At the time of her arrest, Lili St. Cyr had been taking it off for nearly a decade. She spent hours, days, and thousands of dollars preparing acts that involved elaborate sets and ornate costumes, many that she sewed herself. She was a perfectionist, not merely a stripper. An artist, Giesler would emphasize again and again in front of the jury and to the ever-vigilant press. He wanted the papers on her side and wasn’t afraid to feed them stories. Her profession was misunderstood, marginalized. Lili wasn’t doing anything against the law, nor was she doing anything that could be deemed indecent. Artists” shouldn’t be judged by the same standards as others, he argued. Giesler was prepared to show her performance was “art” and asked the court to select a jury that was “capable of judging such things on their artistic merit.” He also proposed to the court that Lili perform her act for the jury at a private show at Ciro’s. The judge rejected such an offer.
THE ACT
Lili, starting out as a chorus girl, was clever and determined that she wasn’t going to toil in the ranks of struggling dancers. And she made it, reportedly earning $200,000 a year at her height. She said about stripping, “I’m flattered by the attention.”
Throughout the years, Lili’s acts grew complicated and expensive. In Vegas, she stripped from a metal cage that traversed across the room with her perched on a swing just above the audience’s reaching hands as she dropped her skimpy panties. Those doing the reaching included both First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and Ronald Regan.
Lily even named her scenarios. In “Suicide,” she entered the stage semidressed in panties and bra. In front of a mirror, she would contemplate her image, run a brush through her short blonde curls, sometimes tossing off her rhinestone jewelry, other times keeping them on as a maid prepared a bath in the ornate and translucent tub center stage. Next, the lithe dancer submerged herself in the tub, running a sponge up her leg, which was jack-knifed into the air for the audience to see. Next, the maid, usually her real and loyal Sadie, would hold a large thick towel between Lili and the audience as Lili emerged, wrapping herself in the folds of the white towel, twirling, giving audiences tantalizing glimpses of a perfect shape, still mostly clothed in net panties and pasties.
Other scenarios were “Cinderella,” “Geisha,” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” based on the Oscar Wilde novel. She was, as she told Mike Wallace on his television show, always paying for things (including ex-husbands) and spared no expense for her act, her wardrobe, or her jewels. There would be variations of her bathtub show “Wedding Night,” wherein she prepared and bathed as an expectant bride. It was her bathtub act that became her signature piece that would land her in hot water in Hollywood.
CIRO’S
Ciro’s was the Sunset Strip’s swankiest spot in the late 1940s and ’50s. With its red ceiling and matching red banquettes, it’s where the kings and queens of Hollywood ensconced themselves with cold martinis and where bad behavior reigned in a clubby, members-only-type atmosphere—not the least of which was Paulette Goddard’s giving “favors” under the tables.
Across the street, its competitor, the Brazilian-themed Macambo, fought for top spot with the movie stars, studio heads, and gossip columnists who kept the clubs’ names in front of the public. Macambo’s decor was courtesy of excessive, whimsical-themed decorator Tony Duquette. Its wallpaper was black and white striped, and cages filled with live parrots and squawking birds lined the walls.
Ciro’s imported stellar acts, such as Edith Piaf, Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, and Mae West. Martin and Lewis became stars at the club. So loyal and grateful were the pair that when they were grossing $100,000 a week around the country, they came back and performed at their old rate of $7,000. Bugsy Siegel had a ringside table. Every night it was see and be seen.
Herman Hover was the short, plump bachelor owner and promoter of Ciro’s. He hosted parties for the stars, whom he considered his friends, at his home and evening at his club. Later he would be arrested for the attempted murder of his brother-in-law, whom he tried to choke to death on the streets of Beverly Hills.
Hover had gotten his start with Earl Carroll, the Broadway musical producer known for his barely dressed showgirls. He had earned the nickname the “troubadour of the nude.”
