On the evening of March 5, 1926, well-known, fifty-one-year-old Manhattan millionaire, Edward "Daddy" Browning, waltzed through the doors of the legendary Hotel McAlpin, and into the life of a fifteen-year-old high school girl named Frances "Peaches"Heenan. Thirty-seven days later, amid blaring newspaper headlines announcing the event and with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in close pursuit, they were married. Within ten months they would begin a courtroom drama that would capture the imagination of the American public, and blow their impassioned saga into a national scandal. Their 1920s romance captured the nation's attention, forever changed tabloid journalism, and sent riptides across the moral landscape of America for years to come.On sale this week, Michael M. Greenburg's Peaches and Daddy vividly recounts the amazing and improbable romance, marriage, and ultimate legal battle for separation of this publicity-craving Manhattan couple in America's "Era of Wonderful Nonsense." Their story is one of dysfunction and remarkable excess, yet at the time, the lurid details of their brief courtship and marriage captured the imagination of the American public like no other story of its day. Their prurient affair propelled them into the headlines and the bylines of the nation's tabloid press for a brief moment in time, but their legacy is one of an enduring contribution to the cultural landscape of a turbulent country.
No comments:
Post a Comment