"At the end of your act, you back up and the lights dim and the curtain's closing and you reach down and you unhook and let the g-string fall." "I was scared because I could see my grandfather staring at me, who was a minister, and I thought the devil was gonna get me because I had sinned." "This was the relative who did the naughty things." "If one has morals... then they can't be taken away by me or anyone else." "Burlesque was a fabulous, gaudy era in America that's been left out of the history books." "I was 14 and summer was coming and school was out, so I went down and applied for a chorus-girl job at the Casino Theatre." "I couldn't go to The Old Howard because my mother was working there." "Well, there's the story of the father who kept telling his son," ""Don't go to The Old Howard because you'll see something you're not supposed to see."" "One night, the boy sneaks into The Old Howard, and he does see something he's not supposed to see... his old man sitting in the front row, watching the first show of the night." "They'd put itching powder in somebody's costume if they got a bigger hand onstage than they did." "I was the extra added attraction." "I did the street-scene number, with the gunshot, the crawl... nothing sexier than a woman crawling, if she knows how." ""They didn't like me."" "I said, "She don't have any bosom."" "She has... it's all little, you know?" "They want big bosom." "Burlesque started in America in the mid-1800s." "You'll have early productions like the "Black Crook,"" "Little Egypt performing at the World's Fair." "Those are some of the early American burlesque." "I'd say it was a changing point when Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes came from England and they revolutionized American burlesque and helped move it into what burlesque is today." "Lydia Thompson introduced the tights performance, which was what was shocking." "The word "striptease" was introduced into the American language in 1928." "Before that, there was the strip act and the tease act." "So it was actually two acts." "And the strip act was where you just like go onstage and take off your clothes as fast as you could." "And then the tease act was kind of more teasy, and it came out of this jazz-age word, "teasing," which meant to flirt." "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." "Turn of the century, the '20s, and the '30s, there was no affordable entertainment for working-class people." "A man, if he went door to door trying to sell a vacuum cleaner or a Fuller Brush and he just couldn't sell anything..." ""I got to go home to my family with no money, and the..." "Oh, what the hell, if I got 15 cents?"" "He'd fall into a burlesque show, and he could laugh." "And you know what?" "There was nothing to laugh about in the '30s, but to fall into one of those shows!" "A burlesque show is a combination of a variety show, with a little more spice to it." "There was a big opening production number that lasted about 15 minutes." "After the opening, you had the comic and the straight man, as a rule." "And after that scene, then the first strip would be presented." "And they had novelty acts that were mixed in." "And then they would have a singer or a dancer." "And then the middle production, which they called the picture number, and it was another huge production that lasted about 10 minutes." "And then there was a cofeature..." "If you had a chorus line, they usually did a nice buildup for the feature." "And it used to run just about an hour and a half." "It was essentially a dressed-up Vaudeville show with bare bosoms and a dancing chorus." "It was a pleasant afternoon." "I was embarrassed and humiliated about my past." "I had, since I was a child, rheumatoid arthritis." "So, most struggling actresses work as waitresses or typists while they're trying to get a job." "I could do neither, but I could wear gloves and shoes and work as a stripper." "I'd sing a little song." "I had a terrible voice, but I made them listen to me so that if they wanted to see my body, they had to hear my voice." "In Cleveland, there was a fur shop next door to the hotel room." "And I went in to this little fur shop, and I said," ""Do you have any like little pieces of fur that I could buy?"" "And I sewed the little fur piece into a triangle, and I put it on an invisible elastic." "I did my number." "All of a sudden, there's a blackout and a drumroll." "Then the lights hit me." "There was deathly silence for about two minutes, and then there were screams and howls and yells." "The little old lady who owned the theater comes running up the stairs to the dressing room, saying," ""Honey, that's the best flash I've ever seen, but can you trim yourself down a little?"" "It was a place where, economically, people were driven because they couldn't get work anyplace else." "And the women, for the most part, had to take off their clothes and dance erotically to arouse men." "And the men got aroused right there in the front row." "With strippers and dancers, we have, as a society, kind of this mixed view of them." "On the one hand, they're desirable and titillating." "And on the other hand, they're going against the status quo, and we sort of have this reproachful disdain for them." "I think most of the women who got into it were fleeing rural poverty and sometimes abuse." "So, to my mind, they transformed their situations through striptease." "It's easy to misunderstand their motivations, and I think the only people who can speak to their motivations are the women themselves." "I had a terrible childhood." "I was pulled up into the hills by five guys and raped, one by one, when I was 14." "And I worked in the fields." "I picked cotton, chopped cotton." "And I said, "Oh, my God," "I've got to get out of this poor environment that I'm in."" "I started out in the chorus line, and after about two months, Lillian Hunt says," ""If you strip, I'll give you about a 5-minute number."" "And I said, "No, I don't think I want to do that."" "But she says, "Well, I'll raise your salary to $60."" "I said, "In that case, I'll take it."" "I really don't know what I'd been looking for in the men." "I think I was looking for the father that I never had." "They separated before I was born." "And she never had any photos of him." "My brother said, "Oh, here's a picture of your real father."" "Well, I went crazy." "I walked over, I said, "Mother, who is this?"" "She said, "I don't know."" "I said, "You better tell me who it is." "Is that my father?"" ""I don't know."" "I said, "I'm gonna ask you one more time." "Is that my father?" "If you don't tell me the truth, you won't have to wait to die because I'm gonna take this pillow and smother you to death."" "My mother, Helen Bingler, was raised by a wicked stepmother." "She had her four teeth knocked out by a broom handle." "She was a showgirl, and she had an act herself where she bent over backwards on a chair and would drink water." "When she worked with Abbott and Costello, they nicknamed her "Bingo."" "I think what she wanted to do was marry and have children." "It was mainly to get out of that poor situation that she was in." "When my father was killed, my mother crawled into a shell and just sat with an old blue chenille bathrobe, with cold cream around, and then I finally ran away." "I said, "Mom, when that clock ticks 12:00," "I'm 18 and I'm out of here and I'm away from you."" "And I left." "My mother worked in the chorus and she worked with the comics and she did strip." "She had a lot of problems mental." "She wouldn't drink every day, but when she did drink, she would disappear." "And she would be gone for three or four, sometimes five months." "And when she came back, she always came back married and pregnant." "And then she always gave the baby away." "She overdosed on painkillers." "She was only 42 when she died." "We walked through the hills two miles each way to go to school, and the kids always had their tales on Monday or Tuesday to tell about," ""Daddy beat Mommy, and he blacked both eyes."" "My father... he was a working man, but he got black lung." "And nobody owned cars." "Everybody had horses and wagons." "I mean, it was a treat to get a pair of shoes once a year." "My father took a job in Texas and left my mother up there with four kids." "So my mother sold beer." "And "Pretty boy" Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde stopped by, and my sister and I would dance for them and get a dime... or a quarter." "When you were a chorus girl, we started out at $40 a week." "And that was a lot of money." "And at 16, I already had three children, and I was supporting those children." "What motivated me most of all was seeing my mother give birth in the cotton field and work herself to the bones and then put those old stockings on me." "And she's protect my arms so I wouldn't get sunburned because she used to call me her jewel in heaven." "And I guess she is what made me want to change everything." "In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, sideshows within circuses had burlesque shows." "They had the cooch show." "But they also had, during the spectacle..." "that opening grand entry... long lines of chorus girls." "I loved working in the circus." "I really did." "I went with the bareback rider for a while." "Up in North Dakota and Wyoming and way up there, they don't have shows like we have in the big cities." "So the 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." "They have a talker." "He goes out..." ""Bally, girls." "Bally."" "And most of the chorus girls all have to go out and bally like this." "And then we would get up on the stage, and we would pretend to be these exotic dancers that were going to thrill the customers." "And always, there's a little boy, 9 years old, with a water pistol!" "You do maybe 10 to 30 shows a day." "Whenever that weather is shining and the sun is out there, you do those shows." "You were on your feet a lot, swollen feet and all." "We used to soak them in tubs of ice." "When you're through with the..." "and you ride home... you just stop and get some Chinese and you soak in the bathtub, you know?" "You don't go out." "You don't smoke." "You don't drink." "You don't spend any money." "When you get back to New York, boy, you're mean and lean and you got a bankroll." "Tiny Kline came over to the United States in January of 1905." "She said that she was 14 years old and she came over