Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin
Writers Running Wild in the Twenties
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Narrated by:
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Lorna Raver
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By:
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Marion Meade
About this listen
Marion Meade re-creates the aura of excitement, romance, and promise of the 1920s, a decade celebrated for cultural innovation, the birth of jazz, the beginning of modernism, and social and sexual liberation, bringing to light, as well, the anxiety and despair that lurked beneath the nonstop partying and outrageous, unconventional behavior.
The literary heroines in Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin did what they wanted, said what they thought. They drank gallons of cocktails and knew how to have fun in New York, the Riviera, and Hollywood, where they met and played with all the people worth knowing. They kicked open the door for 20th-century female writers and set a new model for every woman trying to juggle the serious issues of economic independence, political power, and sexual freedom.
In a style and tone that perfectly captures the jazzy rhythms and desperate gaiety that defined the era, Meade tells the individual stories of Parker, Fitzgerald, Millay, and Ferber, traces the intersections of their lives, and describes the men, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson, Harold Ross, and Robert Benchley, who influenced them, loved them, and sometimes betrayed them. She describes their social and literary triumphs (Parker's Round Table witticisms appeared almost daily in the newspapers and Ferber and Millay won Pulitzer Prizes) and writes movingly of the penances they paid: the crumbled love affairs, abortions, depression, lost beauty, nervous breakdowns, and, finally, overdoses and even madness.
A vibrant mixture of literary scholarship, social history, and gossip, Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin is a rich evocation of a period that continues to intrigue and captivate listeners.
©2004 Marion Meade (P)2004 Blackstone AudiobooksListeners also enjoyed...
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Pretense upon pretense.
- By Shalin Desai on 06-01-15
By: Edmund White
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Careless People
- Murder, Mayhem, and the Invention of the Great Gatsby
- By: Sarah Churchwell
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting audiences across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922, and Careless People carefully reconstructs the crucial months during which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald returned to New York in the autumn of 1922.
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Fascinating study of the Fitzgeralds and Jazz Age
- By Sand on 06-11-14
By: Sarah Churchwell
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In the Great Green Room
- The Brilliant and Bold Life of Margaret Wise Brown
- By: Amy Gary
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary life of the woman behind the beloved children's classics Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny comes alive in this fascinating biography of Margaret Wise Brown. Margaret's books have sold millions of copies all over the world, but few people know that she was at the center of a children's book publishing revolution.
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Excruciatingly boring
- By Melissa S. on 01-31-19
By: Amy Gary
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America's Queen
- The Life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
- By: Sarah Bradford
- Narrated by: Sandra Burr
- Length: 8 hrs and 55 mins
- Abridged
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Using remarkable new sources, Sarah Bradford has written a timely celebration of a life that was more private than commonly supposed. Revealing new testimony from many of the couple's friends shows the complexities of this apparently very public relationship and of her controversial marriage to Aristotle Onassis. Here is the private Jackie - neglected wife, vigilant mother, and working widow - whose contradictory and fascinating nature is illuminated by all that Bradford has discovered.
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American Royalty
- By Kindle Customer on 06-10-16
By: Sarah Bradford
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Mark Twain
- A Life
- By: Ron Powers
- Narrated by: Ron Powers
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
- Abridged
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Mark Twain founded the American voice. His works are a living national treasury: taught, quoted, and reprinted more than those of any writer except Shakespeare. His awestruck contemporaries saw him as the representative figure of his times, and his influence has deeply flavored the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Buy the Book
- By W.Denis on 10-22-05
By: Ron Powers
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Daring
- My Passages - A Memoir
- By: Gail Sheehy
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Candid, insightful, and powerful, Daring: My Passages is the story of the unconventional life of a writer who dared - to walk New York City streets with hookers and pimps to expose violent prostitution; to march with civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland as British paratroopers opened fire; to seek out Egypt's president Anwar Sadat when he was targeted for death after making peace with Israel.
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Enjoyed unexpectedly
- By Corinne O'Rourke on 09-06-23
By: Gail Sheehy
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Jack London
- An American Life
- By: Earle Labor
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 16 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast - an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed best-selling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf.
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Glad I chose this
- By SherryH on 04-14-19
By: Earle Labor
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My Autobiography
- By: Charles Chaplin, David Robinson - introduction
- Narrated by: Steve John Shepherd
- Length: 19 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Take an unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called "the only genius to come out of the movie industry" as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his "reverse migration" back to Europe.
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Finally Chaplin’s auto is available!
