A half-century before Madonna, Gypsy [Rose Lee] understood how to make performance out of desire, how to exploit the very human and eternal instinct to always want most what we'll never have.
The cousin said that Gypsy [Rose Lee] took a full fifteen minutes to peel off a single glove, and that she was so damn good at it he gladly would've given her fifteen more. So this story got me thinking, who was Gypsy Rose Lee? Who could possibly take the simple act of peeling off a glove and make it so riveting that one might be compelled to watch this for a full half-hour? So I began researching, and I came across a series of articles from the year 1940 about Gypsy in Life magazine.
One of the biggest questions to me was whether or not Gypsy the person was capable of loving anyone or anything beyond Gypsy Rose Lee the creation, and even that was a conflicted, tortured relationship.
I don’t mind the disapproving ones so much. It’s the tolerant ones I can’t stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don’t realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They’re just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century!
Gypsy [Rose Lee ] was a masterful storyteller, and her memoir and by extension, the musical weren't only Gypsy's monument; they were also her chance for monumental revisionism.
Her sister [June Havoc] said the musical portrayed who Gypsy [Rose Lee] wanted to be before the burlesque thing happened she wanted to be this beautiful, romantic person with dreams. So Gypsy told the story of her life as she wished she'd lived it: embellishing, softening the edges, eliminating certain things altogether.
In Gypsy [Rose Lee] the musical, her mother, 'Mama Rose', is portrayed as a slightly eccentric, pushy, ambitious stage mother, but that version doesn't come close to the truth.
When Gypsy was older, after she became Gypsy Rose Lee, I think she was both proud and slightly ashamed of her Seattle roots. She worked very hard to rid her voice of any trace of a local accent, cultivating an affected way of speaking that sounded as if she pinned the ends of her words.
I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman.
When I tried to do something else, everyone behaved as if I was Gypsy Rose Lee trying to paint a Matisse.
One of my favorite people is Gypsy Rose Lee. She bears out the Biblical promise that he who has, gets. And I hope she gets a lot more.
Before every performance, you need at least half an hour to focus on what you are about to do: the walk-on and walk-off, the lyrics, how you are going to sing it - like, the original or bring your own personal flavour to it - how are you going to make it the best.
What is this gypsy passion for separation, this readiness to rush off when we've just met? My head rests in my hands as I realize, looking into the night that no one turning over our letters has yet understood how completely and how deeply faithless we are, which is to say: how true we are to ourselves.
How can the intensity of this shame be understood by those who have never experienced it? How can they understand the strength of the motivations produced by the desire to escape from it?
People always ask, "How do you get in the mind of the teen reader?" I think all human beings have these common threads. We struggle with the same things. We desire love and attachment. We have to sort out how much we want to be attached and be independent, how we manage need and being needed and being hurt. These are things that begin when we're - how old? Then in those teen years we start to really feel them.
It is never too late, no matter how old you get because anytime or any point in your life you can always have a chance to make a difference. You can always make a change for the better no matter what background you derived from. You can always do your best and be all that you can be because you will always be uniquely you. It is why it is always wise to listen to your eternal heart, your eternal instincts, and what it had always strove for and/or to do because really anybody can make a difference not only in their own lives but in the lives of others. It is never too late to shine; never.
The most intense joy, lies not in the having, but in the desire, Delight that never fades, bliss that is eternal, Is only your, when what you most desire, is just out of reach...Anthony Hopkins, from the movie Shadowlands, where he plays C.S. Lewis