by herself." "By 1911, she was dancing burlesque in Altoona, Pennsylvania." "She was in the cooch shows, which were these annex features at Wild-West shows, and she decided to try her hand as an aerialist." "She would hold in her mouth a leather strap and hang by her teeth." "In 1958, Walt Disney was at a show and saw her working." "Three years later, she became Disneyland's first Tinker Bell." "She was 70 years old." "And every night, she would slide on this cable across the park, over to Sleeping Beauty's castle." "And the nightly fireworks display would begin." "Vaudeville became burlesque with strippers." "They added the strippers to keep the men from going to the movies." "The idea was..." "what reason was there, if you could go to a movie, to go to a live show?" "And one of the answers was because it had naked women." "It's actually who you are." "It's not what you do." "It's how you conduct your life and yourself and your values." "Even my husband... when I said one time to someone I was a stripper, he said," ""Well, you weren't a stripper." "You were in burlesque."" "Well, honey, what do you think I did in burlesque?" "I mean, I didn't play the piano." "Sally Keith looked at me and she said," ""Secretary, with a body like that, why do you want to be a secretary?"" "And I said, "I don't want to be a secretary." "I want to be a stripper."" "One day, she said, "We have to change your name."" "I said, "What do you have in mind?"" "She said, "What about 'Sunny Day'?"" "I said, "I really don't feel like a 'Sunny Day.'" "Give me another one."" "She says, "How about 'Tempest Storm'?"" "I said, "I'll take it."" "The only gown that I really had to work on was my high school prom dress, right?" "The one I started out with was an old dress from being a maid of honor." "Of course, the zipper got stuck and one of..." "One of the customers had to reach up and help me unstick the zipper." "There was a number called "Powder My Back," full of chorus girls." "We'd all go down into the audience and like powder people, you know, and..." "Powder my back every morning" "And we'd all be out there with our powder puffs." "And I stopped short because there was my next-door neighbor, cheating on his wife." "And, like, he was lost for words, and I was lost for words." "So I just powdered the next guy." "I think the misconception was we were preoccupied with sex." "Most of the time, when you were onstage, you were thinking about," ""Oh, I hope there's a good restaurant in this town."" "Reformers were always asking..." "were strippers prostitutes?" "And whenever strippers themselves were asked, they would say," ""We don't really have time to be prostitutes." "We're in rehearsal."" "A lot of people were of the opinion that you were a hooker." "And I used to make it very clear to them," ""If you're talking about yourself, that's fine."" "In those days, we didn't have to show, as they would say, our private parts or strip down naked to be appealing." "I was a nervous wreck because I thought that I had to show my little fur cap." "I said, "Well, I'm not gonna show my fur cap."" "So I got a razor out of my makeup case, and I went in and shaved my little fur cap." "The first time I stripped was..." "at my father's nightclub." "I never wanted to be a stripper." "I was going to be a very famous movie star." "I had 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." "My first act, the women in the audience threw their fruit out of their drinks at me." "I had to give them a little talk that I didn't want their husbands and everything, and then I was okay." "It was called the Poor Man's Musical Comedy." "You could fill an opera house with 2,000 people, beautifully dressed, huge orchestras." "The St. Louis blues and the jazz that came from that deep south... that's original American music, and that's what the burlesque entertainers used." "The '20s, '30s, into the '40s, when burlesque was king, it was clean." "Somehow, the young people think it was just striptease..." "No, it was a huge, gaudy theatrical show." "I was 19 years old and wanted to get into show business." "I signed on for $35 a week, which, in those days, you could get a room at the Earl Hotel for $2 and you could eat for $1 a day." "So I thought I was in the big time." "A straight man is 6'0" tall, wears a hat, dresses very nattily, and speaks very distinctly, where you're can understand every word." "I was not a good straight man." "I heard one of these comics talk to the boss, and he says," ""I thought you had a straight man for this show."" "He says, "Well, I got three men."" "He says, "Yeah, you got three." "You got a gay guy that sings opera, you got a dancer that can't talk, and you got a hillbilly from Arkansas that don't know the difference between a proscenium arch and a condom."" "And so I said, "Well, I better learn something."" "When I was in grammar school," "I was at, perhaps..." "I think I was 13 years old." "And I met a kid in school, my future partner, Rudy." "They had a contest in school to see who was the strongest boy in school." "And sure enough, Rudy and myself came out to be on top." "And we liked it so much and we gained such a reputation for our strength in school... so we became hand balancers." "Burlesque shows at that time showed novelty acts." "And some of them were acrobatic." "We said, "Well, we can do that." "Why don't we do an act that no one else can do because they're not strong enough to do it?"" "And we developed the act called "Renald and Rudy,"" "which kept us together for 25 years." "I think my father was born in Manhattan, but I'm not sure." "He was the guy who would sing the opening number when the chorus girls would come out and parade around, usually without their shirts on." "And that job he had was known officially as the "Tit Singer."" "And that was an official title." "I don't know if you had to get a special degree for that or what, but he was also a really good straight man." "My dad first was first introduced to burlesque through the Ann Corio show, where he was what they would call a dancing juvenile, which is sort of the person that comes out and warms the audience up for the top banana." "Then he got a partner." "They started on the circuit - not the blue circuit - which was a little bit dirtier." "And by chance, he happened to meet Bud Abbott, who was the most sought-after straight man." "What are you doing, Lou?" "What's the idea..." "The role of the straight man, you know, is very... it's very subtle." "The straight man helps the comic be funny." "He has to understand exactly how to set the comic up." "Loan me 50 cents, Lou." "I'd like to loan you 50 cents, but all I got is 40 cents." " Forty cents?" " Yeah." "Give me the 40 cents and you owe me 10 cents." " Right." " All right?" "There was one sketch they wrote..." "Hank Henry says to my father," ""Get out of here, and don't come back until you can bring home the bacon."" "At the end of the sketch, my father walks in with a pig under his arm, and he says," ""Well, I brought home the bacon."" "Blackout." "Just a minute, Mr. Landlord." "You must have received my check in the mail for the rent." "When did you mail it?" " Uh... any day, now." " "Any day, now."" "Most of their routines that they did in films came out of burlesque." "So, they would bring their stooges on the set... pie throwing, matchsticks, you know, in the shoes." "There was a little Italian baker that baked all these fresh pies every morning." "And Dad would go in on his way to work, and he would buy up 20, 30 pies." "And this baker was so thrilled to think that Lou Costello loved all of his pies." "What the guy didn't know is that those pies were being thrown into people's faces, through the course of the shooting day." "In order to do that sketch, they lugged this pig around with them everywhere they went, from town to town, all over the eastern wheel, I think it was called." "And they put the damn pig in the back of the car." "And there wasn't any room for me, so they left me with two crazy aunts in Wilmington, Delaware." "I hated this pig." "This pig was my sibling, you know?" "This pig was stealing my parents from me." "I married a piano player, and a lot of chorus girls did that." "I had two Russian wolfhounds in the act." "They made me a lot of money." "They laid on a pink fur rug on the floor." "Their names were Anna and Alisha." "And one night in Syracuse, New York, a very inebriated man threw a steak bone out on the floor, and he was whistling..." ""Hey, hey."" "I cut the band, I went to the mic, and I said," ""Sir, at least there are two dogs in the house that know their place." "Obviously, you've noticed that they are very beautiful females, but give up." "They're not in heat."" "They were very high-strung because of inbreeding to keep the white strain." "They attacked my daughter." "But I put my daughter down on the floor and she was crawling, and I thought I heard a growl." "And as I bent down to pick her up fast, Alicia jumped and nipped her right..." "I had my husband take them that night." "I destroyed them." "I put them down." "My daughter still has the puncture mark." "She was 8 months old." "Harold..." "I believe his father started the whole Minsky burlesque, and Harold was his son." "And he owned the Rialto Theatre in Chicago." "And Dardy Orlando was, of course, the sister to Lili St. Cyr, who was a very famous stripper." "And she was married to Harold Minsky." "When the father started it, there was no nudity." "And they had..." "these 13 theaters were a wheel." "They'd do one show a week, move that to the next theater, and then do another new show..." "Well, Harold's folks, every summer, would go to Europe to vacation." "And they left him, as the shows came in, to put the stuff away and close the theaters." "Well, the kids, when they'd come in for the last tour, they..." "Oh, they were all broke." "They needed the money, and," ""Please don't close down the show," and, "Let's run it again."" "And Harold did, and while the folks were gone for the summer, he made over $1 million." "And it was a dime to get in." "So when the father came back, he retired and said, "It's yours." "The business is yours."" "Harold used to stand out in front of the theater on a Friday night with envelopes and the politicians would come by and he'd pay off every... union." "Unions were terrible." "Lilly Christine was a wonderful stripper called "The Cat Woman."" "And she was