Art and politics in New York
Steve Cohen reviews February House by Sherill Tippins (Pocket Books) Gypsy Rose Lee was perhaps the ultimate post-modern stripper — in an age when modernism wasn’t yet derided. She never took her clothes off. She was famous for this in her working lifetime (the 1940s) and immortalised for it in the Stephen Sondheim/Jule Styne musical Gypsy. What is virtually unknown is her cultural and left-wing political commitment. She non-stripped whilst singing: “When I lower my gown a fraction, And expose a patch of shoulder, I’m not thinking of your reaction, I’m not even feeling colder. I’m thinking of...