Rose La Rose and the Re-Ownership of American Burlesque, 1935-1972

Home , Ann Corio, Bambi (The Young Ones), Blaze Starr, Bloodhound Gang, Burlesque, Burlesque (soundtrack)

TAUGHT IT TO THE TRADE:

ROSE LA ROSE AND THE RE-OWNERSHIP OF AMERICAN BURLESQUE, 1935-1972

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Elizabeth Wellman

Graduate Program in Theatre

The Ohio State University

2015

Dissertation Committee:

Jennifer Schlueter, Advisor

Beth Kattelman

Joy Reilly

Elizabeth Wellman

2015 ABSTRACT

Declaring burlesque dead has been a habit of the twentieth century. Robert C.

Allen quoted an 1890s letter from the first burlesque star of the American stage, Lydia

Thompson in Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1991): “[B]urlesque as she knew it ‘has been retired for a time,’ its glories now ‘merely memories of the stage.’”1 In 1931, Bernard Sobel opined in Burleycue: An Underground History of

Burlesque Days, “Alas! You will never get a chance to see one of the real burlesque shows again. They are gone forever…”2 In 1938, The Billboard published an editorial that began, “On every hand the cry is ‘Burlesque is dead.’”3 In fact, burlesque had been declared dead so often that editorials began popping up insisting it could be revived, as

Joe Schoenfeld’s 1943 op-ed in Variety did: “[It] may be in a state of putrefaction, but it is a lusty and kicking decomposition.”4 It is this “lusty and kicking decomposition” which characterizes the published history of burlesque. Since its modern inception in the late nineteenth century, American burlesque has both been framed and framed itself within this narrative of degeneration. This narrative consistently reaffirms that the burlesque that came before was superior, worthwhile, real, or legitimate, and that the current state of burlesque is dire, on the edge of complete moral and artistic decay. In many ways, this

ii narrative of perpetual degeneracy is burlesque’s most salient feature. This dissertation examines the narrative of degeneracy in American burlesque between 1935 and 1972, as it permeates popular culture, impacts the development of the burlesque circuit, and is disrupted or re-interrogated by performers who began operating their own burlesque theaters, offering a cultural study of the stripper in popular discourse, the American burlesque circuit, and the career of Rose La Rose in the hopes of achieving what cultural historian John Storey calls “an active undoing." 5

1 Robert Clyde Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1991), 236.

2 Bernard Sobel, Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days (New York: Farrar & Rinehart,

1931), 262.

3The Billboard was renamed Billboard Music Week in 1961 and then Billboard in 1963; Jimmy Stanton,

"The Forum: Plugs Comedy as Essential Burlesque Aid,"The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 19,

1938, 33 [ProQuest Multiple Databases].

4 Joe Schoenfeld, Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), January 8, 1941, 146, [ProQuest Multiple Databases].

5 John Storey, Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.,

2003), 93-94.

iii

For Rose, and Buddy, and all the rest

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank you to Jennifer Schlueter for her incredible example as an advisor, teacher, and mentor. I am endlessly grateful to her for her keen eye, her patience, and her ability to find in my initial wide-eyed stumbling through burlesque history the seeds of this project. I thank her for framing my mistakes and shortcomings as possibilities, for seeing the best in me, for demanding my best work, for helping me stay joyful in this project, and for reveling in the research with me.

My heartiest thanks to Beth Kattelman for her archival expertise, strong scholarship, and kindness over the past six years of graduate school. I am so thankful to have been taught and guided by her as an advisee, a student, and a research assistant at the Theatre Research Institute.

Thank you to Joy Reilly for her willingness to listen, her graciousness as a teacher, and for passing on her deep love and commitment to her field and her students. I am so grateful for her time and energy.

My deepest gratitude to Charles H. McCaghy for his collection which sparked my initial passion for burlesque history, introduced me to Rose La Rose, and was absolutely essential to this entire dissertation. All my thanks to the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute, to the Head of Thompson Library Special Collections, Nena Couch, Curator of Theatre, Beth Kattelman, and Assistant Curator, Orville Martin for introducing me to the McCaghy Collection, for sharing their expertise so generously, and for facilitating such access to the archives. My thanks to all the staff members in the Ohio State University Special Collections at Thompson Library for their patience and assistance with materials for the last several years.