on, and some guy fell out of the balcony." "And, you know, Harold went over to him, and instead of asking how he was, he said," ""How much do you want to do that for every show?"" "Always the showman." "He would have Dorothy, believe it or not, check out the women's breasts to see what kind of breasts they had." "We found these beautiful little girls and turned them into strippers." "They were responsible for making it an American kind of entertainment." "Before World War II, in the 1930s, was really the golden age of striptease." "That's when strippers started performing in cafes and nightclubs." "That was because Fiorello LaGuardia and other reformers across the country were doing this shutdown of burlesque." "So, as a result, there was kind of a glamorization of burlesque." "Hello, everybody." "Here we are, up in Sally Keith's suite in the Hotel Lennox, and I'm gonna turn it over to Sally, first of all." "Sally?" "Well, I want to say that it's very nice of you to come up here today." "I'm having a wonderful time..." "Sally Keith was the greatest tassel dancer that ever lived." "She was the 5th of 10 children." "It was a very observant Jewish family." "As a kid, she would take the tassels off the window shades and play with them." "She could make those tassels sing." "One would go one way, one would go the other way." "She performed at the Crawford House for 13 years." "She had a half a million dollars here and thousands here and her furs and her jewels." "I was Sally Keith's shadow, and everything she did, I did, you know, right behind her, to the song "Me And My Shadow."" "There were two supposed robberies, where she was allegedly beaten up." "That, I know, was a publicity stunt because I remember my parents talking about how they put makeup on her legs." "She was robbed, and she was paranoid about being robbed again." "She had a drinking problem." "She reminded me a lot of my mother." "You know, she would drink, and then she couldn't function." "She was 54 when she passed away." "They say that when Sally Keith was not playing at the Crawford House, that the lights burned a little dimmer in Scollay Square." "She was just amazingly popular." ""Betty Rowland, the Redheaded Ball of Fire!"" "She's a little bit of a tiny thing." "Rozell painted her body in gold." "You could die from that makeup." "In fact, a lot of people in the business did die from it." "And she was going with the baron, and she became pregnant and he said," ""If you have a son, I'll marry you." "If you have a daughter, I will support you and the daughter."" "And she had a son." "She really became so elegant and such a perfect baroness, you would believe she was born with the title." "During World War II, the Nazis occupied the Baron and Rozell's chateau, and not only did they kill Rozell's beloved dogs, but they also ate them." "Rozell's son in, 1978, was kidnapped from his home in Paris and kept for two months." "And during that time, they cut off his little finger." "According to Betty, Rozell didn't want to go to the nursing home that her children put her in." "Betty was told that, while in the nursing home," "Rozell stacked a table on top of another table, climbed up on them, jumped out the window, and killed herself." ""Till you get back, I'll turn off the starrish night, reserve such light just for the sight of you."" ""Till you get back, I'll turn off the dew each dawn." "No flowers are born until they're worn by you." "I'll miss you." "I'll miss you." "Must you go?"" "If you want to flip your flipper, go and see the famous stripper." "You'll enjoy the show!" "Ann was born in Hartford, Connecticut." "She was from a family of 12 children." "She heard from a girlfriend of hers in Hartford that there was this show opening in New York and they were looking for girls." "So the two of them went down there, and all of a sudden, she was in burlesque." "And her mother, who was a very strict Italian lady... she went bananas." "She ended up being in the front row at one of the shows, which terrified my aunt, word has it." "And she went backstage, and she was not too thrilled about this, but she said, "As long as they look and no touch, it's okay."" "After the first maybe six months or a year, she became a headliner." "And she was competing with Gypsy." "Ann was way above her, as far as earning money and as far as pleasing the people." "She appealed to the truck driver and the bus driver and the mechanic and everything." "They all came to the show..." "with their wives, too." "The Old Howard in Boston was her pet theater." "She cooked up an idea to do a midnight ladies-only show, which was a rousing success, but it did force one slight architectural change to The Old Howard." "They had to install a ladies room." "There was a saying in Boston..." ""You can't graduate from Harvard till you've seen Ann Corio."" "She was married to a real evil guy who had a dog-training act, and he treated her just awful." "He got everything in the divorce because she had put it all in his name." "And she was devastated over this." "And it really was Michael lannucci who came about and convinced her to put the show back together." "I came up with the idea of, why don't we do a show depicting the history of burlesque when it was in its finer days?" "And that's how "This Was Burlesque" came along." "Ladies and gentlemen, the Queen of Burlesque, Ms. Ann Corio!" "The show became an instant hit, and we toured for 26 years." "Ann's number was "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody."" "She came out all in pink." "She loved pink." "And she would eventually go down to a flesh-colored leotard, with sequins and stones in strategic place." "And her punch line was..." ""Oh, I can't take that off." "I'll catch cold!"" "Her last show that I saw, she was about 80." "I mean, she was tired." "She became, shall we say, fading from us in life." "She had a difficult time speaking, as that sort of takes over, that dementia." "The last day I saw her, she just stared across the table at my mother as if she did not know her." "It has been reported she died in her 80s, but she was 90." "We were together 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for like 30 years." "Tonight we go after the story of a beautiful blonde who has made a fortune by taking off her clothes in public." "You see her behind me." "She's the leading stripteaser in America..." "Lili St. Cyr." "And she developed a routine, the one she became most famous for, which was her bubble-bath routine." "In those days, they didn't have bubble machines." "And she'd hire one of the chorus girls to lay down in back of the bathtub and blow the bubbles in a little thing." "And then she would get out and get dressed again, and all of this was to get around laws which said you couldn't leave the stage with anything less than what you started with." "She was always the headliner, and she was making anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 a week." "She was making a fortune, and Harold would have to keep going back to her and asking her to do sometimes six shows a day." "And she'd say, "No, I want a set of sterling-silver flatware."" "And she would name all the pieces that she'd want in order to do another show." "Her marriages keep breaking up, in part because of her career - she wanted to work." "She did not save well." "She said at one point that she always assumed there would be someone there to buy her a hamburger and take her out to dinner." "I always have to make money to pay for things and to... now I'm caught up, and I'll be stopping." "She tried to commit suicide three times." "He got involved with someone, and he was involved with some drugs and, I think, got Lili involved." "She never told me what her illness was, but she said it was hard for her to get around." "She had this great house in the Hollywood Hills, and she ended up having to sell it." "I think she was on drugs at the time." " What kind of drug use?" " Heroin." "She was living in an apartment house that she did own, and she lived there with about 10 cats." "She became very reclusive." "Are you afraid of growing old or growing ugly?" "Yes." "Her philosophy was when a beautiful woman gets older, she should go Garbo-esque and disappear." "She sold off a lot of her memorabilia, gave a lot of it away to people." "She told me to come down, that she'd have a box outside her door waiting for me, full of pictures and some clothing that she had given me." "So, I looked in the window 'cause I just wanted to see a glimpse." "And here..." "I can remember it like it was yesterday... was this old woman, bent over, walking across the room." "But the face... it was her face." "She still had the face." "So when you quit and you're out of the business, what will be your interest?" "I don't know." "Georgia Sothern would set the place on fire when she came out." "She was a big star while she was still in her teens." "She couldn't even spell southern." "She left out a couple letters." "She was only 12, 13 years old, and she traveled with her uncle, who was in Vaudeville." "And he died of pneumonia." "All these other strippers and burlesque girls were in the hotel, and they knew about the old man dying." "They said, "What are you gonna do?" She said, "I don't know." "Here... put some makeup on and do this and do that,"" "and they took her to Minsky's." "And one time Mr. Minsky said, "Georgia, you're acting like a child."" "And she said, "I am." "I'm 13."" "I got an extra $15 a week to catch the wardrobe as the strippers threw it off in the wings." "So, my first caught was with Georgia Sothern." "She would do something like "Hold That Tiger,"" "and she'd fling her clothes through the wings." "But she was afraid that another stripper was going to steal her act, so she'd clothespin the curtains and just leave enough room so that the bra and the panties and the skirt would slip through, and I would catch that." "But of course, I peeked, and I saw her act, which I eventually stole." "It's a funny thing, but she was not an attractive woman, and she was little." "But she did something on that stage that was like magical, you know?" "She... if I can use the word... 