Word: clio
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Dates: during 1941-1941
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Edna Ferber is more adroit. Her Creole heroine, Clio Dulaine, is not only beautiful, but hard, in the manner of Scarlett O'Hara and other cut-rate Becky Sharps. Clio takes up with Gambler Clint Maroon: "He was magnificent, he was vast, he was beautiful, he was crude, he was rough, he was untamed, he was Texas." He was also a gambler, but Clio soon seduced him into larger ambitions...
After Miss Ferber has warmed the pair up around New Orleans of the early '80s, she takes them North to Saratoga's United States Hotel. There, as the Comtesse de Trenaunay de Chanfret (incognito), Clio sets the town by its ears. She breakfasts at six in the stables, eats potato chips outdoors, sets other new styles. She also sets her cap and her talons for railroad multimillionaire Bart Van Steed, the most eligible bachelor in the Western Hemisphere...
Maroon, meanwhile, has Gary-Coopered his way in & out of Clio's boudoir, various gambling halls, and the offices of J. P. Morgan in New York. He runs a first-class Western-style fight against railroad pirates, during which two locomotives collide in a tunnel. He gets back to Saratoga in time to claim his lady at an effectively staged costume ball, and to promise her that he'll make more money than Van Steed ever dreamed...