Author: florianduijsens

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Podcast #78: Paula Fox

It’s our last episode of Season Seven, and our last episode of 2024, which means it’s Rotkäppchen time! Join us as we toast to Dead Ladies with German fizzy wine, and hear the story of another fabulous woman.

DLS cofounders Katy Derbyshire and Florian Duijsens join the party as we get ready to hear the story of writer Paula Fox. As Florian explains, this talented author’s personal plot twists and turns include a stint as foreign correspondent, receiving a baby alligator in the mail, writing award-winning children’s books and a novel adapted for a film starring Shirley MacLaine, oh—also being Courtney Love’s grandmother (but not knowing that for decades).

Want to hear our end of year review and our Dead Lady gift list chat? This time it’s exclusive on Patreon, but you can join up starting at only $2 or 2€ and get access to all our special content past, present, and future. You can also gift (or request) a subscription to the Dead Ladies Show by following this link.

We can tell you this already: we will be live in Berlin on February 16th and May 13th, when we celebrate our 10th anniversary of the Dead Ladies Show in Berlin! Save the date, dears!

If you’re in NYC, go see our pals Dead Ladies Show NYC on January 16 at the KGB Bar Red Room. Find out more from them on Instagram @deadladiesnyc or join up for their newsletter if you like here.

We’d also be pleased as punch if you follow us on social media @deadladiesshow where we share pictures and info about all of the wonderful Dead Ladies we’ve covered so far. You can also drop us a line via info@deadladiesshow.com and we’re on BlueSky too!

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts.

Show notes:

Read more: Podcast #78: Paula Fox
Paula’s great-granddaughter Frances Bean Cobain in and ex utero
Paula Fox’s gorgeous, terrible parents, Elsie de Sola and Paul Hervey Fox
Paula and her beloved Uncle Elwood Corning
Paula’s first movie star, Lilyan Tashman
Young Paula in Queens
Posters for the worst movie Graham Greene ever saw
The last thing Paula needed
Paula as a young woman
Paula’s marvelous memoirs of her childhood and her time as a journalist in war-torn Europe
The movie that bought Paula her brownstone
Paula in said brownstone
The only biography of Paula’s so far is in German

Our theme music is “Little Lily Swing” by Tri-Tachyon. Thanks for listening! We’ll be back with a new episode next year.

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Dead Ladies Show #37: Flora Tristan, Helen Duncan & Mary MacLane!

Come Saturday, 30 November, we’re back at last to our bilingual format! Our podcast producer Susan Stone and your beloved co-host Florian Duijsens will be joined by the fantastic Magda Birkmann, an expert on almost-forgotten women’s writing. And it’s all held together by your other beloved co-host Katy Derbyshire. This is your chance to learn about three extraordinary women who certainly did not do as they were told. Put on your glad rags and join us for an inspiring and informative evening. The aim of the show is to raise money for more podcasts, so we’ve adjusted the non-reduced price to €10, but reduced tickets still cost €4. Get your tickets here. Doors open 7.30 pm – come on time to get a good seat!

We would like to point out that the lift in the building is unfortunately not working at the moment. For this reason, access is currently restricted. We would like to apologise for this.

Please arrive at least 10 minutes before the start of the event, otherwise your seats may be released if there is a large crowd.

FLORA TRISTAN (Flore Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristán y Moscoso) was a French-Peruvian socialist activist and feminist theorist. Born in 1803 into a military family, she experienced deprivation first-hand when her father died and her uncle nabbed the inheritance. Her writing organized the fragmented ideas on women’s equality arising from the French Revolution, laying the foundations for 19th-century feminism. She was the first to say that the proletariat must unite as a class and free itself, an idea that Marx would later incorporate in his work. Her publications included Peregrinations of a Pariah (1839), Promenades in London (1840), and the booklet The Workers’ Union (1843).

HELEN DUNCAN was a Scottish medium and the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 for fraudulent claims. She used her “paranormal talents” to make ends meet (and because it was better than working in a bleach factory). Her crude methods were quickly exposed by flash photography but she continued nonetheless. The British Navy took an interest in her after she leaked the sinking of a ship at a séance in 1941. She was arrested mid-performance in 1944, shrouded in a white sheet, and sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment. A sample of her “ectoplasm” is held at Cambridge University Library.

MARY MACLANE was an American writer whose memoirs started scandals and helped introduce the confessional style of autobiographical writing. A bisexual feminist, she wrote her first book at the age of 20 in 1901. Her publisher rejected its original title of I Await the Devil’s Coming, but the book was still a massive hit, especially with other young women. Following two more experimental memoirs, she wrote and starred in an autobiographical silent movie in 1917, entitled Men Who Have Made Love to Me. It was the earliest recorded on-screen breaking of the fourth wall outside of comedy cinema, with MacLane addressing the camera while smoking cigarettes between vignettes of failed love affairs, although sadly the film is considered lost.

