title: Vignettes: Chapters From a Life
author: Vivian Cherry
description: As a young woman, Cherry danced with the Helen Tamiris Dance Company and in concert, and nightclubs including the La Conga and Le Bal Taberin. She was a soloist at the Roxy Theater, and danced on Broadway in Sadie Thompson and in the 1945 a revival of Showboat. After a knee injury she took a job as a darkroom technician for Underwood and Underwood where she developed printing skills. In 1946 she joined the Photo League and studied with Sid Grossman, and soon began selling her photographic essays to magazines such as Life, Look, Popular Photography, Pageant, Jubilee, Coronet, This Week, Salon Photography, Amerika, Redbook, Scope, Parade, Ebony, Sports Illustrated and Colliers. She worked with Arnold Eagle on a documentary film about the Actors Studio and its director, Lee Strasberg. She also produced and photographed a childrens film, Hello Halloween. In 2000, the Brooklyn Museum mounted a major retrospective of her work. In addition she has exhibited and is the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, NYC, International Center For Photography NYC, National Portrait Gallery-Smithsonian, Washington, DC, The Jewish Museum, NYC, The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus OH, Microsoft, Seattle, WA, Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe. NM, Lee Gallery, Winchester, MA, Higher Pictures, NYC, Marquette University, WI, Soho Photo, NYC, Central Fine Arts, NYC, New York Public Library, NYC, The Gallery at St Marys College, St Marys City, MD, Soho Triad, NYC, SK Josephson Gallery, Portland, OR and many others. Vivian Cherry has her photographs appearing in many books including - Picturing NY-Museum of Modern Art, The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day-Harper One, Only Skin Deep-Abrams, Revolution Of the Heart-Temple University Press, Remembering the Lower East Side-Indiana University Press, Loaves and Fishes- Harper &amp; Row, Cityscapes-Columbia University Press, The Radical Camera- Yale University Press etc. Cherry has two books of her photographs published by powerHouse. They are They are Helluva Town: New York in the 1940s and 50s (2007) and Vivian Cherrys New York (2010).
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   **Table of Contents**
  
  CHAPTER I
  
  CHAPTER II
  
  CHAPTER III
  
  CHAPTER IV
  
  CHAPTER V
  
  CHAPTER VI
  
  CHAPTER VII
  
  CHAPTER VIII
  
  CHAPTER IX
  
  OTHER TITLES
  
  ABOUT ME
  
  > CHAPTER I
  
  Ellie Lennox was trying to get laid.
  
  From the way men went on about great racks and easy lays and how open they
  were to sex with beautiful women, it would seem that it should have been way
  easier than it was. Unfortunately, Ellie had several things set against her.
  
  The first was her position. She'd been born into royalty. Ellie knew she
  shouldn't complain about that particular fact. How many people were there out
  there who were born into poverty and had to fight and work themselves to the
  bone just to keep a roof over their head and food on the table? She didn't
  envy them their position