'humped' the scenery and the curtain like... they howled because they loved it." "The comics were the main thing in burlesque, not the woman." "Hello there, Bud." " 'Bud'?" "Do I know you?" " No, sir." " Do you know me?" " No." " Well, let's keep it that way." " All right, fella." "People think, oh, nudity." "Oh, no, no, no." "It was the satire of life." "That's what every burlesque bit was." "They were always trying to take you out, you know." "Comedians are comedians, you know?" "What they are onstage, they are offstage." "Scurvy Miller was the funny one." "He was an elegant guy." "He was really a very sweet, nice man." "And then he'd take his teeth out." "Steve Mills was the top banana." ""Top banana" means you were the comic that carried the whole show." "My father was a comedian named Eddie Lloyd, who was in burlesque his entire life." "Being the second banana meant he was the featured player, not the star." "Peanuts Bohn... he had a funny, long coat and a funny hat." "And somebody would poke fun at him, and he'd go, "What the hey-ey?"" "He'd never say "hell," you know?" "But they got around that." "And Billy "Boob" Reed would say, "You god-dey-ey."" "And he'd never say the word "goddamn," or something like that." "Tootsie Roll, America's favorite candy, brings you "Pinky Lee's Circus Time"!" "After opening night," "Mr. Carroll used to come backstage and tell us all to change this." "And he'd go up to Pinky, and he'd say, "It's the dinner show, Pinky." "Please don't sweat."" "Pinky said, "How am I gonna stop sweating?"" "He said, "I don't know, Pinky." "It's your act."" "Billy "Boob" Reed would come out and have this beautiful girl at the table." ""Sure, have a little drink, honey."" "And he be getting her drunk." "And then he'd hold the bottle, and that was a burlesque trick they all used." "You hold the bottle up, and you spit it out about five feet while you're doing it." "Rags Ragland used to be a bar fighter." "I heard a story about how he was protecting one of the dancers from somebody in a bar and started a fight and hit the guy over the head with a bottle and then went back and did the show." "In 1941, little Mickey Rooney was voted the most popular and highest-paid actor in Hollywood, and his father was working at the burlesque theater in Los Angeles." "His name was Joey Yule." "So, he went to Louis B. Mayer, and he said," ""I want you to give my Dad a contract at the studio,"" "And they said, "You got it."" "The comics in burlesque were mean, vicious, angry, and frustrated." "They had tried to make it in show business, probably on Broadway or in Vaudeville, and couldn't do it, so they were relegated to burlesque." "Harry Clex was one of the funniest ones." "He'd say, "Now, I want you, when I say this..."" "whatever it was..."You freeze."" "And he's turned around, and he's facing you." "He's got his eyes crossed, and he's saying," ""Oh, my God, my little pecker's hanging out."" "And you're not sup... to you, quietly... and you're supposed to not smile." "He'd do everything he could to break you up, but God help you if you broke up." "You know, why would people come to see a burlesque show at noon?" "Are they really coming to see the comics at noon?" "My guess is some of those matinee performances were deadly." "And then the comics would really be entertaining one another, rather than the audience." "Attention, all burlesque theater performers... costumes, your breasts..." "There were some towns that were a little bit stricter than others." "Most of the towns, you could not show anything on your breasts unless you had pasties." "Detroit we used to call "The Vatican."" "You had rules for how you could bump." "You... couldn't do a series of bumps." "In Dallas, you had to wear a net bra, net pants... big front on them..." "and a big, big wide strip up the back." "We used to call it "Tit Town."" ""Where you working next week?" "Tit Town."" "Everybody knew that was Indianapolis." "The minuted you touched up here..." ""Ah!" "Ah!" "Ah!"" "Yeah, I mean..."Oh, Tit Town."" "They were crazy over your boobs." "Green Bay, Wisconsin..." "I had to get off a stage and go to the dressing room to remove even a glove and then go back and dance, go back again." "I said, "Why do they need a stripper here?" You know?" "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 they way they always do it." "They had a little box on the side, where they had pasties." "And there was a light on the stage." "And if they thought the cops were coming, the light would go on, and you had to run over and grab the pasties and put them on real fast." "Stage-door johnnies... a lot of guys... if you worked in the theaters, they would like to wait on the back entrance, in hopes that you would come out." "And sometimes I would just stay in 'cause I was afraid." "There were some towns where you had to be afraid." "Two men grabbed me." "I don't know what they wanted." "I started screaming because it scared me half to death." "I had green hair, and they knew who I was." "But finally, some stranger rescued me from that." "An admirer from the Hudson Theater... after 60-something years, to this day, he calls me every birthday, every Christmas." "Every place I opened," "I would get three and four pies delivered, like humongous, you know, incredible pies." "Someone anonymous had sent me a pair of earrings with a black stone and diamonds around it." "And it was for pierced ears, and I didn't have pierced ears." "So, one of the girls said," ""That's the most beautiful pair of earrings I've ever seen."" "And I gave them to her." "And I found out later they were black opals... real black opals." "I met Governor Earl Long." "Blaze and I were in competition with him." "Oh, he was a dirty old man." "They called him the "Crazy Governor."" "He used to drive down the street in his limousine, throwing $100 bills out the window." "If I was crazy when they took me, I'm crazy now." "And if I'm crazy now, I've been crazy all of my life." "One of the girls said that that must be Jack Kennedy." "He was a handsome young man who came to the burlesque show... sent a car for me." "But when he found out I was only 14 years old, he stopped the car and sent me home." "My boss goes, "You got to meet this guy." "This is one of the Kennedy boys..."" "Well, I wasn't interested." "He didn't appeal to me..." "just a young guy with a bunch of bushy hair, and it looked red under the lights." "So I'd let him buy me a $50, $60 bottle of champagne, and I'd have a few drinks of it and move on." "This entourage barged in there one night." ""Would you like to go out with Kennedy?"" "So I dated him." "And I had never said anything about it." "I was on a television show in Michigan..." "The interview was going great, and he said," ""I understand you slept with President Kennedy."" "And I said, "You certainly got my attention."" "I said, "Would you repeat that?"" "I was stalling for an answer." "And I said, "He's not here to defend himself."" "But he said, "Well, what did he talk about in the bedroom?"" "I said, "It certainly wasn't politics."" "My mother always wished that I had taken up some other form of work." "My mother thought..." "Well, when she saw me up there, she thought it was beautiful, and she saw that I wasn't doing anything wrong, and she came to grips with herself." "My family was very proud of me, not like some, "Oh, you cannot go."" ""What striptease?" "I just show my body." "Nobody touch me."" "I took my daughter with me all summer long when she was out of school, so everybody knew her." "The chorus girls were like..." "they were like my mothers to me." "And they would take me upstairs and they'd pat my head and they'd comb my hair, and they'd... you know, they were really sweet to me." "My father took me to a show that my mother was doing." "When we sat down and the show started and my my mother came onstage," "I said to my father in a not-so-quiet voice," ""What's Mommy doing up there without her clothes?"" "My son also got polio, the year that I went to work." "He was in the hospital for a year." "And I would get home at 2:30, 3:00 in the morning and get up early and take him to Santa Monica from Torrance for his treatments." "When you start to have children and they're in school, you have to be careful who you told." "I sent her to Catholic school, and she took my 8x10 photo to school." "And I had to go see the Mother Superior." "I mean, all my boyfriends used to come over to the house." "They wanted to see my mom." "They thought she was beautiful." "I had a wonderful Filipino neighbor and his wife." "They were great with my two children, and they used to take care of them." "And I used to call them every night, and I laid the law down, and I said, "I expect you to abide by my wishes, and you will check in with Sixto and his wife,"" "which he was the Filipino man." "I was raised an outdoor nudist." "But when it came to being in the apartment at home, my parents would say," ""You don't walk in front of the window without any clothes on."" "But this was a time when you could lose jobs over this kind of information." "I wouldn't change my childhood for anything, 'cause that's the childhood I had and that's what I worked from." "But it was a form of abuse to not protect a kid from some of the stuff that the kid would see." "I've also been a Latin Quarter showgirl and a dancer." "My husband wanted to do a story about me a week before we were married." "And so he went to the Daily News and he went to a man who was gonna do a short story on me." "He said, "Oh, I know about her." "She's the one used to be the stripper."" "He said, "What?" "!"" "He said, "Yes, your wife used to be a stripper."" "So that's how my husband found out." "Being married isn't really a big..." "you know, it didn't work." "You'd be here, they'd be there." "Usually, you had maybe three talking women, and they were married to the comics or to the straight men or something like that, and it was a family thing." "We just married to go on the road, 'cause I didn't want to go on the circuit by myself." "And Jimmy Matthews said," ""Oh, well, let's just go." "We can share a room."" "You know, so we married in April onstage of the Follies Theater." "And then we got divorced in May." "I was married to four different men." "But husband number 3, I married 3 times, so he was 3, 4, and 5." "And then number 6 lasted about 5 minutes." "I had too many of them..." "Liz Taylor and I have the same amount." "Mimi and Thareen were both playing at the Burbank, and they met backstage, and Thareen just knew." "It just clicked." ""I want to spend the rest of my life with this woman."" "And I don't think Mimi's marriage was a great one, and I certainly know that