Louise Brooks Arrives in New York: Awkwardness Beneath the Bold Beauty
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Louise Brooks Arrives in New York: Awkwardness Beneath the Bold Beauty

ByBill LeFurgy

Rereading Louise Brooks’s reminiscences of her early years in New York City, published as Chapter One in Lulu in Hollywood, I’m struck by the unique blend of detail, candor, and lack of pretension or sentiment. She credits her success in the city to a soda jerk who tamed her accent, a waiter who refined her…

Single Women and the Telephone: The Astonishing Shift From “Hello Girls” to “Avoid Phone Calls at All Costs”
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Single Women and the Telephone: The Astonishing Shift From “Hello Girls” to “Avoid Phone Calls at All Costs”

ByBill LeFurgy

The telephone was wildly disruptive when it arrived at the end of the Nineteenth-century. It was a radical innovation that brought change, not the least for single women, both in the workplace and in the male imagination. Women dominated the ranks of telephone operators early on, starting with Emily Nutt in 1878 Boston. The teenage…