8 January: Gypsy Rose Lee

On this date in 1911 Gypsy Rose Lee, American actress, burlesque entertainer, and writer was born. Her memoir, which included a scathing portrait of her domineering mother, was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.10 things you might not know about her.

1. Her real name was Rose Louise Hovick, known to her family as Louise, since her mother's name was also Rose. She had a younger sister, June, who became an actress.
2. Although she was born on 8 January, she always claimed her birthday was 9 January. It's entirely possible she was never sure herself what her birthdate was, because it's known her mother used to forge birth certificates for Rose and her sister so they could be "proved" to be older or younger than they actually were (depending on whether she wanted them old enough to work or young enough to get cheaper train fares).
3. A turning point in her career was a wardrobe malfunction. While performing in a burlesque show, a strap on her dress broke, and the dress fell to the floor. Embarrassed at first, she tried to cover herself but then realised the audience was loving it, so she made it part of her act. Later on, she would take the pins out of her dress on stage and drop them into a tuba so they'd make a plinking sound.
4. The journalist H.L. Mencken invented a new word in her honour - ecdysiast, meaning stripper. The word was derived from the Greek word ecdysis, which means to shed one's skin, like a Snake. In the Gypsy, the musical of her life, she's quoted as saying, "At these prices, I'm not a stripper, I'm an ecdysiast."
5. Her memoirs weren't the only book she wrote. She wrote two novels. One was a murder mystery called The G-String Murders, set in a burlesque theatre. The second was called Mother Finds a Body. She also wrote a play, The Naked Genius, which was made into a film, Doll Face, in 1946.
6. Gypsy Rose Lee had a bathmat and Toilet seat made from mink.
7. Although Broadway producer David Merrick snapped up the musical rights to Rose Lee's memoirs fairly quickly, at first nobody was interested in writing a musical about a stripper. Arthur Laurents eventually did, but even he wasn't sure until he heard a story about her mother at a cocktail party. One of the other guests claimed that Rose Lee's mother was her first lover, and told the story of how the older Rose once pushed a hotel manager out of a Window during an argument, and killed him. The fact that her daughter's career was largely the result of this woman forcing her daughters onto the stage made him re-think and write the musical.
8. Rose Lee's mother is also said to have shot and killed a woman at the boarding house where she lived, who was possibly her lover, because she made a pass at Gypsy Rose Lee when she came to visit and mother was jealous. The death was officially described as suicide.
9. Gypsy Rose Lee married three times. At one of her weddings, a chimpanzee was the ring bearer.
10. She died of lung cancer in 1970 at the age of 59. On receiving her diagnosis, she described it as "a gift from mother."

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A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

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Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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