I am indebted to Janelle Smith for her great generosity over the past two years. I thank her for sharing her immense personal collection of burlesque photographs, costumes, and ephemera with me, as well as for her invaluable knowledge of burlesque history and culture. I thank her for her frequent assistance in identifying performers and obtaining rare archival materials and I thank her for her friendship.

Many thanks to the staff in the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Special Collections at Lied Library for their kindness and assistance during my August 2014 visit.

Thank you to my mother who taught me to read and to my father who taught me to love the minutia written there. All my love and thanks to my husband, Kyle, for his sacrifices and understanding over the past six years of school. No words are big enough.

Research for this dissertation was partially supported by the Critical Difference for Women Graduate Studies Grant made possible by the Coca Cola Foundation and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University, as well as the Aida Cannarsa Snow Endowment Fund in the College of the Arts and the John C. Morrow Memorial Fund.

VITA

2008……………………………………………………………B.A. Theatre, Adams State University

2011……………………………………………M.A. Theatre, The Ohio State University

2009 to 2015…………………...Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Theatre

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ...... ii

Dedication ...... iv

Acknowledgements...... v

Vita...... vii

List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………….ix

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Chapter 2: The Stripper in Popular Discourse…...... 33

Chapter 3: Working Strong on the Burlesque Circuit…………...... 65

Chapter 4: Re-Ownership………………………...... 103

Chapter 5: Conclusion...... 144

Bibliography...... 158

Appendix A: American Burlesque Circuits Timeline……………………...... 179

Appendix B: Rose La Rose Career Timeline…………………………………….……..188

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Rose La Rose in production still of her "Oriental Dance" from the film, Queen of Burlesque (1946), Reproduced with special permission from The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute…………………………………………...21 Figure 2: La Rose with her mother, Jennie in personal snapshot, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute…43 Figure 3: Rose La Rose with unknown reporter backstage, location/date unknown, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute………………………………………………………………..45 Figure 4: La Rose posing for photographers, location/date unknown, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute…………………………………………………………………………………..47 Figure 5: Newspaper advertisement featuring Rose La Rose at the Rialto in Chicago, dated between 1938-1940, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection…………………………………………………………………86 Figure 6: 1960s newspaper advertisement for the Park, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection………………………….…93 Figure 7: Newspaper advertisement for one of Irma the Body's appearances at Rose La Rose's Town Hall, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection………………………………………………………………………..110 Figure 8: Rose La Rose posing in front of a banner at Snookie's night club, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute…………………………………………………………………………………114 Figure 9: Rose La Rose's handwritten instructions for the stagehand, likely written late 1960s, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute………………………………………………………………121 Figure 10: Newspaper advertisement for the annual stripping contest at the Town Hall, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection...125

Figure 11: Likely Rose La Rose's last public performance, 1971, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection…………………………...133

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a colleague about my work in burlesque history and my particular interest in the art form in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The assessment was quick: “Oh, well, that’s just stripping then.” My colleague was—and is—in good company with this notion. Prominent historians and journalists have written repeatedly about the “death of burlesque.” In 1956, Barney Gerard wrote an article for

Variety entitled, “Burlesque –Its Rise and Demise” in which he claimed it had

“succumbed to smut and strippers.”6 In 1961, Ann Corio premiered her future Broadway production, This Was Burlesque, effectively announcing burlesque’s time of death.7 In

1965, drama critic Robert Pollak reviewing This Was Burlesque wrote that “These and hundreds like them ultimately contributed to the death of burlesque and even the bumps and grinds couldn’t save it.”8 In 1963, Martin Collyer declared in Burlesque: The Story of a Unique American Institution, that burlesque “for all practical purposes” was dead,

“withered and died…gasped its last…that grand old dinosaur.”9 In Striptease: The Untold

History of the Girlie Show (2004), Rachel Shteir called 1969 “the year that killed striptease.”10 When the famous burlesque dancer Rose La Rose actually died in 1972, the

