Description
Book SynopsisDetails 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. Each of Ropes’s long-forgotten novels was inspired by his own experiences as a performer, and focused on the lives of gay men in show business.
Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- INTRODUCTION
- The Enduring Myth of 42nd Street and the “Forgotten Melody” of Bradford Ropes
- INTERLUDE
- The Stories of Ropes’s Backstage Trilogy
- ONE
- Peering Back at “Proper Boston”
- TWO
- Drag Reveals and “Strange Interludes”:
- Billy Bradford’s Dances on Broadway
- THREE
- “This is Not a Book to Give to a Maiden Aunt”:
- The Influence of Backstage Novels and “Pansy Craze” Novels
- FOUR
- “Light-Hearted and Damned”:
- Anti-Gay Discrimination and Camp Defiance in Ropes’s Backstage Novels
- FIVE
- “Your Blood Responds More Eagerly to the Lure of the Theatre”:
- The Backstage Trilogy, the Puritan Ethos, and the Myth of “The Show Must Go On”
- SIX
- Bringing Back Bradford Ropes
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
