My G-String Mother: At Home and Backstage with Gypsy Rose Lee (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WE TURNED onto Collins Avenue seven blocks from the club, but even at that distance Mother's name was the biggest and brightest thing in sight..." (more)
Key Phrases: curtain speech, New York, Curious Evening, Gypsy Rose Lee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"One fears a Mommie Dearest or at best a made-up Auntie Mame. And in Preminger’s surprisingly informative and entertaining book, we sort of get a combination of both. But there is a third person here – a woman of enormous good humor, eccentricity, and intelligence."
-The San Francisco Chronicle

"This book absolutely had to be written."
-London Review of Books

Product Description

Few people can claim to have known a real-life Auntie Mame. For Erik Preminger, "Mame" was his mother, famed stripper and personality Gypsy Rose Lee. Erik was 12 when Gypsy decided she was through with striptease - "I'm forty-two years old. Too old to be taking off my clothes in front of strangers." Her endless schemes for staying famous and maintaining their extravagant lifestyle - a best-selling writing career, a musical based on her life, a disastrous attempt to turn her home movies into a blockbuster - make for comedic yet poignant reading. My G-String Mother is a stylish, incisive portrait of two lives: an awkward adolescent who was as much confidante, co-conspirator, and companion as son, and the legendary woman who told the police during a raid at the famous Minsky's burlesque house, "I wasn't naked. I was completely covered by a blue spotlight."

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Frog Books (January 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1583940960
• ISBN-13: 978-1583940969
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 3.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #739,640 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intimate Glimpse of a Fascinating & Eccentric Star, February 13, 2004

By	Allen Bardin (Columbia, SC United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Erik Lee Preminger doesn't paint a rosy portrait of his mother, the enigmatic Gypsy Rose Lee, but it isn't a hatchet job either. Miss Lee was obviously a difficult, frugal woman, but also was warm, loving (to an extent), funny, brainy and to her public, glamorous. Preminger's recollections are alternately maddening and hilarious, but the reader finishes the book with the notion that the "Queen of Burlesque" was indeed an amazing piece of work. Why Gypsy Rose Lee isn't more of an icon today is beyond my imagination!

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy the Book - It'll surprise you - and so will Gypsy!, May 15, 2006

By	T. Armstrong "wondergirl" (California United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've spent hours interviewing Erik Lee Preminger about his life and his famous parents. I've read other things he's written and watched his compilation of his mother's home videos. This guy is the real deal. He had a childhood most kids couldn't survive intact and he emerged from it as a smart, honest, hardworking, funny and very kind man. He loved his mother when he was a kid, and when he was an adult, he learned to appreciate her strengths (and she had a great many!) and forgive her weaknesses (and we ALL have a lot of those).

He sees Gypsy for what she was - a brilliant, clever, hilarioulsy funny, talented (even her stripteases were punctuated by comedy pieces that she wrote) often selfish, often generous, ambitious and relentlessly hardworking woman.

She REALLY had the childhood from Hell and HER mother makes Gypsy seem like Mother Theresa! But she too emerged from the ashes as a never bitter woman who practically invented the phrase "Carpe Diem."

She had quilting bees at her house with dozens of Hollywood superstars. She adored her beloved little Chinese Crested dogs. She hosted a popular tv talk show. She wrote a best-selling murder mystery. She was still doing USO tours and making our troops laugh when she was ill with cancer. And even that couldn't dim her indomitable spirit. Her acceptance of that terrible illness should be a lesson to us all.

Until I met Erik, all I knew about Gypsy was the tiny bits portrayed in the play and movies, but after reading about her in Erik's books, listening to him talk about her, I have learned to love her dearly.

Erik writes with a very clear, unpretentious style about a child's life with a famous (and infamous) woman and about his eventual understanding of what a truly remarkable woman his mother was. And listening to him talk about his relationship with his dad (when they finally got to know each other) moved me to tears. That should be the next book he writes!

Buy the book. It'll surprise you.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Home and Backstage with a Legendary Mother., November 21, 2005

By	C.G. Gambit (Woodland Hills, CA) - See all my reviews

Young Erik undoubtedly suffered some frustration from having a famous, tenacious, indomitable mother in the form of the glamourpuss Gypsy Rose Lee. But his portrait of her is a tender one--he does not idealize her, but he does not lambast her. It is a mature and loving representation of the bond between a mother and child in the theater business. It is also an interesting account of successful single motherhood far ahead of its time. Anyone who loves Burlesque, Vaudeville, Gypsy Rose Lee and Theater History with love this book. A fun, entertaining non-fiction read.