Toledo Blade’s headline read: “Ex-Ecdysiast Follows Burlesque in Death.”11 As the

Gettysburg Times reported in 1981, when the Trocadero, a famous burlesque theater in

Philadelphia closed in 1978, “the Troc closed its doors on the ashes of burlesque.”12

Far from being a phenomenon isolated to the mid twentieth century, declaring burlesque dead has been a habit in both scholarship and popular media at various points

1 throughout the twentieth century. Robert C. Allen quoted an 1890s letter from the first burlesque star of the American stage, Lydia Thompson’s in his history, Horrible

Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (1991): “[B]urlesque as she knew it ‘has been retired for a time,’ its glories now ‘merely memories of the stage.’”13 In 1931,

Bernard Sobel opined in Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days, “Alas!

You will never get a chance to see one of the real burlesque shows again. They are gone forever…”14 Allen himself declared “the body of the burlesque industry brain-dead” in

1937 when it was banned in New York by Mayor La Guardia: “It was only a matter of a few years before burlesque passed from the scene entirely except as a misleading signifier for nightclub strip shows.”15 In 1938, The Billboard published an editorial that began, “On every hand the cry is ‘Burlesque is dead.’”16 In fact, burlesque had been declared dead so often that editorials began popping up insisting it could be revived, as

Joe Schoenfeld’s 1943 op-ed in Variety did: “[It] may be in a state of putrefaction, but it is a lusty and kicking decomposition.”17

It is this “lusty and kicking decomposition” which characterizes the published history of burlesque. Since its modern inception in the late nineteenth century, American burlesque has both been framed and framed itself within this narrative of degeneration.

This narrative consistently reaffirms that the burlesque that came before was superior, worthwhile, real, or legitimate, and that the current state of burlesque is dire, on the edge of complete moral and artistic decay. Burlesque is in a constant state of being worse than other popular arts and worse than its former self. In many ways, this narrative of perpetual degeneracy is burlesque’s most salient feature.

Generally, burlesque refers to a distinct performance mode characterized by a performer (historically female) dancing to music, sometimes singing or talking, and usually includes elements of striptease and humor. A burlesque show traditionally features five or six female strippers interspersed with comedic sketches performed by male comedians. A typical burlesque act or “spot” includes three songs or “trailers.”

These trailers often show a progression, narrative, and/or build to a climactic moment of the act in which the final pieces of clothing are removed. Though nudity has varied greatly depending on decade, location, venue, and performer, dancers most frequently remove all clothing except pasties covering the nipples and a g-string covering the crotch.

Though cultural understandings of burlesque continue to shift and will be interrogated within this dissertation, this general definition of burlesque should be noted.

From burlesque’s first performance on the American stage, the narrative of degeneration has been present in public discourse about burlesque as a way of determining its legitimacy. Burlesque was under almost constant scrutiny for its content by public censors—to fend off its degeneracy. Simultaneously, it was asked to innovate, to offer something that could not be seen in one of the competing popular entertainments—to provide a more degenerate product than its competitors. As Irving

Zeidman remarked in 1967, “The trouble with the American burlesque showroom beginning to end, is either that it has been too dirty—or else it hasn’t been dirty enough.”18 These dual and competing expectations mean that burlesque negotiates (and capitalizes upon) a spectrum from legitimacy to illegitimacy, advertising as both better and worse than itself. Likewise, burlesque performers have traded on the tensions between perceptions of legitimacy and illegitimacy within the public imagination. In print

2 media representations, for example, a burlesque star could perform this tension, representing herself as both classier than average burlesque while also naughtier and edgier than average burlesque. It sometimes worked in a performer’s favor to play into public perceptions of illegitimacy that might increase box office. In this way, however, the tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy are enacted upon the performer’s public self, demanding that she defend her performance as (legitimate) art rather than

(illegitimate) smut. Simultaneously, newspaper coverage throughout the twentieth century reported on such artistic declarations and ambitions with a barely-concealed sneer: could a stripper dare to call herself an artist? These tensions have long since permeated popular culture representations of exotic dance in film, television, books, and music and have led to familiar shared jokes in pop culture experience.

