Molly Spotted Elk

by McBride, Bunny

• ISBN13: 9780806129891
• ISBN10: 0806129891
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Oklahoma Pr

Summary

This biography chronicles the extraordinary life of twentieth-century performing artist Molly Spotted Elk. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age, performing vaudeville in New York, starring in the classic docudrama The Silent Enemy, then dancing for royalty and mingling with the literary elite in Europe. In Paris she found an audience more appreciative of authentic Native dance than in the United States. There she married a French journalist, but she was forced to leave him and flee France with her daughter during the German occupation of 1940. Using extensive diaries in conjunction with letters, interviews, and other sources, Bunny McBride reconstructs Molly's story and sheds light on the pressure she and her peers endured in having to act out white stereotypes of the "Indian."

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii	(2)
Foreword	ix	(4)
Eunice Nelson-Bauman
Preface	xiii	(6)
Acknowledgments	xix
Chapter 1. Escape	3	(2)
Chapter 2. Roots	5	(3)
Chapter 3. Changes in the Land	8	(6)
Chapter 4. Island Paths	14	(22)
Chapter 5. Road Shows and Ballyhoo	36	(20)
Chapter 6. Anthropologists and Ranchers	56	(16)
Chapter 7. Cabarets and Speakeasies	72	(24)
Chapter 8. The Silent Enemy	96	(32)
Chapter 9. New York to Paris	128	(19)
Chapter 10. A Penobscot in Paris	147	(15)
Chapter 11. City of Lights	162	(29)
Chapter 12. Paris Noir	191	(17)
Chapter 13. Birth	208	(9)
Chapter 14. A Far Cry	217	(32)
Chapter 15. Paris Revisited	249	(19)
Chapter 16. Home	268	(20)
Postscript	288	(3)
Jean Archambaud Moore
Notes	291	(48)
Bibliography	339	(12)
Index	351