Month: July 2024

GOAT Conquers GLOAT In Battle Of Swimmer Biopic Subjects

Gertrude Ederle and Diana Nyad are both women swimmers with recent biopics. That’s where their similarities end.

“Before Diana Nyad, There Was Trudy Ederle”
—IndieWire headline

“‘Young Woman and the Sea’ claims its own lane alongside ‘Nyad’”
— Washington Post headline

When “Young Woman And The Sea” opened in theatres in May, reviewers and headline writers suggested that Nyad and Ederle share more than a gender, a sport, and a recent biopic. They were wrong.

“Young Woman and the Sea” begins streaming today, so it’s a good time to look at why  Gertrude Ederle is one of the greatest swimmers of all time, and Diana Nyad is one of sports’ all-time greatest liars.

Above: On the day after Ederle’s crossing, the Boston Globe devoted most of its front page and all of page 7 to her accomplishment.

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Nyad To Bring Find a Way Home To The Hamptons

Next month, Diana Nyad will bring her memoir to East Hampton, New York, just up the road from where her mother spent much of her toddlerhood. In an interview with a Hamptons-based magazine, Nyad tells her usual tales. More tantalizing, though, are the tales she doesn’t tell.

Above: The biographies of Robert Caro (top left) of New York urban planner/public official Robert Moses and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson have earned him two Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, and too many other honors to list here. On the top right is MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid, whose book “Medgar & Myrlie” the New York Times calls “a 352-page love letter” to civil rights leaders Medgar and Myrlie Evers. Neil deGrasse Tyson and Nelson DeMille will have to fend for themselves biographically because this caption’s already too long. The fifth author doesn’t belong with the other four.

On August 5, 1922, about 300 guests arrived at the Southampton summer home of George Warrington Curtis — an heir to the Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup patent medicine fortune — for what The New York Herald called a “fete Champetre,” a “party in the fields.”

Curtis had asked guests to arrive at his 100-acre Captains Neck Lane estate before ten p.m. Driving onto the grounds after that would be too dangerous; all lights would be on the night’s entertainment: The Marion Morgan Dancers.

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