- By Ryan Baumbach on 04-28-22
By: Charles Chaplin, and others
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She Made Me Laugh
- My Friend Nora Ephron
- By: Richard Cohen
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning journalist Richard Cohen, wrote this about his "third-person memoir": "I call this book a third-person memoir. It is about my closest friend, Nora Ephron, and the lives we lived together and how her life got to be bigger until, finally, she wrote her last work, the play, Lucky Guy, about a newspaper columnist dying of cancer while she herself was dying of cancer. I have interviewed many of her other friends - Mike Nichols, Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep, Arianna Huffington.
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Loved it!
- By Leigh Lerro on 10-27-17
By: Richard Cohen
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Eleanor and Hick
- The Love Affair That Shaped a First Lady
- By: Susan Quinn
- Narrated by: Kimberly Farr
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1932 Eleanor Roosevelt entered the claustrophobic, duty-bound existence of the first lady with dread. By that time she had put her deep disappointment in her marriage behind her and developed an independent life - now threatened by the public role she would be forced to play. A lifeline came to her in the form of a feisty campaign reporter for the Associated Press: Lorena Hickok. Over the next 30 years, until Eleanor's death, the two women carried on an extraordinary relationship.
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An Icon who was real.
- By Francine Fields on 08-17-17
By: Susan Quinn
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The Riviera Set
- Glitz, Glamour, and the Hidden World of High Society
- By: Mary S. Lovell
- Narrated by: Jill Rolls
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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The Riviera Set reveals the story of the group of people who lived, partied, bed-hopped, and politicked at the Château de l'Horizon near Cannes, over the course of 40 years from the time when Coco Chanel made southern French tans fashionable in the twenties to the death of the playboy Prince Aly Khan in 1960. At the heart of dynamic group was the amazing Maxine Elliott, the daughter of a fisherman from Connecticut, who built the beautiful art deco Château.
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Riviera Set
- By Lois Kelly on 05-04-18
By: Mary S. Lovell
What listeners say about Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Ryver C.
- 08-21-07
Fantastic
I love books like this. Getting behind the scenes of a crazy time. The tone of the book pulled me in right away. Highly Recommend.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Scott
- 05-20-21
Fun Story and Cautionary Tale
For those who like the 1920's, this book was a fun ride with the major figures of the literati. It is also a tale of excess that becomes clear in the last chapters. A good read for fans of these authors.
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- White Rabbit
- 11-22-21
Interesting read I recommend it
I recommend this for anyone interested in Scott or Zelda Fitzgerald (the most interesting), Edna Furber, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Milay. All part of American history each with their own worthwhile story.
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- OK Amy
- 07-07-17
Fascinating story difficult to follow
I chose this book as a followup to the Amazon series Z. It follows the story of each individual woman, year by year throughout the twenties. With the exception of the Fitzgeralds, I had little, to no knowledge of the other writers. Initially, each story was difficult to follow, but as the characters became more familiar, the book moved along very nicely. It was a lovely introduction to the wit of Dorothy Parker.
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3 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Celia
- 07-29-05
A lot of fun!
This book was a romp through the 20's with some of it's more interesting characters. It's fascinating to find out how very human and fragile legends really are. This group lived on the edge but they had the problems of ordinary people too. What makes it so much fun is to see it all through their creative and usually very humorous points of view!
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7 people found this helpful
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- E. Standard
- 04-27-22
Brilliant!
I couldn’t stop listening to this, hugely entertaining as well as informative and very well written.
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Ended up enjoying it
It took me a little while to adjust to this book partially, I think, because it reads more like fiction than a non-fiction. Also, there are so many people that someone of a newer generation may not recognize names like Edna Ferber, etc. But once I got started, I enjoyed this book very much... especially the parts about Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There were so parts that are just too funny... like about F. Scott Fitzgerald being chronically obsessed with his small ****. I thought this was a splendid book and well-narrated.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Parisa Hervani
- 01-12-16
What a creative mind!
Love how this book was written. It was so fun getting to know these infamous writers. Great narration too, added 1920's spunk to it. I was thoroughly entertained by this light and amusing read, and I got to see one of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, in a biographic way.
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- Alex Gunter
- 11-22-23
Fascinating Intertwined Lives
What a romp! A delightfully informative four part Biography that clips right along as fast as Gatsby’s yellow car. Worth the time in every way.
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- Amaze
- 10-29-21
Entertaining and depressing
This is a rollicking survey of notable American women writers in the 1920s (and a bit into the 1930s). The author appears to have done an amazing amount of research and the material is very well presented. However, at a certain point, maybe halfway through the book, it becomes apparent that most of these women, and their male colleagues, were hopeless alcoholics. The recounting of their alcohol-soaked lives becomes, for me, rather depressing. It's not the author's fault; she's telling it like it is. It's just not a very appetizing reality. Maybe that was how it was in those days for most intellectuals and artists. Too bad. Still, it's a good read and a good survey of an interesting group. Just be prepared for a lot of drunkenness and disfunction.
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1 person found this helpful