Broadway Butterfly: The Lady Gangster of Jazz Age New York
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- Synopsis
- The definitive book on one of the most notorious murders in Jazz Age New York history, that of Vivian Gordon, the high-end escort, con artist, and blackmailer connected to gangsters like &“Legs&” Diamond and Arnold Rothstein, whose death exposed the dark underbelly of police corruption throughout the city—from the Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist who is one of the foremost Mafia experts writing today. Like so many other pretty butterflies, Indiana-born Vivian Gordon fluttered to New York in 1920 looking for fame and fortune. Before long, the flame-haired chorus girl parlayed her youth, beauty, and ambition into more profitable means as a tough and glamorous symbol of Prohibition-era excess. She was a speakeasy owner, blackmailer, high-end escort, extortionist, racketeer, and con woman. But given her dangerously intimate associations—from ruthless underworld gangsters to corrupt high-ranking city officials—Vivian was also a woman who knew too much and who rightfully feared for her life. On February 26, 1931, Vivian&’s bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Now, in the first in-depth biography of its kind, Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano unravels her tumultuous life and the headline-making murder that became an obsession for many, including then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The evidence Vivian left behind was damning: a diary with more than three-hundred names implicating powerful officials, philanthropists, businessmen, and every major gangland figure in collusion and corruption. The investigation eventually resulted in the career-endinginvestigation of James &“Jimmy&” Walker, disgraced mayor of New York City. Ultimately, Broadway Butterfly finally finds a place in history for Vivian, a woman with a rare legacy in gangster lore, whose demise was as tragically inevitable as the brutality of the city&’s demimondeduring Prohibition.
- Copyright:
- 2024
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- ISBN-13:
- 9780806543161
- Related ISBNs:
- 9780806543147
- Publisher:
- Citadel Press
- Date of Addition:
- 06/25/24
- Copyrighted By:
- Anthony M. DeStefano
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.