Hover would do anything to steal customers from the competition across the street. Ciro’s shows were huge, theatrical extravagances, taken from Hover’s vaudevillian past. Sonja Henie road an elephant on stage and the acrobatic team the Corsoni Brothers performed. At that point, Hover had never booked a stripper before he met Lili. Surely Lili would pack ‘em in. He saw Lili’s act in New York and wanted that special brand of glamour and aloofness that she projected onstage in his club. Her reputation in a brash world of strippers was strictly high-class. She wasn’t low-brow and bawdy like Rose La Rose, who flashed her pubic hair.
Ciro’s had never seen the likes of Lili, with her haughty, Nordic looks, almond-shaped green eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, and a dancer’s long, tight body. Her looks were exaggerated in a Sophia Loren kind of way. Her dark eyebrows were drawn into high arcs above her real ones. She was the epitome of the 1950s aesthetic of sophisticated and polished looks, not a hair out of place. Like fashion models Suzy Parker and Dovima, she was the era’s aesthetic ideal, slimmer than the sex symbols of decades past. By 1951, she had obtained a shellacked perfection. She was impenetrable, swaddled in fur, cloaked in perfume, and tossing jewels as if they were paste. She was the elusive dame who took it off for strangers.
Lili would reveal her body, but not her soul.
For Lili’s debut, Hover spent thousands of dollars expanding Ciro’s stage and constructing a set that included a solid silver bathtub for the fair stripper. Nothing was too good for his loyal patrons. Nothing was too good for Lili. Hover was planning the publicity he needed to shove it to those across the street.
Opening nights would always make Lili nervous. She suffered from terrible stage fright, claiming she couldn’t stand people to look at her. She was as uncomfortable walking into a cocktail party with all her clothes on, as she was used to being on the stage shedding it for a large crowd.
At Ciro’s, she performed to sold-out crowds. The biggest stars, including the LA mayor and a few sheriffs, jammed the club. Lili wowed em. She was a hit.
THE ARREST
October 19, 1951. Ciro’s was crowded with the usual movie stars—Ronald Regan, Ava Gardner, Mickey Rooney (whose father Joey Yule was an old burlesque comedian)—who ordered up drinks, waived to studio heads, nuzzled their dates. The regulars were in attendance. They’d come to see Lili’s return engagement of her “Interlude for Evening.”
Though sold out, the audience in the supper club was more sedate than what Lili was used to in the burly houses where, starting out, she was billed variously as Lili Finova, Lili Fehnova, Lili LaRue, and Lili LaBang. Maybe the movie stars had to act as if they’d seen it all before. Maybe they thought she was nothing more than a spectacular body.
Hover was determined to give his competitors a pain in their cash registers. He was not above calling the police and/or reporters himself when fights broke out among guests, which happened far too frequently. Any publicity helped his club. According to his niece, Sheila Weller, who wrote the book Dancing at Ciro’s, Hover like all the nightclub owners on the Strip had a special relationship with the LA sheriff’s department. Nothing went on in the clubs that the sheriff didn’t know about. Insider tips were as prevalent then as they are today. If there were arrests going down, Hover would know. If something ended up in the paper, it was because he wanted it there.
Over steak tartar and escargot, the smell of smoke wafting above patrons’ heads, Lili began her act. She laughed, she seduced. One leg smoothly shot into the air. She leaned her head back, smiled. A square diamond necklace framed her neck like a yoke. Champagne corks continued to pop, ice tinkled in drinks, silverware clashed. Busboys in maroon jackets scurried by.
Somewhere Lili had to have become aware of a change in the house�
�a different sound, a scuffle perhaps. Raised voices. Urgent whispers. Attention was drawn from the stage and, subsequently, her. Something was going on in the house.
Three officers of the law descended upon her. She was under arrest.
In her dressing room, the woman officer confiscated Lili’s net panties and rhinestone-encrusted net bra as evidence.
Hover was arrested, too. There was a big splash the next day in all the papers.
Lili was nervous. She’d just been arrested in Montreal and didn’t relish the idea of spending time in jail again. There was only so much a performer could endure before she could be labeled off-limits. Lili couldn’t afford to be out of work. If she was “trouble” or targeted, perhaps her weekly fee would suffer in addition to her nerves. She had no other skills, no other way to make a living.
