Overview

"The riveting biography of Ursula Parrott—best-selling author, Hollywood screenwriter, and voice for the modern woman.   Credited with popularizing the label ""ex-wife"" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance, and a host of new challenges facing modern women. Her best sellers, Hollywood film deals, marriages and divorces, and run-ins with the law made her a household name. Part biography, part cultural history, Becoming the Ex-Wife establishes Parrott's rightful place in twentieth-century American culture, uncovering her neglected work and keen insights into American women's lives during a period of immense social change.   Although she was frequently dismissed as a ""woman's writer,"" reading Parrott's writing today makes it clear that she was a trenchant philosopher of modernity—her work was prescient, anticipating issues not widely raised until decades after her decline into obscurity. With elegant wit and a deft command of the archive, Marsha Gordon tells a timely story about the life of a woman on the front lines of a culture war that is still raging today."

Full Product Details

Author:   Marsha Gordon
Publisher:   University of California Press
Imprint:   University of California Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.635kg
ISBN:  

9780520391543

ISBN 10:   0520391543
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   25 April 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

"List of Illustrations  A Note on Name Usage Introduction: ""Maxims in the Copybook of Modernism"" 1 • The Limited Life of a Dorchester Girl  2 • At Radcliffe: ""A Pushy Lace-Curtain Irish Girl from Dorchester"" 3 • First Husband, Lindesay Parrott: ""Strange Moments of Tenderness and Pretty Constant Dislike"" 4 • Modern Parenting 5 • Greenwich Village: The Path to Becoming a ""Self-Sufficient, Independent, Successful Manager of Her Own Life"" 6 • Hugh O’Connor: High Felicity on the ""Road of No Rules"" 7 • New Freedoms in the ""Era of the One-Night Stand"": The Ex-Wife Is Born 8 • Ursula Goes to Hollywood 9 • Second Husband, Charles Greenwood: ""The Stupidest Thing I Ever Did in My Life"" 10 • ""Extravagant Hell"" 11 • The Business of Being a Writer 12 • Third Husband, John Wildberg: The Faint Resemblance of Stability 13 • ""The Monotony and Weariness of Living"" 14 • Fourth Husband, Alfred Coster Schermerhorn: ""Two Catastrophes Should Be Enough"" 15 • Saving Private Bryan: The United States vs. Ursula Parrott 16 • Her ""Breaks Went Bad"" 17 • ""Black Coffee, Scotch, and Excitement"" Afterword: Remembering a ""Leftover Lady"" Acknowledgments  Chronology Notes Published Writings of Ursula Parrott Bibliography Index"

Reviews

[O]ffers an in-depth look at Parrott's complicated and sometimes scandalous life. * Walter Magazine *

"""As Marsha Gordon argues in her engaging new biography, Becoming the Ex-Wife, the novel 'offers a strong case for the protections of marriage and the dangers of being an unattached woman.' . . . In her biography, Gordon makes an excellent case for Parrott as an unjustly forgotten historical figure: a sociological flash point, a beneficiary of feminism and victim of patriarchy who got her enemies mixed up."" * The New Yorker * “Why did a once-transfixed reading public turn away, and why is Parrott so often now eliminated from a pantheon of popular urban “working girl” writers that includes Helen Gurley Brown, Candace Bushnell, Nora Ephron, Dorothy Parker and, perhaps most comparably, Jacqueline Susann? . . . A reissue of Ursula Parrott’s racy novel “Ex-Wife,” and a new biography of its author, remind us of the brazenly talented women sidelined by convention. . . . [Gordon] surfaces plenty of colorful period detail: passport photos of everyone looking mussed and truculent in that Jazz Age way; correspondence from exasperated agents, editors and lovers; even an adorable 'mapback' version marked with key locations in 'Ex-Wife.'” * The New York Times * ""Parrott led a scandalous, glamorous, sometimes lonely life in the public eye, and Gordon, professor and director of the film studies program at North Carolina State University, has done the world a great service by bringing her back into the spotlight."" * Washington City Paper * ""In Becoming the Ex-Wife, Marsha Gordon sheds welcome light on this remarkable and troubled writer, who knew too well how hard it was to be a modern woman who wanted sexual freedom and a career of her own choosing. In this well-researched and fascinating biography, Parrott emerges as a star who should be remembered alongside Jazz Age icons like Dorothy Parker and the Fitzgeralds.” * Newcity Lit * ""[O]ffers an in-depth look at Parrott’s complicated and sometimes scandalous life."" * Walter Magazine * ""Parrott is forgotten and Faulkner is famous. This is so much more than a matter of quality, which is why we need biography. . . . Marsha Gordon makes a compelling case for Parrott’s artistry and continuing relevance. . . . Ms. Gordon does something else that is quite shrewd: She has a concluding chapter, after Parrott has died, which concentrates on her subject’s literary legacy. The story of Parrott’s life is over, but her writing lives on, even if we don’t yet know it.""   * The New York Sun *"

"""As Marsha Gordon argues in her engaging new biography, Becoming the Ex-Wife, the novel 'offers a strong case for the protections of marriage and the dangers of being an unattached woman.' . . . In her biography, Gordon makes an excellent case for Parrott as an unjustly forgotten historical figure: a sociological flash point, a beneficiary of feminism and victim of patriarchy who got her enemies mixed up."" * The New Yorker * “Why did a once-transfixed reading public turn away, and why is Parrott so often now eliminated from a pantheon of popular urban “working girl” writers that includes Helen Gurley Brown, Candace Bushnell, Nora Ephron, Dorothy Parker and, perhaps most comparably, Jacqueline Susann? . . . A reissue of Ursula Parrott’s racy novel “Ex-Wife,” and a new biography of its author, remind us of the brazenly talented women sidelined by convention. . . . [Gordon] surfaces plenty of colorful period detail: passport photos of everyone looking mussed and truculent in that Jazz Age way; correspondence from exasperated agents, editors and lovers; even an adorable 'mapback' version marked with key locations in 'Ex-Wife.'” * The New York Times * ""Parrott led a scandalous, glamorous, sometimes lonely life in the public eye, and Gordon, professor and director of the film studies program at North Carolina State University, has done the world a great service by bringing her back into the spotlight."" * Washington City Paper * ""In Becoming the Ex-Wife, Marsha Gordon sheds welcome light on this remarkable and troubled writer, who knew too well how hard it was to be a modern woman who wanted sexual freedom and a career of her own choosing. In this well-researched and fascinating biography, Parrott emerges as a star who should be remembered alongside Jazz Age icons like Dorothy Parker and the Fitzgeralds.” * Newcity Lit * ""[O]ffers an in-depth look at Parrott’s complicated and sometimes scandalous life."" * Walter Magazine *"

Author Information

Marsha Gordon is Professor of Film Studies at North Carolina State University, a former Fellow at the National Humanities Center, and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award. She is the author of numerous books and articles and codirector of several short documentaries.

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