Beschreibung:

15 Autograph Letters Signed and 6 Autograph Notes Signed ("Brick," "Bricky," and "Brick Top"), 41 pp recto and verso, 4to, 8vo, and 12mo, various places including Rome, London, New York, October 13, 1958 to April 13, 1972, to Jodi Desmond, most with original autograph transmittal envelopes, minor creasing and toning throughout, otherwise fine. Together with 10 pp of manuscript notes and 4 pp of typescript notes on Bricktop by Desmond, and other related clippings and ephemera. Dancer, singer, Parisian cabaret star Bricktop was born in West Virginia, and by her teens was performing on the Pantages vaudeville circuit. From the 1920s to the 1950s, she had her own nightclub in Paris, Chez Bricktop, where she nurtured the careers of Duke Ellington, Mabel Mercer, and Josephine Baker, and entertained celebrities such as Cole Porter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Porter wrote the song "Miss Otis Regrets" for Bricktop. This series of letters is written to Jodi Desmond, a young woman whom Bricktop met in Rome during the 1950s. In her autobiography, Bricktop describes Desmond thus: "She was a white girl, quite young, and I don't remember now why she was in Rome. She had something to do with the picture business. She was one of what I used to call the 'out-real people'—the people who didn’t really belong, but who sort of hung around on the fringes. Jody was very popular, and she and I became quite close. It was she who found the cellar location on the Via Veneto that most people remember as the Rome Bricktop's." In this series of correspondence, Bricktop discusses the vicissitudes of the nightclub business as well has her Catholic faith. From New Year’s Eve, 1967: "I'm so restless keeping house going to mass, saying my rosary answering the telephone to say no no no, I don't want to go out. It's just another hangover next day & I must say not the hangovers we used to have & as you know the Doctors tell me I must do something at least 3 or 4 nights a week but I can't make up my mind to work for anyone else & to put $$ in a place of my own … could have done a lovely place in Marbella starting June but again its putting money & who knows. Darling you know I'm too old to start staying up & drinking a lot of liquor every night & if its Bricktops you know what happens … was going to work with Charlie Beal at Georges thank God I never went back to talk business with them. They fired Charlie on a one night notice because Charlie didn't want whores hanging around his piano. / Yes, whores in Georges." See illustration.