, which may have more solid information than her life elsewhere. And, unlike many academics, she writes in a very interesting way. A very entertaining AND informative work. I recommend it highly. Now, if she'll just publish on the rest of Gypsy's life, we'll be all set!

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gypsy in Vietnam, July 3, 2009

By 

James Hooper (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gypsy: The Art of the Tease (Icons of America) (Hardcover)

My brother served as Gypsy Rose Lee's escort officer in Vietnam. For a unique perspective of her January 1969 USO tour, here is an extract from from the longish chapter titled "Gypsy" in my latest book, A Hundred Feet Over Hell:

"A week into the tour we were in a ward reserved for senior NCOs. She went from bed to bed, greeting each soldier with a few light words until she reached one who must have been in his late forties. Badly wounded, he started to cry as soon as she touched him, whispering that he'd been in love with her since World War II. The feeling that we were intruding on something very personal saw everyone back away to give Gypsy and this scarred veteran their privacy. She stayed with him a long time, leaning close, stroking his hair. I couldn't hear what she said, but the look that came over his face said that a lifelong dream had come true.

What truly impressed me was how gentle and sincere Gypsy was when she met these long-standing fans who had been wounded. It was difficult for her, but I think she accepted that they had voluntarily chosen this path. Yet, while she was by turns warm, caring, and flirtatious with them, her entire persona changed when she visited wards filled with very young draftees with terrible injuries. She once said that every time she spoke with these boys all she could think was, "That could have been my son," and how grateful she was that he hadn't had to serve. There were times traveling from one hospital to the next when, if no one could see, she would weep quietly.

Passing through an amputee's ward one day, she heard a teenager snarl that she was "an old has-been trying to get publicity." Afterwards, she said she understood his anger and might well have said the same thing if she'd been in his place. Regardless of the horror she saw, she maintained her composure, treating them all with a dignity untainted by pity. Only once, while talking to a youngster who'd just come out of surgery, did she almost break down. Most of this boy's face was gone, yet even in his pain he smiled as she spoke with him. When we emerged from the hospital, she suddenly turned and clung to me, sobbing heartbrokenly."
www.jimhooper.co.uk