The Legendary Life of Doris Eaton Travis

by: Femme Vivre LaRouge

Few of us are lucky enough to enjoy either the longevity or the fullness of life that Doris Eaton did.  Born March 14, 1904, Doris witnessed almost all of the amazing twentieth century, as well as the unfolding of the twenty-first.  In 2010, shortly before she passed away, Doris received her final standing ovation in the New Amsterdam Theatre, as the last living Ziegfeld girl.

At 14, Doris was the youngest girl to perform in The Follies, and she was the last dancing too, performing annually at the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids “Easter Bonnet Competition” for a dozen years preceding her death.  Young Doris was dancing in The Follies when fellow Ziegfeld girl, Gilda Gray, first popularized the shimmy.  Along with her siblings, she was making films in Hollywood when John Wayne was just a prop boy and Alfred Hitchcock was still writing title cards for silent pictures.  During the twenties, Jack and Sam Warner, her upstairs neighbors, regularly came down to mingle with the show crowd gathered there, in hopes of starting their own studio.  Other regulars at the Eaton household included Fred Astaire and Charles Lindbergh, with George Gershwin on the piano.  In 1929, Nacio Herb Brown wrote a little ditty called ‘Singin’ in the Rain” for her, which she debuted at the Hollywood Music Box Revue.  She rode in an airplane less than twenty years after the first successful flight, lived through Prohibiton and two world wars, and witnessed the nineteenth amendment, giving women the right to vote.   Doris Eaton was named just weeks before Times Square was given its name, and Doris was there, dancing in the square, for its centennial celebration.

When Doris was just a child, her eldest sister, Evelyn, used to direct the younger children in backyard productions, which led to five of the seven Eaton children working in showbiz at some time or another.  Doris’ career began at age seven with a role in the Nobel-winning novel-turned-play, “The Bluebird.”  The fantastic Eatons performed regularly at Zefferino Poli’s Washington, DC theatre, where President Woodrow Wilson was often in attendance.  After doing the touring circuit, the Eatons wound up in New York City, taking with them a young Volga Hayworth, who didn’t make a very big splash in showbiz, although her daughter, Rita, certainly did!

For seven years straight at least one of the charistmatic Eaton children was performing in The Follies.  One of them, Pearl, aided with Follies choreography and became Broadway’s first female stage manager.  Pearl was a regualar in The Frolics, as well as Earl Carroll’s Vanities and George White’s Scandals, and RKO’s dance director for a time.  Another sister, Mary, became The Follies’ prima ballerina, wowing audiences with her intricate sequence of  impeccable pirouettes.  Mary, along with Doris and their brother Charlie, also experienced success in Hollywood.  After Mary and Doris tied in a seven-state beauty contest, Doris gave the follwing beauty advice: “Don’t hire a taxicab when you can afford to walk.”  When Doris first appeared in The Follies, by law, children under the age of 16 were not allowed to perform in musical comedy, so she took the name Doris Levant and the following year, Lucille Levant.  By her third year in The Follies, she was finally 16 and was promoted to ‘specialty dancer,’ under her own name.    It was during this time that Doris met Babe Ruth (who, incidentally, married another Follies girl) and had her very own baseball signed by him on a publicity assignment.  Showbusiness was booming for the Eatons.

Then came the Great Depression and the Eatons’ careers were cut short.  Doris eventually found steady work in 1936 as a dance instructor at the original Arthur Murray dance studio.  She enjoyed a long, successful career with Arthur Murray, opening the first new branch of the studio, in Detroit.  At one time there were nearly 300 Arthur Murray dance studios, 18 of which belonged to Doris.   The studio brilliantly marketed their classes with a dance-for-health campaign, and social dancing was at peak popularity.  Doris wrote a weekly newspaper column, On Your Toes, which was full of dance advice along with delightful illustrations, and hosted her own television show,  for seven years.

Both of Doris’ younger brothers came to work with her at the studios and in 1950, at Charlie’s suggestion, the school began to host dance getaways in Havana.  These dance vacations were enchanting trips to paradise that brought the attendance of celebrities such as Ava Gardner and Ernest Hemingway.  Unfortunately, that party ended in 1959 when Fidel Castro took Havana.  Of course, in the sixties everything was changing and, as couples’ dancing declined in popularity, the Arthur Murray empire began to lose money.  Doris had no choice but to sell each of her branches in the late sixties.  Those years, sharing her love and knowledge of dance with so many, were precious to Doris.  As quoted in Lauren Redniss’ biography, Century Girl, Doris said, “When I see a woman moving over the ballroom floor in grace…precision…feeling…tasting the joy of movement…creating a segue of pattern pictures, all coordinated to a rhythm…then I know this person is at one with the universe – at one with God.”

Doris met Paul H. Travis when he was taking a dance course with her and after 8 years of courtship, they wed.  Doris was 45 at the time and, although she had married producer Joe Gorham at the age of 18, he unfortunately died of a heart attack less than a year later.  Despite an 11 year relationship with Herb Brown, Doris did not remarry until she fell in love with Paul, and she never had any children.  The couple raised racehorses instead, moving to a ranch in Norman, Oklahoma in 1969.  Then in 1980, Doris decided it was high time she gave herself the education she had missed during her busy youth.  After obtaining her G.E.D., Doris attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating cum laude at age 88.  Later, upon her one hundredth birthday, Oakland University granted her an honorary Doctorate of Humanities.  For her speech at the commencement ceremony, she sang a number, “Ballin’ the Jack,” from the 1913 Follies, much to the delight of all the graduates.

By this point in time Doris had already made her stage comeback at The Amsterdam, beginning with the newly renovated theatre’s opening gala in 1997.  The event brought together the last five Follies gals, of which Doris was the only one still able to perform.  At age 94 she repeated her performance from 1919’s Follies and kept returning each year to perform, while all the other Ziegfeld girls passed on.  Doris did numerous interviews and documentaries and even made a cinema comeback with a cameo role in 1999’s Man on the Moon.  Doris celebrated her centennial birthday on Broadway, with an enormous pink cake that was taller than she.  As Tom Viola, Executive Director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids said of Doris, “no matter her age, when the stage lights hit Doris she was instantly and forever young.”  Without any medications or help from doctors, Doris kept on dancing and didn’t stop until she was 106.

