Tuesday, January 10 at 2pm / Virtual - on Zoom and FCTV
Falmouth Jewish Congregation hosts a free, virtual Jewish Book Council Talk by Pulitzer Prize-Winning Historian and Biography Debby Applegate on her book Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age
On Zoom and broadcast live on FCTV Public Channel 13 and livestreamed on FCTV.org
Zoom registration here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpcemgrz0rG9ed2J3tN-WW5oJF7AXXyDGv
Falmouth Jewish Congregation and the Worcester JCC present a free, virtual Jewish Book Council Author Talk on Tuesday, January 10 at 2pm with Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Debby Applegate, discussing her new book, Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age.
Madam is the biography of Polly Adler (1900-1962), the most infamous and influential madam in Jazz Age New York – a real-life figure to rival the fictional Great Gatsby. Her brothels hosted gangsters, politicians, writers, sports stars, and high society swells. Everybody came to Polly’s. Pearl “Polly” Adler (1900-1962) was a diminutive dynamo whose Manhattan brothels in the Roaring Twenties became places not just for men to have the company of women but were key gathering places where the culturati and celebrity elite mingled with high society and with violent figures of the underworld–and had a good time doing it. Adler’s 1953 memoir, A House Is Not A Home, sold 2 million copies and became a 1963 movie starring Shelley Winters. The often jaw-dropping story of a Jewish immigrant from Eastern Europe, Polly Adler’s life is a classic American story of success and assimilation, and of a corrupt yet glamourous era when high and low collided, creating the unique ingredient that fuels American culture. The New York Times praised Madam as a “breathless tale told through extraordinary research”.
Debby Applegate is a historian whose first book, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry War Beecher, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Learn more about her at her website, https://debbyapplegate.com.
Participants on Zoom are able to pose questions to the author. Find the Zoom link at www.falmouthjewish.org. FCTV, Channel 13 in Falmouth will carry the program live and livestream it at their website. Books are available with signed bookplate from Eight Cousins Bookstore in Falmouth and can be ordered in person, by phone, or online at www.eightcousins.com.