A novelist, a screenwriter, and an actress in 1920s New York City. These Jewish women immigrants created the shape-shifting, genre-crossing Salome of the Tenements, first a popular novel and then a Hollywood movie. The title character was a combination Cinderella and Salome like the women who conceived her. Rose Pastor Stokes was the role model. Anzia Yezierska wrote the novel. Sonya Levien wrote the screenplay. Jetta Goudal played her on the silver screen.
Ginsberg interprets their creative collaboration as a project of self-invention that shaped and reflected the cultural landscape. Woodrow Wilson, John Dewey, Theodore Roosevelt, and Cecil B. DeMille played supporting roles. The women of the Salome Ensemble took center stage, pursued American dreams, escaped sweatshop squalor, knew romance and heartache, and won success in politics, fashion, journalism, literature, and film.