For further reading on the wonderful Doris Eaton Thomas and her marvelous life, I highly recommend Century Girl: 100 Years in the Life of Doris Eaton Travis, Last Living Star of the Ziegfeld Follies by Lauren Redniss.  I was delighted to find that Doris also wrote an autobiography, The Days We Danced: The Story of My Theatrical Family from Florenz Ziegfeld to Arthur Murray and Beyond, which I have not yet had the pleasure of reading.  For charming photos and footage of her performances with Broadway Cares, see: http://www.broadwaycares.org

Bombshell: Pin-Up and Nose Art of WWII

by: Femme Vivre LaRouge

While art has always adored the feminine form, the pin-up made her true debut in the 1900s both in the U.S. and Europe.  Ushered in by exoticism, flappers, the French postcard, Ziegfeld, and the Gibson girl (America’s first centerfold), the pin-up really came into her own mid-century.  The embodiment of life, love, joy, and vitality, the all-American pin-up girl is both alluring and comforting.  By WWII, pin-up art had become mainstream, and came to adorn numerous magazines, dime novel covers, advertisements, promotional products, and, of course, calendars.  But her most important post was bolstering morale in the war effort, when flesh-and-blood pin-ups joined the ranks of the painted.  The advent of ‘nose art’ also made pin-ups larger than life, reminding soldiers of what they were fighting for.

Combat troops, composed mostly of single young men, leaving the strictures of their home society for the first time, and faced with death on a near-daily basis, deserved whatever support a well-turned leg or well-endowed bust could give them.  Although most nose art was never really sanctioned by any commanding officer, social restrictions concerning a girl’s state of undress were considerably relaxed during wartime.  After all, if a fella is risking his life for his country, doesn’t he deserve a good view of that country’s bounty?  Naturally, the further from the states a gent was stationed, the more risqué his plane’s mascot could be.  Censorship was generally only an issue when an aircraft was paraded on the home front, and some rebellious crews still chose to paint ‘Censored’ on their ladies rather than clothes.

Although not all nose art depicted pin-ups, it all gave its crew a much-needed icon and identity.  As Phil Cohan wrote in his article, “Risque Business,” on the subject of nose art, “At its best, the art is the crew’s expression of self-pride, a release from the anonymity and uniformity of military life, and an antidote to the dehumanization of war.”  The great importance of this very impermanent artform is not only that it gave servicemen something more personal to be a part of, but also that it is a marker with which to identify the past and both the missions that made it, and those that didn’t.

The artists creating these works had to make do with very limited resources and, for the most part, were not professionals.  They were very creative with their available materials and, if they were paid at all, it was usually in goods or alcohol.  Regardless of the work’s quality, though, the most important thing was that it gave the vessel a personality, much in the same way of a captain naming his ship.

Many men were also able to find security in linking the personage of someone well-known in the public eye to their machines, such as Rita Hayworth.  Hayworth’s famous pin-up photo from Life magazine’s August 1941 spread earned her the title of U.S. Navy’s “Red-Head we would Most Like to be Ship-Wrecked with.”  According to legend, photographer Bob Landry had a happy accident when a flashbulb failed to go off, creating a sensous shadow around Rita’s phenomenal figure.

The image of ‘The Love Goddess,’ which was reproduced more times than any other star’s photo in Life magazine, was even pasted on the first test atomic bomb dropped on Bikini Atoll.  Although this knowledge, understandably, weighed heavily on Rita, she said, “I’m proud of that photo.  Not just because the servicemen told me I looked good, but because of what the photo meant to so many of them: a link with home.”

Rita did a great deal more than just pose for the war effort; she was regularly seen helping out in the Hollywood Canteen after a long day’s filming, and worked with the Naval Aid Auxiliary.  Hayworth performed on radio shows and USO shows, signed autographs for soldiers until ‘Hollywood’s most beautiful hands’ must have been tired to the bone, and was even known to give out locks of her hair to some lucky soldiers who had the gumption to ask.  American GIs called their war bond-selling darling the “Number One Glamour Back Home Girl.”

In fact, the only pin-up more popular than Rita Hayworth was fellow actress, Betty Grable.  After releasing a 1942 promotional photo of Miss Grable for Twentieth Century Fox’s upcoming film Pin-Up Girl, the studio began receiving over 20,000 letters a week from servicemen, all requesting her photo.  By the end of the war, 1 in 5 military men owned the iconic photograph, taken by Frank Powolny.  Betty Grable was considered to be the ‘Pin-Up Queen of WWII,’ and the infamous photo was included in Life magazine’s ‘100 Photos that Changed the War.’  Life magazine noted that, “It was more than the sexy picture that enamored them of her; there was a magical wholesomeness and substance they saw beyond the curves of her figure. It was her very essence that was loved.”

Like Evelyn ’$50,000 Treasure Chest’ West and Tempest Storm, Betty Grable had what she considered her best assets insured with Lloyd’s of London, but for her this translated to ‘Million Dollar Legs.’  With measurements of 18.5” thigh, 12”calf, and 7.5” ankle, hosiery specialists and Hollywood alike touted her legs as the most beautiful and ideal.  Rumor has it that a young serviceman by the name of Hugh Hefner even considered her iconic pin-up pose to be his primary inspiration for founding Playboy.

To all the men and women who have served, and those who have done their best to serve those serving, Thank You.

The Silver Slipper and the Infamous Evelyn West and Blaze Starr

by: Femme Vivre LaRouge

The only icon that says Las Vegas more than a slot machine is a showgirl.  From can-can to canned music, Vegas seems to have always welcomed scantily clad women on its stages.  Some of the biggest busts in burlesque were popular touring sensations at the Silver Slipper in the mid-century.  One of the largest casinos on the Strip in its heyday, some favorites at this saloon were Tempest Storm, Evelyn West, and Blaze Starr.

