Now cruising toward 103 years old, Doris Eaton Travis is the last living Ziegfeld girl, whose life -- as rendered in this vivacious scrapbook bio -- is a study in joie de vivre. She made her stage debut as a chorus girl in 1918, worked in silent and talking films, "performed for presidents and princesses, bantered with Babe Ruth, offended Henry Ford, earned a Phi Beta Kappa degree in History (at 88), raised turkeys and raced horses." (Give a listen to how she spent her 100th birthday as featured on NPR's All Things Considered.)
Lauren Redniss' celebratory book tells Ms. Travis's story on dancing, swirling pages of collage that combine period images with an entirely handwritten text. The words bump and coil around photos, drawings and memorabilia in a layout that may overwhelm anyone old enough to actually remember the Ziegfeld Follies (the deliberate absence of typeset text would make my mom nuts). But for the campy, the artistic and the romantic, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more visually delicious biography.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. 9(MDM3NjYwMjA5MDE1MjA1MzQ1NDk1N2ZmZQ004))