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DLS NYC #31

Join us on Wednesday, November 13, 7–9pm at the Red Room at KGB Bar (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003, Third Floor). Same bat time, same bat channel.

Buy tickets here!

At this, our 31st show, learn about an cutting-edge industrial designer, a mom who knows just when it’s clobberin’ time, and a Sister/resister. Brought to you by an industrious designer, a repeat presenter with a particular love for overlooked stories, and a man who loves his cat. Sheila and Molly will be there as well, steering the good ship DLS NYC as is our passion.

P.S. We are charging a cover to defray costs of the event—if this presents any issue, please contact us and we can absolutely work something out. Tickets purchased online are $10 plus fees; tickets at the door will be $15.

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Your Ladies:

HELEN HUGHES DULANY (1885–1968), was an Industrial Design pioneer who made significant contributions to stainless steel, commercial china, kitchen ranges, and dining car equipment for railroads. Although Dulany had a short lived career, lasting about seven years, she made significant contributions to American modernist design. Dulany’s innovative work is found within major museum collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, The Met Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. 

KATHERINE MCHALE SLAUGHTERBACK (1893–1969) was a farmer from the rugged plains of Colorado who earned the nickname “Rattlesnake Kate” when she and her young son found themselves under attack near a den of snakes; she single-handedly clobbered 140 of them to death. She later turned their skins into a flapper style dress with matching accessories and collected venom for scientific research. Her feat captured the imaginations of Americans, earned her the amorous interest of a cowboy poet and is the subject of a solo album by Neyla Pekarek, a former singer with the Lumineers.

SISTER MEGAN RICE (1930–2021) was a Roman Catholic sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus and disarmament activist from Morningside Heights in New York. Beginning life as a school teacher and missionary, Rice later became involved with multiple anti-war activist groups resulting in multiple run-ins with the law. As a result of her involvement with the Transform Now Plowshares group, she spent three years in prison for her protest of the nuclear industrial complex.

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Your Presenters:

SAM BARONE is currently pursuing a BFA in Interior Design at Parsons School of Design. With a passion for both modern and historical design, Sam is working at Weinberg Modern, Apartment 48, and CvH Gallery.

AMY PADNANI is a senior staff editor on the Obituaries desk at The New York Times and the creator of Overlooked, a series that tells the stories of remarkable women, people of color and others who never got a Times obit.

GREG LOWE is a transplant from Michigan with a penchant for following his cat around his apartment and coercing people to play trivia despite not being good at it. For a collective list of his works, click here: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004874/

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Podcast #76: Ester Krumbachová

In this episode, Rachel Pronger of the Invisible Women film collective brings us the story of iconoclastic Czech film multi-talent Ester Krumbachová. Ester was a screen writer, costume and stage designer, author, and film director. Her work was quirky, colorful, and political, lashing out at patriarchy and authoritarianism. She had a defining influence on Czech New Wave cinema, collaborating on more than twenty movies from the early 1960s on, including the delightful Daisies and the perplexing Murdering the Devil. Her involvement in the satire A Report on the Party and Guests meant she was blacklisted from working in film by the Czechoslovakian communist party during much of the 1980s. She worked under pseudonyms, painted and made jewelry, returning to the film industry in the 1990s.

DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire joins producer/host Susan Stone to set the scene.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can find the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

Continue reading “Podcast #76: Ester Krumbachová”
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DLS NYC x Green-Wood Cemetery

We’re deep into spooky season—get ready to get even deeper (by approximately six feet) into the world of dead ladies!

Detail of Charlotte Canda’s Mausoleum. Photo via Green-Wood.com.

The illustrious J.R. Pepper, a recurrent presenter at DLS NYC, is leading a DEAD LADIES-THEMED CEMETERY TOUR. And you should all come.

Presented by Green-Wood Cemetery, the tour (“Fame, Fortune, and The Forgotten: The Untold Stories of Victorian Women”) will include stops at the graves of Charlotte Canda, Lola Montez, and Anna Leah Fox, among others.

Lola Montez, not yet a Dead Lady. Photo via Green-Wood.com.

It will take place 3–5pm (spoooooky golden hour!) on October 27 at Green-Wood.

For more information and to buy tickets, click here. Use code DEADLADIES10 for a $10 discount!

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PodFest Berlin 2024: Anna Göldi & Shirley Chisholm!

We’re delighted to invite you to our third appearance at PodFest Berlin as we celebrate a first and a last for some notable Dead Ladies!

