Behind the Burly Q

by Leslie Zemeckis

  Though a lot of the women got into burlesque wanting to be “stars” and hoping it was a stepping stone to legitimate careers, it was not.

  Lili St. Cyr, (lovingly and ironically pronounced sincere) one of the highest-grossing strippers ever, spent years trying to legitimize herself and her career, but when she was cast in movies, it was only ever as a variation of herself. She stripped in Naked and the Dead and performed her Dance of the Seven Veils in Sinbad. In Runaway Girl, her last film, she played a runaway stripper. She was in her forties.

  A vast majority of the women got into burlesque as a means to feed themselves. Only a handful that I interviewed said they had dreamed of being in the business. But as Val Valentine wanted to make clear, “[they] didn’t all come from bad backgrounds.”

  When she was eleven or twelve, Dixie Evans’ father was killed on an oil rig. “My mother crawled into a shell and just sat with an old blue chenille bathrobe with cold cream,” she said. Her mother practiced Christian Science, “Naive,” Dixie called her. She was tired of her mother not working. “Signs then said, ‘Don’t apply for a job if over 25.’ And I was working. No money. My mother couldn’t cope.”

  Dixie, born Mary Lee, began nude modeling in Los Angeles. She told her mom she was modeling for the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalogue. She didn’t tell her about burlesque career for a long time. Dixie eventually became annoyed with her mother’s pious attitude. “I finally ran away. I said, ‘Mom, when that clock ticks midnight, I’m eighteen and I’m outta here and I’m away from you.’ And I left.” She went to Reno, Nevada. It was two years before she reconciled with her mother.

  Others popped into burlesque briefly, later denying it. “But they were there. Ginger Rogers was the head soubrette at the Haymarket,” Dixie informed me. Actress “Sheree North worked Larry Potter’s Supper Club in Los Angeles and Earl Carroll’s. Vaudeville and burlesque were very similar. If the vaudeville didn’t have an act and there was an opening in a burlesque show, believe me, they’d take it. They wouldn’t say ‘Oh, I don’t play burlesque.’ Yes, they did.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  One Glove at a Time

  “I threw up.”

  —Terry Mixon, on her first time stripping

  “‘You want to try a strip this week?’ ‘I’ll try it.’”

  —Betty Rowland on how she started

  Stripper Sherry Britton

  Just who performed the very first strip in history is a thing of speculation and myth in burlesque lore.

  In Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days, author Bernard Sobel speculated that the “willful removing of one’s clothes” (as opposed to straps “accidentally” breaking) began in 1906, when a Millie DeLeon threw a garter to the audience—and thus began America’s popular new attraction. Author Frank Cullen (Vaudeville Encyclopedia) claims the date was 1904 and that “Mlle. DeLeon” was publicity hungry. She was often arrested for “forgetting to don her body stocking.” Her endeavors in the scandal-causing department earned her a promotion: a solo spot at the end of the show—when all the star strippers performed—plus she was excused from group dances and scenes with the comedians. (As a side note, a unique aspect of burlesque was the audience participation, and by 1915, Mlle, was having the men in the audience remove her garter for her.)

  Morton Minsky, one of four brothers who dominated the New York burlesque scene, claims the strip started in 1917 when Mae Dix absentmindedly began removing her costume before she reached the wings. When the crowd cheered, Dix continued removing her clothing to enthusiastic applause. Morton’s brother Billy ordered the “accident” repeated every night.

  Others claim it wasn’t until 1923. According to Rachel Shteir, “Mademoiselle Fifi was the one who the Minsky brothers say started striptease. She goes onstage and her cuffs were dirty. So she starts taking off her cuffs, and so the crowd goes wild.” Shteir added that in those days, the dancers would come on stage with layered costumes and begin peeling down—not very far, mind you.

  Before 1928, Shteir said that stripping consisted of two separate acts. The strip act was where one went onstage and shed her clothes as quickly as possible. And the other was the tease act, which was “more teasy, and it came out of this Jazz Age word ‘teasing,’ which meant to flirt.”