Public discourse that framed burlesque in a constant degenerative state also impacted the ways the American touring burlesque circuit developed in the twentieth century. Circuit and theater owners walked a fine line between the law and the box office, largely by playing into the tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy. One of the earliest burlesque circuits, the Columbia Wheel, advertised itself as “clean” burlesque as opposed to the dirtier burlesque of the Mutual Wheel. Yet, the owners and operators of the two touring wheels made no such distinction where their business practices were concerned: they shared offices and profits. As burlesque circuits broke apart across the first half of the twentieth century, certain tour routes gained reputations for being more legitimate—or less. Performers seeking the legitimacy that success in burlesque could offer them—financial stability and celebrity—were expected to “cut their teeth” on one of the smaller road show circuits where they would perform in dangerous environments

3 and were expected to “work strong”—to flash pubic hair during performances. Women were often arrested for these performances. Thus, by “working strong,” the body of the burlesque performer became a literal site of the tension between legitimacy and illegitimacy. She must be worse to be better, and better to be worse.

In this business of burlesque, men have historically dominated, profiting from the cultural hierarchies within the art form. Beginning in the 1950s, however, a number of successful burlesque dancers who had negotiated the narrative of degeneracy as performers moved from performing to operation and ownership of their own theaters.

Many of these women purchased theaters where they had previously performed, attaching their names, and making choices that distinguished those theaters from male-owned spaces. Their ownership was marked by intentionality in reclamation of space, both literal and historical. This re-ownership extended beyond physical space into the burlesque art form itself, as dancers passed down traditional burlesque practices to newer dancers through individual mentorship and, in some cases, actual burlesque schools. Ultimately, this group of women owner-operators disrupted the cultural hierarchies about legitimacy in burlesque by redefining legitimacy as ownership, both in legal and artistic definition.

In this dissertation, I will examine the narrative of degeneracy in American burlesque between 1935 and 1972, as it permeates popular culture, impacts the development and business of the burlesque circuit, and is disrupted or re-interrogated by performers themselves who began operating their own burlesque theaters.

TERMINOLOGY

The word legitimate is defined as “being in compliance with the law, in accordance with established or accepted rules and standards, and valid or justifiable.”19

Legitimacy also carries with it the nineteenth and twentieth century connotations of high art, its antonym being popular. Since its appearance on the American stage in the late nineteenth century, burlesque has been defined as popular, rather than legitimate. In this dissertation, I will use the term legitimacy to describe a spectrum of public perception within cultural discourse. By its definition and practice, burlesque can never reach legitimacy and yet, is consistently evaluated on its relative distance from the legitimate.

Legitimacy here implies a public perception of respectability and quality and simultaneously, an unattainable state. The result of this narrative of degeneration is that burlesque is perceived always to be grasping for legitimacy and yet, in order to be legitimately burlesque, it must operate on or outside the margins of that legitimacy.

Terminology within this dissertation is purposefully complicated by the public perception that burlesque is in a perpetual state of degeneration. Popular discourse has given us numerous titles associated with this performance mode. The vocabulary of performance in this dissertation must be permeable as terminology has been historically permeable. The variety of terms for dancer in burlesque show include dancer, burlesquer, stripteaser, striptease, stripteuse, stripper, strip, striptoosie, peeler, exotic dancer, exotic, girl in a girl show, terpsichore and ecdysiast. Though some terms have faded in and out of vogue, stripper and exotic dancer have remained in usage through most of the twentieth century. As Lucinda Jarrett points out in Stripping in Time: A

History of Erotic Dance (1997), the terms exotic dancer or exotic likely originate from the Chicago World Fair’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, along with the Little Egypt legend which began with the appearance of belly dancers in the Cairo exhibit, a form of dance that came to be known in the United States as cooch dancing.20 These first cooch

