Behind the Burly Q

by Leslie Zemeckis

  “They will fight backstage, yes. And they have to call the front of the house. The stage hands don’t know where to grab. They’re trying stop the girls, separate them, pull em apart,” said Dixie Evans.

  “I’ve heard stories of anti-Semitism and people getting beat up and that sort of thing.” Alan Alda recalled numerous fights among the comics, especially after a few drinks at the bar that was inevitably next to every burlesque theatre, no matter the town. Tempest Storm remembered how “they’d put itchin’ powder in people’s costumes if some girl got a bigger hand onstage.”

  Lili St. Cyr hired two stagehands to guard her tub after some girls put ice cubes in it prior to her slipping into it during her performance.

  “Better not use someone’s music. Whatever they tell you, do the opposite. It’s cutthroat back East,” said Dixie Evans.

  Mickey Jones was a stripper known as the Jungle Girl. Joni once asked her, “Could I have your sheet music?” Unlike so many, Mickey said sure. That kind of generosity was not common among the competitive world backstage. Everyone tried to hold on to their gimmick.

  There were other petty resentments from other cast members.

  “Sometimes an emcee resented the fact that some dumb broad thought she had a body and was the star of the show. That he was. And maybe he should have been. They’d screw up your intro or make you wait a long time backstage. One made me wait a long time. He wouldn’t tell me what his last joke was. I’m in a gown and fur. I’m starting to sweat. And I had those poor dogs waiting,” said Joan Arline, who performed with two Russian wolfhounds.

  But as much rivalry as there could be among the stripers and comedians, there was a feeling of us-against-them. The burlesque performers looked out for one another; they stuck together.

  “You knew about the stigma, but we’re in a group all by ourselves,” Dixie said. “There was some protection and comfort in that.”

  “They made the best of it. They were pretty good to one another. They stuck by one another,” said Alda.

  Backstage friendships formed an intractable bond between the performers. Blaze Starr would always remember and be grateful to Val Valentine for the time Val brought her soup when she had the flu.

  “You met wonderful people, you were like a family,” Sequin explained. “I had a party at my apartment, a luau . . . fruit and coconuts, poi, [but] no liquor. One musician got angry: ‘What do you mean you don’t have any liquor?’ ‘Well, I don’t drink.’”

  Blaze Starr and Val Valentine. Friendships were close backstage.

  Sometimes the closeness was taken advantage of. As a chorus girl, Dardy was sharing the cramped room with others. She became furious and appalled when another girl used her mascara cake. “You had to spit in it to work it.”

  Dardy plotted her revenge, and a couple weeks later, the chorus girl showed up for work with a red swollen face. She said she didn’t know what had happened. Dardy told her she did. Dardy had a stagehand find her a dead mouse—rampant backstage—and then she stuck it in the girl’s cold cream. “She never borrowed my mascara again.”

  There were feuds, real and imagined, printed in the girlie magazines. Most were simple publicity stunts. In 1942, according to Billboard, Sol Goodman, Blaze’s employer at the Two O’ Clock Club, was charged with striking a dancer after he broke up a three-way fight among dancers backstage.

  A very real altercation between Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm did occur, however. Tempest was just starting out and Lili was the headliner at the El Rey in San Francisco. “I admired Lili St. Cyr,” Tempest said of the older (by almost a dozen years) headliner. “But when she came in as the star at the theatre, she resented me.”

  As the star, Lili would go on last, after the other girls.

  Dixie said, “[Lili] claims that Tempest had a couple of her outfits with straight pins and Lili got one stuck in her toe.”

  “I was just starting out and here’s a big star bitching about me,” Tempest remembered.

  Dixie said, “Every time she gets with a group she’ll bring that up. ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. It’s not my straight pin.’”

  “Well, I got so mad . . . I took my wardrobe out of my dressing room. I said, ‘I’m getting the hell out of here. I don’t have to take that crap,’” Tempest said.

  In later years, when asked about Tempest, Lili always said she was alright—if you were a plumber.

  Morton Minsky wrote that one of the “greatest feuds” was between Margie Hart and Rose La Rose. Margie had her nose surgically altered. Rose claimed to like it so much she went to the same doctor and purchased the same nose. Margie was so furious, she punched Rose in her new nose, giving her two black eyes.