Although there was little protest to the stripteasers’ Vegas presentations, both Blaze Starr and Evelyn West found themselves under the scrutiny of the law when performing elsewhere.  In Philadelphia Blaze Starr’s performance was brought up on an obscenity charge for her aggressively sexual panther crawl and Evelyn West was reportedly hauled to the big house at least a half dozen times in St. Louis.

Billed as “The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque,” Blaze Starr was born in 1932, hit the road at the age of 15, leaving her Virginia home behind, and was performing burlesque in Baltimore by 16.  With her phenomenal figure and flaming red hair, Blaze quickly made a name for herself.  This hot-blooded mama can aptly be described as fierce, her acts known for their energy and daring.  Her most famous stage prop was the burning couch, a device that was both hot and humorous.  As Blaze graced the divan with her derriere and began to disrobe, the couch would start to smoke and seemingly set itself on fire!  The only person this act didn’t make her popular with was probably the fire marshall.  What really got her into trouble, though, was another little stunt involving a live panther.  The panther joined her onstage and helped her out of her clothes while searching for hidden snacks.  But problems didn’t arise from a protest by PETA or an act of animal violence.  No, the trouble all started when the panther passed away…and Blaze decicded to keep the routine, imitating the panther herself.  Although audiences were ready for her raw re-enaction of the panther’s prowl, police were not.  Perhaps they feared that Blaze would incite a sexual riot, so they arrested her for obscenity.  Just as a later accusation in New Orleans would be, the charges were thrown out.

Miss Starr is perhaps best known these days for her love affair with “the ungovernable governor,” Earl K. Long of Louisiana and the movie, Blaze, based off of her autobiography.  Previously pictured as the lead in 1962’s Blaze Starr Goes Nudist, Blaze may not have been an actual nudist, but Miss Evelyn West spent some time as a part of The American Sunbathing Assocation.  She advocated the health and happiness that nudism could bring to a person and was even a bridesmaid in a nude wedding once.

Known as “The Hubba-Hubba Girl,” Evelyn West was born in 1921 and has been credited with making burlesque ‘bust-conscious.’  She was so proud of her own pair that she had them insured for 50 big ones through the prestigious Lloyd’s of London.  She even attempted to legally change her name to Evelyn “$50,000 Treasure Chest” West.

Beginning in sideshow, Evelyn’s career really took off after World War II when she began performing a striptease at San Francisco’s President’s Club.  She appeared in the film A Night at the Follies in 1947, where she quipped, “I know you’re looking at my shoes,” and was an extra in a couple of earlier films, but burlesque was where she really made it big.  Despite her many run-ins with the St. Louis police department, Deputy Police Chief James Hacket gave her the compliment of calling her “the Babe Ruth of burlesque.”  Her most notorious prop, a dummy called Esky, modeled after Esquire magazine’s mascot, caused some to take offense.  They claimed that her act “excited men to lewd and vicious thoughts,” but as per usual, the judge in this case was hesitant to navigate the grey area between art and misconduct, and the charges were dropped.  Although she was taken in for indecent exposure several times, her bondsman, Bob Block, has stated that she was never held over night.

Miss West had no problem stirring up a little trouble, and publicity, wherever she went.  Evelyn was known to make disparaging comments about rival celebrities, even throwing a tomato at one, and threatening to sue others.  According to one source, her pin-up photos were banned by the US postal service for lewdness and a pricing scale that correlated directly to Miss West’s state of undress.

From starring at the Stardust and Silver Slipper to authoring articles such as “How I Feel about Sex” and “Are Strippers Immoral,” the buxom beauty definitely made her mark on burlesque.  Evelyn eventually retired to anonymity, though, and passed on in 2004.  Blaze Starr, however, continues to create art, selling her jewelry online at www.blazestarrsgems.com.  She also still enjoys playing the Cajun fiddle and the slot machines!

Mata Hari, the Most Infamous Spy that Never Was

by: Femme Vivre LaRouge

Her greatest crime was her ambition; her foolish pride proved to be both her virtue and vice.  Mata Hari lived in an era when the world would be forever changed by ‘the war to end all wars.’  Parisians had been riding high on a wave of gaiety in the emerging modern age, intoxicated by opium and orientalism, the spider woman and the Salome craze, and the fervor of unbound flesh that came along with it.  But it was not to last; The Great War brought everyone back down to earth with startling disillusionment.  Unfortunately, Mata Hari was unwilling to let go of her dreams of grandeur and did not accept the sobriety of a new age, thus landing herself, inextricably, in a situation which was much direr than she ever realized.  The year 1917 found her not only arrested, but condemned to death by firing squad for crimes she most likely never committed.

Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, born in 1876, was always a proud and spirited girl who wished to bring attention to herself.  After a tumultuous marriage to the stormy Rudolph MacLeod, which caused her a good deal of humbling heartache, she hightailed it for Paris.  Due to the despicable circumstances of her marriage, she had little choice but to leave her daughter behind and was never allowed to see the girl again, though she did try.  Even the letter written to her child on the day of Margaretha’s execution remained sealed in her dossier, which was not scheduled to be opened for 100 years.

Margaretha made a bold move for a penniless woman when she arrived in Paris and checked in to one of the most expensive hotels in town.  She cleverly used what she had picked up while living with her military husband in Java and Sumatra to cloak herself in exoticism, creating a new identity as the Javanese temple dancer Mata Hari.  Belle Epoque Paris was more than willing to believe this charade and her love of men and military uniforms quickly made her not only a sensational performer, but an extremely successful courtesan, as well.  Meaning ‘eye of dawn,’ Mata Hari performed her stripteases in the homes of the wealthy, famous, and powerful all across Europe.  Depending upon her venue and audience, she would sometimes wear a nude bodysuit and sometimes nothing at all; however, she never removed her trademark bejeweled breast plate, not even for her lovers.  The truth is that she was displeased with her small breasts and large areolas, but she often claimed that it was because her violent husband had bitten off both of her nipples in a fit of rage.

