A complex subject is both a boon and a curse to the biographer. All the biographies that truly intrigued me weren’t written by the person themselves or their families but by a writer who stumbled across the subject, became engrossed and then spent years delving deep. How such a biographer can finish their work without loathing the sight or sound of their subject is a miracle. Noralee Frankel is among those who lost themselves in research and came out on the other side with Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy Rose Lee seems on the surface to be an easy subject to chose for a biography. You have a woman who marched to her own drummer, wrote a best selling biography that was turned into a hugely successful musicial and then movie. What could Gypsy Rose Lee conceal? A lot.

A harsh, unstable mother who used her for money, a sister that envied her for getting even a meager education, married lovers, the true identity of her son Erik’s father, her political affiliations, working for and against her public image, her struggle to be seen as more than just a strip tease artist and that’s just off the top of my head.

Peeling away the layers of gloss and illusion that Gypsy Rose Lee used as skillfully in life as on stage, a portrait of a damaged and talented woman who could be a cold to her relatives but work herself to the bone for the causes she believed emerges. Did she ever believe the blast furnace of her childhood was worth her too brief fame and notoriety as an adult? Perhaps that is her last illusion.