  A platinum-haired beauty, Hinda Wassua was unique for being one of the few exotics that never changed her name to sound less ethnic. The Minsky’s brothers promoting their brand of Americana wanted their strippers to sound American. Thinner than the British Blondes, Wassua was a Midwestern Glamazon mythologized as being another “first” when her bra strap broke one night in Chicago at the State and Congress Theatre. It was 1928. Sobel wrote that Hinda was performing not at the State and Congress, but at the Haymarket, and the Lithuanian lovely (by way of Connecticut birth) was tap dancing and her clothing came undone and the audience cheered. The manager demanded she repeat it the next night. She eagerly did and went on to much acclaim.

  “In the ’20s, you could be funny because you could be ethnic—like The Polish Stripper,” Shteir said. Even Gypsy Rose Lee wasn’t immune to change. “Billy Minsky asked her to change her name and straighten her hair so she wouldn’t appear so ethnic.”

  Author H. M. Alexander claimed in his 1938 book Strip Tease that after the broken strap, the idea spread like wildfire to the rest of the competing theatres and soon owners were demanding their girls “accidently” break a strap or two. Since it made them instant sensations, the girls were only too happy to oblige.

  At the time, nudity was rampant on Broadway in legit theatres. According to Alexander, there were the Shuberts in the early 1920s, with girls who posed nude until “little by little they showed more.”

  An article in Uncensored Magazine claimed that Flo Ziegfeld copied the Folies Bergère extravaganzas, even with the price of a ticket being “four times” the cost of a burlesque show. Hollywood movies at the time showed more nudity and were more daring than the burly cue. It wasn’t until 1934 that the Motion Picture Code clamped down and consequently brought nudity back to the burlesque theatre.

  At the same time, Earl Carroll, the “Prince of Nudies,” had his glorious revue parading across Broadway with bare breasts on display. This forced burlesque to step up and give the men what they wanted: boobs.

  In the 1920s, the comedians went from heavily made up, putty-nosed caricatures to clean faces. They became one with their audience. The men in the audience identified with them. This decade also brought short flapper skirts and the baring of knees. To keep up, burlesque was forced to show more.

  October 24, 1929, saw millionaires leaping out of their high rises and the Great Depression descended on the country, making a boon for cheap, common-denominator entertainment. Burlesque thrived.

  And though France had its Moulin Rouge with plenty of nudity, the performers did not strip. Only in America did women peel off their clothes, teasing the audience with the promise of more. It was a naughty, flirtatious show, neither raunchy or nasty. It was good-spirited fun and tongue in cheek. A flash, a hint, a glimpse—it was more the suggestion or hope of what one might see rather than the reality.

  What was it like the first time you stripped? I asked this of all the women I interviewed.

  For Beverly Anderson, it was a “disaster.” She was booked to perform at a Long Island High School. It was supposed to be a joke strip.” Beverly was to come out in various bathing suits throughout the eras and dance to “By the Sea by the Sea, by the Beautiful Sea.” She was wearing an elastic bathing suit over a two-piece for her final number. She had never rehearsed the number with “perspiration.” The night of the show, as she peeled off the outer bathing suit, along came the two-piece beneath, leaving her stark naked in front of 250 shocked teenagers. She didn’t know what to cover first, her top or bottom.

  Rita Grable went to a high school for performing arts in New York. She was in a dance line at the Copa in Baltimore. When the show closed, an agent approached her. “Would you li
ke to go into burlesque?” he asked. She thought, Are you serious? I’m a dancer. She was nineteen and making $66 a week in the dance line [in the 1950s]. The agent told her, “‘I can get you $125 a week.’” She thought, My god, what do I have to do? “He said sorta take off this. “And I thought, ‘How bad can it be?’” Grable said.

  The agent then took her to a club. She watched other girls and thought, It’s not that hard, and I do have to pay the rent, she said. “And it looked like fun. When you’re nineteen, everything looks like fun. I did it and it was.”

  Lady Midnight’s maiden strip was quite different, without agents or contract negotiations. “The first time I stripped was . . . at my father’s nightclub. I never wanted to be a stripper.” Born Benita Kirkland, her father was the well-known baggy-pants comedian Monkey Kirkland.