Enjoying fully the freedoms of her existence as a fallen woman, Mata Hari took on lovers from all walks of life.  She claimed that in her ‘sacred dances,’ “I offer everything and finally myself to the god – which is symbolized by the slow loosening of my loincloth, the last piece of clothing I have on, and stand there…entirely naked.”  Surprisingly, she was never arrested for a lewd performance, only on trumped up espionage charges.  Initially, those who were suspicious of Mata Hari were merely offended by her insistence on continuing to represent herself ostentatiously in the midst of war and fearful of her influence with men of power and position.  Times were changing for women and the pendulum of patriarchy had swung back to once again condemn women who dared to live too largely, rather than admire them.

Sadly, Mata Hari was oblivious.  She seems to have lived in a dreamworld, perhaps convincing herself of the character history she had been selling the public for years.  Having no idea that the French and British were already keeping tabs on her, she was first approached by a German officer to pass along any useful information she might happen to pick up.  In need of money, she accepted the offer, without really intending to do anything but go on about her own business of self-promotion, as if it was nothing more serious than deceiving one of her many lovers.  Her worst mistake, though, was to fall in love, for the first time ever.  The young man, a Russian officer, was wounded in the war and, in desperation, Mata Hari also agreed to spy for France in order to earn enough money to end her career as a courtesan and marry her lover.

Mata Hari’s grand scheme was anything but subtle; she set out at once to seduce an old lover, the crowned prince of Germany!  After that matters only became further convoluted when she was mistaken for an actual German spy, Clara Bendix.  Mata Hari was interrogated at Scotland Yard until she spilled the story of her agreement to spy for the French officer, Georges Ladoux.  British Intelligence, however, had been alerted by Ladoux himself, over a year previous, to keep an eye on Mata Hari!  Naturally, this made him look rather foolish and only furthered his distrust and distaste for Mata Hari, and he set out to bring about her ultimate demise.  Caught in the crossfire of wartimes, Mata Hari was made a sacrifice.  Her arrest and execution was touted by both Britain and France as a great success in the war effort, and by Germany as a great example of the folly of the Allies.  Her trial was anything but fair and the evidence given against her was circumstantial at best, yet she maintained her poise and dignity to the bitter end.

Living out the last months of her life in a filthy cell, Mata Hari’s letters went undelivered and her pleas unheard.  Her trial was a closed, fly by night procedure, with no press coverage permitted, and those who could have testified in her defense were not allowed to do so.  Destitute, imprisoned, and abandoned by her slew of admirers, she wrote, “I will defend myself and if I must fall it will be with a smile of profound contempt.”  Mata Hari held her head high and, when faced with a firing squad comprised of twelve soldiers, she refused the blindfold, choosing instead to look her executioners in the eye.  She did not flinch until hit by eleven bullets, as one of the men had fainted.  Whether it was just for good measure or just one final insult, an additional bullet was put in her head; no one claimed her body, and she has no grave.  Mata Hari may have come to an untimely and unjust end, but she lives in infamy, immortalized as the most famous spy seductress of all time.

Well tie me up, it’s Clara Bow
by: Hella Goode

This week it’s Anne Hathaway, the next week Natalie Portman and after that maybe Mila Kunis. Who is the new “it girl” in Hollywood? Reaching “it girl” status is great while it lasts, but there was only one original “it girl” and her name was Clara Bow. Women adored her for her spunkiness and free spirit. Yet she was gifted in attracting men as well. She had that unattainable and enviable spark that got her cast time and time again.

Bow began her career in silent film and was one of the few actors of the time that managed to successfully transition to “talkies.” Her voice was not the silky smooth one sought after by many actors of the time, but still a unique one that drew the ears of those who heard it. Yet what she was most known for was for being the first to hint at the existence of sex in film. Granted for today’s
standards it was still tame, but for the time, Clara’s flirtation was hot as a skillet.

Just as her star shot to the sky, she began to burn. Paramount began typecasting her as mostly a flapper, or a party girl. She displayed her acting abilities including her emotional range through other roles although not as plentiful sometimes as a jailbird and other times as a tomboy.

Strangely, for a person so desired as an adult, Clara was born unwanted. She was born in 1905 in Brooklyn to a mother who was mentally ill and her father had no interest in her. Her dreams were her escape.

That was until she won the 1921 Fame and Fortune contest looking for the next big thing by Motion Picture, Motion Picture Classic, and Shadowland Magazines. They reported that she had “a genuine spark of the divine fire.” She was cast in a small part in Beyond the Rainbow in 1922, but was disappointed to find that her scene was cut before release. However things changed when B.P.Schulberg got hold of Clara. Soon she had more work than had thought possible.

She was more versatile than given credit for by many film historians. Despite giving such brilliant dramatic performances, it was Clara’s flapper roles that increasingly drew the attentions of millions of American film-goers.

Riding on the successes of The Plastic Age, Dancing Mothers, and especially
Mantrap, Clara was fast becoming a major star. Men started to desire her voluptuous body and became completely mesmerized by her effervescent charm and breath-taking beauty. Clara even set fashion trends among women.

Yet a dispute with assistant Daisy DeVoe which lead to a court case took Clara into a downward spiral that she found nearly impossible to escape. Ms. DeVoe had difficulty getting along with Bow’s then husband, Rex Bell, who may have gotten the allegations going. In the trial, DeVoe alleged that Bow had a libido that wouldn’t stop. She claimed the actress had her way with countless men and even dipped a toe into bestiality. Clara found it hard to repolish her reputation and began having breakdowns. She became known as “Crisis-a-day Clara.” Studios and industry people distanced themselves from her.

She later moved to Nevada on hiatus from films, became the mother of two sons and began to recuperate mentally from all she had endured, not only in Hollywood, but from her life from day one.