  Performers felt very proprietary about their acts and names, looks, dances, and even the music they chose to play while onstage. Some of the papers played up a feud with Rose La Rose when she tried to sue a black stripper who was dancing as Rosa La Rosa.

  “A lot of the girls back then, when they were headliners, you couldn’t wear the same color gown. You couldn’t use any music that was even similar to theirs,” Carmela said.

  When the girls weren’t onstage—depending on who they worked for at the time—some would socialize, others would go home to do laundry or see their children, and some weren’t allowed a choice.

  Producer Lillian Hunt of the Follies in Los Angeles had “all girls between shows on army cots in the basement. Girls couldn’t go out between shows. Every time it rained, the cops would be in the green room or the basement. Rats running on pipes, cops shooting rats off water pipes in basement. Vice, etc. would hang out, look at the girls. And become friendly. You mutually understand one another. You met policemen and gangsters.”

  “Between shows we’d go to the bar,” Lady Midnight said.

  “One time after too many drinks after the show,” Maria Bradley remembered, “after drinking martinis for first time, I stood against a wall and slid down. I had a hangover for a week. I didn’t drink martinis after that.”

  Like the circus, there was a hierarchy in burlesque shows. Some headliners would have nothing to do with the chorus girls, or other acts backstage, preferring to stay in their rooms.

  There were also unwritten rules among the performers themselves. “Strippers didn’t allow talking women or chorus girls looking at them. Nobody in the wings,” explained Sequin. They wanted to protect their special something at all costs.

  Maria Bradley said, “Strippers didn’t talk to chorus girls; they were the stars.”

  Dixie recalled Red Skelton, after he had become a big star, showing up at the theatre to take Charlie Pritchard—an old comic in his eighties with a big putty nose—out on the town. “Big-time stars a lot didn’t really reach down. But some did. Lou Costello and Bud helped out their fella old comedians.” Lou made sure his friend George “Beetlepuss” Lewis was taken care of in a sanitarium when the old comedian came down with cancer. Stars, like Lili St. Cyr, weren’t seen backstage. “Lili became reclusive. She always was. She’d ride around in a limo, with curtains drawn. You didn’t see her between shows,” recalled Dixie Evans.

  Candy Cotton said, “I’d stay in my dressing room doing beading and reading, so I stayed out of trouble.”

  April March lived a similar backstage life. “I stayed in the dressing room.... I had to watch my soap opera.”

  As a feature it meant “you’re around a lot of people but it doesn’t mean you spent a lot of time with them. I was pretty much on my own,” admitted Alexandra the Great. “I had my own dressing room.... I was very shy anyway. I was there to work. I was always ready. I didn’t do much between shows.”

  Dardy Minsky preparing to go on

  Lillian Hunt counseled Taffy O’Neil not to “mix with the girls; they’ll try and undermine you.” Lillian promised to keep them out of the wings when Taffy was on. “I was friendly, but you can’t be too friendly or they’d come in your dressing room and bother you and make you nervous.”

  A few, a very few, brought the
ir children backstage. Val Valentine was backstage as a young girl with an aunt.

  “Many times backstage, I’d sleep in fan boxes, about a five-foot box she’d stored fans in, slid under dresses that would hang. That would become my bed,” Sean Rand recalled, about his mother Sally Rand.

  Typically the musicians would be playing cards. “They’d have a bookie come in to book horses,” said Renny.

  Alan Alda recalled, the “chorus girls were up there and they’d change in front of me.” They called him Allie.’ He could “smell sweat and clothes. Here’s what it meant to me: the chorus girls would take me up to the dressing room, then they’d say, ‘We’re going to change our clothes; turn your back.’ I could smell the costume and perfume. I remember thinking, They don’t know this means anything to me. Boy, do they have it wrong.”

  Backstage had both its dangers and its solace; it was truly a home away from home.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Censors

  “Use of a bed in skits must not be abused by raw dialogue or action.”

  —Boston License and Censor Bureau

  “Never let your nipple show.”

  —Maria Bradley

  What one saw in burlesque very often depended upon where one saw it. There were a variety of different rules for each burlesque house.

  “Some towns were a little bit more strict than others. Most of the towns you could not show . . . your breasts unless you had pasties,” Beverly recalled. There had to be a certain amount of coverage while dancing and most towns were thorough. “They didn’t want the cops coming in arresting the girls and stopping the show,” said Beverly Anderson.