Florian, Katy, and Susan will be presenting a mini-Dead Ladies Show at the podcast festival on Saturday, September 14th starting at 4pm (doors open 3:30pm) at House of Colour (HOCO), Gneisenaustrasse 66–67, Aufgang E, 1st Floor, 10961 Berlin.

Susan will tell the timely tale of the first Black woman to run for the American presidency, and Katy will reprise the story of the last woman to be legally executed after being accused of witchcraft in Switzerland (auf Deutsch, this time). See below for more information on the two ladies in question, who will, as always, be presented in a messy mixture of English and German.

Tickets are €11.83 (including booking fees), or you can purchase day passes and event passes from PodFest Berlin that include the many exciting things going on between September 7–15, including workshops, panels, seminars, and other events! Please book in advance here.

See you soon!

SHIRLEY CHISHOLM was the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress, in 1968. Four years later, she was the first Black person and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Once in Congress, she worked to get surplus food into the hands of those who needed it most and tried to implement federal funding for childcare. She did succeed in giving domestic workers the right to minimum wage, and she pointed out to the women’s movement that women of color faced multiple forms of discrimination. After her death in 2005, her vault in Buffalo was inscribed with her legendary campaign slogan: “Unbought and unbossed”.


ANNA GÖLDI was the last woman to be legally executed after being accused of witchcraft in Switzerland, in 1782 – that’s just seven years before the French Revolution. From a poor family, she worked as a maid in various households. In 1781 she was looking after a young girl who allegedly began spitting up needles. Her wealthy employers accused her of witchcraft, and she was tortured until she admitted being in league with the devil. She was sentenced to death by decapitation for poisoning, even though the girl had not died. Not until 2007 was her case acknowledged as a miscarriage of justice.

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DLS NYC #30

At our 30th (!) show, we’ll be regaled with the stories of an anti-fascist philosopher, a Hollywood It Girl, and a groundbreaking comedian.

Brought to you by a writer-editor who is also YOUR VERY OWN BARTENDER whaaaat; a stand-up comedian; and a sit-down humorist. Emceed by the co-hosts you have come to know and love. It’s going to be a real banger!

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SIMONE WEIL (1909–1943) (pronounced Vay) was a French philosopher, Christian mystic and anti-fascist. After studying philosophy, Weil divided her life between teaching, manual labor on farms and in automobile factories, and traveling Europe. In the 1930s she fought briefly in the Spanish Civil War and had her first mystical experience at the Shrine of St. Francis of Assisi. During World War II she worked for Charles de Gaulle’s Free France. Despite publishing little during her lifetime, her work was discovered and championed by figures like T.S. Eliot and Albert Camus. Her work continues to attract academic interest while her life is inspirational to Christians, leftists and others.

BARBARA PAYTON (1927–1967) was a Hollywood actress known not only for her films but for her social life and her struggles with alcoholism and drugs. She was briefly known as a Hollywood “It Girl”—gossip columnists dubbed her “Queen of Nightclubs.” The film Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye was the high point in Payton’s career. Barbara’s autobiography I Am Not Ashamed details her spiral from being the next famous Hollywood actress to a sex worker on Sunset Boulevard.

PHYLLIS DILLER (1917–2012) was the first female comedian to make it big in the United States. Before Joan Rivers, there was Phyllis, a housewife and mother of 6 children. She didn’t step on a stage until the age of 37. In order to be taken seriously, Diller wore her hair in a crazy style and dressed clownishly to downplay her attractiveness. With zero female role models to look up to, she cobbled together her own comedy style, which led her to gigs on The Tonight Show and a long, storied career. The original Mrs. Maisel, Diller was a groundbreaking performer, who once said, “A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.”

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Your Presenters:

CARRIGAN MILLER is a writer and editor of the KGB Literary Magazine. He is your bartender.

OLIVIA VON BLUE is a stand-up comedian & actress born and raised in Manhattan. She performs all around NYC at venues such as Union Hall, The Slipper Room & Club Cumming. Olivia will perform her solo show “Olivia Von Blue is a Star” September 12th at Union Hall.

JOHANNA GOHMANN is an essayist, humorist, and children’s book writer. A two-time Moth winner, she has written for The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, The Cut, and The Wall Street Journal.

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Podcast #73: Therese Giehse

In this episode of our podcast, DLS co-founder Katy Derbyshire brings us the story of  Therese Giehse, a German actor, pacifist and exile known for founding an anti-Nazi cabaret (which, really, we could all get behind these days). Therese had artistic and other adventures with her lover Erika Mann (daughter of Thomas Mann), was photographed by Annemarie Schwarzenbach, and embodied several of Bertolt Brecht’s best-known characters on stage. She also acted in movies with Vivien Leigh and previous DLS star Romy Schneider.

