The Pirate Queen

Published on June 21, 2015

The music:

*Under the credits is Harlaamstrat 74 off of John Dankworth’s great, ridiculous Modesty Blaise score.
*The recurring piano theme is Les Marionettes by Zbigniew Preisner from his score to La Double Vie de Veronique (And, have you seen The Double Life of Veronique? Man, that’s good)
*Eugenia’s dreamy little theme is Just Saying by Jamie XX off of In Colour
*That organ track is called Organ Track by Nicolai Dunger from The Cloud is Learning
*Al Davis’ dance theme is Watusi Bounce from Bo Diddly’s Ride On/The Chess Masters
*Helen watches Eugenia on the lawn at the Grand Hotel to the tune of To a Wild Rose by Patricia Rossborough from the collection Dainty Debutantes: Female Novelty Pianists of the 1930’s (And, ugh. Dismissive much?)
*The Judge drones over one of Scott Watson’s Six Solos for the Beginning Tuba Player from his 2008 album, Stepping Stones for Tuba, vol. 1 (like I need to tell you that)
*The ending piece is Mike Andrews lovely Library Chant from his score to Miranda July’s lovely Me and You and Everyone we Know

Notes:
I first stumbled across this story in my torn up copy of New York: Confidential! Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer’s truly mucky, muck-raking guide to the city’s underbelly from 1951. I read a ton of old news paper articles about the case (the New York Times covered it extensively, if you want to go back and read those).

The two most useful books I came across in the process were Joshua Zeitz’ Flapper and Lewis Erenberg’s Steppin’ Out: New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930