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Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce |
List Price: $26.00
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Description:
"I may be expensive," Peggy Hopkins Joyce (1893-1957) once remarked, apropos of the wealthy husbands she acquired and discarded so lightly, "but I deliver the goods." Such racy frankness made Joyce the darling of the newly powerful mass media during the 1920s. Though she was a Ziegfeld showgirl and made a few movies, she was essentially a new kind of celebrity, states Constance Rosenblum in this entertaining biography: "She did nothing of significance [but] Peggy was blessed with a profound understanding of the uses of publicity, not to mention an enormous hunger for its fruits." Rosenblum traces Joyce's trajectory from restless girlhood in the conservative South through her partying teens (she had been married twice by the age of 20) to the zenith of her fame as an icon of hedonistic Jazz Age glamour and the sad years of declining media attention and income cushioned by the judicious sale of jewels from former spouses. In this balanced appraisal, Joyce comes across as neither especially talented nor smart, but nonetheless oddly likable as she parlays her looks and charm into a life of comfort. "She knew what she wanted, went after it with her whole heart, and lived the life she yearned to live," Rosenblum concludes. "That is no small achievement, then or now." --Wendy Smith
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