American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee by Karen Abbott Page A
Authors: Karen Abbott
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red light. At once the act downgraded into a tamer version of itself—a “Boston,” they called it, named for that city’s especially vigilant enforcers of decency. Bodices remained buttoned, hips swayed to a halt, and the officer would leave disappointed, not having seen anything remotely objectionable.
Never let it be said that the Minskys weren’t men of their word.
Chapter Eleven
Michael Todd was the toughest, lowest kind of man, that close to being a gangster. And Gypsy was mad about him.
Really
mad about him.
– JUNE HAVOC
Chicago, Illinois, 1941
A fter arriving in Chicago, Gypsy does what Michael Todd will not, filing for divorce from a spouse she doesn’t love. Just as her mother did nearly thirty years earlier, Gypsy claims her husband, Arnold “Bob” Mizzy, treated her “cruelly” by using “obscene and abusive language” and knocking her down twice. She requests that the decree apply to her two wedding ceremonies, one in a water taxi off the Santa Ana coast and another at Long Beach, both sanctioned by 20th Century–Fox and attended by the press.
Reporters follow Gypsy to Chicago, covering her divorce (GYPSY ROSE LEE “STRIPS” HUBBY , headlines blare) and the grand opening of Mike’s Theatre Café on the city’s North Side. Teenage waitresses wear gingham skirts and serve Jell-O and milk along with highballs. Children swing back and forth on the railing while their parents watch Gypsy work the stage, using every one of her old tricks. She pays a woman in the audience to scream as she pulls off her last pin. A beat later, a busboydrops a tray of dishes. While the audience roars, Gypsy pretends to faint. “I never try to stir up the animal in ’em,” she confides to Chicago’s press corps. “Did you ever hold a piece of candy or a toy in front of a baby—just out of his reach? Notice how he laughs? That’s your strip audience.”
She keeps her word to George Davis and pounds on the typewriter between performances, rereading while she soaks off her body paint in the tub, a process that often takes hours. His connections help her land a contract with Simon & Schuster. “I’ll do my specialty in Macy’s to sell a book,” she writes to her publicist. “If you would prefer something a little more dignified, make it a Wannamaker’s window.” She’s eager to finish now. George is a great friend but a stubborn, temperamental critic, and his letters often have less to do with
The G-String Murders
than with his own floundering literary career, the daily chaos at Middagh Street, pointed comments about her decision to leave (“I’m delighted to hear that Todd wants you to stay on and make more money”), and, most maddening, his insights into her future.
“I think it very funny,” George writes, “that you were once arrested for playing in a sketch called ‘Illusion.’ By rights you should have been given a life sentence: you’ve been playing it constantly.… Over and over I catch myself staring the mask of youth off you, the way dirty boys stare the dress off their teacher, and what I see scares the bejesus out of me. Not for myself, but for you.” More foreboding than his words is the fact that she had thought them first herself, the looping, silent sound track in her mind since becoming Gypsy Rose Lee.
She and Mike spend nearly every hour of every day together operating the Theatre Café, and if he leaves Chicago he sends letters: “Darling, I reread your pink letter at least 10 times.… I feel exactly like you do and wish I could say it as good as you do—somehow I can’t make with gags & funny words.”
His wife, Bertha, has her suspicions, and Mike still insists on discretion, mostly for the benefit of his son. If Bertha discovers their affair, she will keep him from seeing Michael Todd, Jr. One night, when Gypsy is expecting Mike for dinner, she hears a knock at her door. To her surprise she finds Junior, dressed in a suit, comb lines visible across his
Never let it be said that the Minskys weren’t men of their word.
Chapter Eleven
Michael Todd was the toughest, lowest kind of man, that close to being a gangster. And Gypsy was mad about him.
Really
mad about him.
– JUNE HAVOC
Chicago, Illinois, 1941
A fter arriving in Chicago, Gypsy does what Michael Todd will not, filing for divorce from a spouse she doesn’t love. Just as her mother did nearly thirty years earlier, Gypsy claims her husband, Arnold “Bob” Mizzy, treated her “cruelly” by using “obscene and abusive language” and knocking her down twice. She requests that the decree apply to her two wedding ceremonies, one in a water taxi off the Santa Ana coast and another at Long Beach, both sanctioned by 20th Century–Fox and attended by the press.
Reporters follow Gypsy to Chicago, covering her divorce (GYPSY ROSE LEE “STRIPS” HUBBY , headlines blare) and the grand opening of Mike’s Theatre Café on the city’s North Side. Teenage waitresses wear gingham skirts and serve Jell-O and milk along with highballs. Children swing back and forth on the railing while their parents watch Gypsy work the stage, using every one of her old tricks. She pays a woman in the audience to scream as she pulls off her last pin. A beat later, a busboydrops a tray of dishes. While the audience roars, Gypsy pretends to faint. “I never try to stir up the animal in ’em,” she confides to Chicago’s press corps. “Did you ever hold a piece of candy or a toy in front of a baby—just out of his reach? Notice how he laughs? That’s your strip audience.”
She keeps her word to George Davis and pounds on the typewriter between performances, rereading while she soaks off her body paint in the tub, a process that often takes hours. His connections help her land a contract with Simon & Schuster. “I’ll do my specialty in Macy’s to sell a book,” she writes to her publicist. “If you would prefer something a little more dignified, make it a Wannamaker’s window.” She’s eager to finish now. George is a great friend but a stubborn, temperamental critic, and his letters often have less to do with
The G-String Murders
than with his own floundering literary career, the daily chaos at Middagh Street, pointed comments about her decision to leave (“I’m delighted to hear that Todd wants you to stay on and make more money”), and, most maddening, his insights into her future.
“I think it very funny,” George writes, “that you were once arrested for playing in a sketch called ‘Illusion.’ By rights you should have been given a life sentence: you’ve been playing it constantly.… Over and over I catch myself staring the mask of youth off you, the way dirty boys stare the dress off their teacher, and what I see scares the bejesus out of me. Not for myself, but for you.” More foreboding than his words is the fact that she had thought them first herself, the looping, silent sound track in her mind since becoming Gypsy Rose Lee.
She and Mike spend nearly every hour of every day together operating the Theatre Café, and if he leaves Chicago he sends letters: “Darling, I reread your pink letter at least 10 times.… I feel exactly like you do and wish I could say it as good as you do—somehow I can’t make with gags & funny words.”
His wife, Bertha, has her suspicions, and Mike still insists on discretion, mostly for the benefit of his son. If Bertha discovers their affair, she will keep him from seeing Michael Todd, Jr. One night, when Gypsy is expecting Mike for dinner, she hears a knock at her door. To her surprise she finds Junior, dressed in a suit, comb lines visible across his
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