Eventually she came back to movies in Call Her Savage (1932) and Hoopla (1933). However her party girl reputation was stuck like the gum to the back of her ear. In 1988 David Stenn wrote a biography about Clara called Runnin’ Wild in which his pen burned in his mission to clarify and rectify the wild rumors about her.

One might ask what good such an effort would do, over twenty years after herdeath, on September 26, 1965. As long as there are those who enjoyed Clara’s life and work, then setting the record straight would be worth it.

Who was Clara Bow, the “it girl”? It can be summed up in one of her personal
quotes. “All the time the flapper is laughin’ and dancin’, there’s a feelin’ of
tragedy underneath…”

Burlesque Arrests: Georgia Sothern

by: Femme Vivre LaRouge

Burlesque has seen many incarnations, ups and downs, and even periods of hibernation over the past century, but try as the censors might, it has never really gone away.  The magical connection between burlesque and the American audience can be summed up in the lyrics of Willkommen from the opening of Cabaret: “Leave your troubles outside!  So life is disappointing?  Forget it!  We have no troubles here!  Here life is beautiful…the girls are beautiful…even the orchestra is beautiful!”  Although burlesque has seen success on the stages of Broadway and other high end venues, it remains an essentially working class form of entertainment, aiding escapism from the worries of everyday life through the troubles of the Great Depression and war times.  Miss Georgia Sothern was a big player throughout.  Her career lasted from 1922-1977 and began when she was barely 13!

Raised in vaudeville, Georgia began performing with her uncle when she was a toddler; her father had abandoned the family and her mother struggled to make ends meet for Georgia (then called Hazel) and her sister, Jewel.  Within a week of Hazel’s thirteenth birthday, her mother was in a state-funded hospital being treated for tuberculosis and her beloved Uncle Virgil had died of the same.  Uncle Virgil had entrusted Hazel to another vaudeville act, but that form of entertainment was vanishing quickly and the act soon dissolved, the manager running off without paying Hazel, and she found herself alone on the streets of New York city.  After a week of nearly starving and without finding work in the only field she knew, the brave young girl turned to burlesque.  She had a number of false birth certificates from her vaudeville days and was able to pass herself off as 17!  Later, when Mr. Minsky found out that she was only 14 (and had been working for him for over a year) he nearly hit the roof, but she gave him one of her false birth certificates and assured him that she would never alert the law to this indiscretion.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia picked her name on the spot in Phil Rosenberg’s office and in her nervousness, forgot the ‘u’ in Sothern, and so the spelling stuck.  Her unique style of whirling dervish striptease was also born out of nervousness, during her very first performance and this jazz age baby rode it all the way to the bank, eventually having a signature tune written for her, “Hold that Tiger.”  Ann Corio wrote, “The mere sight of this red hot red-headed temptress tossing her hips in fantastic abandon to the wild music of the band caught up everybody in its spell…the audience was almost as exhausted watching as Georgia was performing.”  Sometimes she would get so caught up in her exuberant dance steps that she would end up taking off and putting on her clothing several times during a number, leading one fan to remark, “She strips just like she had dynamite for lunch.”

Not only did she do a fast strip, she led a fast-paced life in the roaring twenties and no matter how conservative she actually was, adventure always seemed to seek her out.  Her skirmishes with the law didn’t always involve burlesque, but often gangsters and bootleggers, as well as her poorly picked husbands.  While still only 13, Georgia witnessed a gangland murder that would have had her dead that very night, but for the fact that she had worn black and the streetlight happened to be burned out, so that the killers didn’t notice her.  The plot thickened later, when she found out that perpetrator was her best friend’s boyfriend!  Months of living in fear that he would discover her identity culminated in his dropping a large wad of stolen cash at their apartment as he fled from the police.  But when he returned much later, to kill his former flame, he was the one that ended up snuffed out in a nearby park, thanks to her friend, Foxie, a rival bootlegger.  The police also became involved in her personal life when her first husband threatened to jump from a tall building, to the amusement of a large crowd and the chagrin of the police squad.  Georgia, however, called him on it, and he flew into a rage, swearing at her and hitting her, and ultimately landed himself in jail.

But back to burlesque.  She was never busted for being underage, but she was escorted out of Philadelphia by the police.  Whenever Mr. Poole, the city’s censor, would come around, the burlesque houses would tame down the show and cut all the bumps and grinds.  He became fixated on finding Miss Sothern doing whatever it was that made her so popular; one night the theatre was not slick enough and Sothern was caught wearing only three sequined rosebuds.  She was given 24 hours to leave town, or end up in jail.  Although Georgia was mortified, the reporters were on her side and it all turned out for the best, with Mr. Cohen selling Georgia’s contract to none other than Billy Minsky.  Burlesque thrived in the city of New York’s emerging nightclub scene for years to come, but further into the thirties, things began to change.  Mayor LaGuardia was doing his best shut down burlesque and issued stricter and stricter edicts, including this one: “You are not allowed to remove an article of clothing.  You may not peel from your person even so much as a glove.”  The biz had to get creative, some operations creating floating nightclubs, modeled after prohibition speakeasies.  However, when the states entered WWII, the art of the striptease didn’t seem so bad.  As Ann Corio wrote in 1941, for Variety, “Burlesque, along with aviation and munitions, is experiencing a wartime spurt.”  During this time, Georgia joined Gypsy Rose Lee on Broadway in Mike Todd’s productions of Star and Garter and The Naked Genius.

But when the war was over, burlesque was booted from The Great White Way and it was back to the nightclubs for the peelers.  In 1948, Georgia was arrested at Club Samoa in Manhattan, under the charge “lewdness in a tent.”  The star was fined $125, but this didn’t stop her.  She spent years fighting the case and finally won, the judge ruling that “the city could not deprive her from earning a living in a lawful occupation.”  Furthermore, Georgia is cited as being the main force behind the abolishment of the ‘police card,’ which performers in New York had to pay for every two years and, if their card was taken up for any reason, they were not allowed to work in the city.  Georgia was a great advocate of her profession and prompted H.L. Mencken to coin the term ‘ecdysiast’ to try and ameliorate the unfavorable image brought to mind by the term ‘stripper.’  Performing the carnival circuit in the later years of her career, Georgia eventually took her own shows on the road, Sothern’s Red-Headed Revue and the Top Hatters.  She didn’t retire from the stage until five years before her death, in 1981.  She was 72, and in my book, this dynamite dame deserves a lifetime achievement award.

