"Ziegfeld Girl" Movie poster, 1941
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Ziegfeld Follies, Ziegfeld Girls: Staging Provocative Beauty

A century ago, a line of women glide languidly into the glow of the footlights on a Broadway stage. Nearly nude, they shimmer with feathers, jewels, satin, and sequins. The audience watches in a spellbound mix of desire, envy, and awe. Here, presented to the world as icons of feminine beauty, are the Ziegfeld Girls….

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

Rereading Louise Brooks’s writing 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…