5 dancers were most often equated with a foreign or “exotic” identity. In its first decades of usage, exotic dancer often connoted a dancer who performed race or foreignness in either appearance or dance style, regardless of their actual heritage or ethnicity. By the 1920s, an exotic dancer had become a kind of dancer within burlesque and vaudeville performance, accompanied by a soubrette and a prima donna. But by the 1930s, exotic dancer had become somewhat interchangeable with stripper as a term for a female performer in a burlesque show. The word stripper appears at least as early as the 1920s and has continued in contemporary use.21 In The Language of Showbiz: A Dictionary

(1973), whose contributors include Harold Minsky, the word strip-tease is defined as descendant from the strip which “consisted of girls undressing to tights on a high wire or a stage runway over the audience,” and became strip-tease “circa 1907.” The dictionary includes a separate entry for the term strip woman:

A girl that walks and ‘dances’ to music and removes her clothes to cries of delight from a largely male audience…Currently strip women are called ‘exotics,’ though to a younger generation the expression is ‘topless.’22

As an example of this porousness, Variety called burlesque queen Georgia Sothern a stripper in 1937, an “‘exotic dancer’…with a frank bump-and-grind routine” in 1938, a stripper in 1939, a stripteuse in 1944, a strip dancer in 1948, and a stripper in 1951.23

William Safire’s 2006 article in the New York Times illustrates some of the permeability of these words:

It is still a mistake to confuse the adjective erotic (maddeningly sexy) with exotic (mysteriously foreign). But the phrase exotic dancer — which preceded stripteaser and became for a time a euphemism for it — has for longer than a generation made the usage leap to become synonymous with stripper and the more recent nude dancer.24

I acknowledge the problem of “exotic” and “erotic,” as interchangeable, in that this privileges

Western experience and smacks of nineteenth century ethnography by uncomplicatedly

6 conflating non-Western women with sexuality. Many women working in burlesque styled themselves as “exotic,” regardless of heritage. Representations of race were often stereotyped and fetishized. While women of color were performing as “exotic,” many white performers were also using the term “exotic” to describe their own acts, whether or not these performers were meant to represent non-white ethnicities or cultures.

Clearly, terminology has historically mattered to performers. In 1940, Gypsy Rose

Lee asked H.L.Mencken to invent a word that sounded better than stripper. The word

Mencken invented was ecdysiast.25 Despite Lee’s motivation to change popular vocabulary, print media continued to refer to her as a stripper or striptease artist.

Ecdysiast did enter journalistic vernacular but as a slightly tongue-in-cheek expression.

The public recognized ecdysiast as a euphemism and its use was framed so as to communicate that a woman in an illegitimate entertainment was attempting to pass herself off as something better, nobler, or more artistic. Increasingly, the term exotic dancer came to be viewed as similarly euphemistic. Correspondingly, the terms burlesque, striptease, exotic dance, and stripping are often thought of as connoting distinct art forms but, in fact, used interchangeably throughout the twentieth century. In an effort to acknowledge the porous nature of these terms and the ways in which they have been used to connote legitimacy, I will use the words exotic dance, burlesque, stripper, dancer, and performer, acknowledging that performers doing similar work may identify more strongly with one term than another.

Finally, there is some disagreement about whether the term neo-burlesque connotes a time period or a style of performance. In this dissertation, I will use neo-burlesque to reference burlesque performance occurring after 1990.26

METHODOLOGY

This dissertation will take a primarily historiographical approach, offering a cultural study of the twentieth-century stripper in popular discourse and of the American burlesque circuit, and a case study of the life and career of burlesque queen Rose La

Rose. I am indebted to the work of John Storey and particularly, his definition of cultural studies from his influential work, Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to

Globalization (2003):

Cultural studies is not opposed to so-called high culture, but it is opposed to both the idea that this is a universally unchanging culture (simply “the best which has been thought and said”), and to the way in which high culture is mobilized to make, mark, and maintain social distinctions and class inequalities. Without the required cultural capital to decipher the ‘code’ of the canonized object of art, people are made socially vulnerable to the condescension of those who have the required social capital.27

