Flapper by Joshua Zeitz (2006)
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Just a quick summary of how this book handles the topic along with a listing of the main personalities covered.
Not exactly a movie book, but the last third of this tale of the 20's does cover the flapper in Hollywood, specifically Colleen Moore, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks. Flapper does succeed in living up to its subtitle, "A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern." Zeitz concentrates more on the individuals though often does so to illustrate how flapperdom filtered down to the masses.
The first third of the book concentrates of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: who they were, how they met, courtship, Scott's early writing, early partying and marriage. Anyone with any interest in this topic has likely heard most of this information before, but obviously in a book about flappers these are neccesary personalities.
A little more interesting to me was the tale of Lois Long, who as Lipstick would write a column for The New Yorker for close to fifty years. When she started at The New Yorker Lipstick was basically paid to go out at night and party and then come in to write about it. Pretty sweet work.
Next up was the life of Coco Chanel who made such a huge imprint on flapper fashion. As Zeitz expands his tale of the flapper to touch upon each new personality he does a good job of recalling the previous personalities weaving flapperdom all together as he does so.
The final chapters which covered Colleen Moore, Clara Bow and Louise Brooks -- and covered them in that order to emphasize their overall importance in his history -- were definitely familiar territory, but did a pretty good job in capturing the basics of what made each of these women important individuals. If you're looking for something specifically about each of these actresses it isn't hard to find the proper titles.
The book closes with an enjoyable brief summary of the fate of each of our famous flappers.
Very well done in moving from beginning to middle to end -- in the Fitzgerald's you have the origins; Lipstick and Coco Chanel are the middle as Lipstick reports on emerging trends and Chanel profits from it; and finally film celebrates the flapper as something new before flooding it into mainstream culture ... and then cutting it loose when the public has had enough.
Some other personalities Zeitz mentions throughout are Gordon Conway, John Held, Bruce Barton, and Edward Bernays.
Very good, quick, easy read.
291 pages of text plus Notes and Index bringing it to 338. 2006 from
Crown Publishers.
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