LEIDER, Emily Wortis 1937-

PERSONAL: Surname pronounced Ly-der; born December 23, 1937, in New York, NY; daughter of Joseph (a psychiatrist) and Helen (a social worker; maiden name, Zunser) Wortis; married William Leider (a pediatrician), December 22, 1957; children: Jean, Richard. Education: Barnard College, B.A., 1959; Columbia University, M.A., 1961. Religion: Jewish.

ADDRESSES: Home—P.O. Box 210105, San Francisco, CA 94121. Agent—The Wylie Agency, 250 W. 57th St., Ste. 2114, New York, NY 10107.

CAREER: Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, instructor in English literature and writing, 1964–66; Antioch College West, San Francisco, CA, instructor in poetry and women's studies, 1973–76; San Francisco Review of Books, San Francisco, associate editor, beginning 1977.

MEMBER: Poets and Writers, Authors Guild.

WRITINGS:

Rapid Eye Movement and Other Poems, Bay Books (San Francisco, CA), 1976.

(Editor and author of postscript) Miriam Shomer Zunser, Yesterday: The Memoir of a Russian Jewish Family, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times, Stanford University Press (Stanford, CA), 1991.

Becoming Mae West: The Shaping of an Icon, Farrar, Straus (New York, NY), 1997.

Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor of poems and articles to periodicals, including New York Times, Chicago Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Kalliope, and Shakespeare Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS: A former poetry instructor who has also published a collection of her own verses, Emily Wortis Leider has more recently published several biographies on famous actors and an author. In Becoming Mae West: The Shaping of an Icon Leider not only paints a detailed portrait of the notorious stage and screen legend, but also portrays West's career in its historical context as a reflection of the changing face of American moral values from the early 1900s to the late 1930s, from a period that was uniformly Victorian to one where libertinism had gained a strong foothold. The daughter of a German mother and a drunken prizefighter father, the Brooklyn-born West went on to a highly successful career in vaudeville and film that made her one of the best-known sexual icons of the twentieth century. According to Martha McPhee in the New York Times Book Review, most people remember West as "a pneumatic blonde, part siren, part caricature, strutting slowly across the screen, all hips and bosom, her famous one-liners sliding out of the corner of her mouth." Leider's stated aim in her biography is "to penetrate the layers of makeup to probe the elusive singular woman" beneath. Detailing West's career, the plots of her films, her family life, her numerous love affairs, her financial dealings, her relationships with other stars such as Cary Grant and Marlene Dietrich, even her experiments in spiritualism, Leider depicts West as an independent and strong-willed woman who created her own legend, a feminist forerunner of such later performers as Roseanne and Madonna.

Reviewing Becoming Mae West for Booklist, Donna Seaman praised the book as an "eye-opening, candid, lushly detailed and immensely entertaining biography," while also noting that West emerges as "a pioneering woman artist who challenged the hypocritical sexual mores of her times." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly stated, "Exhaustive research, fine writing and a keen appreciation of Mae West's own bawdy wit inform this energetic and erudite biography." In contrast, the Voice Literary Supplement contributor M. G. Lord presented a more critical view both of West and of Leider's evaluation of her life. Lord saw West as "backward and obnoxious," a "hollow" icon, contending that she was both racist and anti-lesbian, and "did little to enhance the lives of her fellow women" other than "her pioneering rejection of the social pressure to become a mother." While granting that Leider "has written a graceful, meticulously documented biography," the reviewer went on to state that it is "probably more than her tedious subject deserved."

Maintaining an interest in early Hollywood, Leider wrote a biography on 1920s heartthrob Rudolph Valentino titled Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino. Known for his sexual charisma in such films as The Sheik and Blood and Sand, Valentino was actually an Italian immigrant named Rodolfo Guglielmi. He came to America when he was eighteen and within a couple of years was starring in major motion pictures. Unlike his movie persona, however, in private Valentino was unlucky in his marriages, both of which ended in divorce, and was known to his friends as a friendly but shy man. Tragically, in 1926 he died of peritonitis, a consequence of gastric ulcers. In her biography, Leider explores the private and public Valentino, discussing the ups and downs of his career and his apparently "ambiguous sexuality," as a Kirkus Reviews critic related. The reviewer complained that, although Leider goes over the facts of the actor's life and career, she does not adequately convey how and why Valentino had such considerable appeal to his fans. Rosalind Dayen, writing in the Library Journal, conceded that "Dark Lover adds depth to its mysterious subject, [but] it gets bogged down in details and metaphor." However, the New Statesman contributor Caroline Murphy admired how "Leider tells [Valentino's] often lurid story with restraint and, above all, compassion."

