This week's lost in the stacks book is a haphazard choice. I haven't had a chance to do much browsing so I had to just choose an author more or less. I've long wanted to read Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as it somehow seems like a representative work of the 1920s Flapper lifestyle, and this is a period that is always of interest to me. My library has a number of her works, but A Girl Like I caught my attention, so it came home with me.
Anita Loos was born in California in 1888. Her father owned a newspaper, but it sounds like he wasn't the best provider so Anita helped the family financially by becoming a stage actress. It was writing that she preferred to do and began with short pieces submitted to newspapers in California, but she soon turned her talents to writing screenplays and later Broadway musicals. It blossomed into full time work, and she was a very prolific writer. Her film and Broadway credits run from 1912 through the mid-1950s. She was a contributor to Vanity Fair for a number of years and her sketches for Harpers Bazaar about the escapades of a Flapper named Lorelei Lee became Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It wasn't a huge critical success but it was immensely popular with the reading public, risqué for the time, though rather tame by today's standards.
She was also a memoirist, and A Girl Like I is only one of several that she published. It sounds like a breezy, chatty sort of read--very gossipy of Hollywood life and the glitterati of that era. It garnered a favorable review in the New York Times.
"Her one great ambition never to be bored is evident. This is no tired senior citizen (she was 70s when she wrote it) writing her memoirs but a gifted wit who has seen the best of many worlds. The sex in the first flapper era of the Twenties was pretty tame, she says, held up to the sixties. 'How could any epoch boast of passion with its hit love song bearing the title When You Wore a Tulip, A Bright Yellow Tulip and I Wore a Red, Red Rose?' Although there were no four-letter words in the Loos opus, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it was a shocker when it came out in 1926."
Anyway, this could be a fun read in the same way Gentlemen Prefer Blondes would be--to get a look into a vanished time from someone who lived it.
Who knew "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" was originally a novel? Interesting!
Posted by: Sarah | July 23, 2011 at 02:37 PM
Is there something wrong with your comment form, Danielle?
I did post a comment yesterday and I also saw it appeared and today it is gone. Plus I see no others apart from Sarah which is unusual. What happened?
Well, I wrote that it sounds like an interesting testimony and I was curious to read whether her writing style was also good.
Posted by: Caroline | July 24, 2011 at 03:17 AM
Sarah--I think it might have been cobbled together from a series of stories for a magazine. I'd like to read it eventually.
Caroline--Sorry about that--other people have told me they have tried to post comments but couldn't or that they disappeared--I need to find out from Typepad what's going on! I looked in my spam folder, but nothing but junk there! To be honest I wasn't really happy with the book I chose or my post, so I'm not surprised there are not many comments. I think people are busy with summer as my visitors have really fluctuated for the last couple of months. I think it would be fun, too, to see some of her films--not sure if they were silent films or later ones--she wrote quite a few screenplays, but I am also curious about her other writings. Sounds like she knew a lot of people in Hollywood and the literati. She could have some good stories!
Posted by: Danielle | July 24, 2011 at 08:14 PM
I read Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the follow-up But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, years ago but enjoyed them so I think that they are somewhere on my shelves still (they had a very stylish cover I seem to recall which appeals to the shallow side of me!)
I like that period of history too and have a few non-fiction books about it stockpiled for when I feel that I can concentrate more than I can at the moment.
Posted by: Liz F | July 25, 2011 at 04:24 AM
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes has been on my TBR list for awhile. I didn't know Loos was so prolific though, I thought she only had a few books. Interesting too about the memoirs. I hope it turns out to be fun!
Posted by: Stefanie | July 25, 2011 at 01:01 PM
I agree that that era is very interesting, and Loos's writing sounds like a lot of fun. Reading a memoir by her would be entertaining, I'm sure!
Posted by: Dorothy W. | July 25, 2011 at 03:53 PM
Liz--I think the covers may have been what first made me pick the books up! I love that era and have long wanted to read the books. I'm shallow too that way. I'm not doing well with nonfiction at the moment--maybe when it cools off!
Stefanie--I wonder if she is on Project Gutenberg--must check that out. Her memoirs sound like good gossipy fun.
Dorothy--I think entertaining is probably a good word for her books. I need to try something by her out soon.
Posted by: Danielle | July 25, 2011 at 11:17 PM