American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee (53 page)

To my amazing editor, Susanna Porter, for her guidance, support, and superior editorial eye, and for finding Gypsy’s story as fascinating as I do. And to her assistant, the efficient and ever-patient Sophie Epstein, for cracking the whip gently.

To Simon Lipskar, agent extraordinaire, for his general brilliance, unerring logic (his slavish devotion to the Yankees notwithstanding), tireless
advocacy, and willingness to tell it like it is, even when I don’t want to hear it. You gave me the single best piece of career advice I’ve ever received, a printout of which hangs on my office wall: “Just shut the fuck up and write the book.” Indeed.

To the people who found files, checked facts, or lent a helping hand: the entire staff at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (a special shout-out to the unfailingly cheerful Tanisha Jones), Su Kim Chung of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Charlene Peoples at the Washington State Department of Health, Dotty King, Dianne Durante, Martha Davidson, Trish Nicola, Peter Dizozza, David Williams, Noralee Frankel, and, especially, the intrepid and delightful Carolyn Quinn.

To everyone who shared personal memories of Gypsy, the Minsky brothers, burlesque, and vaudeville, or who helped facilitate interviews: Arthur Laurents, Liz Smith, Dr. Edward Orzac, Bette Solomon, Dardy Minsky, George Bettinger, Satan’s Angel, Kaye Ballard, D. A. Penne-baker, Gus Weill, Liz Goldwyn and Dominique Porter, Frank Cullen, Ava Minsky Foxman, and Mike Weiss. Thanks, also, to the vast and extraordinary neo-burlesque community, especially Laura Herbert, Franky Vivid and Michelle L’Amour, and the incomparable Jo Boobs.

To Sara Gruen and Joshilyn Jackson, my critique partners and dearest darlings (as Gypsy would say), who sustain me on a daily—even hourly—basis. Thank you for our decadent yet productive retreats, for reading this book more times than I care to count, for encouraging my inner Julia Child, for enduring my insufferable sore-winner poker-victory dance (okay, okay, I
occasionally
lose), for hating me hard, and for perfectly matching my own level of batshit crazy. Without you two I’d have quit this business long ago. My love and thanks, also, to the members of my writing group at large: the outrageously gifted Anna Schachner, the magnificent Lydia Netzer, the wicked and sharp Gilbert King, the whip-smart Emma Garman, the savvy Elisa Ludwig, and the fabulous and forgiving Renee Rosen.

To Julia “Edipist” Cheiffetz, Benjamin Dreyer, Tom Perry, Tom Nevins, Barbara Fillon, Sally Marvin, Debbie Aroff, Lynn Buckley, Susan Kamil, Gina Centrello, Steve Messina, Caroline Cunningham, Sandra Sjursen, Tom Schmidt, Rick Kogan, Erik Larson, Stephen J.
Dubner, Steven D. Levitt, Nick Barose, Jack Perry, Kathy Abbott, Melisa Monastero, Laura Dittmar, Beth France, Nora Skinner, Chip and Susan Fisher, Rachel Shteir, Jonathan Santlofer, Andrew “P. Pokey” Corsello, Mary Agnew, Sue Taddei, Jennifer Fales, and everyone who has supported me during my career, including the three-year process of writing this book. To quote old-time stripteaser Mae Dix, I’d do anything for all of you, within reason.

To Chuck Kahler, with whom, incredibly, I’ve spent half of my life: thanks for seeing through me, and for seeing me through.

And finally, a gutsy, ballsy, Ethel Merman–style
squawk!
to Poe and Dexter.

1
“Genius is not a gift”: Quoted in Joyce Carol Oates,
Blonde, x
.

2
“May your bare ass”: Telegram, Eleanor Roosevelt to Gypsy Rose Lee, May 8, 1959, Series I, Box 6, Folder 8, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division (hereafter BRTD), New York Public Library.

1
“Everybody thinks”: Havoc,
More Havoc
, 160.

2
the fair’s 1,216 acres: Gelernter, 18.

3
seven hundred feet high:
The New York Times
, October 29, 1939. (Other sources say 610 feet; see Gelernter, 16.)

4
Joe DiMaggio:
The New York Times
, May 28, 1940.

5
“aquabelles”: Gelernter, 308.

6
“We will be dedicating”: Ibid., 344;
The New York Times
, December 29, 1938.