Storey calls for “an active undoing” of the underlying definitions that pre-determine some work “art” and other work “popular.” In this dissertation, I apply Storey’s “active undoing” to the cultural hierarchies within a popular culture form, arguing that the dominant power structures that have historically privileged high art over popular or mass culture have created similar structures within burlesque. The result is that burlesque is, in some times and some places, a glorified art form but only in contrast to the act of “just stripping.” The narrative of degeneration which dominates burlesque history is part of a pattern of cultural hierarchies, insisting always that burlesque must be both better and worse than itself. This dissertation asks not why exotic dance is not considered high art but rather why, within the context of popular art, some strains of exotic dance are privileged above others and, ultimately, how these hierarchies impact our cultural memory and understanding of exotic dance history. In the career of Rose La Rose, this

8 project finds pockets of what Storey, quoting Antonio Gramsci, described as “a contradictory mix of forces...‘commercial’ and ‘authentic,’ marked by both ‘resistance’ and incorporation,’ ‘structure’ and ‘agency.’”28

This project relies on primary source and archival materials located in the Charles

H. McCaghy Exotic Dance Collection from Burlesque to Exotic Dance, the Minsky

Burlesque Collection, the Jess Mack Papers, BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection, as well as the archives of the periodicals The Billboard and Variety, and a large number of national and local newspaper archives, particularly The Toledo Blade. This dissertation is primarily confined to American burlesque between 1935 and 1972, the years spanning

Rose La Rose’s career, as a clear picture of the cultural hierarchies in burlesque and their subsequent disruption by dancers’ re-ownership of burlesque beginning in the 1950s.

REVIEW OF SECONDARY LITERATURE

Consideration of the literature reaffirms not only the cultural hierarchies buried within popular discourse surrounding burlesque, but also the ways those hierarchies determine the construction of burlesque history. The earliest formal examinations of burlesque are Bernard Sobel’s Burleycue; An Underground History of Burlesque Days

(1931), Sex, Vice, and Business by Monroe Fry (1959), Martin Collyer’s Burlesque: The

Story of a Unique American Institution (1964), and Irving Zeidman’s The American

Burlesque Show (1967). Each of them reinforces these divisions.

While Sobel’s Burleycue includes some compelling firsthand accounts of the art form, the book maintains a moralistic tone that romanticizes “classic burlesque,” while decrying the smut and “debauch” of the contemporaneous iteration. In particular, the narrative of degeneration permeates his amazed descriptions of burlesque dancers who

9 insisted to Sobel backstage that they liked to read and led quiet ladylike lives outside of the theater. His influence on future burlesque scholarship is clear—Martin Collyer believed him to be the eminent scholar of burlesque. Sobel was not the first to complain about burleque’s degeneracy but his perpetuation of the narrative certainly influences the historians who followed him.

The socialist John L. Spivak, writing under the pseudonym Monroe Fry during the

Second Red Scare, wrote Sex, Vice, and Business largely as an expose on the immorality of capitalism.29 Fry’s positioning of burlesque among chapters on prostitution, gambling, moonshine clearly frames the art form as a sort of moral degeneracy and detriment to the public good. Not only did Fry write directly on burlesque, including a lengthy interview with Rose La Rose, he penned a companion chapter on the b-girl, a woman who worked mainly in bars or clubs to encourage male patrons to buy them (often diluted) alcohol in exchange for the promise of attention and company. The b-girl was not necessarily a prostitute and burlesque dancers who worked in clubs were sometimes expected to also work as b-girls, or to “mix,” but the conflation of the two occupations in Fry’s book, originally a series of articles published in Esquire, demonstrates cultural hierarchies that place burlesque in a spectrum of cultural vice, an attitude that continues today in cultural framing of the modern strip club. Fry’s work, decidedly rooted in the socialist politics of the book, is cynical of all exotic dance as art.

