One of America's most talked about Jazz Age personalities, Peggy Hopkins Joyce was the quintessential gold digger, the real-life Lorelei Lee. Married six times, to several millionaires and even a count, Joyce had no discernible talent except self-promotion. A barber's daughter who rose to become a Ziegfeld Girl and, briefly, a movie star, Joyce was the original modern celebrity -- a person famous for being famous. Her scandalous exploits -- spending a million dollars in a week, conducting torrid love affairs with both Charlie Chaplin and Walter Chrysler -- were irresistible to tabloid journalists in search of sensation and to audiences hungry for the glamour her life seemed to promise.
Joyce's march across Broadway, Hollywood, and the nation's front pages was only slowed by the true nemesis of the glamour girl: old age. She died in 1957, alone and forgotten -- until now.