TRIAL
December 4th. Lili arrived in court in a dark suit, wrapped in mink for the jury of ten women and twelve men, carefully assembled from a pool Giesler chose that might appreciate or at least understand Lili’s “artistic performance.” Giesler had spent careful hours advising his client what to wear. Lili looked like the proverbial million bucks, not like a low-rent peeler. She sat demurely and immaculately groomed, listening to the two arresting police officers describe her act to the jury, detailing her “voluptuous figure,” which was now primly out of sight.
Giesler had already used his famous bumbling act to put the jury at ease, fumbling for words, soft-spoken. He was known to appear so ill-equipped that jurors would feel sorry for his clients before testimony even began. It was all an act. He addressed jurors and witnesses with the same quiet respect. His homely looks and lack of flash earned him trust.
Giesler approached the testifying officer, and politely asked the officer to explain what he was doing at the show that featured a well-known stripper. “Eating dinner,” the officer replied, as if it was perfectly normal for a sergeant to dine at Ciro’s on a cop’s salary.
Giesler made a point of asking if Lili’s performance at all “excited” the officer.
The officer denied that it did. He just continued eating his dinner through it.
“Did you applaud the act?” Giesler softly asked.
“I did,” the officer acknowledged.
One can imagine Lili suppressing a smile. It was a good day in court for Jerry and Lili.
December 5th. Lili’s act at Ciro’s had lasted all of fourteen minutes. The second arresting officer took a good twenty-five minutes to describe it, in detail. The officer testified that Lili “bumped and grinded”—two things Lili had a reputation for not doing. The third arresting officer, a female, would testify Lili had worn a bra and G-string, but claimed “there wasn’t much you couldn’t see.” This was the art of burlesque, making them think they saw more than was ever revealed. A good burlesque act was an illusion.
Giesler turned to the jury. He presented his claim that the officers went to Ciro’s with the intention of arresting Lili, no matter what her act, in reality, was. Someone had decided before she stepped one painted toenail into her bathtub that her act was going to be indecent. The stripper was framed, Giesler intimated.
Next on the stand was nightclub owner Hover, who, with Giesler’s insistence, demonstrated to the eager jury exactly what a “bump” was. Hover told the jury Lili did not perform a “bump” or a “grind” at Ciro’s. There were titters of laughter in the court as the fat little nightclub owner attempted an offending move for the jury and reporters.
December 7th. The jury awaited the testimony of the star defendant Lili St Cyr. Fully clothed, Lili slowly and calmly went through the motions of her act; stepping in and out of an imaginary tub, twirling, pirouetting across the courtroom, her courteous attorney playing the role of her attentive stage maid.
With a flourish, Gielser produced the sixty-two-inch-wide, thick towel that Lili wrapped herself in as she emerged from the “tub” like she did every night of her performance. As the “maid,” he stood in front of the jury/audience to shield Lili. Sixty-two inches was an awfully big prop and covered up much of the stripper. How much of Lili could really be seen? The jury got it.
The presentation of the case was over. It was time for ten women and two men to decide Lili’s future.
After only eighty minutes, the jury was ready with their answer.
While she wrung a lace hanky in her hands, the jury pronounced Lili innocent of lewd and indecent exposure charges.
Lili burst into a relieved smile and shook each and every hand of the jury, declaring it was a victory for strippers and burlesque artists everywhere. “I’m really relieved,” she said. “It’s a wonderful and a real victory.”
She threw her arms around Giesler and smiled for the cameras, holding Exhibit “A” and “B,” her rhinestone-encrusted panties and bra. She was radiant. Jerry himself looked extremely satisfied.
The fame from the trial Lili acquired sent her career (and subsequently her earnings) skyrocketing; this brought endless engagements and travel.
Jerry’s fame was forever cemented by Lili’s touch of glamour. He would be so pleased with the ensuing publicity that followed, he never bothered to bill Lili. Lili and Jerry’s shared triumph in court legitimized Lili’s career and sprinkled Jerry with Stardust. He was a few years away from another blonde damsel in distress, Marilyn Monroe, who it was claimed saw many of Lili’s performances so that she could pattern herself after the burlesque queen. Marilyn would turn to the saggy-chinned attorney in tears after her very public divorce from Joe DiMaggio. He would stand patiently beside the teary-eyed blonde like he had for Lili.
