Winslow, Thyra Samter

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WINSLOW, Thyra Samter

Born 15 March 1893, Fort Smith, Arkansas; died 3 December 1961, New York, New York

Daughter of Louis and Sara Harris Samter; married John S. Winslow, 1920; Nelson W. Hyde, 1927

After leaving her smalltown Arkansas home, Thyra Samter Winslow made some attempt at gaining a formal education. She spent two years at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and later studied at the Cincinnati Art Academy and Columbia University. Her real education, however, began when she first went on stage as a chorus girl. The theatrical phase of Winslow's career ended in 1915 when she was hired as a feature writern the Chicago Tribune. By this time she was regularly selling short stories and articles.

Between 1914 and 1923, her rueful stories of small-town life appeared almost monthly in H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan's widely read magazine, the Smart Set. Later, in 1934, she contributed to the New Yorker a regular series of sketches, which was later published as a book, My Own, My Native Land, in 1935. She also wrote book and theater reviews and, from 1937 to 1940, screenplays for major Hollywood studios. Her hobby was cooking, and late in her career she produced three diet books, expounding her own highly unscientific method of weight control.

Winslow's writing style is marked by shrewd observation of the absurdities of social ritual. She was acutely aware of the snobbery of the small town and often focused with ironic under-statement on the strategies of the social climber. Courtship was for her of particular interest, especially those cases in which an outwardly naive young girl lures an unwitting suitor into matrimony. She also wrote extensively about theater people and about the sophisticated denizens of New York.

Show Business (1926) is a tale of an ambitious Missouri girl who finds glamour and financial reward in the chorus line. It is marred by a somewhat tedious plot as well as a lackluster central character. The novel's chief strength lies in its realistic depiction of the backstage milieu, complete with gold-digging chorines adept at "grafting" a dinner or a diamond from an attentive male. Given this sordid but wholly credible environment, it seems especially unlikely that the heroine remains virginal until a nice young millionaire proposes marriage. This novel, her only one, reveals the difficulties Winslow met in moving beyond the limits of the short story; in fact, more than 200 short stories make up the bulk of her published work.

Her concern with the three-generation household is exempli-fied in her best and most widely anthologized story, "A Cycle of Manhattan." This long story, which first appeared in the Smart Set (1919) and was later published in the volume Picture Frames (1923), traces the rapid assimilation of a Jewish immigrant family into the American mainstream. As the Rosenheimers move from rags to riches, their lifestyle grows increasingly pretentious and their family name becomes progressively more Anglo-Saxon: "Abe Rosenheimer" of the story's opening pages finally emerges as "A. Lincoln Ross." Winslow's sharp eye for social detail reinforces the sardonic humor behind the family's ascent. She clearly sees what these people have sacrificed in terms of emotional well-being for the sake of a fashionable veneer.

The story is typical of her, however, in that it lacks sympathy for its characters. She remains so scrupulously detached from her creations that she appears rather heartless. She is a master of the ironic twist, and it is the cleverness of her plotting far more than the sensitivity of her characterizations that made her popular.

Other Works:

People Round the Corner (1927). Blueberry Pie, and Other Stories (1932). Think Yourself Thin (1951). Winslow Weight Watcher (1953). The Sex without Sentiment (1954). Be Slim—Stay Slim (1955).