Biography
Caspary was born prematurely in Chicago – her mother, Julia (née Cohen), already over forty with three other nearly-grown children, had hidden her condition. Her father, Paul. was a buyer for a department store; he and her mother were both second generation German and Russian Jewish immigrants. Being such a surprise to her family, Caspary was thoroughly spoiled as a child.
After her graduation from high school in 1917, her father enrolled her in a six month course in a business college, and by January 1918, Caspary found herself working as a stenographer. Caspary went through a string of menial office jobs, looking for one where she could write instead of taking dictation from people with bad grammar. While working at an advertising agency composing copy, she invented the fictitious "Sergei Marinoff School of Classic Dancing", a mail order dance course. Caspary wrote all the materials for this and other correspondence courses she had little knowledge of, including one that taught screenwriting. She was also producing articles for publications such as Finger Print Magazine, and the New York -based Dance Lovers Magazine. By 1922, she had turned down a raise from $50 to $75 to write from home and work on her first novel.
Read more about this topic: Vera Caspary
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
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