7
Westinghouse Time Capsule:
The New York Times
, September 24, 1938; Goldfield, 545.

8
General Motors’ Futurama exhibit: Gelernter, 19–25.

9
“undesirable slum areas”: Wood, 60.

10
They witness a robot:
The New York Times
, April 30, 1940.

11
“Sooner than you realize it”: Trager, 515.

12
“Peace and Freedom”:
The New York Times
, May 12, 1940.

13
hourly war bulletins:
The New York Times
, May 18, 1940; Philip Hamburger, “Comment,”
The New Yorker
, June 1, 1940.

14
foreign section:
The New York Times
, May 18, 1940.

15
“American Common”:
The New York Times
, May 19, 1940.

16
Fairgoers line up:
The New York Times
, June 4, 1940.

17
larger than the turnout: Gypsy received a louder ovation—based on an applause meter—than Roosevelt and Wilkie combined: J. P. McEvoy, “More Tease Than Strip,”
Reader’s Digest
, July 1941.

18
outpolling even Eleanor Roosevelt: John Richmond, “Gypsy Rose Lee, Striptease Intellectual,”
American Mercury
, January 1941.

19
“larger than Stalin’s”: Preminger, 56.

20
“What’s the matter in there?”: Preminger, 57.

21
babies cry: Interview with Bette Solomon, granddaughter of Jack Hovick (through his second marriage), September 18, 2009.

22
dogs urinate: story by June Havoc as told to Tana Sibilio.

23
“I don’t like poison darts”: Geoffrey T. Hellman, “Author,”
The New Yorker
, December 7, 1940.

24
“I hope you are well”: Rose Thompson Hovick to Gypsy Rose Lee, undated, Series I, Box 1, Folder 14, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, BRTD.

25
“Have you the faintest”: The version of “A Stripteaser’s Education” presented here (and later) is a composite; Gypsy performed this, her signature number, for many years and updated the lyrics every so often. In later years, she called it “The Psychology of a Stripteaser,” likely in homage to Freud.

1
“Do unto others”: Cohn, 121.

2
hurling herself: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 14, 92.

3
scalding water: Havoc,
More Havoc
, 39.

4
tearing her mother: Laura Jacobs, “Taking It
All
Off,”
Vanity Fair
, March 2003; Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 122.

5
A caul: Lee,
Gypsy
, 44.

6
dark circles: Ibid., 10.

7
fit into a teacup: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 14.

8
including her older daughter’s name: Washington State certificate of birth, record number 193, file number 1388. This is the original birth certificate on file and specifies that there is “one child living of this mother”—clearly marking it as Louise’s/Gypsy’s. Though Rose Hovick certainly could have doctored a copy of a birth certificate, it would have been impossible for her to doctor the original. Charlene Peoples, a representative of the Washington State Department of Health, as well as officials at the King County Health Department, confirmed that this certificate is indeed the one that was filed at the time of birth. Though the birth certificate gives “Ellen June’s” date of birth as January 8, 1911, I cite January 9 as Gypsy’s birthday in the book since that is the date she used throughout her life (she also cited 1914 as the year of her birth). It’s also possible, of course, that Rose never registered the name “Rose Louise” at all, and that, after the girls began their vaudeville careers, she requested that Gypsy’s certificate be amended to read “Ellen June.” The King County Health Department was unable to verify when “Ellen June” was added to the certificate, or who, specifically, updated the document. Erik Preminger also believes that his mother was born in January 1911.

There are several theories and guesses about the Hovick sisters’ true ages and names; I base my own conclusions on this birth certificate and several other pieces of documentation:

a. June’s letter to Gypsy, Series I, Box 2, Folder 9, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, BRTD, dated April 25, 1949: “I wired to Vancouver and received a birth certificate which makes me 35—born November 8, 1913. Here is the end of the
world. I am also called Ellen June. Mother requested they put down the same name as only she would do.”

I tried to obtain a copy of June Havoc’s birth certificate and was told that such records are not public information until 120 years after an individual’s birth. A representative of the British Columbia Vital Statistics Agency said it would have been impossible for Rose Hovick to steal an original birth certificate, as June describes in
Early Havoc
.

b. The divorce records of Rose Hovick and John Hovick. Rose began divorce proceedings by filing a restraining order against John O. Hovick on July 3, 1914, which states “that there are two children the issue of the said marriage, to wit, Rose Louise Hovick and Ellen June Hovick, age respectively three years and one year.”

