Laurie Gwen Shapiro is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and author of “The Stowaway” (Simon & Schuster). Her forthcoming biography of Amelia Earhart will be published by Viking.
Laurie Gwen Shapiro
By Laurie Gwen Shapiro
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Culture On Emma Lazarus’ birthday, how the poet inspired Laurie Anderson
Editpr’s Note: A version of this piece was published by the Forward in 2019; we’re revisiting it on the occasion of Emma Lazarus’ birthday. Lazarus was born on July 22, 1849. This tale features feminist heroes not normally paired: the 19th-century poet Emma Lazarus and the (very alive) avant-garde musician and artist Laurie Anderson. Of…
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Culture EXCLUSIVE: How Poet Emma Lazarus Inspired Laurie Anderson
This tale features feminist heroes not normally paired: the 19th-century poet Emma Lazarus and the (very alive) avant-garde musician and artist Laurie Anderson. Of Emma Lazarus, most know only that she wrote the line “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” — iconic words emblazoned on the pedestal of…
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Culture 50 Years Later, Just How Jewish Was ‘The Graduate?’
As a superfan of “The Graduate” I was thrilled to get my hands on Beverly Gray’s new book “Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How ‘The Graduate’ Became the Touchstone of a Generation.” Fellow enthusiasts of the film will more than enjoy this brisk voice-y historical read timed to the fiftieth anniversary of the film’s release in…
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Culture My Hero Grandmother Who Escaped An Arranged Marriage
I knew my grandmother Fanny Meiselman only as a tiny old woman who smelled faintly floral. I never really questioned why she spoke English so well while I had to make do with Yinglish when I talked with my other grandmother. Grandma Fanny used to chase me with bobby pins to get my unruly thick…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn’t as Bad as You Think Charlotte Bronte
My top 2016 museum experience meanwhile took place at The Morgan Library and Museum. “Charlotte Brontë: An Independent Will” opened September 9, and will run to January 2, 2017. Timed to celebrate the 200th anniversary of her birth, it is the perfect exhibit for a compulsive reader. I left my husband home and saw it…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn’t as Bad as You Think Bill Cunningham: New York
The most memorable film screening I attended this year was a memorial screening of “Bill Cunningham: New York” back on July 21. The eponymous star of the film, a shy New York Times photographer who documented New York’s and Paris’s fashion scenes on a bike, died at 87 on June 25 of this year, after…
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Culture The Time I Almost Saw Walt Disney Vomit
In Laurie Gwen Shapiro’s interview with Sam Adams, a former Hollywood errand boy-turned-dealmaker, Adams turns to Shapiro and asks her if he ever told her about the time that he saw Walt Disney nearly vomit. She asks him to elaborate and, well, here’s the rest of the story: “One day when I was at the…
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Culture Meet Sam Adams — Humphrey Bogart’s Assistant and I.B. Singer’s Dealmaker
I met retired Hollywood film and literary agent Sam Adams while I was on a research trip for my forthcoming book. When I introduced myself, he was reading a dog-eared copy of perhaps the greatest of true Antarctic tales, Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s “The Worst Journey in the World.” Sam, now just shy of his 90th birthday,…
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