Tag: 19th-century America fiction
From Corset to Freedom—The Making of Silver Dollar’s Flapper Persona 🕊️
The rise of the Flapper in the 1920s wasn't a sudden cultural explosion; it was the inevitable, magnificent climax of deep-seated changes that had been building since the suffocating days of the Victorian Age.
For a performer like Silver Dollar Tabor, this transformation was deeply personal. She moved from the long skirts and strict morals of her mother Baby Doe's Leadville world—a world of pious, Victorian restraint—to the bobbed hair and jazz of the speakeasy. The Flapper didn't just appear; she was pushed out of the Victorian era by war, technology, and sheer exhaustion with the old rules, and she was pulled into the underground by the ultimate American folly: Prohibition
The Silver Screen and The Silver King: Carl Erickson, Silver Dollar, and the Legend of Baby Doe Tabor
The 1932 biographical film Silver Dollar, produced by First National Pictures (a subsidiary of Warner Bros.), offers a fascinating window into early Hollywood’s attempt to capture the dramatic, rags-to-riches-to-rags saga of Colorado’s legendary silver baron, Horace Tabor. At the heart of this adaptation was the source material—David Karsner’s 1932 biography of the same name—and the creative hands of screenwriters, including the relatively young and promising Carl Erickson.
BlueInk Review Just In!
prestigious editorial review
"Silver Echoes, Rosenberg's newest historical novel, is as sharp as small daggers, and her images leap off the page. If the narrative’s hectic pacing, fragmented scenes, and amnesiac gaps are occasionally disorienting, they are also thrilling."
~ BlueInk Review
"Following the success of Gold Digger (2019), Rebecca Rosenberg delivers a sparkling and fiercely tragic biofic of Baby Doe Tabor’s daughter, the dazzling Silver Dollar Tabor. This is really the tale of both Baby Doe and her daughter. Anchored around a 1932 frame story, Baby Doe tries desperately to save her husband’s legacy, a failing silver mine in Leadville, Colorado. She works with Silver’s old friend, Carl Erickson, to write his movie about the Tabors. Flashback chapters reveal all that Baby Doe doesn’t know about her daughter's difficult life.
Cue the Music for Silver Echoes Cover Reveal!
Silver Dollar Tabor was a rising movie starlet in 1920s Chicago …
but beneath the glitz and glamour, a darkness brewed. Haunted by a traumatic past and dangerous alter ego, she disappeared into the city's smoky speakeasies, where she captivated audiences with her daring tiger tamer act and embraced the seductive world of burlesque. Years later, her infamous mother, Baby Doe Tabor, embarks on a relentless search for answers, uncovering a shocking truth that threatens her own mining comeback. Based on a true story, this tale explores the dark side of ambition and the enduring strength of family.
Silver Echoes Spotlight: Dale Winter
From Ziegfeld glamour to mobster's widow, Dale Winter embodied the Jazz Age
Admirers and the envious whispered Dale Winter's name. Beauty and stage presence propelled her through the Ziegfeld Follies, her star soaring on Broadway. Hollywood beckoned, and her sophisticated allure made her a sought-after actress, though true superstardom eluded her grasp. Newspaper columns chronicled her every move, from stunning gowns to her whirlwind social life. She epitomized Jazz Age elegance.
In my Roaring Twenties novel, Silver Echoes, Dale Winter eerily foreshadows Silver Dollar Tabor's future as Silver descends into darkness.