So I said it would take me a long time to finish Eve’s book, and it has. Until this past Sunday, in fact.
It’s great. Eve made sure that I now admire and respect a woman whom I didn’t even know existed until I read her book. Not to mention how much I admire and respect Eve as a writer.
I can pinpoint precisely, toward the beginning of the book, the line when Anna Held and the Birth of Zeigfeld’s Broadway ceased to be simply a book I was reading and became a story with which I was involved: “She rolled her eyes like a pair of dice, but they paid off much better than any honest dice ever did.” Exactly the sort of surprising turn of phrase in which I delight.
Eve: Fantastic book. You did indeed give Anna a three-handkerchief death, and I now find myself wanting to visit her grave. Brava! (If I may be permitted a bit of pretentious exclamation.)
I finished Anna on Sunday as well! Eve, it was an interesting, satisfying read on a subject I knew nothing about.
You’re an excellent biographer - the research was thorough and the photos cool as hell. Thank you for spilling your identity so the board could get a glimpse of your and Anna’s greatness.
Thanks, thanks to both of you–I’m so glad I brought Anna back to life! I do cringe sometimes when I go back and read some sentences I now think are rather over-wrought, but I guess all writers do that.
Anyone who wants their copies signed, just send 'em to my work address . . .
And to plug someone ELSE’S book, Greg King’s new bio of Sharon Tate is first-rate (and, I might add, uses my “Films of the Golden Age” article on her as one of its sources).
Haven’t been on the MB at all this week, but Ike just E’d me and told me to check in. Been too busy, aggravated and demoralized (mostly about work). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sit on the stove and moan . . .
The photos were cool as hell. Moreso now that I feel like I know the people in them. Especially the one on the back cover. If I had a copy of that one, it’d go straight onto the wall.
Hope work goes better for you as the week progesses, Eve.
Thanks, Lux, dear—I LOVE that photo, and also want to frame the original when I get it back. You want me to send you a laser copy of it?
For those of you in the dark, the back-cover photo is of Anna riding an ostrich in 1911; she has a smirk on her face and if you block out the front and back of the ostrich, it looks like she’s standing there on big ol’ ostrich legs.
If I ever find myself awake during normal postal hours (Damn you, second shift, I’ll see you in hell!), I’m going to try to send my book off for that signature. It will become the first book in my “signed first editions” collection.
