Born on This Day: Ina Claire 1893-1985

15 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Anniversaries, Film, Jeanne Eagels, Theatre

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ina_claire_by_vintagedream_stock-d4qgoo8Of Irish descent, Ina Fagan was born in Washington on October 15, 1893. She never knew her father, who had died in a car accident four months previously. With no family breadwinner, Ina and her mother went to live in a boarding-house. From an early age, Ina had a talent for impersonations, and made her vaudeville debut in 1909 as ‘the dainty mimic’, under her mother’s maiden name of Ina Claire. Continue reading →

Ziegfeld and His Follies

21 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Books, Non-Fiction, Theatre

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Cynthia and Sara Brideson are twin siblings, and the co-authors of Also Starring… , a 2012 book profiling forty character actors of Hollywood’s Golden Era. For their latest project, Ziegfeld and His Follies, they have chosen an even more ambitious topic – the life and times of that most fabled of Broadway producers. Many other writers and film-makers have explored this subject, but while Florenz Ziegfeld Jr.’s name remains a symbol of glamour and excess, the man himself is a shadowy figure – like the great and powerful Oz. Continue reading →

Jeanne Eagels: A Fitzgeraldian Life

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Jeanne Eagels, Non-Fiction

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Jeanne72dpiTarainAnother great review of Jeanne Eagels: A Life Revealed, this time from blogger David Marshall James. He compares Jeanne’s turbulent life to a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was fascinated by her husband, Ted Coy, a retired football star – even depicting Coy in his fiction.

It’s as if F. Scott Fitzgerald penned her life’s story:  Midwest girl with stars in her eyes makes it to Broadway, seizes the role of a lifetime, then declines as dramatically as she has arisen … Authors Eric Woodard and Tara Hanks have expended an exceptional effort in presenting Jeanne Eagels, through the record of her life and her accomplishments, and through the memories of those who knew her.