Thareen's was not a really satisfying relationship." "They were obviously a couple." "They obviously adored each other." "I was married 52 years..." "And he was my greatest fan." "My mother was very loving, in spite of the fact that she was schizophrenic and paranoid." "She accused my father of having an affair with somebody, and he denied it." "And then she went after him with a paring knife and tried to stab him, so I would say that it was hard on her." "There was an interesting thing that happened when my father got to Hollywood." "Because of my mother's growing mental illness, it was difficult for him to climb up the Hollywood ladder, socially." "They never went to parties where they would meet people who would advance his career." "Instead, every Sunday night, all his old friends from burlesque would come to the house." "And they would get together and do sketches for one another." "There was a 60/40 cut." "The straight man usually got 60%." "Then, when they came out to Hollywood, Dad said to Bud," ""Let's change it." "Let's do 50/50."" "They were always in competition." "If Bud Abbott put a pool in, and it was so many feet, my Dad would have to put his pool in and extend it a few more feet longer." "They were like brothers." "They fought, but God help anybody that said anything derogatory about the other one." "Red Buttons carried me out onstage when I was 6 months old." "They used to like to carry me out in their arms." "Then I would pee on them, and they'd have these stories to tell for the rest of their lives." "They were a bunch of people who loved trouping around together and making people laugh, making one another laugh." "They traveled around the country together, pulling into Toronto in the middle of a snowstorm and piling into the theater, living in a crappy hotel with green wooden walls and having not much to make their lives happy but one another" "and the ability to laugh and make somebody else laugh." "Circus life and burlesque life both were really based, in large part, on travel." "One of my earliest memories is walking down the aisle on the train while the whole company was playing cards and drinking and joking." "They called a long train trip a two-bottle jump." "You traveled with, like, 22 chorus girls." "You traveled with wardrobe." "You had your own car on the trains when they would go from place to place." "Your trunks... one trunk would be in the hotel for you, and your other trunk would be at the theater." "And it was..." "you know, it was show business." "The burlesque theaters used to pay your freight from town to town, and you could take trains." "I didn't like that so much, 'cause sometimes you had cockroaches on those trains." "I traveled to nightclubs and drove myself in a big, white station wagon with the big, white dogs." "Oh, it made an entrance..." "I traveled all the time alone." "I was always traveling from one city to the next by car." "And I was always worried about breaking down, so I did have a pistol in my coat." "I didn't have anything in it, but I had a gun." "I learned how to make spaghetti sauce in an electric percolator." "We used to travel with the two shopping bags, right?" "What was in the shopping bags?" "A coffee pot and three dishes, three knives, three spoons." "You ate in a room!" "And every hotel, when you checked in a hotel, it says," ""No Cooking in the Rooms."" "But, boy, in the morning, come 9:30, 10:00 in the morning, you'd smell that coffee brewing." "We'd get into a hotel room or an apartment, put our own bedspread on the bed." "He had Modiglianis that he'd taken out of art books, and we'd scotch-tape them to the walls." "You know, we had a home away from home wherever we were." "Out front, the big sign says," ""Doors Open at 12:00 Noon."" "That didn't mean the show started at 12:00 noon; the doors opened then!" "Kids from Newark's six or seven high schools would cut classes and slip down there in groups to witness the bare-bosomed beauties." "We had women in there with their shopping bags to kill time before they went to catch their bus." "Wednesday afternoon was ladies' day, and up in the balcony, we had to serve tea and cakes to the women." "Early burlesque was a family entertainment." "That's hard to believe, but it was." "Burlesque theater did not own the candy concession." "They leased it out to candy concessionaires." "They would put up the money for the shows, they put up the money for the scenery, they put up the money for the security bonds with the union, everything." "The concession companies are the ones that really opened the burlesque theaters, because they made so much money." "In between the acts, they had this candy pitchman." "He would stand up at the front of the theater, and he would hold up a box." "Ladies and gentlemen..." ""In each and every candy box, there's 10 pieces of Atlantic City's saltwater taffy..." "And in each and every box, there's a little pair of dice." "You hold it to the light, you see little Fatima as she does her dance nude."" "And he would say, "A certain number of these boxes will have a $10 bill in them."" ""And in one box, there's a gold watch." "And in one box, there's a gold pen."" "Of course, the box was worth about a nickel or a dime in 1930 money, and they would get about a dollar for it." "And then one of the young men will jump up from the audience," ""I got the gold pen!"" "And then they'll be selling more candy boxes." ""Oh, I got the gold watch!"" "And then the candy butcher backstage," ""Give me the watch, give me the pen." "I'll see you next show."" "Then, Boston... oh, boy, they had a great burlesque theater there..." "The Old Howard." "The Old Howard really began as a church." "When they rung down the curtain for the last time at The Old Howard, all of the stockbrokers on Milk Street wore black armbands for a week." "The Hollywood was the only burlesque theater in San Diego, and my dad was the owner from about, I would say, maybe 1920 till 1970, was the end of it." "It really got good when the war started." "That was because of the Navy in San Diego." "And so, Saturdays and Sundays, you couldn't even get a seat in there." "My dad had a club called the Colony Club in Dallas." "And the Carousel Club was about three blocks down from the Colony Club." "The notoriety of the Carousel Club was that it was owned by Jack Ruby." "Kennedy was assassinated on a Friday." "It was early enough in the day for Jack Ruby to run an ad in the newspaper, saying," ""The Carousel Club will be closed tonight."" "Things like this happen, people still want to go out." "My dad understood this, so he kept his club open." "That night, Ruby comes into my father's club and he confronts my Dad." "You lousy, no-good-for-nothing this, that, and the other." "How could you be open?" "Our president is dead." "How can you do this?" "And he took a swing at my Dad." "He wanted to knock my Dad out." "And New Orleans... was the most fantastic place in the world." "It was all burlesque, all up and down the street, on both sides." "Burlesque and jazz bands." "Mardi Gras was a fun time." "And they had the shows going day and night." "I must have did 16 shows in Mardi Gras." "In those days, it was a town of glamour." "Kitty West came out of the big oyster shell on Bourbon Street for years." "Tourists used to flock there." "They weren't gonna leave New Orleans until they saw Kitty come out of that oyster shell." "Well, I tried to track her down." "She's in Mississippi in a little FEMA trailer." "And she said, "I lost my house, my car, and all of my clothes, all of my photographs."" "I had an act." "I told a story." "My act was a story." "We'd take you on a mythical trip to the bayous of Louisiana, where deep in the mist, lies a lady in waiting..." "Then, I would step out of the shell, into the audience, looking for my mate." "And the end is where I didn't find my mate, and I had to go back to the shell." "I said, Goodbye, Mama" "You're gonna be proud of me" "You said, if I keep on growing" "I'll be a 38 double D" "So wearing' my 38 double D" "They all come to look at me" "And if inches really count" "Then I'm in luck from A to Z" "I was working in a doughnut shop in Washington, D.C., and this man came in." "He asked me, do I sing." "And I told him, yeah, I sing and yodel, which I did." "You know, I do." "He said, "Well, I need a girl for my show."" "And he took me over to see his show that night." "I played some songs and sang." "And he said, "Oh, come on, you got to go out and take something off."" "And she said "No."" "So she's standing there, and he said," " "Blaze, will you take off something?" - "No, no."" ""Will you take it off for America?"" "And she said, "Yes!"" "And she took off her bra, and the servicemen hollered." "In her movies, she had a clamshell." "She wanted to copy my oyster shell." "And that's why she had the clam, because I would have sued her." "She didn't like sharing the billing with me." "She wanted to be the one and only Blaze." "I look after me, 'cause I'm number one." "I had a small heart problem, but I didn't want to die on the stage practically naked." "I wound up going to a hospital, and they did five bypasses." "And doctor told me I couldn't work for a couple years, or I'd die." "And I'd saved." "Mr. Goodman was Jewish, and he always explained to me," ""You must save some now for later years, because when you get old and wrinkled and sick and ugly, no man's gonna want you then." "There won't be anybody bringing you goodies."" "And she was the famous Fan Lady and did her famous fan dance." "Now, she was a little different." "She might have had a little bit of controversy here and there, because she was totally nude." "But she saved Chicago." "Her speech wasn't good enough for the talkies." "The World's Fair came out to get the country rolling again." "William Randolph Hearst was going to do the Milk Fund Ball, which was a $100-a-plate dinner." "And you're talking 1932-33, $100 a plate." "She was pretty put out by that." "She came from a very meager background, so she started thinking," ""I can get a horse, put him on a boat, bring him in through Soldier Field."" "And all of a sudden, clippety..." ""What is this coming down the promenade?"" "Right in front of all the people is a big prancing horse with a nude Sally Rand." "And of course, everybody followed her." "And she went home, went to bed." "Girlfriend called her and said," ""Sally, you're on every paper in the United