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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.7
EAN num: 9781560256434
ISBN number: 1560256435
Label: Da Capo Press
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 296
Printing Date: December 20, 2004
Publishing house: Da Capo Press
Sale Popularity Level: 683169
Studio: Da Capo Press
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
In this rousing tribute to an unforgettable time and place, Jerome Charyn picks up where Gangs of New York left off and transports readers back to a swaggering, golden era in American life—the Roaring Twenties—when Broadway the street exploded into Broadway the legend. Charyn looks at the men and women who helped make the Big Street the most glamorous place on the planet, from Mae West to Fanny Brice, Legs Diamond to Irving Berlin, Scott Fitzgerald to Arnold Rothstein, and many more. In cinematic prose and numerous photographs, Charyn captures Broadway's vagabondage, outlaw culture, and self-mythologizing. He brings a rollicking, rough-and-tumble period in New York history to life—conjuring an intoxicating portrait of Jazz Age excess by examining the denizens of that greatest of all 'staggering machine[s] of desire,' the street known as Broadway.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book is simply awash in great little anecdotes about the folks who spent their days in and around the Broadway of the early part of the 20th century. We get tales of the famous and the infamous, the good and the bad, the rich and the not so rich, and a myriad of supporting characters so colorful they could fill a Damon Runyan book of stories. It's not meant to be a book of mini biographies, but there are some interesting lives explored. The book also contains one of the most incisive analyses of "The Great Gatsby" I've ever read. If the author leaves you wishing for more information about some of the people you meet, that may be the book's only failing: it's too short. I could really have enjoyed reading another few hundred pages about the people and places he describes!
Rated by buyers 
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Well, this book is filled with lots of interesting stories, but it's so disorganized it seems like it was written by an Jazz age drunk! Better editing would have done wonders for this book which has great stories about some of the celebrities of the 1920's, but flows sloppily from one anecdote to another.
Rated by buyers -
Author Jerome Charyn provides the reader with a cast of colorful characters such as Arnold Rothstein who used to enjoy wasting his time in Lindy's Restaurant, Al Jolson who was very difficult to live with and a self promoter, Legs Diamond, who detective Johnny Broderick once stuffed into a garbage can, Flo Ziegfeld, who glamorized the American girl, former singing waiter Irving Berlin who sang at Nigger Mike's and then went on to become the writer of over one thousand songs. Author Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald and wife Zelda, gangster Owney Madden, Fannie Brice and her husband Billy Rose who was 5' 3 1/2" in his elevator shoes "who walked with the bounce of an overwound toy." Bert Gordon, W.C. Fields, Ruby Keeler, boxers Jack Dempsey and Johnson, and, of course, The Bambino himself, George Herman Ruth. The book is filled with anecdotes of these and other famous and infamous characters that made The Great White Way the historic place it is today. If you like social history you should love this book. I did come to one conclusion about a great majority of these individuals. As famous or infamous they may have been, many of them shared a feeling of loneliness even though they were major players in American social history.
Rated by buyers -
Gangsters and Golddiggers is a fascinating book that introduces you to the unique characters that made up early broadway. From its early existence as an Indian trail to the rise of theater and organized crime, this book offers a glimpse into a world that vibrates with violence and lust. Gangsters and Golddiggers reads almost like an epic motion picture. Definately pick this one up.
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