  Since the beginning of burlesque, censors would come to the theatres and inspect the shows. Theatre operators made it clear to performers what they could and could not do in their theatres, could and could not wear, and could and could not say.

  Below is a partial list of rules that were posted backstage at the Old Howard in Boston, Massachusetts.

  ATTENTION: BURLESQUE THEATRE PERFORMERS

  ATTENTION ALL FEMALE PERFORMERS MUST NOT AT ANY TIME HAVE ON LESS THAN PASTIES (GLUED DIRECTLY ON BODY) LARGE ENOUGH TO COVER ENTIRE NIPPLE PLUS A FULL NET BRASSIERE OF SUFFICIENT SIZE WHICH IS NOT TO BE REMOVED AT ANY TIME.

  NO BUMPS OR GRINDS IN A FLAT-FOOTED POSITION.

  NO FONDLING OF PRIVATE PARTS OR BREASTS AT ANY TIME.

  BADGERING AUDIENCE FOR REPLIES IS FORBIDDEN.

  SKITS REFERRING TO PERVERTED PERSONALITIES ARE TO BE KEPT AT A MINIMUM.

  MALE PERFORMERS ARE NOT TO TOUCH BUTTOCKS OR BREASTS OF ANY FEMALE.

  BLASPHEMOUS LANGUAGE WILL NOT BE TOLERATED AT ANY TIME.

  CONTINUED VIOLATION OF ANY OF THE ABOVE-MENTIONED REGULATIONS WILL RESULT IN THE REVOCATION OF BURLESQUE THEATRE LICENSE.

  -LICENSE AND CENSOR BUREAU

  Lily Ann Rose said, “In Boston, the Watch and Ward Society censored everything. And they would come in on Monday morning and watch the show and if there was anything in there like ‘damn’ or ‘hell,’ it had to come out. After the censors came in, then the next show went on and they did everything the way they always do it.”

  “Boston was the strictest. You had to be careful not to do anything suggestive,” said Sequin.

  Every city felt the pressure from politicians and local church groups trying to clamp down on what was assumed to go on in the burlesque theatres.

  Maria Bradley pointed out that “those who were against burlesque usually hadn’t gone to one. The same men and women would easily pay bigger dollars to see a Broadway show featuring the same amount—if not more—of nudity.”

  Chorus girls with the required pasties

  AGVA (American Guild of Variety Artists Union) was founded in 1939 to govern live performances in the variety field, including circus, cabaret, and touring shows. In Philadelphia they screened the strippers’ performances before they went on.

  “The vice squad was at every opening,” said Dixie Evans. “‘We’re going to check your show.’ After the show they would tip their hat. ‘Everything is fine, just keep it that way.’ City Ordinance came and told you just what to do. We did, [but] girls wanted extra applause.

  “On New Year’s Eve, the City Ordinance was a bit more lenient. They would come in and tell the house, ‘We’re gonna be out of town on New Year’s Eve; do what you want.’ At the finale the girls would all line up and holler out to the audience, ‘What’s your name?’ Then with a rotation of their pelvises, they would spell out the name. The vice squad knew that it was a traditional thing and the audience would shout longer and longer names. And New Year’s Eve there wasn’t a big audience,” said Dixie Evans.

  The censors were on the look out not only for lewd behavior, but also for profanity. The comics were not allowed to curse.

  In 1932, Ann Corio would testify in front of the Watch and Ward that her act was “art.” Her testimony didn’t convince anyone and the Old Howard in Boston was shut for thirty days, despite Mayor Curley and his wife’s repeat attendance at Ann’s shows. “The Mayor’s entourage would come into the theatre after the show had started and set up his folding chair, then the Mayor would come down and enjoy the show.”

  The laws varied from state to state and county to county. “Blue law” stated you couldn’t work on Sundays. To get around that, shows went on at five minutes past “midnight on Sunday—really Monday,” said Joni Taylor. In Chicago, the police censors would come in for the first show on Friday and afterward tell the comics which jokes to delete, and they would tell the dancers which “wiggle to unwiggle.”

  “Buffalo, New York—they weren’t allowed to make any hoops or hollers,” or else security guards in the aisles would pound their Billy clubs, said Taffy O’Neil.