  She recalled, “I started in chorus. A week later, there was a dancer who couldn’t dance. I went in her place. Before you knew it I was the co-feature.”

  Candy Cotton also became a stripper by accident. “From being a chorus girl I went to being a stripper because the dancer didn’t show up,” she said. This was an excuse used to explain many of the girls’ maiden voyages.

  In Terry Mixon’s case, the feature dancer was sick and the choreographer of the Old Howard, Bunny Weldon, told her, “You’re going on. Get out there.” Mixon put on the feature’s gown and danced to her music. “It went over very well,” she recalled.

  For Alexandra the Great, fear consumed her during her first strip. “I was afraid I’d fall off the stage. I wasn’t scared [of the stripping]. It’s an adrenaline high—if you get through it. And that’s the last time I felt it.”

  Dixie Evans was working as a page in a vaudeville show in San Francisco. The show closed and she couldn’t get back to Los Angeles. She was sitting at the bottom of the stairs of a burlesque club while a girl was bumping on stage. Dixie was “terrified.” Someone said to her, “You want to work? You’ll make a lot of money. See Bernie at the Chinese Noodle Shop. Here’s twenty dollars; get a costume.” She bought a sheer pink nightgown, grabbed a pillow, and danced to “Mr. Sandman.” She took off her nightgown. “That’s all I had,” she said.

  Sunny Dare of the blue hair, born Roberta Bauman, joined the Sally Rand brigade. And we ended up in Dallas, Texas. And we got stiffed for all our work. So, I had to do a strip to get enough money to get back home on.”

  Some first nights could be harrowing. “My first act, the women in the audience threw their fruit out of their drinks at me,” Vicki O’Day said. “So I had to give them a little talk that I didn’t want their husbands and everything. And then I was OK.”

  Vicki O’Day, formerly Westlin, started stripping relatively late, at age twenty-nine. She said in general the women in the audience liked her because “I wasn’t particularly busty. I wasn’t a threat to women. I put humor in my act.”

  One of the first things a stripper did was change her name. Candy Cotton chose her moniker because she liked “candy cotton and my hair was like it. It was a big fluff of hair.”

  Dardy Orlando took her last name at her famous sister Lili St. Cyr’s suggestion. Lili’s lover at the time was Jimmy Orlando, a wildly popular former hockey player who had dominated the Canadian rink. His was an easily recognizable name in Montreal, where both sisters performed.

  Sometimes their monikers backfired. When Gypsy Rose Lee tried acting in movies, she was billed by her real name Louise Hovick because producers were worried about the stigma associated with “Gypsy,” though they had hired her because of it.

  Kitty West, aka Evangeline the Oyster Girl, said, “In those days we didn’t have to show... as they would say ... our private parts. Or strip down naked to be appealing.”

  A rare few of the women crossed over into “legitimate” entertainment in a small way. Ann Corio performed in B movies for Monogram Studios.

  According to Shteir, most strippers “weren’t really actresses; they knew how to do their act, sometimes sing, dance, and that was it. It didn’t transform into a career in Hollywood.”

  Shtier continued, “It was the lowest form of entertainment in popular entertainment. ... People looked down on it both in the entertainment world and just generally—like a lot of things that people look down on, they also coveted. Like the way people do with rap today. It’s a double-edged sword.”

  Stripteasing in itself was a transient occupation. Some stripped for a relatively short time before moving on. Others became managers, like Lillian Hunt, and stayed in the world. Leroy Griffith segued from a teenage candy butcher to owner of burlesque clubs, to an owner of a strip club. It was a small community that provided protection for the performers. According to Shteir, the performers “sought out family” because of their difficult personal family situations and because the “women couldn’t get out of the business so easily.”

  Lady Midnight recalled that “sometimes you’d get a judgmental look. In those days [people] thought you must be promiscuous.... We worked hard for our living, three shows a day, five on Saturday, four on Sunday. We never had a day off in the theatre. Ever.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Circus Life

  “I didn’t bump and grind much. Carneys put a damper on burlesque. They were rough on the midway.”

  —Joni Taylor

  “It was an amazing invasion into a community.”

