{"title":"Andrew L Erdman","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"queen-of-vaudeville-book-andrew-l-erdman-9780801449703","title":"Queen of Vaudeville","description":"In her day, Eva Tanguay (1879–1947) was one of the most famous women in America. Widely known as the \"I Don't Care Girl\"—named after a song she popularized and her independent, even brazen persona—Tanguay established herself as a vaudeville and musical comedy star in 1901 with the New York City premiere of the show My Lady—and never looked back. Tanguay was, at the height of a long career that stretched until the early 1930s, a trend-setting performer who embodied the emerging ideal of the bold and sexual female entertainer. Whether suggestively singing songs with titles like \"It's All Been Done Before But Not the Way I Do It\" and \"Go As Far As You Like\" or wearing a daring dress made of pennies, she was a precursor to subsequent generations of performers, from Mae West to Madonna and Lady Gaga, who have been both idolized and condemned for simultaneously displaying and playing with blatant displays of female sexuality.   In Queen of Vaudeville, Andrew L. Erdman tells Eva Tanguay's remarkable life story with verve. Born into the family of a country doctor in rural Quebec and raised in a New England mill town, Tanguay found a home on the vaudeville stage. Erdman follows the course of her life as she amasses fame and wealth, marries (and divorces) twice, engages in affairs closely followed in the press, declares herself a Christian Scientist, becomes one of the first celebrities to get plastic surgery, loses her fortune following the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and receives her last notice, an obituary in Variety. The arc of Tanguay's career follows the history of American popular culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Tanguay's appeal, so dependent on her physical presence and personal charisma, did not come across in the new media of radio and motion pictures. With nineteen rare or previously unpublished images, Queen of Vaudeville is a dynamic portrait of a dazzling and unjustly forgotten show business star.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50097832788241,"sku":"CIN0801449707G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007222317329,"sku":"NIN9780801449703","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52946300666129,"sku":"CIN0801449707VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0801449707.jpg?v=1772274399"},{"product_id":"blue-vaudeville-book-andrew-l-erdman-9780786431151","title":"Blue Vaudeville","description":"This work reveals the often racy, ribald, and sexually charged nature of the vaudeville stage, looking at a broad array of provocative performers from disrobing dancers to nude posers to skimpily dressed athletes. Examining the ways in which big-time vaudeville nonetheless managed to market itself as pure, safe, and morally acceptable, this work compares the industry's marketing and promotional practices to those of other emergent mass-marketers of the vaudeville era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.     Included are in-depth examinations of important figures from the vaudeville stage such as Annette Kellerman and Eva Tanguay. The work attempts to address historical context as one means of understanding these performers with an appreciation for their rebelliousness. It discusses censorship and content control in the vaudeville era, and concludes with an analysis of film's part in the fall of vaudeville. Many photographs, cartoons, and other illustrations are included.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50361587597585,"sku":"CIN0786431156G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52146960531729,"sku":"NLS9780786431151","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53373581885713,"sku":"CIN0786431156VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0786431156.jpg?v=1750702872"},{"product_id":"beautiful-book-andrew-l-erdman-9780197696330","title":"Beautiful","description":"From the late 19th to the early 21st centuries, female impersonation was a hugely popular performance genre. Long before today's popular television shows, men in colleges, business, and even the military formed drag clubs and put on musicals and variety shows of all kinds with little fear of negative judgment. But no female impersonator was as famous, successful, or highly-regarded as Julian Eltinge (1881-1941). Eltinge, born William Dalton just outside Boston, started playing female characters and imitating women with his mother's encouragement as a child while his father shuttled his family around the Americas in search of a mining fortune that never materialized. The future drag star returned to Boston in his late teens where he quickly rose through the ranks of semi-amateur all-male musicals, then transitioned to vaudeville, and eventually starred in hugely successful musical comedies such as The Fascinating Widow (1910).   For decades, the Julian Eltinge Theatre on West 42nd Street bore testament to his stature. But Eltinge longed to play serious roles which did not require him to impersonate women; it was a lifelong struggle. He constructed a hypermasculine offstage persona-- a cigar-loving former Harvard athlete who beat up anyone who questioned his manliness--most of which wasn't true. But Eltinge's efforts were essential in a culture increasingly focused on separating “real men” from “inverts” and “perverts,” demanding men define themselves in new ways during a time of economic and cultural upheaval. During his heyday, Eltinge published a beauty and advice magazine for women, launched lifestyle-brand makeup and skincare products, and became a paid spokesperson for corsets and women's shoes, all without a hint of irony. Julian Eltinge's success with mainstream audiences, ever avoiding suspicions and scandal, says much about the emergent middle-class white heteronormativity of the era and what we have come to think of as the social construction of gender. Beautiful pays tribute to Eltinge and gives rich insight into his unique contributions to the transformation of cultural ideas about masculinity and femininity.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50999972364561,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50999975182609,"sku":"NIN9780197696330","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197696333.jpg?v=1776767523"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-andrew-l-erdman.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}