Barbara Gordon, who chronicled her battle with Valium addiction in the best-selling memoir I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can, has passed away.
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Gordon died at her home in New York City on April 7 after several years of ill health. The pioneering author was 90.
“Although an urbanite through and through, she was a force of nature,” her brother, Edward Loeb, said in her online obituary.
Gordon’s memoir about her mental health issues and Valium addiction was groundbreaking at a time when the drug was often overprescribed and thought to be safe. I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can became a bestseller, was shortlisted for an American Book Award, and was adapted into a film starring Jill Clayburgh.
The film adaptation, however, failed to impress critics… or Gordon herself. In her published obituary, she offered a classic Hollywood takedown: “It was an awful disappointment, so different from the book, so unfeeling, so yucky. But I’m not the first writer who had her book horribly altered by Hollywood, and I’m afraid I won’t be the last.”
Even so, the movie helped raise awareness about the dangers of prescription drug addiction. The title became so well-known in the 1980s and ’90s that playwright Tony Kushner used it for a guaranteed laugh line in his 1991 play, Angels in America. Gordon once explained the title’s origin from an old Catskills joke: a man and a woman are dancing at a singles resort when the man says, “I’m only here for the weekend.” The woman replies, “I’m dancing as fast as I can.”
Barbara Gordon Also Had an Impressive Career in TV
Barbara Gordon was born Barbara Sue Loeb on December 19, 1935, in Miami Beach, Florida. After attending Vassar and graduating from Barnard College, she started her career as a secretary at NBC in New York. She quickly moved into a writing role for the network’s Today Show and later became a writer and producer for public television and WCBS, CBS’s New York flagship station.
For WNET, a primary PBS member station now known as Channel 13, Gordon produced segments for the acclaimed 1971–72 series The Great American Dream Machine. During her TV career, she won three New York-area Emmy Awards.
She is survived by her brother and his wife, Melinda, as well as three nephews and other extended family members.