Leider is also the author of a biography of turn-of-the-century California author Gertrude Atherton. Like Mae West, Atherton was an independent woman who challenged contemporary values. Her steamy novels were often banned and her flamboyant public persona defied the accepted behavior for women of her time. Reviewing California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times for Canadian Literature, Michele O'Flynn described it as "a very carefully researched biography which examines important issues, works and events that played a role in … Atherton's day."

Leider once told CA: "My poems tend to be concise and imagistic lyrics with narrative and dramatic leanings. Rapid Eye Movement [and Other Poems] contains a sequence of poems based on characters and events in my grandmother's memoir, Yesterday."

"I come from a family or writers. My maternal grandmother wrote plays for the Yiddish theater. My father published an account of his analysis with Freud. My twin brother writes young adult fiction under the name Avi."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Literature, March, 1992, Ann Romines, review of California's Daughter: Gertrude Atherton and Her Times, p. 176.

Biography, summer, 2003, Richard Schickel, review of Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, p. 562.

Booklist, May 1, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Becoming Mae West: The Shaping of an Icon, p. 1473; April 15, 2003, Mike Tribby, review of Dark Lover, p. 1439.

Canadian Literature, spring, 1993, Michele O'Flynn, review of California's Daughter, pp. 155-156.

Choice, November, 2003, D. B. Wilmeth, review of Dark Lover, p. 549.

Contemporary Review, June, 2004, review of Dark Lover, p. 379.

Entertainment Weekly, June 20, 1997, L. S. Klepp, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 68.

Journal of the West, January, 1993, James L. Dodson, review of California's Daughter, April, 1993, Richard W. Etulain, review of California's Daughter, p. 103.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2003, review of Dark Lover, p. 364.

Library Journal, November 15, 1990, Jeris Cassel, review of California's Daughter, p. 72; April 1, 1997, Marianne Cawley, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 96; April 15, 2003, Rosalind Dayen, review of Dark Lover, p. 88.

London Review of Books, December 16, 2004, Wayne Koestenbaum, review of Dark Lover, p. 31.

London Times, September 28, 2003, Christopher Silvester, review of Dark Lover, p. 42.

Los Angeles Times, December 14, 1997, Wayne Koestenbaum, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 12; May 11, 2003, Richard Schickel, "Film on Paper: A Stardom Doomed by Expectation," review of Dark Lover, p. R2.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune, May 25, 2003, David Walton, review of Dark Lover.

New Statesman, November 3, 2003, Caroline Murphy, "The World's Greatest Kisser," review of Dark Lover, p. 54.

Newsweek, July 14, 1997, Ray Sawhill, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 69.

New Yorker, May 19, 2003, Thomas Mallon, "Those Lips, Those Eyes," review of Dark Lover, p. 84.

New York Times Book Review, April 14, 1991, L. Elisabeth Beattie, review of California's Daughter, p. 20; June 27, 1997, Martha McPhee, review of Becoming Mae West, p. G11; May 11, 2003, Barry Gewen, "We Lost It at the Movies," review of Dark Lover.

Pacific Historical Review, February, 1993, Gloria Ricci Lothrop, review of California's Daughter, p. 103.

Publishers Weekly, January 25, 1991, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of California's Daughter, p. 41; May 5, 1997, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 189.

Reference and Research Book News, February, 1998, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 138.

Smithsonian, March, 1992, Helle Bering-Jensen, review of California's Daughter, p. 117.

Times Literary Supplement, Mary Jo Salter, review of California's Daughter, p. 9.

Variety, July 21, 2003, Joel Hirschhorn, review of Dark Lover, p. 40.

Video Age International, June-July, Eliza Gallo, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 8.

Voice Literary Supplement, summer, 1997, M. G. Lord, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 14.

Western Historical Quarterly, February, 1992, Nancy J. Taniguchi, review of California's Daughter, p. 115.

Women's Review of Books, December, 1997, review of Becoming Mae West, p. 25.