For more information on Georgia Sothern, the Red Headed Bombshell, I highly recommend reading her autobiography, Georgia: My Life in Burlesque.

Remembering a Legend: Tura Satana

By: Hella Goode

“Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” (Russel Meyer, 1965)…the title alone grips you. When you see Tura Satana as Varla, it kind of gropes you. But you wouldn’t want to grope her because she really would kick your ass. Tura, born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi on July 10, 1938 in Hokkaido, Japan lived a less than privileged life, although those are usually the more interesting ones.

Her family immigrated to the United States and grew. She attended James A. Riis Elementary School in a part of Chicago where racial categories were distinct. She was neither black nor white, in fact she was multiracial. Yet people only saw her as Japanese, and after World War II that was not a good thing. She was constantly taunted by the other girls until one day she finally fought back, and as you might guess….she kicked their asses!

She spent more time fighting than most of us think anyone should have to, but these struggles helped form the foxy femme fatale she would become. She was an early bloomer which seemed to lead to trouble. As a young girl she was gang raped. Understandably, this left her shaken, but also very angry. As if it were a page torn out of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill manuscript she went on a revenge manifesto and over time found each and every one of the so-called young men and, again, she kicked their asses!

Her voluptuous build at such an age convinced others of her adulthood, helping her score jobs as a model and dancer way before legal to do so, according to most sources beginning at the age of 13. She was 5′ 7″ and by the time she was fully developed was said to be a 40FF bra size. Her burlesque routines weren’t run of the mill strip numbers. She was very athletic, graceful and artistic too. Her skills as a martial artist and her sultriness as a dancer lead to roles in other movies and on television as well. About her dancing she said, “When I was dancing burlesque was an art – classy and elegant and requiring talent. I got out of it when it started to become raunchy and lost the art. Now they call it nude dancing, but it’s plain old pornography as far as I’m concerned. They do things on stage that I wouldn’t have even thought of doing.”

As was common in Japan, early on her parents had planned her arranged marriage. She was 13 at the time and he was 17. As was to be expected by a girl who had seen that life could be better than the four walls of a domestic home, she broke free of it. It was not her only marriage. Tura had also married John Satana, giving her his now infamous last name, and Endel Jurman whom she loved dearly. She had a daughter named Kalani later at 19 years old.

Tarantino must have been extremely mused by Tura as parts of Death Proof seem to be reminiscent of her performances as an actress where she took names and kicked ass and had fun in muscle cars with other hot chicks who kick ass. Some say that he even based the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, and Lucy Liu’s part Japanese character, Oren Ishii from snippets of Tura herself. Her image sparks flames even now.

It was tempting to think that Tura would have even kicked death’s ass had it knocked on her door before coming in. It had to happen. All that ass-kicking can take its toll on the heart. This February 4, 2011 in Reno, Nevada, Ms. Tura Satana passed of heart failure. Tura, darling, KAIP, may you Kick Ass In Peace, or Pieces……

Sex Toys, a History

By: Femme Vivre LaRouge

Depictions of sexual devices have been found in the art of cultures worldwide from as far back as 30,000 years ago.  Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians all had their own inventions and don’t appear to have been shy about using them.  What the Greeks called olisbos, the Renaissance Italians termed diletto, meaning delight, and that is what we now know as the dildo.  Of course, they’ve come along way – they are no longer made of dried camel dung coated in hardened resin (as in the ancient Middle East) or bronze (as in ancient China) and olive oil is no longer the lube of choice.

Then came the Victorians, a group riddled with dichotomy.  Repression was the word of the day, especially when it came to sexuality and even more so when it came to women.  However, it was during this time period that rubber made its debut, not only for tires, but also dildos, and butt plugs were no longer just carved ginger root or frightening medical devices made of glass.  These newfangled wooden eggs were designed and prescribed by doctors to prevent the loss of sperm by forcing it back towards the female reproductive organs.  At least that was the theory.  In those days, many practices or contraptions that we now consider sexual cloaked themselves as medicinal.  Talk about your sexual healing!  The steam age also made health spas popular with both men and women, who visited these establishments for therapeutic water jet massage made possible by steam power.

And then there was the hysteria craze.  Both psychological and physical in nature, this affliction had many symptoms, including convulsions, choking sensations, heart palpitations, fainting, and sudden, violent mood swings.  In this era, women were thought to not only be quite simple, but governed almost entirely by their uterus, and the term hysteria is derived from hustera, the Greek for womb.  Neurologist Horatio Bryan Donkin, a man ahead of his time, wrote the description of hysteria for the 1892 Dictionary of Psychological Medicine, in which he pointed out that the suppression of activity in girls and the enforcement of sexual inhibition was a contributor to the disorder.  Indeed, it became a quite popular ailment, along with anorexia, especially for aristocratic and intelligent young girls, perhaps because they lacked many avenues of control over their lives and were expected to be completely devoid of libido.  Young hysterics even became celebrities of a sort, ‘performing’ their attacks, under hypnosis, in front of audiences and for medical study.  They were photographed extensively and would often copy the poses of tragic heroines and figures in Romantic art, as well as influencing the aesthetic their time.

One of the more prominent treatments for hysteria was clitoral massage, performed by a physician, to induce ‘paroxysm,’ or as we know it, orgasm.  This was meant to calm the patient and it wasn’t long before the first (steam-powered) vibrator was invented, by an American doctor, George Taylor, in 1869.  Then, in 1883, the first electromechanical version was patented and it began to be marketed as a cure-all for women.  Advertisements described how much happier, healthier, and more vivacious women would be if they bought these massagers for their face and head; and these ads often described more than healing properties, if one read between the lines.  Woman’s  Home Companion and Needlecraft magazine sold them by mail order and, in 1918, Sears Roebuck advertised their product as a ‘marital aid’ that no woman should be without.  Men were even encouraged to buy vibrators for their wives in order to keep them young and pretty, relaxed and content.  In the 1930s, however, the sexual nature of these ‘health aids’ was made more obvious through erotic cinema and without the cover of medicine, vibrators went underground until the sixties.

