With a thrill, I can now announce that "Lady in White" is available in print and e-book formats.
Print/Paperback:
Other E-Book Formats (iBook, Scribd, Kobo, Tolino, Nook,
etc.):
Showing posts with label joan sawyer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label joan sawyer. Show all posts
Saturday, August 5, 2017
Published At Last!
It's been a long, long road from the day I got interested in this 100-year-old courtroom drama. I've spent many hours seeking out untapped sources, uncovering rare documents, and pondering the events from a different perspective to come up with new theories on what really happened. With the encouragement of several friends, I pulled myself out from the slump of discouragement and rejection. Forging ahead fearlessly, at last it has happened.
With a thrill, I can now announce that "Lady in White" is available in print and e-book formats.
With a thrill, I can now announce that "Lady in White" is available in print and e-book formats.
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Sources, Sources, Sources
Sure I could borrow photographs and images that I see floating around the internet. Pinterest! Wikipedia! Other blogs! But I have a code of ethics and I don't do that. If I can't cite the source, if I can't verify it's public domain, or if I can't get an affirmative permission from the copyright owner, I don't use it.
My book is in the home stretch -- the final week before it launches into the world. Here are 3 more photos that won't make it into the book because I could not find the source until this morning.
Miss Joan Sawyer was a nightclub owner, a suffragette, and an exhibition ballroom dancer in New York City. She is said to be the "other woman" who broke up Jack and Blanca's marriage. But is that really the whole story? I have some theories about that.
Today while browsing the Library of Congress archives online, as I often do on a Tuesday morning, I stumbled across an instructional manual on various trendy dance steps. The one-step and the maxixe are being demonstrated in photographs by the celebrity dancers of the day. Guess who is among them? Yup.
I've seen these photos of Joan Sawyer floating around on other blogs. Heck, I've used one in an earlier blog post here. I never knew the exact source. I could never verify the citation and, without that, I did not use them in my upcoming book. Well, that's OK. I have 34 illustrations already!
Hopkins, J. S. The Tango and Other Up-To-Date Dances a Practical Guide to All the Latest Dances, Tango, One Step, Innovation, Hesitation, Etc. [The Saal eld Publishing Co., Chicago, monographic, 1914] Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/14010455/. (Accessed July 25, 2017.)
My book is in the home stretch -- the final week before it launches into the world. Here are 3 more photos that won't make it into the book because I could not find the source until this morning.
Miss Joan Sawyer was a nightclub owner, a suffragette, and an exhibition ballroom dancer in New York City. She is said to be the "other woman" who broke up Jack and Blanca's marriage. But is that really the whole story? I have some theories about that.
Today while browsing the Library of Congress archives online, as I often do on a Tuesday morning, I stumbled across an instructional manual on various trendy dance steps. The one-step and the maxixe are being demonstrated in photographs by the celebrity dancers of the day. Guess who is among them? Yup.
I've seen these photos of Joan Sawyer floating around on other blogs. Heck, I've used one in an earlier blog post here. I never knew the exact source. I could never verify the citation and, without that, I did not use them in my upcoming book. Well, that's OK. I have 34 illustrations already!
Hopkins, J. S. The Tango and Other Up-To-Date Dances a Practical Guide to All the Latest Dances, Tango, One Step, Innovation, Hesitation, Etc. [The Saal eld Publishing Co., Chicago, monographic, 1914] Pdf. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/14010455/. (Accessed July 25, 2017.)
Saturday, December 24, 2011
The Scandalously Fabulous Joan Sawyer
When Jack and Blanca divorced in 1916, the grounds were that he had cheated on her. The “other woman” was a successful Broadway dancer named Joan Sawyer.
From about 1914 to 1918, Joan Sawyer was one of the country's most popular and successful dance stars. Her main competitors were the dance team of Vernon & Irene Castle who promoted their wholesome image as a married couple. Joan Sawyer – a single, unmarried woman – went through dance partners like satin shoes.
As a self-reliant business woman, she managed a New York nightclub called “Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden” and her business manager was also a woman. She marketed herself to a general audience beyond the vaudeville theater goers. She made records on the early Columbia label and published sheet music with instructions on how to dance her versions of the fox-trot, the waltz, or the maxixe heel step.
Sawyer used her fame to promote the cause of women's suffrage (the right to vote) though ironically her business manager Jeanette Gilder was anti-suffrage.
Pushing the envelope, Sawyer employed black musicians at her nightclub, calling them her “Persian Garden Orchestra” and would not perform without them. Under the direction of Dan Kildare (of the Clef Club) and later Seth Weeks, the orchestra earned rave reviews wherever they played. Sawyer's role in sponsoring talented black musicians in these early days of ragtime and jazz is mostly forgotten.
Sawyer is mostly remembered for being the one who gave silent film star Rudolph Valentino his first break into show business. Sawyer and Valentino danced on stage in New York, Philadelphia, and once did a performance for President Woodrow Wilson. Valentino left New York to pursue a career in silent films. On his job application to the Hollywood studios, he wrote that he was tired of ballroom dancing.
Joan Sawyer also tried getting into films when exhibition dancing fell out of fashion during the First World War, but her movie career fizzled. Eventually, she faded away into obscurity.
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