"Florence wasn't just a bad singer: ...she was a stratospherically, catastrophically awful one. And yet it was her limitations that catapulted her to real, lasting stardom." In Florence! Foster!! Jenkins!!!, journalist Darryl W. Bullock (The World's Worst Records) investigates the legendary singer who has been mostly known for a handful of recordings and a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall, both accomplished when she was over 70.
Narcissa Florence Foster Jenkins was born in 1868 to wealthy, educated parents in Pennsylvania. A gifted pianist, she married young and graduated from the Philadelphia Conservatory of Music. By 32, she was divorced and a wealthy heiress. She moved to Manhattan, became a popular socialite and met an attractive younger actor who became her primary lover and manager. She was a gifted, well-connected promoter, financing lavish musical events and charity fund-raisers. She also held private recitals in the Grand Ballroom of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where she sang challenging classical vocal repertoire in outrageous costumes. Her audiences "developed a convention that whenever she came to a particularly excruciating discord... where they had to laugh, they burst into these salvos of applause and whistles and the noise was so great that they could laugh at liberty." But her friends shielded her from the worst criticism and, in many ways, she led a charmed life, devoted to what she loved, talent or no talent.
Bullock discusses the 2016 biopic starring Meryl Streep in his preface and afterword. With or without the movie, this is an entertaining little biography, well grounded in cited research, with illustrations, a detailed timeline and an index. --Sara Catterall