NONFICTION

Feuding Fan Dancers: Faith Bacon, Sally Rand, and the Golden Age of the Showgirl

by Leslie Zemeckis
Counterpoint. Oct. 2018. 320p. photos. notes. bibliog. ISBN 9781640091146. $26; ebk. ISBN 9781640090606. BIOG
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In a world where a woman's only currency is her beauty, her value was fleeting—unless she had the inner strength and courage to warp it to her will. In this title, Zemeckis (Behind the Burly Q) explores the lives of Faith Bacon (1910–56) and Sally Rand (1904–79), two old-school showgirls who danced their way from Hollywood to Broadway and every state in between, starting in the 1920s. Of the two, Rand is most remembered while Bacon has been largely forgotten. Both were fan dancers, flouting modesty laws by coyly hiding their gorgeous bodies behind huge ostrich feather fans. Bacon may have originated the dance on Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities, but Rand took it, adapted it, and ran with it. Their paths often ran parallel until they finally diverged when Bacon committed suicide.
VERDICT Zemeckis brilliantly captures an era long vanished, filled with stage mothers, slimy producers, devious cons, and classic mobsters that will fascinate fans of the showgirl era, theater history, and early to mid-20th-century showbiz.
Reviewed by Teri Shiel, Univ. of Connecticut Health Ctr. Lib., Farmington , Aug 01, 2018
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