Filthy Sugar

Set in the mid-1930s, Filthy Sugar tells the story of Wanda Whittle, a nineteen-year-old dreamer who models fur coats in an uptown department store, but who lives in a crowded rooming house with her hard-working widowed mother and shrewd older sister, Evelyn, in the "slums" behind the city's marketplace; a world where "death is always close but life is stubborn." Bored with the daily grind and still in shock from the sudden death of her father, Wanda finds both escapism and inspiration in the celluloid fantasies of the Busby Berkeley musicals, Greta Garbo dramas, and Jean Harlow sex comedies. Strutting up and down the aisles of Blondell's department store, her peep-toe high heels drumming out a steady beat on the waxed linoleum floors, Wanda fantasizes that she's Ruby Keeler, the tap dancing sweetheart from 42nd Street. But Wanda wants more than to wear a glamourous woman's coat—she wants to live inside of her flesh. Her dreams come true after a...