  —Professor Janet Davis

  The World’s Columbia Exhibition of 1893 in Chicago was the start of carnivals in America. The word “midway” came from the Columbia Exhibition. “The circus created the midway—because from that big top to the marquee, the front door, that’s the midway.”

  The midway would morph into rides, exhibits, and attractions, and eventually become crammed with sideshows. The midway was also where the “cooch” shows played. A barker would stand out front on what was called a bally platform with a bevy of scantily clad beauties and lure the “rubes” (local customers) into the tent for a scandalous, often all-nude show.

  Carnivals and circuses were the premiere form of entertainment for most of America in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries. For many, it was the only type of show available to rural America—and what a glorious extravaganza it was. Before most people had ever been to a zoo and before movie theatres appeared in every town, the circus brought exotic animals and fantastic spectacles—including nudity—to the masses. On opening day, there were long lines of chorus girls. Shows under the tent involved several hundred cast members. A circus often sat ten thousand people or more. Burlesque-style dancing and costumes were a part of the circus and carnival shows, of course. In fact, circus burlesquers had more freedom and they got away with a lot more nudity because the circus was smart enough to “market itself as education’ for the entire family.... There wasn’t a lot of censor,” explained Dr. Janet Davis, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

  Circus and carnivals were places where “people on the margins of society found a home and felt safe, where they couldn’t elsewhere.” Entertainment under the tents was a “freewheeling cheap amusement.” It was “democratic,” accessible to anyone because of the price and also the type of entertainment. It wasn’t highbrow. This type of entertainment had much in common with burlesque in the theatres. It was a crucial forum “for telling stories about the rest of world, recreating spectacles and peace treaties.”

  The circus attracted lesbians, gays, and others who felt safe among the other “outcasts” of their day. Strippers, homosexuals, female impersonators. Freaks among freaks.

  And though many considered performing in the canvas shows to be “low rent,” it was a lucrative gig. Both Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand worked Royal American Circuses and made a fortune. In 1949, at the age of thirty-eight, Gypsy performed eight to fifteen shows a day, and earned ten thousand dollars a week while touring with her four-year-old son and third husband. The huge sum of money wasn’t the only reason Gypsy, at the height of her fame, was working s
o hard: It was in her blood—the love of travel, living out of a trailer, the rapport between the circus folks. The circus’s GYPSY AND HER ROYAL AMERICAN BEAUTIES sign stretched high into the night sky—proof of the size of the crowds she could attract.

  Gypsy’s act consisted of scantily dressed girls who she would then slowly dress in her clothes, leaving herself in only a corset. According to Billboard Magazine, Royal American did a brisk business and Gypsy’s tent was consistently packed. She was the first name attraction hired by Royal American. Sally Rand would follow.

  Many dipped into the carny life, from Georgia Sothern (once billed as the Human Bombshell) in the late 1940s to Lili St. Cyr, who worked her last fair in 1970. Others I interviewed—Candy Cotton, Dixie Evans, Ricki Covette, and Mimi Reed—all worked under the canvas.

  Dixie Evans claimed that she loved working for the circus. “I really did. I went with a bareback rider for a while. Up in North Dakota, Wyoming, and way up there, they don’t have shows like we have in the big cities. So the [circus] trains would go up there with a big show at the end of the season when everybody’s through with husking the corn and whatever they do way up there and everything. Oh, they look forward to these shows! And Sally Rand was a headliner. I mean the people adored her. They loved her,” Dixie recalled.

  The girl show revues, as they were called in the carnivals, were large burlesque shows, with chorus lines, variety acts, and strippers. These were not “cooch shows.” The cooch shows had only a couple girls and they took off all their clothes. That was certainly not burlesque.

  Daphne Lake had been a snake charmer on a circus for four years. But when the show closed, she was stranded in the South with little money. “I went to the girls show” she said. “They needed bally girls. Talker comes out on stage and talks about the show inside and look at the pretty girls!’ A lot of times those people aren’t in the show. I was pretty much a shill. I’d be there in my little evening gown—I had one gown—and make big smiles at the audience. In those days, as a car hop, I was lucky to see twenty-five dollars a week.” Daphne made seventy-five dollars for three shows a day, seven days a week.