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Her parents, for lack of a better word, were hustlers: her father was a grifting heroin addict while her mother lived on the fringes of movieland, working as a cigarette girl at the Copacabana and landing bit parts on shows like "I Love Lucy" yet never quite catching that elusive big break.

His father, Francesco "Frank" Stallone Sr., worked as a hairdresser while his mother, Jacqueline "Jackie" Stallone, worked as a cigarette girl at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe nightclub.

I drafted my first novel in the first six weeks of my son’s life, balancing him on a nursing pillow clipped around my body like a cigarette girl’s tray.

A New York boy’s life and a cigarette girl’s story recall World War II-era radio.

She sometimes looked directly at the camera, with an apparent smirk, and other times appeared serenely lost in thought, always with her little tray of Fiji bottles like an old-fashioned cigarette girl.