Dear {$firstname},



Hello from Hollywood (more on that in a minute)! It’s been a while since I newslettered, but I have news to share.



Words I never thought I’d write: “I’m so excited that I published an obituary! In the New York Times!”



Yep, Ursula Parrott got her first obituary yesterday and I had the honor of writing it, in the form of a New York Times Overlooked column. It will be in the print edition on Monday July 15th.

I’ve long admired this series, which features important people who got passed over in their day—not coincidentally, almost all women and people of color. I’m thrilled that it is now part of the published record about Parrott’s life and contributions.



In other news: I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Debby Applegate (her latest book, Madam, is a masterfully researched biography of Polly Adler) about Ursula for the Biographer’s International Organization podcast, which you can listen to here.



If you’ve been waiting to get a copy of “Becoming the Ex-Wife” or to suggest it for your bookclub, do I have news for you: it comes out in PAPERBACK in early August! If you want to order signed copies of either hardback or paperback, and support a small, locally owned business, you can contact my local bookstore, So & So books, with a request (I’m happy to personalize autographs, as well).

And there’s more! Parrott’s 1929 best-seller, “Ex-Wife,” has now been republished in the UK, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany (with more translated editions on the way)!



Looking ahead: I’ve started two new projects.



I kicked off summer with a residency at the amazing Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, where I spent a month working on a new documentary project, co-directed with Louis Cherry, about the visionary artist—and violinist, and cosmetologist, and featherweight boxer, and devout Catholic, and castanet player—Alexander Bogardy. If you are at the Smithsonian American Art Museum any time soon, you can see a number of Bogardy’s paintings and notebooks on display there.

I’m sending this newsletter to you from Los Angeles, where I’m doing archival research—primarily at UCLA and the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Pictures—for my new book project, a biography of Dorothy Arzner (here’s a profile of Arzner written by my brilliant University of Chicago colleague Allyson Nadia Field for the Women Film Pioneer’s Project).



Arzner was a pioneering editor, screenwriter, director, and professor at UCLA (Francis Ford Coppola was one of her many film students). Her career, which spanned the 1920s through the 1940s, was remarkable. Arzner directed Clara Bow, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Lucille Ball, and many others, and she lived a rich, interesting, complicated life that I’m very excited to write about in the months to come.  A couple of days ago I even got to tour the house she built for herself and her life partner, Marion Morgan, in the Hollywood Hills.  

As always, feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you’d like a Becoming the Ex-Wife book club guest, virtually or in person, or just want to say hello.



Thank you for reading.  



Stay cool,

Marsha Gordon



Visit my website and follow me on social media for more updates: