BOOK TALK WITH SLIDE PRESENTATION OF SILENT MOVIE STAR HELEN GARDNER

Dorin Schumacher and VANITY FAIR (1911) with Helen Gardner as Becky Sharp.

Dorin’s book is a deeply researched and moving account of Helen Gardner embodying Becky Sharp in Vitagraph’s ambitious 1911 screen adaptation. As Helen Gardner’s granddaughter, Dorin brings a wholly unique passion to her research on the grandmother she never met. With this book, she shares with us Helen Gardner’s voice and role in VANITY FAIR, the first film adaptation of the novel. Dorin’s recreation of her famous grandmother, the first actor to produce and star in a feature-length film in the United States, illuminates the vanguard actor’s pivotal role in early American film.

Dorin, a Ph.D. in French literature, teacher, scholar, and author, searched worldwide for her absent grandmother’s traces buried in the suppression of women’s contributions to cinema, now shines a spotlight on Gardner’s brilliant movie creations. 

Dorin’s recent memoir is Gatsby’s Child: Coming of Age in East Egg (Mastodon, 2018).

Hearing loop installed and available to hearing aid users with T-switch.

This event is free to Literary Guild members. Click here for your tickets.

Not a member? Join here or join at the event. Guest tickets are $10 each. 

G. J. Ford Bookshop will be selling copies of the book at the event, and we encourage you to purchase your book and have it signed by the author. Our local independent bookstore makes many of our author appearances possible.

Too many books? Why not purchase one, read it and then donate it for our annual book sale or the library?