Born in Munich in 1898, she went against her liberal Jewish family’s expectations to train as an actor, cast as older characters even as a young woman. The Pfeffermühle cabaret started up in 1933, swiftly moving to Zürich to escape the Nazis. With Erika and Klaus Mann, Giehse toured the political show around Europe, never mentioning any names but using parables and storytelling to rip the piss out of Hitler and his henchmen. 

Therese returned to Zürich in 1937, where she joined the outstanding cast at the Schauspielhaus theatre, many of them also emigrants like her. During the war, she performed in the premiere staging of Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage, defining the title role in what some directors have called the greatest play of the 20th century. 

She went on working with Brecht and other key playwrights and directors after 1945, in Munich, Zürich and East Berlin. Therese Giehse maintained her pacifist stance throughout her life, criticizing the Vietnam War at public events. She died in 1975 and is buried with her sister in Zürich.

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

Continue reading “Podcast #73: Therese Giehse”
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DLS NYC #29

Our 29th show features three ladies who made their marks on the world in dramatically different ways. Join us as we learn about a mystic memoirist, a trailblazing crime boss, and enigmatic icon of the silver screen.

By the time she was 20 years old, crime boss STEPHANIE ST. CLAIR (1897–1969) was well on her way to infamy in early 20th-century Harlem. Known as Queen of the Policy Rackets, she ran a lucrative gambling network and resisted control both by the Mafia and by corrupt police. After retiring from racketeering, St. Clair became a political activist, championing the rights of the Black community until her death in 1969.

MARIA RASPUTIN (1898–1977), daughter of the Russian mystic Gregory Rasputin, lived many lives in the twentieth century.  Born in rural Siberia, she stayed with the four grand duchesses in the Alexander Palace until the Revolution forced her into exile. Following brief stints as a cabaret dancer and con artist, she became a lion tamer for circuses across Europe and America, claiming to control beasts with her “Rasputin gaze”. A bear mauling ended her circus career in 1935, and she moved to Los Angeles, worked as a riveter, and wrote three memoirs about her childhood with her beloved father.

MARLENE DIETRICH (1901–1992) was a star of stage and screen who left an immediate impression over audiences worldwide. Noted for her sultry eyes, smokey voice, glamourous fashion sense and often gender defying performances, she remains one of the most famous and fabulous stars in Hollywood history. Not only was she an androgynous sex symbol -he was also a symbol of defiance during World War II. An active supporter of the Allied cause, she performed at numerous USO shows and earned the US Medal Freedom. To this day she remains an ageless style icon, inspiring numerous performers, and exhibitions immortalizing her for generations to come.

Your Presenters:

MOLLY O’LAUGHLIN KEMPER is a writer in New York. You may have read her work in Greener Pastures or Mutha Magazine, or you may have heard her read it aloud from the depths of a walk-in closet on the Everything Good podcast. You may also know her as the co-host of the Dead Ladies Show NYC.

DAISY LONG is a lighting designer and amateur equestrian based in New York City.

JR PEPPER is a photographer, adjunct professor, lecturer, retoucher, photo researcher, cemetery tour-guide and self described ‘professional eccentric.” A New York local, she is known for her spirit photography and knowledge of graves, ghosts and guinea pigs.

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Podcast #72: Miriam Rothschild

In this episode, DLS co-founder Florian Duijsens introduces us to Dame Miriam Rothschild, a British zoologist, entomologist, and botanist. Coming from a wealthy family (yes, those Rothschilds) with an active interest in nature, she started collecting ladybirds and caterpillars and taking a tame quail to bed with her at the age of four. During a stint of WWII codebreaking at Bletchley Park, she pressured the British government to take in more Jewish refugees, providing housing for 49 children in her own (stately) home. She then became a leading authority on fleas, with sidelines in other parasites, butterflies, and meadow restoration.

DLS co-host Katy Derbyshire joins producer Susan Stone to kick off the fun.

If you are in New York, you can see a Dead Ladies Show July 17 and September 25 at the KGB Bar’s Red Room. Find out more from them on Instagram @deadladiesnyc or join up for their newsletter if you like here.

Don’t forget we have a Patreon! This month, Florian is there telling Susan all about another Rothschild — Pannonica, Miriam’s sister, who was named for a moth, and known as the Jazz Baroness for her patronage of and friendships with musical greats including Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. You can join up for as little as $2 or 2 euros a month and enjoy our full archive of special features, and our eternal gratitude. Here’s the link!

We’d also be grateful if you follow us on social media @deadladiesshow where we share pictures and info about all of the wonderful Dead Ladies we’ve covered so far. You can also drop us a line via info@deadladiesshow.com

Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Pocket Casts. You can download the transcript, created by Susan, here.

Show notes:

Continue reading “Podcast #72: Miriam Rothschild”