Noralee Frankel’s live­ly biog­ra­phy, Strip­ping Gyp­sy, the first ever pub­lished about the high­ly mythol­o­gized Gyp­sy, exam­ines the strug­gles Lee faced in mak­ing a lucra­tive and uncon­ven­tion­al career for her­self while main­tain­ing a sense of dig­ni­ty and social val­ue. Frankel shows that the famous Miss Lee was an enig­ma, clear­ly strug­gling with her choic­es and her desire to be respect­ed and legit­imized. Those who know Gyp­sy Rose Lee only from the musi­cal and film based on her rise to star­dom will be sur­prised by what they uncov­er in Strip­ping Gyp­sy. In all ways, Lee traf­ficked in the incon­gru­ous: she was at once sex object, intel­lec­tu­al, and activist. In addi­tion to her high­ly suc­cess­ful strip-tease act and film career, she pub­lished two mys­tery nov­els and a mem­oir, wrote two plays, and showed her orig­i­nal art­work in famed Mod­ern Art-impre­sario Peg­gy Guggen­heim’s gallery. Lee also gained noto­ri­ety for her par­tic­i­pa­tion in lib­er­al pol­i­tics. As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Arnold New­man said, ​“She was a lady, a bril­liant, bright woman who was the friend of many writ­ers and intel­lec­tu­als.” Though she was­n’t above using her fem­i­nin­i­ty to full advan­tage, Lee aspired to much more than admi­ra­tion for her phys­i­cal beau­ty.