If Louise had been born in January 1911, and June in November 1913, they would have been three and a half and nearly one, respectively, in 1914. Since the children were not yet in show business, Rose Hovick had no true motive to manipulate their ages. Judgment Decree for Rose E. Hovick vs. John O. Hovick, Filed August 20, 1915, #102195, Superior Court, State of Washington, King County, King Co. Court House, Docket Vol. 46, Folio 104, Journal 537, Folio 160.

c. Finally, in 1916, Rose Hovick enrolled Gypsy in the Seattle public school system using the name Rose Louise and a birth date of January 9, 1911: Frankel, 4; Seattle School District No. 1 enumeration record for J. O. Hovick, May 15, 1916, Seattle Public Schools.

9
Description of 4314 W. Frontenac Street: Office of the Secretary of State, Division of Archives and Records Management, Puget Sound Regional Archives, Bellevue, Washington.

10
square of Puget Sound: Residence, King County Assessor, Seattle, Washington, file number 3334.

11
“Her low tones”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 22.

12
Rose had married: Marriage certificate, license no. 27327, filed on May 28, 1910, Seattle, King County, Washington. Both Rose’s mother, Anna Thompson (aka Big Lady), and her grandmother Mary Stein (Dottie) signed the certificate as witnesses, which refutes the notion—invented by Rose and repeated by her daughters—that she fled a convent and eloped when she was fifteen. She lists her age as “18” on the marriage certificate, a number confirmed by the 1900 and 1910 U.S. censuses, both of which give her birth year as 1892: Year 1900; Census Place: Seattle Ward 8, King, Washington, Roll T623_1745; Page 7A, Enumeration District 114; Year 1910; Census Place: Seattle Ward 3, King, Washington; Roll T624_1659; Page 11A, Enumeration District 148.

13
Rose got her chance: July 8, 1914: Rose E. Hovick vs. John O. Hovick, Filed August 20, 1915, no. 102195, Superior Court, State of Washington, King County, King Co. Court House, Docket Vol. 46, Folio 104, Journal 537, Folio 160.

14
“damp and full of knot holes”: Ibid.

15
“bad reputation”: Ibid.

16
“struck and choked”; beat Louise “almost insensible”: Ibid.

17
“any underwear to speak of”: Ibid.

18
Professor Douglas’s Dancing School: Series II, Box 14, Folder 7, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, BRTD.

19
“I cannot recall”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 15.

20
favorite bit of family lore: Preminger, 186–187.

21
“In a few years”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 15.

22
“Mrs. Hovick, here you have”:
New York Sunday News
, June 22, 1941. (In this article, the dance instructor is called “Professor Belcher.”)

23
any child who: Lee,
Gypsy
, 10.

24
“We simply haven’t the money”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 15.

25
Jack Hovick told: Author’s interview with Bette Solomon, September 18, 2009.

26
Would-be millionaires: Eugene Clinton Elliott, 35.

27
“jungle mother”: Series VI, Box 42, Folder 4, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, BRTD.

28
Judson Brennerman: Marriage Certificate No. 8289, State of Washington, King County.

29
newspapers reported:
The Fort Wayne Sentinel
, May 16, 1916.

30
“Daddy Bub”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 123.

31
The following September:
Judson Brennerman v. Rose E. Brennerman
, Filed September 14, 1917, no. 124577, Superior Court, State of Washington, King County.

32
“cruel in many ways”: Ibid.

33
“Men,” she told her daughters: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 122.

34
“God cursed them by adding an ornament”: Ibid.

35
red rose … cabbage leaf: Lee,
Gypsy
, 61.

36
323 Fourth Avenue: U.S. Census, 1910.

37
drowning when he was nine: Author’s interview with Erik Preminger, November 3, 2009;
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, August 25, 1897.

38
died of a drug overdose: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 24.

39
“Of course, he was only a man”: Ibid.

40
Big Lady often fled: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 23; Lee,
Gypsy
, 11.

41
embroidering an altar cloth: Series VI, Box 42, Folder 5, Gypsy Rose Lee Papers, BRTD.

42
“Dozens of tiny squares”: Havoc,
Early Havoc
, 23.