  April March said, “In Dallas you had to wear a net bra, net pants, big front on em and a big, big wide strip up the back.”

  White Fury added, “We had a lot of laws. Three or four inches of cloth on either side. Full bra a lot of places.” So she sewed tassels onto a flesh-colored bra.

  “Detroit was known as the Vatican,” Joan Arline rolled her eyes. “You had rules for how you could bump. You couldn’t do two. You couldn’t do a series of bumps. You had to have two-inch piece on [the] front panel. I didn’t use fringe. It had to show that you had like a bikini bathing suit fuller than what they wear now. If you were a blonde, you had to wear [a] brunette [G-string], you couldn’t wear black; blonde you couldn’t wear a nude one. Every blonde was not bleaching there. You carried two sets of nets, flesh or black with ruffle to show you had it on.”

  “If you touched a curtain on stage, if you grabbed it and it hit near your stomach or legs, the stage manager gave you a talkin’ to when you went off,” recalled Lorraine Lee.

  Because of the laws in Green Bay, Wisconsin, April March couldn’t even strip onstage. “I had to get off the stage and go to the dressing room to remove even a glove, and then go back and dance and then go back again. I said, ‘Why do they need a stripper here?’”

  “It was to get around laws that said you couldn’t leave the stage with anything less than what you arrived with,” explained Betty Rowland. “You couldn’t take off anything in front of the people. So we used to go in back of the curtain and come right around, and take it off. You changed costumes,’ that’s what they said.”

  “Indianapolis was known as Tit Town,” said Joan Arline. “‘Where you working next?’ ‘Tit Town.’ Everybody knew that was Indianapolis. The minute you touched up here ... they were crazy over your boobs.”

  In most houses, red lights were installed in the footlights and if a cop or censor was coming in, the girl at the front would hit a button and a red light would flash that warned the strippers to tone it down.

  “They had a little box on the side where they had pasties and if there was a light on the stage and if they thought cops were coming, the light would go on and you had to run over and grab the pasties and put em on real fast. It also meant no flashing,” said Lady Midnigh
t.

  Alexandra the Great went out on the “flashing circuit” with the encouragement of her mentor Rose La Rose. It didn’t seem to bother her. Men would sit with newspapers on their laps and popcorn buckets covering their privates. But the dancers never felt threatened. Not that the strippers had much recourse if customers acted up—Sherry Britton encountered an obscene customer during a close dance and the theatre owner defended him, not her, when she complained.

  Besides a shooting or two (more on that later), nothing much dangerous happened in the theatres.

  “The audience was there to have fun,” said Maria Bradley.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A Bump

  “A sharp hip movement where the lower section of the body is thrust forward or bumped provocatively.”

  —Uncensored Magazine

  “A bump is when the muscles of the buttocks are contracted and lower part of the spine bends forward sudden-like, throwing the front portion of the private parts forward.”

  —Testimony from the 1951 trial of Lili St. Cyr

  Some women like Georgia Sothern and Tempest Storm worked the curtains, pulling the fabric between their legs in a suggestive manner. “Bumps into the curtain are not very subtle,” said Alan Alda. “But at the same time, it’s innocent. It’s like, ‘Here’s that gesture.’ There was something open about it. It wasn’t dirty. It was just erotic.”

  To bump is to jolt, to hit against, to collide with. Some of the more “wild” dancers did exactly that to their legions of fans. They thrust themselves right into large paychecks and onto the covers of magazines. People paid attention when they burst onto the stage.

  “I’d come booming out of the curtain and let them have it,” recalled Vicki O’Day.

  One of the most popular bumps came from stripper Evelyn West and her Million Dollar Chest. She was born Amy Coomer in Kentucky. She claimed to have insured her magnificent bosom for $50,000 in 1947. Hugely popular, she remained in the gossip columns for years, including being featured in Life Magazine. Alfred Kinsey, founder of the Institute for Sex Research, attended numerous burlesque shows as research for his famous report “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,” but for some reason refused to interview Evelyn. She put humor in her strip, telling the audience”! know you’re looking at my shoes.” Retiring, she moved to Florida, shedding “Evelyn” and reverting to Amy, leaving the stripper behind. She died at the age of eighty-two.