href="#ulink_a0c85bae-5d23-5676-914e-1e2c2b84ce69">Powell friend and portraitist Peggy Bacon, ca. 1920
Peggy Bacon charcoal drawing of Powell, 1934, with inscription
Peggy Bacon charcoal drawing of Powell, 1934
Peggy Bacon charcoal drawing of Coburn “Coby” Gilman, 1934
Peggy Bacon drawing of cats Perkins vs. Calhoun
Flier for Walking down Broadway, 2005
Playbill featuring Big Night, January 1933
Flier for Big Night, December 2012
Whither, Powell’s first novel (1925), in dust jacket
Powell, elegant in pearls, ca. 1930s
Powell in publicity photo eating pineapple, 1933
Coburn “Coby” Gilman with Jackson Pollock and Rita Benton
Clare Booth Luce
Members of the Council on Books in Wartime, ca. 1943
A coy-looking Powell
Powell in her beloved Café Lafayette, 1946
Powell in her Greenwich Village apartment, ca. 1950
Powell and husband, Joseph Gousha, 1952
“The Lost Generation” from a 1963 Esquire article by Malcolm Cowley
Powell caricature by David Johnson
Powell’s close friend Hannah Green, 1974
Author with Tim Page, 2014
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people helped make this project happen, most especially Tim Page, Powell biographer and editor extraordinaire, without whom it would not even have begun. I thank him first of all for writing her biography; for bringing out his edition of her letters, four of her plays, and a volume of her diaries; for being a tireless champion of Dawn Powell’s works; and for seeing to it that so many of her long-out-of-print novels, plays, and short stories were reissued. I thank Mr. Page for his unfailing generosity, for being not only a tireless correspondent but also a most supportive champion of me and my work; for his sharp and quick editorial eye; for allowing me access to the Powell papers at Columbia University; for sharing with me the two known recordings of Powell’s voice; and for giving me permission to reproduce photographs of Dawn Powell, Joseph Gousha, and other people or locations to which he or the friendly estate of Dawn Powell, represented by the generous and considerate Peter Skolnik, owns the rights. I also thank Mr. Page for kindly providing contact information for Carol Warstler, daughter of Dawn Powell’s younger sister, Phyllis Powell Cook. The very kind Carol Warstler, with whom I have been in touch, sent me a copy of her daughter-in-law Debra Warstler’s thesis on Powell. Indeed, Page has been so selfless and steadfast a friend that I cannot effectively describe all that he has done not only for me but also for Dawn, as he fondly refers to her and as I am sure she would insist he call her. I thank also Vicki Johnson, Carol Warstler’s daughter, for sharing with me a copy of their family tree and also for sending me reproductions of the beautiful artwork done by Powell’s elder sistern, Mabel Powell Pocock.
I am indebted to renowned Broadway lyricists and composers Lee Adams and Charles Strouse for their communications with me, their always considerate assistance, their interest in my work, and their willingness to share with me their warm memories of Dawn Powell. A special thanks to Charles Strouse for having me up to his place in New York and for taking me to lunch that snowy spring day in April 2007.
A warm thank-you to Christopher Purdy, Executive Producer of Columbus, Ohio, radio station WOSU, for generously sending me a tape of his “Dawn Powell” radio program; and to Christopher Bennett, director of the Lincoln Library at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, for a lovely and lengthy telephone conversation and for kindly sending me the Lake Erie Bulletin and several copies of the school literary magazine, the Lake Erie Record, on which Powell had acted both as editor and contributor. Kind thanks to Debra Blanchard Remington, director of development and alumni relations at Lake Erie College, for providing me a copy of the very useful May 1940 alumna issue of the Bulletin of Lake Erie College.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Merrill Skaggs and Dr. Robert Ready, both of Drew University, for their suggestions and unfailing support. I wish also to thank Dr. Kathleen Hunter of the College of St. Elizabeth for her unwavering belief in me and for her inspiring words, “The enemy of ‘done’ is ‘perfect.’” Thanks to Lynne McKinery, also of the College of St. Elizabeth, for her tireless support and assistance, and to Art “Vandelay” Layenberger, because he wanted me to.
I am grateful to Bruce Lancaster, Drew University reference librarian, for taking it upon himself to conduct some additional research that led me, with Tim Page’s help, to Powell’s family; to Kathleen Brennan, for pointing out a New York Times article I otherwise may not have known about; to Kim Macagnone, customer service representative at the Village Voice, for providing me a copy of Michael Feingold’s important piece, “Dawn Powell’s Acid Texts,” which for some reason I could get no other way; to Barbara Meister, librarian at the Ohioana Library Association, for photocopying the rare Powell novel A Man’s Affair for me at no charge; to Jeanine Krattiger, for generously printing out so many copies of this manuscript; to Mary Pradilla, graduate student at the College of St. Elizabeth and alumna of Lake Erie College, who located some information on Cleveland history for me; to Carl Thomas Engle, research librarian at Morley Library in Painesville, Ohio, for tracking down and sending me some elusive information on the Shore Club, where Powell worked as a teenager; to Kathleen Conry, theater actress and director who resided at New York’s Rehearsal Club in 1966, for much vital information; to Muriel Keyes, assistant editor of the Antioch Review, for tracking down Gore Vidal’s first published mention of Dawn Powell in an editorial by Robert S. Fogarty; and to Peter L. Skolnik, lawyer for the Powell estate, for all estate permissions and for letting me know about the rights to Powell’s final novel, The Golden Spur, which Lee Adams and Charles Strouse said back in 2008 they may yet one day turn into a musical, though time is passing and the project at this date seems unlikely (an unfinished version of it, from 1962–64, is held at Columbia University Library); to Author’s Guild attorney Michael Gross, for his tireless correspondence, astute eye, and indispensable lawyerly advice; to Arthur Vanderbilt, for putting me in touch with the Author’s Guild in the first place; to Jeffrey Edmond Lawson, son of John Howard Lawson and his second wife, Sue Edmond Lawson, for generously recounting for me his fond and vivid memories of Powell; to Peter Reznikoff, actor and very young friend of Powell’s—his parents were the photographer Genevieve Naylor and the artist Misha Reznikoff—for granting me permission to reproduce a rarely seen portrait of Powell taken at her beloved Café Lafayette by his mother; to Tricia Gesner of AP Images for her invaluable, prompt, reliable, cheerful, and tireless help, even on weekends; to brilliant and hardworking photographer William “Bill” Wittkop, without whom I could not have provided illustrations for this book; to David Johnson, for allowing me to reproduce his outstanding caricature of Dawn; to Jonathan Bank of the Mint Theater, New York, for giving me a digital image and permission to reproduce the theater’s flier for their production of Walking down Broadway; to John Dos Passos Coggin, John Dos Passos’s only grandson, for sharing information his mother, Lucy Dos Passos Coggin, remembers about Dawn; and especially to Allie Mulholland, founder