“American Rose — A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee” by Karen Abbott. Random House. 422 pages. $26.
By Adera Causey
Gypsy Rose Lee has been presented as a symbol of wanton sexuality, as a beacon of liberation, as a forerunner to countless Hollywood beauties wasted by excess and abuse, as a shrewd self-marketer and as an unschooled temptress who ultimately became ensnared in a web of her own making. This much serialized, dramatized and memorialized early enigma of a century ago has received yet another investigative treatment with Karen Abbott’s “American Rose.”
This is largely familiar territory for Abbott, whose bestselling “Sin in the Second City” detailed an infamous Chicago brothel owned by sisters. Now, with a slight change of setting and approach to the treatment of sex, she moves east to New York City’s burlesque stages through the story of the iconic Gypsy Rose Lee.
For many Americans, the mere use of the stripper’s name is enough to conjure images of lust and suggestive dances in clubs of yesteryear. Her name brings up a reminder of her memoir and later the stage show and movie, which tell of her life as portrayed by Ethel Merman in the film and also of the dramatics of her over-the-top mother Rose (made famous by the wicked excess of Rosalind Russell).