Sex toys began to flourish again in the sixties, fitting in nicely with the atmosphere of free love.  Then, in 1983, Patty Brisben opened Pure Romance, based on the in-home sales party plan, so that women would have a way to comfortably talk about and research sex toys and other erotic goods.  The company now does sixty million in sales, annually.  As Brisben asserts, “When another woman explains something in a group of women, it becomes ok; they can ask questions without feeling inadequate.  Parties are a great place for women to empower themselves to take control in the bedroom.”  In the nineties, advances in internet commerce made it even easier to shop for bedroom gadgets anonymously.  These instruments became more varied, finally taking into account the specifics of the female anatomy and capitalizing on it.  Now all sorts of colors, sizes, rabbits, dolphins, pearls, and even ‘the Cadillac of vibrators,’ the Hitachi Magic Wand are up for sale at a Condoms to Go near you.

The booming sex toy industry has suffered no losses due to the state of the economy, either.  Sales are up, from Amazon to independent shop owners.  As more couples stay at home to save money, they seem to be spending their time, and a little money, getting more adventurous in the bedroom.   The 2010 Venus adult toys exhibition in Berlin broke records, with 273 vendors offering millions of products to nearly 30,000 attendees.  And, yep, there’s an app for that.  The iPhone now offers an Apple approved application, MyVibe, with adjustable vibration speeds.

Burlesque Arrests: Lili St. Cyr

By: Femme Vivre LaRouge

This month’s installation of Burlesque Arrests illustrates the ongoing decency debate through the life and trials of Lili St. Cyr, billed as the Anatomic Bomb.  Lili, a sophisticated chanteuse, played quite a part in elevating the art of the striptease from a solely burlesque house existence to one on the glitzy new stages of Las Vegas.  Miss St. Cyr dressed and undressed herself very finely, testifying in 1951that she currently had $4,200 invested in her costumes and $11,750 in her props!  After retiring from the stage, she went on to open her own line of high-end, mail-order lingerie like the garments she wore onstage; packages were delivered tantalizingly marked “Intimate Secrets by Lili St. Cyr.”

As a burlesque queen, Lili St. Cyr reigned over Montreal’s thriving nightclub scene for most of the 1940s, but in the early 1950s, a campaign to clean up the nightlife was sweeping the city.  Religious groups began protesting about Lili’s show, claiming that “a stench of sexual frenzy plagues the theater the whole time this dancer’s exhibition lasts” and demanding that the authorities ban any shows given by her in the city of Montreal.  Although the police initially observed her performances at The Gayety and decided there was no cause for action, public pressure eventually drove officials to re-examine the existing laws dealing with performance and public morality.  As a result, Lili received a summons to appear in court to “answer charges under a section of the Criminal Code dealing with offensive, immoral, or indecent exhibitions,” in 1951.  The evidence offered against her was rather flimsy and Miss St. Cyr was acquitted, with the judge noting, “It seems to me that those who made the most noise here today were persons who didn’t even see the performance complained of.”  As Lili herself told a reporter, “everyone has a right to his opinion, but a lot of people are prejudiced who would not be if they could see my act.  I don’t like vulgarity – I think it is ugly – and on the burlesque circuit they think I’m high-hat.”

Naturally, the brouhaha only served as publicity for her, as is usually the case with these matters.  The victory was celebrated in an article from Commerce Montreal, which described Lili’s performance thusly: “With a sparkling light she executes the most fantastic dances of eternal theme…She gives a wake-up to adolescence, a stimulant to the young man, comfort to the middle-aged man, sweet memory to the old man…Lili is the goddess of love reincarnate.”  The article also warned that if the reformers triumphed the city would not only lose its reputation as the capital of nightlife, but millions of tourist dollars as well.  Unfortunately, the Commerce’s advice went unheeded, The Gayety was shut down, and Lili St. Cyr moved on…to Las Vegas.

That same year, the Special Committee on Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce led an investigation on political corruption, the Mafia, and its connection with strip joints.  As the U.S. drifted out of war times and into the family-focused fifties, public consensus about decency took a conservative swing and the pin-ups and burlesque dancers who had been praised for helping to win the war were now being told to cover up.  Even Sin City wasn’t yet ready for St. Cyr; her act was in interrupted at El Rancho and she was arrested in September of 1951.  She was let out on $1,000 bail, skipped her hearing, and hoofed it to Los Angeles.

In L.A. Lili had been headlining a swanky Hollywood club, Ciro’s, where she entertained the likes of Dean Martin, Ronald Reagan, and Humphrey Bogart with her famous bubble bath, even selling her own line of bubble bath in the gift shop.  Although Lili kept herself covered by bubbles, a bath towel, or her ladies’ maid, there were those who took umbrage to her act.  In October 1951, club owner Herbert Hover and Lili St. Cyr were arrested, and her g-string and net bra seized for evidence.  The charges were giving an indecent performance and lewdly exposing her person.  Despite the insistence of the club’s publicist that the whole debacle had been an orchestrated media stunt, the D.A. pursued the case and Lili hired renowned defense attorney Jerry Giesler.  Giesler had already successfully defended Charlie Chaplin, Errol Flynn, and gangster Bugsy Siegel, just to name a few.  He noted, of his tendency to take cases revolving around sex, “It’s because sex is not only one of the facts of life, it’s also – at least in my experience – one of the most prevalent bases of legal strife.”  Giesler insisted that Lili’s act was artistic and refined and requested that her jurors be made up of “people capable of judging such things on their artistic merit.”  Accusations against Lili included that her towel was see-through, which was refuted by examination of the towel in question, and that her dance involved a pelvic bump.  Captain Walker Hannon described this hip motion as “Mae West wiggles” and the short, rotund Hover, when asked to demonstrate a bump, shyly sent the courtroom into fits of laughter.  Captain Sutton testified that he had not seen either bumps or grinds and the jury soon acquitted Lili, after which she stated, “This is a real victory for the profession.”  Once again, the trial increased her fame and the Hollywood Report gossip column ranked her with Lana Turner and Ava Gardner in their Pucker-Up Poll, while an ad for Ciro’s touted, “See What Hollywood Saw! – Was the Jury Right?”

