that in a former life I was one of these girls.
When I was 13 years old, I started a novel about a Ziegfeld girl. I had no idea what I was talking about. I hadn’t even kissed someone, but I was writing blithely about floozies rolling up their garters and going out to jazz clubs with gangsters. I wish I could find it. I know that the lead girl’s name was “Maisie”. Of course it was.
I want to be on that balcony with those girls. Love them.
“Someday, maybe, if I stick it long enough,
I may get to strut my stuff
Working for a nice man
Like a Ziegfeld or a Weismann
In a great…big…Broad-waaay shoooooow!”
Look at the expression on the first girl on the right. I can’t make out if she’s terrified or joyous!
Catherine – ha – and the girl in the middle is like, “Who the heck talked me into this.”
But the girl at the very edge? She’s having a ball.
I’m imagining a really sweaty muggy rehearsal hall, with no AC – and how good it must have felt to cool off up there.
You must find that story. I want it SO bad.
Tracey – I know! There were speakeasies and Charleston parties, and people rolling up the rug as they “cranked the Victrola”- as well as a sort of sleazy stage manager, and all of the Ziegfeld girls laughed at him.
What the heck did I know about ANYTHING but I had so much fun writing it.
When my grandmother was a teenager, growing up in a tiny town on the Canadian border in North Dakota, her parents used to send her to Saint Paul to get some culcha with an aunt who worked as a domestic in one of the mansions on Summit Avenue, where James J. Hill and a bunch of the classic rail barons and, lest we forget, F. Scott Fitzgerald, lived.
And one day in the summer of 1928, she went on her first “date”, with a nice young man, who took her to the Wabasha Street Caves, a set of (er) caves that had been turned into a dance hall and not-at-all-concealed speakeasy on the bluffs across the river from downtown Saint Paul. He was reportedly a very nice, respectful young fella…
…who, it turned out, was a young bag man for the Capone mob (who spent their summers in Saint Paul, too, under a deal they worked out in the teens with the Saint Paul police; Capone, Dillinger, Nelson, the Barkers and the whole crew had summer homes up here), in town on “business”.
Hey, Sheila – off topic (sorry), but I told you a long time ago that I’d planned to write a bit about Everclear. It’s not quite the magnum opus I’d planned, but here it is.
My daughter’s name is Maisie! It evokes that fabulous era for me as well.
Sheila – really?? That was my favorite “fictional” name when I was writing stories as a youngster – how funny!
I hope I’m not being a wet blanket by uttering the dread phrase “publicity stunt.” Did you see the heels on their shoes, and the size of the gaps between the boards? If they did anything more than just stand there like Grecian Urns, they’d likely break their ankle, or topple to their deaths.
Still, it’s a great picture, and a great story to go with it. Like something Paul Lynde would’ve dreamt up to get Sugar Cane into the papers in Beach Blanket Bingo.
Jack – hahaha I know, I know – but it still provides great scope for the imagination!
I love their sexy underthings/costumes that only really leave their arms and shoulders bare.