States."" "Front page." ""What a miraculous feat." "Our World's Fair's fold-out."" "That was the only concession that made a lot of money, and it was the concession that the city fathers owned." "My mother adopted me in 1948." "I grew up backstage." "I used to sleep in her fan boxes." "When I was first in school, when I was younger, and people would come over and they'd say, your mother does this dance or whatever, and then she takes her clothes off," "I was just a little bit embarrassed." "You know, she picked up on that." "And sitting down, explaining to me what the dance symbolizes - it's two herons flying over a moonlit lake in the Ozarks, in Missouri." "She was obviously very physically fit." "5 foot, 105." "She did her last performance in 1975." "She died in 1979." "I went to pay the bill, which was a $10,000 bill, and they said, "It's paid." "Sammy Davis, Jr." "Called in and said," "'Give me the number,' and he wrote a check."" "There's the music, and that's my cue." "There's only one thing left to do." "So I do it." "She could talk, and that's something the rest of us didn't have." "And there's another impossible woman..." "I mean, impossible." "She was doing this show for us in New Orleans, and she had a young son." "She was onstage, and the nurse came running to Harold and said the boy had swallowed a pin." "Harold grabbed the kid, threw him in a cab, and took him to a hospital." "And it was very touchy, and they got it out and everything was fine." "He put the kid in a cab and took him back to the theater." "And when Gypsy heard that he didn't stop to go get her offstage and wait till she finished her number, she was so furious, she walked out of the theater and never came back." "In 1962, at the North Shore Music Theater," "I was the property mistress, and we eagerly awaited the arrival of Gypsy Rose Lee." "The first day of rehearsal, this woman slogs onto the lot..." "Terrible, saggy old house dress with clearly no underwear." "Somebody said, "That's Gypsy Rose Lee."" "She had no talent." "She couldn't sing, she couldn't dance, she wasn't pretty, and she had a very bad body." "Once the pressure was on, in rehearsal, her whole attitude changed greatly, and I think she was panicked." "She would refer to herself in the third person." "She always talked about herself as Gypsy." "She had that strange overbite, so everything came out like that." "And she'd talk about, "Oh, Gypsy didn't mean that."" "And every word was "Jesus Christ, God al-fucking-mighty."" "You know, it's like, "My God!"" "It seemed to have been important to her to appear very legitimate, even though she'd been a big burlesque star." "It was my impression that, most nights, she was drinking." "One of the actors in the cast kind of looked out for her." "And it was sad." "I talked yesterday with Sherry Britton, who was another leading stripteaser, and she said the following." "She said, "Whenever I used to see groups of single men coming to see me strip, I'd think," "'What unfortunate, what lonely people, that they have no better place to spend their time. "'" "Yeah, Bobby got me into burlesque, which I despised." "I was gorgeous." "I had an 18-inch waist." "I was the only one who didn't take off my g-string." "People came back hoping to see the forbidden fruit." "When I first showed my breasts, I fainted." "I could see the men masturbating and knew that I was part of that and realized that was probably all over the theater." "There was a great deal of fighting." "I was beat up 19 times by other strippers." "I fell apart and wound up in the psychiatric portion of NYU." "It was horrible." "They put me on librium, and I was on librium for 30 years." "My father showed up, and he says, "My daughter in burlesque."" "I said, "Where were you?" "Where were you?" "What was I supposed to do?"" "I think what kept a lot of girls in burlesque at the time was the money, because what they were paying for scale was nothing." "It was chump change." "We were making money." "Hunger is a very good motivation for learning dance." "We got in trouble financially, my husband and I." "I says, "Well, let me go back onstage, and I'll get us out of trouble."" "I booked myself for one tour, made $1,500 a week, and I was out of trouble in no time." "You make big money, but it does cost money to stay in the game, it does." "God, if you don't have a mink coat and a cadillac, the agent's not gonna give you any money." "Don't dare walk in an agent's office with a cloth coat." "Every six weeks, you had to do a strip, and you got the magnificent sum of $1.50." "I never was stood up for my pay either, and I know some people were, when the show would close and the bosses would flee." "No matter what you're doing, the chorus or stripping, you're always required to do the scenes... you know, work with the comics." "And that was a big deal, 'cause you got paid $2.50 extra." "If you were a good-talking woman, you would never get any more money and you would never become a feature." "The comics in them days were maybe $175, $200." "And some of the real, real good comics might have got $250." "The burlesque houses paid us $300 a week for the act, and we did four shows a day for that." "But when you went into the clubs, they expected you to sit with the guys and drink, and that wasn't a favorite pastime of mine." "A really big part of their job was to mingle with the crowd, to encourage champagne sales." "And all of the girls generally got a kickback on what they sold, what they convinced people to buy." "I'd feel really embarrassed sitting with some little sailor, and the girl, she'd have this big tray with cigarettes and gardenia." ""Oh, would you like to buy an orchid for the lady?"" "I'd see some fella across the bar, and I'd say," ""If you sit with me," "I won't charge you more than one champagne, and that'll keep all the other girls away and you can enjoy your drink."" "And so they usually bought me a drink, so I was quite successful at the drinking game." "I really felt bad about doing all those things in the joints and the nightclubs." "The theaters are not like that." "You're getting paid for a show and a performance." "Each girl stamped her trademark on her act." "Each one had a little bit of something different." "I was able to rotate muscles with little bows on certain parts of my body in black light." "Because I was in black light, it didn't bother me as much, because I really and truly believed they couldn't see me." "I think it was a choreographer came up with the idea," ""Why don't you girls do a twin strip?"" "So I made all the changes." "I took all the black out of my hair, made it red, got platform shoes so I'd be as tall as she is." "That's how we got the start as the Toni Twins." "I had green hair for maybe a year, two years, until I got skin poisoning." "There was a girl named Zorita." "She worked with a snake." "I used to help her with it, to tape up its mouth and tape up its a-hole so it wouldn't do anything on the stage." "I also worked with Sally And Her Monkey." "That carries an unpleasant stench." "I paid $1, 100 for a baby black panther." "I went out one day shopping, and it climbed in the shower stall and accidentally turned the hot water on." "I come back, and I went in the room and it jumped on my back and it laid its head on my shoulder, and I thought it was going for my jugular vein." "I knew then, "This is scary."" "There was a... 50-ish woman who was good in burlesque." "Her name was Carrie Fennell." "She could make her breasts jump out of her gown... and jump back in again." "We had a humongous champagne glass made, all out of wood." "It was really beautiful." "I was in the glass, so when the curtain opened, you just saw this big glass, and music playing..." ""You Go To My Head" or whatever." "I forgot." "Towards the end, I started doing yoga on the stage." "I'd wrap my legs around my neck, stand on my hands, and do pushups, if you can picture that one." "I had a big giant hammock that screwed into the stage floor, and I would swing on it..." "actually swing on it." "And it was kind of a nice thing." "One time, it broke..." "Just collapsed right down on the floor." "I didn't fall too far, but my dignity was ruffled a bit." "I had gas... a little can of gas." "And I had long, long tassels, and I would dunk them into the gas and then light them and turn them around." "When they came up..." "I put my head back like this, and they came up about this far and went poof, you know, and burned the whole front of my hair." "I didn't stop, no..." "I just..." "I just put those out." "I did a Voodoo death ritual." "I carried a real skull." "And one night it slipped off the tray and..." "Crash!" "Teeth all over." "It was a mess." "One time, one of my pasties flew off and hit a guy in the eye." "For a while, there was an African-American circuit." "It didn't last for very long." "And then were Asian strippers." "Those women never could achieve any level of economic success the way a Gypsy Rose Lee could." "They were always the exotic other." "They had the most beautiful acts in burlesque." "They had dog acts and acrobats." "The Hilton Sisters were a Vaudeville act." "Vaudeville didn't exist in the '40s, and these people still needed a job, and I guess maybe they were a draw." "Never say you'll be the kind" "To ever keep one sweetheart on your mind" "I don't know if they danced." "I mean, they couldn't be separated on either side of the stage." "They had to stay together." "All I know is that my father said they stayed drunk the whole time they were here." "They had special shows for the female impersonators." "I worked with Venus, and he was so beautiful." "He was the star of the show." "He was a paratrooper." "He still looked like a paratrooper, even when he was supposed to be a woman." "And her name was Tamara something." "And she sold her book and she did a strip, and so, yeah, there were novelty acts." "Take it off" "People say, "They threw the wardrobe."" "We never threw our wardrobe." "We paid a lot of money for it." "And we handed it." "That was what was meant by "parade."" "You paraded to the side, and you handed it to a girl that you paid." "There was a costumer that made gorgeous wardrobe..." "Tony Midnite." "I had been a performer myself, with the Jewel Box Revue." "That was a huge show of female impersonators." "And I was working on my own clothes." "I made the stuff to last, really, like put together with iron, and