The Bobbed Haired Bandit : A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York / Andrew Mattson, Stephen Duncombe.
Duncombe, Stephen, author.; Mattson, Andrew, author.
2006
HV6653.C66 D86 2006eb
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Title The Bobbed Haired Bandit : A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York / Andrew Mattson, Stephen Duncombe.
Author Duncombe, Stephen, author.
ISBN 9780814785201
DOI https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814785201.001.0001
Published New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2006]
Copyright ©2006
Language English
Language Note In English.
Description 1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers 10.18574/nyu/9780814785201.001.0001 doi
Call Number HV6653.C66 D86 2006eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 364.15/52/09227471 B
Summary Ripped straight from the headlines of the Jazz Age, The Bobbed Haired Bandit is a tale of flappers and fast cars, of sex and morality. In the spring of 1924, a poor, 19-year-old laundress from Brooklyn robbed a string of New York grocery stores with a "baby automatic," a fur coat, and a fashionable bobbed hairdo. Celia Cooney's crimes made national news, with the likes of Ring Lardner and Walter Lippman writing about her exploits for enthralled readers.The Bobbed Haired Bandit brings to life a world of great wealth and poverty, of Prohibition and class conflict. With her husband Ed at her side, Celia raised herself from a life of drudgery to become a celebrity in her own pulp-fiction novel, a role she consciously cultivated. She also launched the largest manhunt in New York City's history, humiliating the police with daring crimes and taunting notes.Sifting through conflicting accounts, Stephen Duncombe and Andrew Mattson show how Celia's story was used to explain the world, to wage cultural battles, to further political interest, and above all, to sell newspapers. To progressives, she was an example of what happens when a community doesn't protect its children. To conservatives, she symbolized a permissive society that gave too much freedom to the young, poor, and female. These competing stories distill the tensions of the time.In a gripping account that reads like a detective serial, Duncombe and Mattson have culled newspaper reports, court records, interviews with Celia's sons, and even popular songs and jokes to capture what William Randolph Hearst's newspaper called "the strangest, weirdest, most dramatic, most tragic, human interest story ever told."
Access Note Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics text file PDF
Source of Description Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Added Author Mattson, Andrew, author.
In New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
Available in Other Form print 9780814719800
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Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
part I. Woman with Gun
part II. Get Girl Bandit Dead or Alive
part III. Mystery of the Bobbed-Haired Bandit
part IV. Gunmiss, Roused, Shoots Man
part V. Child of Misfortune
part VI. End of a Thriller
Epilogue
Notes
Index
About the Authors

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