University of Michigan needs your feedback to better understand how readers are using openly available ebooks. You can help by taking a short, privacy-friendly survey.
Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes
Maya Cantu
You don't have access to this book. Please try to log in with your institution.Log in
Greasepaint Puritan details the life and work of Bradford Ropes, author of the bawdy 1932 novel 42nd Street, on which the classic film and its stage adaptation are based. Inspired by Ropes's own experiences as a performer, 42nd Street "reads less like a novel than like a documentary about the lives of New York's theatre people and, above all, about the practicalities, the personalities, and the sexual politics that go into the making of a show," according to Richard Brody in The New Yorker. Why did Ropes's body of work—which included a trilogy of backstage novels—and consequently his biographical footsteps, disappear into obscurity?
Descended from Mayflower Pilgrims, Ropes rebelled against the "Proper Bostonian" life, in a career that touched upon the Jazz Age, American vaudeville, and theater censorship. Greasepaint Puritan follows Ropes's successful career as both a performer and the author of the backstage novels 42nd Street, Stage Mother, and Go Into Your Dance. Populated by scheming stage mothers, precocious stage children, grandiose bit players, and tart-tongued chorines, these novels centered on the lives and relationships of gay men on Broadway during the Jazz Age and Prohibition era. Rigorously researched, Greasepaint Puritan chronicles Ropes's career as a successful screenwriter in 1930s and '40s Hollywood, where he continued to be a part of a dynamic gay subculture within the movie industry before returning to obscurity in the 1950s. His legacy lives on in the Hollywood and Broadway incarnations of 42nd Street—but Greasepaint Puritan restores the "forgotten melody" of the man who first envisioned its colorful characters.
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Interlude
Chapter 1. Peering Back at “Proper Boston”
Chapter 2. Drag Reveals and “Strange Interludes”
Chapter 3. “This Is Not a Book to Give to a Maiden Aunt”
Chapter 4. “Light Hearted and Damned”
Chapter 5. “Your Blood Responds More Eagerly to the Lure of the Theatre”
“Mrs. Alice G. Ropes, State President of the W.C.T.U.,” as pictured in the Quincy Patriot Ledger, 1922. Reproduced by permission of Thomas Crane Public Library, Quincy, MA.
Yearbook photograph of Bradford Ropes, from the 1922 edition of The Black and Orange, Thayer Academy. Reproduced by permission of Wentworth Archives, Thayer Academy.
Bradford Ropes as Billy Bradford, high-kicking in 1925 alongside later dance partner Marian Hamilton. Reproduced by permission of National Portrait Gallery, London.
Seattle Star advertisement of Billy Bradford in A Whirl of Dance at the Orpheum Theatre, sharing a 1923 bill with Joe E. Brown. Reprinted from Seattle Star, March 22, 1923.
Douglas Byng and Hermione Baddeley in the “Botany Babes” number from Cochran’s Revue of 1926. Reprinted by permission of Mary Evans Picture Library. Originally published in Eve Magazine, May 5, 1926.
“She’s five-foot nothing and does not look like an author! Her latest book is Applause”: Beth Brown in Screenland, 1929. Reproduced from Screenland (August 1929).
Photo of Bradford Ropes and Val Burton from back dust jacket of Mr. Tilley Takes a Walk. Reproduced by permission of Thomas Crane Public Library, Quincy, MA.
x
This site requires cookies to function correctly.