it took a beating." "Gussie... she made beautiful wardrobe for a lot of us." "Cost me thousands of dollars." "Our wardrobe is very expensive." "Blaze would make all her own wardrobe." "She was very, very crafty." "By hand, I made my first couple of gowns, and that's how come today" "I have some of the most beautiful wardrobe you could ever imagine." "Gertie worked backstage in New Orleans." "She was everybody's maid." "She helped me get my wardrobe on, and she would catch all the girls' wardrobe and take it back and hang it up." "Everybody paid her salary." "We had crepe-paper costumes on... crepe-paper bras and crepe-paper skirts." "She said, "I'm not wearing those costumes."" "They come off the stage, the last show, and the wardrobe was hung." "Your trunk had been taken by the Railway Express in the afternoon." "I hired a cab driver to stand in the wings and catch my wardrobe for me as I threw it off in the wings." "He threw it in the bag and then got me in the taxi, and we went to a train." "But I had to ride all night long sitting in a g-string and a net bra, with a coat over me." "Having to work as a musician in burlesque, they were looked down upon." "It wasn't regarded as a great art form." "Or, you know, it was probably one of the least endeavors you could possibly get into musically." "If you don't go over very big, then it is the band's fault." "All the drummers didn't like Tempest Storm, 'cause she couldn't keep time." "Oh, God, she'd screech and scream at the band." "And she'd be so mad 'cause they didn't catch her bumps." "Well, she would never bump..." "I mean, it was at random." "You know?" "We get a panic call from the conductor." "He had a problem with the drummer, and he said, if he didn't get a drummer, they were gonna lose the job." "So I said to him, "I don't know anything from strippers."" "I never played strippers before." "They had problems with me." "And the only reason I found that out, I looked and it says," ""The drummer..." "God help you if you can catch this girl's act."" "Every place it played, they'd pencil little notes in." "I thought, "I didn't know they thought that bad about me."" "She was known as the Marilyn Monroe of burlesque, and she was a great dancer." "But she was rough on drummers, right." "And she gave me a terrible time." "Finally, we got together, became friends, and we worked it out." "I don't smoke, I don't drink," "I don't do drugs, so I was never introduced to that aspect." "In fact, I never saw anybody do it." "That doesn't mean they didn't." "We had big signs everywhere," ""No alcohol, No alcohol."" "But they would slip it in their pocketbook." "And this one girl, I remember, she said, "I got to go buy a pocketbook."" "She says, "When you buy a pocketbook, you always have to just take a bottle and make sure it's big enough to put a bottle in it."" "We used to get these little 7 Up bottles filled with gin." "And that would get us through the midnight show." "The stage manager says the feature was drunk and they were walking her around the block, trying to sober her up." "It was very lonely." "Where do you go at 11:30 at night if there was a show and you don't anybody?" "You go to the bar." "I was trying to quit drinking, and it was very hard for me to do it." "I had no control over it." "I just became a drunken aerialist, and that was even worse." "A career carousing around at night and drinking does not mix." "Now, you take your choice." "I was very dedicated." "I wanted to be somebody." "Somehow, this wild redhead and running up and down, and the boobs and bumping and grinding, somehow it changed the course of stardom." "She completely sold out the house, and there's like 1,400 seats." "I remember paying Tempest, in those days, $1,800 a week, and $1,800 a week in those days was good money." "I just got $10,000 in San Francisco last year." "I admired Lili St. Cyr, but when she came in as a star at the theater, she resented me." "She claims that Tempest had a couple of her outfits with straight pins, and Lili got one stuck in her toe." "You know, I just started out, and here's a big star bitching about me." "Every time she gets with a group, she'll bring that up." ""I didn't, I didn't!" "It was not my straight pin!"" "I got so mad at Lili, and I took my wardrobe out of my dressing room." ""I'm getting the hell out of here." "I don't have to take that crap."" "My last husband said," ""You're in a degenerate business."" "Oh, God, Rose La Rose." "Whenever you say "Rose La Rose," they would all go, "Ugh."" "Oh, she was raunchy." "She was really raunchy." "She walked pigeon-toed, I know that." "But that's kind of cute, walking pigeon-toed." "Rose was always the biggest seller." "People would wait around the block to see her." "She was a magnificent performer, and she had a dynamic personality." "And I thought she was very funny." "Backstage, she'd be walking around, chastely holding a silk cloth over her chest, you know, while she's waiting to go on." "And every once in a while, she'd drop it for the stagehands." "She just couldn't get enough of showing herself off." "So it must have been an illness she had." "I heard she had her bush in rollers or something." "Did you hear that?" "In curlers?" "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." "They will fight backstage, yes, and they have to call the front of the house." "The stagehands don't know where to grab to try to stop the girls, separate them, pull them apart." "Divena came from California." "I broke her water tank." "And Mr. Lyle says, "Kitty, she's gonna take top billing."" "I said, "Mr. Lyle, that's not what my contract says."" "He put her on and really ran a big ad in the paper, telling everybody about Divena from California, underwater strip." "I got so furious because he came back there and he says," ""Kitty, I'm gonna have to let you go." And she's taking over."" "I got the fire ax and went out there and busted it into a gillion pieces." "Margie Hart... oh, boy, you don't dare mention her name much." "She's the one that closed New York." "It was rumored that on New Year's eve in New York at this theater," "Margie was gonna take it all off." "The reason LaGuardia was so vehement about shutting down striptease was because Margie Hart flashed her pubic hair or she wore a g-string with fake pubic hair on it and flashed that." "He was the Mayor then, and he said, "Either clean up your act or you're gone."" "And they wouldn't clean up the act..." "He banned them." "The police came in, and they closed the theater down, and I think they took her to jail, and they all got booked." "Our family ran from a nun and a priest to a lady of burlesque." "She got in a burlesque show in the chorus, and they, of course, immediately plucked her out and made her a star, 'cause she was so beautiful." "She married John Ferraro, who was the love of her life." "She absolutely worshiped him." "And she was the top-paid lady of burlesque." "I was getting ready to perform, and the owner told me I had a phone call." "And they never do that when you're... when it's time to go on, you go on." "And I..." "Wait a minute..." "Anyway, um, it was Rose." "There were rumors that she was not feeling well." "And she told me how much she cared about me." "And I asked to come to see her, and she said she wanted to wait till she had gained some weight." "And when I got back to Hawaii, I heard that she died." "So..." "It's sad." "Me?" "It was me that had a daughter up for adoption?" "Well, no, what happened was," "I'd signed the adoption papers in the hospital." "And, uh, then I quick called my girlfriend." "I said, "I'm not going through with this."" "And I got out of the bed, and we're running down the hall." "And we get in her car, and the police are after us." "The daughter was adopted by the State Senator of Nevada." "Someone from the Sheriff's office came." "They said, "Don't you ever put your foot in the state of Nevada."" "You know, we'll frame you and put you in jail and everything." ""Don't ever come back."" "That scared me, and I didn't play Nevada for a long time." "I told a girl up there in Reno to find out her address and where she lived." "I was just gonna ring the doorbell and say, "Avon lady," you know." "But my girlfriend went and talked to her, and she said," ""No, she didn't want me, so I don't want her."" "Gave me a good excuse to drink a bottle of scotch that night." "He had asked my mother to keep the baby up that night to see if he would be able to recognize his voice on the air." "And my mother went out to get something for the baby's first birthday, and there was people there in the home." "He was put out in his playpen." "It was an Indian summer day." "And he managed to loosen a slat from the playpen, go through, and then out through a courtyard, into the pool." "By the time it was discovered..." "my mother found him... it was too late." "So they brought my father home." "He said, "I'm going back to do the show." And his sister, Marie, said," ""Lou, how?" "How can you go back?"" "He said, "Because I promised that baby that he would hear my voice tonight." "And wherever God has taken my son, I want him to know he can still hear me."" "Then, one day, God, in his infinite mercy, smiled down on us... a little bundle of pink and white..." "a baby boy." "I worked harder than ever, and then, one day..." " A little baby boy?" " Yes." " A little bit of one?" " A little boy." " Did he have blue eyes?" " Yes." " And brown hair?" " Yes." " And was he a little fat fella?" " Yes." "I was headlining at the Pigalle." "All of a sudden, everybody started screaming, and in came this Korean." "And I heard, bam, bam!" "It sounded like a car backfiring." "And here I was, under the spotlight." "I couldn't move." "I guess he was gonna kill me." "And he was looking right at me, and he aimed the gun, and I guess I blacked out." "They finally caught the Korean." "Somebody knocked him over the head..." "Oh, with one of the bongo drums." "I guess I went into shock, because when I awoke I was at an agent's apartment." "And everybody tried keeping the newspapers and everything away from me." "I didn't know that the Korean had killed the singer from Canada, shot the doorman in both legs, and that's when he came into the club shooting." "So, here, anyway, "True Detective" magazine got that." "They called me a femme fatale." "Wasn't my fault at all." "The club that I worked was run by a woman, but she had ties to