Florence Nash's Copy of Actorviews: Intimate Portraits by Ashton Stevens With Drawings by Gene Markey

Writer Steve Stoliar brightens my new year with news of his most recent acquisition:

It's a 1923 book called Actorviews, written by noted Chicago theatre critic Ashton Stevens. (Orson Welles said he based Jed Leland on Stevens, who was also George Stevens's uncle.) It was issued in a signed/limited edition of 210 and is also inscribed by Stevens. The book is signed to Florence Nash, a theatrical actress and poetess who is mentioned in Stevens's interview with Nora Bayes.

In addition to Stevens's inscription, there is a fairly accurate caricature of Stevens drawn by Gene Markey, who did the illustrations for the book. Since you blogged about Markey's drawing of Benchley and Woollcott, I knew you'd know who he is. He also did a famous caricature of a young Ben Hecht—and he was married to Joan Bennett, Hedy Lamarr, and Myrna Loy, though not at the same time.

For me, Chicago in the '20s has the same sort of romantic image as New York in the '20s: Gangsters, speakeasies, Hecht, Lardner, Dreiser, all those newspapers, etc. This particular copy evokes so much of that time.

Picked it up for $25.

Actorviews
Title page

Limitation page
No. 89/210

"For Florence Nash,
My friend since she
was a baby poet,
my admiration ever.
Hers faithfully,
                               The Author"
and
"The Venerable Critic on a quiet
night in what he has nick-named
'The Windy City.'
To Flo-Flo—
                                         GM"

So did Stevens truly "nick-name" Chicago "The Windy City," as Markey suggests? It wasn't his coinage. Steve writes back, "I also checked earlier and saw that Stevens didn't invent 'The Windy City' but, to my surprise, he was well-known for having popularized the term." Aha!

Steve also provides some helpful Wikipedia links for those of us who aren't quite so up-to-date on 1923 Chicago-based literary celebrities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Stevens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Markey

Note:  I'm so grateful to Steve Stoliar for sharing this find here on Attempted Bloggery. I had no idea such a book was out there. This is Steve's eighth contribution to the blog if I'm counting correctly and his thirty-seventh if I'm not. Steve is the author of Raised Eyebrows: My Years Inside Groucho's House. If you don't have a nightstand, buy one and place this book on it.

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