Sally Rand

American Sex Symbol

Published by Lyons Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

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About The Book

She would appear in more than thirty films and be named after a Road Atlas by Cecil B. DeMille. A football play would be named after her. She would appear on To Tell the Truth. She would be arrested six times in one day for indecency. She would be immortalized in the final scene of The Right Stuff, cartoons, popular culture, and live on as the iconic symbol of the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933. She would pave the way for every sex symbol to follow, from Marilyn Monroe to Lady Gaga. She would die penniless and in debt. In the end, Sammy Davis Jr. would write her a $10,000 check when she had nothing left. Her name was Sally Rand. You can draw a line from her to Lana Turner, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, Ann Margret, Madonna, and Lady Gaga. She broke the mold in 1933 by proclaiming the female body as something beautiful and taking it out of the strip club with her ethereal fan dance. She was a poor girl from the Ozarks who ran away with a carnival, then joined the circus, and finally made it to Hollywood where Cecil B. DeMille set her on the road to fame with silent movies. When the talkies came, her career collapsed and she ended up in Chicago, broke, sleeping in alleys. Two ostrich feathers in a second-hand store rescued her from obscurity.

About The Author

William Elliott Hazelgrove is the national bestselling author of ten novels and fourteen narrative nonfiction titles, including Dead Air: The Night That Orson Welles Terrified America (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), Greed in the Gilded Age: The Brilliant Con of Cassie Chadwick (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024), and Al Capone and the 1933 World's Fair: The End of the Gangster Era in Chicago (Rowman & Littlefield, 2017). His books have received starred reviews in Publisher Weekly Kirkus, Booklist, Book of the Month Selections, ALA Editor’s Choice Awards Junior Library Guild Selections, Literary Guild Selections, History Book Club Selections, and optioned for movies. He was the Ernest Hemingway Writer in Residence. He has written articles and reviews for USA Today, The Smithsonian Magazine, Daily Mail, and other publications, and has been featured on NPR's All Things Considered. The New York Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CSPAN, and USA Today have all covered his books with features. More information can be found at www.williamhazelgrove.com.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Lyons Press (November 1, 2022)
  • Length: 280 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781493067411

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