gangs." "And this man asked me for a date." "He said, "Do you mind if I stop by my home first?"" "And I walked in." "He said, "We'll have to go in the carport."" "And as I was going in the carport, they were hauling out what was left of somebody and throwing him in the car." "And it was so, you know, eye-opening and scary as all get-out." "But the nice Italian family was involved in a lot of clubs and things, especially in Boston." "In Cincinnati, there was a great mob influence." "But I will not name names." "Most of the clubs were run by Mafia, and if one of the bosses said they didn't want you, then you were blackballed." "As long as you did what they wanted and kept your mouth shut and didn't see anything, they didn't bother you." "The mob in Chicago..." "the Fischetti brothers..." "I mean, big, on the "10 most wanted" list." "You know, these are big gangsters." "And they were just wonderful guys." "And one night, we were in this little club." "We didn't tell anybody where we were going or what we were doing." "And this mobster that we knew came in and said, so-and-so's looking for you." "And Harold said, "How in the world did you know I was here?"" "And he says, "We know everything that's going on in Chicago."" "Capone came up to her in one of her performances, and he says," ""I have bought your contract, and you will be at my club the following night."" "And so she said, "Sounds like a deal."" "And then, when she closed up that night, she said," ""I just packed up all my stuff and I went to New York."" "She said, "I took off, thinking there's a total different gang world in New York than there is in Chicago." "Capone won't go on New York territory."" "People can say what you want about the Mafia, but the Mafia kept things in line, like strippers and dancers." "You weren't allowed to go out with the customers." "You weren't allowed to prostitute yourself." "If they ever found out you went out with a customer, you'd be fired the next day." "They're not gonna operate a club for you to get johns." "Actually, they were very nice to all the girls... anyone you thought was connected or a wise guy or whatever." "Oh, no, they were great." "They were always kind of around." "You know, they were like atmosphere people." "I was arrested, but I went to the jail, and I just stood in front and they took pictures, is all." "Isn't that cute?" "Sometimes they just wanted to arrest you just for kicks." "I would go in the box office for myself for a minute, they would come and arrest me..." "I would get in the police car." "We were arrested 24 times, I think, in one night." "I was put in the paddy wagon, and I was taken down to the tombs." "I spent the night in jail." "I worked Philadelphia, I was dating a captain on the police force." "He comes in one night with his boys, like he never knew me, and arrested me." "And I thought, "You son of a bitch, I'll fix your ass, 'cause someday I'm gonna be famous and I'm gonna tell your wife."" "I promised that I would never break the law again." "And I kept that." "I didn't get a traffic ticket till I was 57 years old." "After World War II, striptease was more influenced by the movies." "It wasn't as funny." "There was a real divide between kind of high-class striptease and, like, really grungy, kind of going towards what we now think of as modern porn." "The comics lost their power, and it became a strip show..." "strictly a strip show." "Most of the comedians were very old, and some of them real old." "There were never any newcomers." "There were never anyone coming into the business, you know." "The comedians, you know," "I think they just died on the vine with all their wonderful memories." "How tough it must have been to have an industry die out on you like that." "Unions closed a lot of theaters because they couldn't, you know, keep up with the salaries." "They kept cutting down the personnel, and then the chorus girls started stripping." "So it got down to comics and strips." "Burlesque was fading down enough that, rather than a live band, we had taped music, which was a little nice, in a way, because it was so dependable." "You know, the tape didn't drink." "When television came in, people would stay home and look at these little wiggly lines." "The theaters couldn't stay open." "They thought, "Oh, I know, we'll air-condition these big theaters."" "Big signs out in front, waving, "Air Conditioned."" "That didn't work either." "People stayed home and looked at television." "Striptease didn't really survive in the '60s because of porn, but also because of the women's movement." "You're on the stage during your act, and it was a huge club." "And over all the way across the building, on the wall, was hard-core porn." "Our career in show business ended when flesh acts were not in demand anymore." "What happens to great athletes after their heyday?" "You know?" "Some of them went on to other careers in the real world, like real estate." "Some of them, well, like Lili St. Cyr, opened a lingerie store." "I worked in a factory for a long time, because I'm very good on lathes and machinery and things like that." "I liked doing that a lot." "I went to work for the Houston Chronicle." "Worked in aerospace electronics." "I worked in the morgue there, and I took pictures of anything they needed." "I was an elder in the church, and I taught dancing at the church, and I one night did a number to "The Lady is a Tramp."" "Used to get roses every night." "That's all gone, too..." "That was the good days." "That was the fun days." "When I was on "M.A.S.H.," he got cast in a part playing a guy called Borelli." "Here we were, father and son, playing this scene, and we actually have to figure out how to do this sewing maneuver." "And so now father and son, just like the two characters, actually have to learn how to cooperate." "And if it weren't for this background that he had in burlesque, of writing corny sketches," "I wouldn't have been put into this corny situation where I had to actually cooperate physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually with my father." "It was a wonderful moment in our lives." "I knew that there would be a day I quit, but I really didn't prepare for it financially." "I was up in Canada at a place called the Queen's Hotel, and I couldn't kick my leg over my head... and I thought it was time to leave." "I got mugged in '99, and I was almost killed, and that's one of the things that stopped me." "The man just beat me to a pulp." "I wanted to go out while I was on top, and I didn't want to say," ""Well, gee, look at that old woman up here dancing."" "I didn't want that." "I said, "You know, it's time for me to stay home and be a mother."" "Dad left the business to provide a home and a normal life for me." "I thought I was gonna stay beautiful forever." "I didn't think I was ever gonna grow old." "When you're in your 20s, you know, what the heck do you know, right?" "You think, "Oh..." "This gravy train's gonna run forever."" "No." "I've traveled all over the world, met some of the most powerful, fascinating men." "I've had minks, stables, big homes, big cars, Rolls-Royces, you name it..." "I have no complaints." "I think, when you look at women of that era, they led amazing lives." "They did the absolute best they could, under the situation, and they did even better than that." "They learned to survive." "It was a wonderful business." "It was very good to me." "I met some wonderful people, and I saw some wonderful places, and, uh..." "I miss it as it... as it was." "It was a very close-knit group of people." "I never felt alone." "They were not just hardworking, but they were artists, some of them." "And it was an intensified mix of many different kinds of human activity in a special little cauldron that the rest of the world didn't get to see, except over the footlights." "That was the only kind of really happy time I had, was sort of on the stage and around my friends and my crowd and everything." "It was great, yeah." "It wasn't work, it was play, and we were paid for it, and paid well, and we traveled." "They were truly, truly, truly the happiest days of my life." "It was unbelievable." "Yeah, I'm still shaking my booties, and the beat goes on." "At 77, I'll tell you right now, I can still..." "I can still kick ass." "There's a burlesque theater" "Where the gang loves to go" "To see Queenie the cutie" "Of the burlesque show" "The thrill of the evening is" "When out Queenie skips" "And the band plays the polka" "While she strips" "And the band plays the polka" "While she strips" "Yahoo!" ""Take it off, take it off,"" "Cries a voice from the rear" ""Take it off, take it off,"" "Soon that's all you can hear" "But she's always a lady" "Even in her pantomime" "So she stops, but always just in time" "Oh, Queenie, queen of them all" "Queenie, someday you'll fall" "Someday church bells will chime" "In strip polka time" "She's as fresh and as wholesome" "As the flowers in May" "And she'll retire to the farm someday" "But you can't buy a farm" "Until you're up in the chips" "So the band plays the polka" "While she strips" ""Take it off, take it off,"" "Cries a voice from the rear" ""Take it off, take it off,"" "Soon it's all you can hear" "She's always a lady" "Even in her pantomime" "And she stops" "But always just in ti-i-me" "What's cute about a little cutie?" "It's her beauty, not brains" "Old father time, he'll never harm you" "If your charm still remains" "After you grow old, baby" "You don't have to be a cold baby" "Keep young and beautiful" "It's your duty to be beautiful" "Keep young and beautiful" "If you want to be loved" "Don't fail to do your stuff" "With a little powder and a puff" "Keep young and beautiful" "If you want to be loved" "If you're wise, exercise all the fat off" "Take it off... off of here, off of there" "When you're seen anywhere with your hat off" "Wear a Marcel wave in your hair" "Take care of all those charms" "And you'll always be in someone's arms" "Keep young and beautiful" "If you want to be loved" "Mm-hmm" "If you're wise, exercise all the fat off" "Take it off... off of here, off of there" "Off of there" "When you're seen anywhere with your hat off" "Wear a Marcel wave in your hair" "Ha, ha, ha!" "Keep young and beautiful" "It's your duty to be beautiful" "That's right, girls" "Keep young and beautiful" "If you want to be loved..." "Keep young and beautiful" "If you want to be loved" "Boop-ah-boop"