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Fast-Talking Dames by Professor Maria DiBattista is a history book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Fast-Talking Dames about?

"There is nothing like a dame," proclaims the song from South Pacific. Certainly there is nothing like the fast-talking dame of screen comedies in the 1930s and '40s. In this engaging book, film scholar and movie buff Maria DiBattista celebrates the fast-talking dame as an American original. Coming of age during the Depression, the dame--a woman of lively wit and brash speech-epitomized a new style of self-reliant, articulate womanhood. Dames were quick on the uptake and hardly ever downbeat. They seemed to know what to say and when to say it. In their fast and breezy talk seemed to lie the secret of happiness, but also the key to reality. DiBattista offers vivid portraits of the grandest dames of the era, including Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, Rosalind Russell, Barbara Stanwyck, and others, and discusses the great films that showcased their compelling way with words-and with men.<br> With their snappy repartee and vivid colloquialisms, these fast-talkers were verbal muses at a time when Americans were reinventing both language and the political institutions of democratic culture. As they taught their laconic male counterparts (most notably those appealing but tongue-tied Americ

Who reads Fast-Talking Dames?

Author

Professor Maria DiBattista

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published

2003

Language

EN

ISBN

9780300099034

Category

history

Subjects

Literary Fiction, Fiction, Humour

Rating

3.78 / 5 (55 ratings)

Updated

2026-03-14