Molly Spotted Elk: A Penobscot in Paris

This biography chronicles the extraordinary life of twentieth-century performing artist Molly Spotted Elk. Born in 1903 on the Penobscot reservation in Maine, Molly ventured into show business at an early age, performing vaudeville in New York, starring in the classic docudrama The Silent Enemy, then dancing for royalty and mingling with the literary elite in Europe. In Paris she found an audience more appreciative of authentic Native dance than in the United States. There she married a French journalist, but she was forced to leave him and flee France with her daughter during the German occupation of 1940. Using extensive diaries in conjunction with letters, interviews, and other sources, Bunny McBride reconstructs Molly’s story and sheds light on the pressure she and her peers endured in having to act out white stereotypes of the "Indian."