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Cover of I'd Do It Again! A Memoir by Harriet Wright with Brie Austin
A memoir

I’d Do It Again!

By Harriet Wright with Brie Austin

The short answerI’d Do It Again! is the memoir of Harriet Wright, who danced in the first chorus line of New York’s Copacabana after Jimmy Durante spotted her at the 1939–40 World’s Fair. Brie Austin co-wrote it. iUniverse published the paperback in 2005.

Harriet Wright was in her mid-twenties, swimming in the Aquacade at the New York World’s Fair, when Jimmy Durante picked her for the Copacabana’s first chorus line. Within a few years her name ran in the city’s gossip columns. Her life detoured to a life in Cairo, a love affair in Tunisia, a weekend in jail and six weeks on a yacht cruising the Caribbean with José Ferrer.

Her son Clovis became the youngest designer ever to win the Coty Award, and that opened the doors of the fashion world and Studio 54 to her. Years after her husband died in a plane crash in the mountains of Ethiopia, she learned that he had been working in military intelligence and that the official account was a cover story.

Buy the paperback on Amazon Read the prologue

Book details

Authors Harriet Wright with Brie Austin
Genre Memoir
Publisher iUniverse, Inc.
Published August 29, 2005
Format Paperback, 170 pages
ISBN 978-0595364923 (ISBN-10 0595364926)

From the Copacabana story to the book

Brie Austin’s feature Copacabana: The Great American Supperclub tells the story of New York’s most famous supper club. I’d Do It Again! tells it from inside the chorus line, through the eyes of one of its first dancers. Read together, they show the Copacabana from both sides of the footlights.

About the authors

Harriet Wright has been a dancer, designer, wife and mother, and stayed a charismatic, eccentric presence through all of it. Brie Austin is a columnist and journalist with more than sixty published nonfiction articles on business, travel and entertainment, including the Copacabana feature. More about Brie →

Questions about the book

Who wrote I’d Do It Again!?Harriet Wright, with Brie Austin as co-author.
Who was Harriet Wright?A dancer in the Copacabana’s first chorus line, discovered by Jimmy Durante at the Aquacade during the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair, and mother of the fashion designer Clovis.
When was it published?iUniverse published the paperback on August 29, 2005.
Where can I buy it?The paperback is available on Amazon (ISBN 978-0595364923).