Lili, whom journalist Walter Winchell said outstripped even Gypsy Rose Lee, stated, “If I do demoralize an audience, as some people say, then I’m glad I do it.  People need a loosening up.  Most of the people in this country are hypocritical, too many put on a front of being shocked at certain kinds of behavior.  It’s a joke to think I could demoralize anyone with this little act.  If one has morals, then they can’t be taken away by me or anyone else.”  As the line goes in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, “God bless Lili St. Cyr!”

More on Lili St Cyr

Editors note: When Femme came up with the idea to do an article on burlesque arrests, I thought it was fabulous.  When she came back and said there were just too damn many for one article, I thought- even better!  What better way to kick off a new monthly series than with the delicious Mae West & the legendary Sally Rand.

Burlesque Arrests: Sally Rand & Mae West

By: Femme Vivre LaRouge

Burlesque house raids are as infamous as those of speakeasies during prohibition, sometimes being one and the same.  As performers pushed the envelope further and further, policing agencies and government lobbyists went tit for tat trying to pass new laws of censorship and to enforce a moral code.  Many a famous burlesque performer has come under the scrutiny of the law; here we shall spotlight fan dancing pioneer, Sally Rand, and 20^th century sex icon, Mae West.

Born Harriet Helen Gould Beck, Sally Rand was a teenage runaway, circus performer, cigarette girl, model, dancer, stage actress, and silent film star before she ever picked up a pair of ostrich feather fans.  In 1933, at the Chicago World’s Fair, she not only wielded her fans wearing nothing but Max Factor body paint, but also appeared as Lady Godiva, riding a white horse, apparently nude.  Thus began her arrest record, with a total of four arrests in a single day!  Though Rand was charged with lewd conduct, Superior Court Judge Joseph B. David dismissed the case, noting that, “Some people would want to put pants on a horse…if a woman wiggles about with a fan, it is not the business of this court.”  The incident’s publicity made her a burlesque sensation, her weekly pay escalating from $125 to $3,000 in a single summer.   Never actually baring quite all, Sally Rand was noted for saying, “the Rand is quicker than the eye.”

1946 found Miss Rand back in court, charged with indecent exposure, corrupting the morals of an audience, and conducting an obscene show.  She was taken into custody after an engagement at the Savory in San Francisco, where six police officers witnessed one of her fan dances, in which she decreased her costume to a flesh-colored triangle.  Rand hired renowned defense attorney, Jake Ehrlich, who had kept both Billie Holiday and Gene Krupa from going to jail on drug charges.  Ehrlich made the point that nudity was respected in the art of the great masters and suggested that the court view the dance in question, as evidence of its artistic nature.  The judge agreed to this and even granted Miss Rand a release to continue her performances, unaltered, until the trial was over.  That very same night, however, Rand began her dance, but was stopped for arrest by the San Francisco Police Department.  Imagine their surprise when the lights came up and it was revealed that Sally Rand was hiding a pair of flannel long-johns behind her fans.  Furthermore, in place of her customary triangle of costume, was a note marked “CENSORED.  S.F.P.D.”!  The next morning she performed her usual routine for the judge and jury and was promptly acquitted, on the grounds that, “Anyone who could find something lewd about the dance as she puts it on has to have a perverted idea of morals,” as Judge Shoemaker pronounced.

From flapper to fan dancer, Miss Rand continued to strut her stuff into the, and also her, sixties.  As she said herself, of her illustrious career, “I haven’t been out of work since the day I took my pants off.”

Mae West, a household name to this day, began her career in Vaudeville, working her way up to radio, Broadway, and later the screen. Her entire career, which lasted her a lifetime, was based on one infamous character: herself.  Known for her sexual candor, wit, and double entendres, she coined many famous phrases, such as “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me” and “A hard man is good to find.”

Not only an actress, but a producer and writer, as well, Miss West titled her first Broadway show “Sex.”  The play was not such a great success until it was brought up on a morals charge, sparking a heated debate over the role of censorship in the theatre.  After being arrested and released on $1,000 bail, West continued her show, to packed audiences, for a lengthy run.  As with Sally Rand, the publicity did her nothing but good!  However, in 1927, the play was again brought up against charges of obscenity and West was convicted of corrupting the morals of youth, for which she served nine days out of a ten day sentence, getting out early on good behavior!  She served her sentence at Welfare Island Women’s Workhouse, where Mae West, never a quitter, gathered a great deal of material from observing her inmates and wrote her play-turned-film “Diamond Lil.”  During the scandal of “Sex,” West was also busy writing and producing “The Drag,” which the New York Times described as the play that “caused the sudden action…toward cleaning up the stage.”  Although the show was a success at its out of town previews, it was not allowed to open on Broadway.  This didn’t stop her from staging “Pleasure Man,” which also featured drag performers, and landed West, once more, in jail and, once more, released for $1,000 bail.  The lady certainly had a fighting spirit and, as she said herself, “Those who are easily shocked…should be shocked more often.”

Her involvement in the film business was fraught with the same battles over censorship as her Broadway career.  She caused such scandal on the silver screen that some authors jokingly credit her with singlehandedly bringing down the hammer of the censors that resulted in the Hollywood Production Code of 1934, which was the mode of film censorship until 1968.  But Mae West outlasted the production code, using her same shtick in 1978 for her final film, Sextette and still using her most iconic quote, “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime…when I’ve got nothing on but the radio.”