Debutante: The Story of Brenda Frazier

by Gioia Diliberto

Drawing on interviews, diaries, letters, and scrapbooks, this biography traces the rise and fall of the first and most famous of the celebrity debutantes, illustrating the strange customs of three generations of high society

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

331 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 1987

About the author

Gioia Diliberto is the author of eight books -- three historical novels and five nonfiction narratives -- and a play. Her writing, which focuses on women's lives, has been praised for combining rich storytelling and literary grace with deep research to bring alive worlds as varied as Jazz Age Paris, nineteenth century Chicago, Belle Epoque Paris, disco era Manhattan, and Prohibition New York. Her books have been translated into several languages, and her articles have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian, Town & Country, and Vanity Fair. She also teaches writing and has taught at DePaul and Northwestern Universities and the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Gioia is the mother of a grown son and lives in Woodbury, Connecticut with her husband.

Reviews

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1938 American mass media -- including afternoon newspapers, flash radio broadcasts and picture magazines like LIFE -- seemed obsessed with the impending coming-out of a seventeen-year-old socialite named Brenda Frazier. She was beyond debutante: Walter Winchell upped the ante by christening the lovely teenager the first "celebutante."

Brenda was the youngest member of a group of de facto "poor little rich girls," along with Barbara Hutton, Gloria Vanderbilt and Doris Duke. Though, like them, Frazier was well known mostly for being well known, her exploits charmed and fascinated a Depression-scarred nation, most of whom had never visited New York or set foot in a nightclub.

In fact, Frazier's education, as controlled by her domineering and social-climbing mother, ended when she was fifteen. She was café society's darling for a while, but groomed for an almost-inevitable adult life of letdowns and anti-climaxes. Author Gioia Dilberto tells Frazier's story well in this 1987 biography.

Photos: Brenda Frazier as she appeared on the cover of LIFE magazine:


Later on, adored and bored:

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's something so satisfying in reading about miserable rich people.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engrossing book, not only was it an interesting treatment of the subject, but also her life and times. Paris Hilton should read this and take note.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and depressing.

[Evil Shelley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well researched, but it's hard to scrape up any real concern or interest in the lives of these petty people.

[Joelle Diderich · Rating 5 out of 5]

“On top of the bed were clouds of lacy pillows and flowered cotton sheets, which Brenda always covered with plastic before eating dinner or slitting her wrists.”

Gioia Diliberto’s compelling biography of Brenda Frazier is painstakingly researched and vividly written. She has managed to draw a nuanced portrait of a woman whose tantrums and addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs could easily have lent themselves to caricature. Instead, the book reads like an indictment of a leisure class devoted to frivolous pursuits, to the detriment of basic human relations. Still, the power of that glamorous image holds strong - the proof being that we’re still talking about America’s Glamour Girl No. 1, 82 years after she made her debut.

[Wendy · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was barely readable. The narrative was structured like the author had a word and quota and couldn’t meet it simply by telling Brenda’s story and therefore inserted a lot of tenuously related filler. Just read something else. Anything else.

[Joni Aveni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this glimpse into the world of Cafe Society. What a sad and shallow life! To think she lived only a mile away from me in her last years when I attended BU!

[Tommy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so weird because I think the fall of the rich, privileged and famous is so damned interesting. Another fallen gem I would have loved to known. It was hard to get into, but well worth the read. The decline and addictions were a fascinating read, not to mention the wealth of revealing social history! I can so relate to the social register upper crust folks!