NEW SG Interview: Karen Abbott – American Rose0

by Alex Dueben

Karen Abbott’s first book was Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys and the Battle for America’s Soul, which needles to say, was not the kind of history book you read in school. Centered around the Everleigh Sisters who ran a prominent Chicago brothel for more than a decade, Abbott explored not just the sisters and their many famous clients, but the religious and political figures who collaborated with, fought against, and made their names, locally and nationally, around this issue. Abbott’s most recent book which has just been released in paperback is American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare: The Life and Times of Gypsy Rose Lee.

You know Gypsy Rose Lee. The legendary striptease artist and burlesque performer, author of the novel The G-String Murders, which was turned into the Barbara Stanwyck film Lady of Burlesque, who authored a largely fictional memoir (before writing such a tome became popular) that was turned into one of the great musicals. What’s clear from reading her book, is how much we don’t know about Gypsy Rose Lee.

American Rose isn’t a biography, but uses Lee and her career as a way to look at the thirties when vaudeville died and burlesque took over, and when culture as a whole was in a state of flux. It’s fascinating portrait of the theater-owning Minsky Brothers, moralist New York City mayor Fiorella La Guardia, author Carson McCullers, and America in the midst of an economic Depression but a cultural revolution.

Read our exclusive interview with Karen Abbott on SuicideGirls.com.