Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis

Lauren Redniss' 2006 collage-biography Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies, centers on an iconic woman: Doris Eaton Travis, the youngest daughter of a show business family whose star burned most brightly during the 1920s and '30s. The book chronicles the rise of the Eaton clan, in particular Doris, who became a headlining attraction of Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies, a stage pageant that combined chorus girls and lowbrow comedy. Though the family's prospects were crippled by the stock market crash of 1929, Doris soldiered on, enjoying a triumphant second career as a dancing instructor and public personality. Redniss cleverly utilizes photographic images and other artifacts collected from the Eaton family archives in her layouts. One two-page spread creates the illusion of Doris cavorting with the likes of Charles Lindbergh, George Gershwin, and her own sister, stage and screen star Mary Eaton. Collages from later in her career show Doris smiling and dancing, while employed as a teacher and spokesperson for Arthur Murray's Dance Studios. The sheer volume of material collected, which includes newspaper clippings, diary entries, even old shoe buckles, hints at the fullness of Doris's life in ways that a conventional biography could not. Reissued for the first time in paperback, Redniss' book is a unique biography of a woman who lived her life with graceful determination.