Giesler was the ultimate small-time boy with the Midwestern work ethic, determined to make good in the world. And he did. His career went on for almost a half century.
Lili retired from the stage and public life in her early fifties.
The highest-paid stripteaser had no steady income in her last decades. She grew old and bent, suffered from arthritis or osteoporosis, living with her countless cats in an apartment across from Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
At the time of Lili’s death, she had become a mere footnote to burlesque, dying in obscurity as she had lived for her last several decades. But for a time, there was no one as famous as Lili St. Cyr.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Men That Made Us Great
“Early burlesque was a family entertainment. That’s hard to believe, but it was.”
—Alan Alda
“There were never any newcomers. There was never anyone new coming into the business.”
—Val Valentine
Burlesque shows didn’t run themselves. Besides the Minsky brothers, there were many impresarios responsible for the beautiful burlesque shows both in the theatre and clubs.
Legendary producer Billy Rose was diminutive in stature only. So short was Billy, he would supposedly book the seat in front of him when he went to the theatre so his view wouldn’t be obstructed.
He was an excellent lyricist. “Me and My Shadow” is one of his most famous compositions. Rose had his fingers in all things burlesque, from producing carnival shows to running nightclubs in the ’20s.
He opened Casa Manana in Fort Worth, Texas. It was an outdoor theatre with a huge revolving stage and a moat. The theatre’s “curtain” was a fountain of water spraying up from a circular moat. It was part of the Texas Centennial of 1936. Gypsy Rose Lee gave him “The Evolution of the Striptease” act. The whole revue was so big, with dancers and specialty acts, that more than two hundred local seamstresses were hired. Sally Rand performed her fan dance.
Rose married burly comedian Fanny Brice. During the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, Rose presented’Aquacade,” a show with bikini-clad girls that reportedly earned him a million dollars. He opened the Diamond Horseshoe Club (later taken over by Leroy Griffith). One columnist wrote about the scads of beauties in the place. “He put a PhD on burlesque—PhD, that means pretty hot dames.”
Showman Mike Todd produced burlesq
ue-type shows cleverly using the women and men of burlesque in legit Broadway shows to get around LaGuardia’s ban on burlesque. Still, the censors gave him problems, making Lilly Christine tone down her act, along with others.
Todd produced Star and Garter, a musical, with girlfriend Gypsy Rose Lee. He also produced the popular Peep Show. Apparently things weren’t moving fast enough for Gypsy, who married another to make Todd jealous. Later the showman would marry movie star Elizabeth Taylor and die in a plane crash in 1958.
Lili St. Cyr and her sister Barbara began stripping with N.T.G. at LA’s Florentine Gardens in the 1930s. Nils Thor Grandlund (the girls that worked for him called him “Granny”) was born in Sweden in 1889. He would later be much loved by his showgirls. His nightclub and eatery on Hollywood Boulevard was packed with celebrities and servicemen during WWII, making him a top grosser. He introduced Eddie Cantor to radio along with Al Jolson; he helped Joan Crawford, and Jean Harlow and Ruby Keeler (both in burlesque) become stars.
Granny claimed to name Barbara for two of his society friends, Barbara Hutton and Adelaide Moffett. Lili’s younger half-sister became Barbara Moffett before becoming an actress under contract with RKO.
Granny helped finance his friend Earl Carrol’s Vanities show on Broadway.
He died on April 21, 1957, in an automobile accident, trying to stage a comeback in Las Vegas. He was responsible for discovering actress Yvonne de Carlo (The Munsters), who claimed his body and made the funeral arrangements, burying him at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills near a bridal path he rode on when it was open land.
Earl Carroll opened theatres in New York and Los Angeles. Over the entrance, he installed a sign that read, “Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world.” Dardy Minsky got her start there.
Behind the Burly Q Page 27