Martin Collyer’s Burlesque shares some of Fry’s cynicism and is forthright in its anti-academic stance:

[Burlesque] has finally come to the scholarly attention of the self-styled psychoanalysts, the id kids who feel compelled to ‘explain’ burlesque, as if anything so self-explanatory required detailed explanations. Increasingly over the past half dozen years, students out for their doctorates have been writing deeply

intellectualized theses…If you are interested in learning about burlesque for scholarly purposes, I strongly recommend that you put this down now and hasten to your library. There you will find shelves jammed with serious treatises on the subject. They will tell you in marvelous detail everything about the ancient Greeks, who began burlesque…They will graciously supply a wealth of facts, such as the number of moles on the cheek of the first man to bring burlesque to Eastern Albania. Such vital information can’t be discovered in this book.30

Collyer’s dismissal of academic rigor in scholarly study of burlesque is not only an explanation for his lack of citations and informal quotation style, it is evidence of a cultural reticence to frame burlesque as space for legitimate scholarship. Despite this,

Collyer introduces, and then repeats throughout the book, a tension resulting in his inability to reconcile the “death” of burlesque with a continually produced art form. In a particularly ironic passage early in the book, he argues with Bernard Sobel’s claims that burlesque is in real trouble by the Depression era due to a glut of strip acts: “He is right and he is wrong. By the mid-1930’s, burlesque was assuredly one of The Hundred

Neediest Cases, but there was to be shown some life in the pixie old girl yet. Despite a myriad of setbacks, burlesque continued to rise again and to flourish.”31 He devotes the last section of his book to what he calls, “Peelers Present,” and admits that though

“[b]urlesque’s future seems incredibly bleak, yet […] there have never been as many strippers or apprentice strippers as there are today.”32 Collyer’s reference to apprenticeship hints at the re-ownership of burlesque by performers mentoring younger performers as several were doing at the time of publication, including Rose La Rose’s burlesque “school” in Toledo. Collyer posits that it is somehow both the increasing level of smut and the increasing level of censorship that doom burlesque: that is, burlesque must continually be both better and worse than itself. This presumption is echoed and expanded by Irving Zeidman just three years later.

Zeidman’s The American Burlesque Show marks a turning point in burlesque scholarship. A cultural history interested in accurate research and academic citation, it means to demonstrate the legitimacy of burlesque as an art form worthy of preservation and documentation. While Zeidman remained skeptical about burlesque as it existed in

1967 and finds little tangible “talent” in the field at the time of his publication, he is less romantic about the markings of “classic” burlesque. In some ways, he strikes a balance amongst Sobel (who mourns the loss of a pure art form), Fry (who frames burlesque as bald-faced commodity) and Collyer (who fixates somewhat on the personalities and private lives of burlesque celebrities). Zeidman saw burlesque as both art and business.

Still, he is unable to shake free of the cultural hierarchies prescribed to burlesque and offers a gendered picture of female performance and male ownership.

The second wave of burlesque writing is largely memoir and ethnographic study written by exotic dancers, though none were published during the performers’ exotic dance careers. Examples include: Gypsy Rose Lee’s Gypsy: A Memoir (1957), Georgia

Sothern’s Georgia: My Life in Burlesque (1972), Annabel Battistella’s Fanne Foxe

(1975), Lauri Lewin’s Naked is the Best Disguise (1984), Elisabeth Eave’s Bare: On

Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power (2002), Katherine Frank’s G-Strings and Sympathy:

Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire (2002), Katherine Liepe-Levinson’s Strip Show:

Performances of Gender and Desire (2003), Lacey Lane’s Confessions of a Stripper:

Tales from the VIP Room (2004), Diamond’s A Stripper’s Tail: Confessions of a Las

Vegas Stripper (2005), Danielle Egan, Katherine Frank, and Merri Lisa Johnson’s Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic Dance (2006), Diablo Cody’s Candy

Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper (2006), Jacki Willson’s The Happy

Stripper: Pleasures and Politics of the New Burlesque (2008), Ruth Fowler’s No Man’s

Land (2008) Simone Corday’s 9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door, A Memoir (2011),

Heidi Mattson’s Ivy League Stripper (2011), and Sarah Tressler’s Diary of an Angry

Stripper (2012). Significantly, except for Lee’s outlying memoir in 1957, the majority of this autobiographical writing came after 1970. In the wake of the re-ownership of burlesque by women in the 1950s, performers increasingly found space to document their own histories. While several of the early autobiographies are referenced in this project, the majority of published memoirs and ethnographies relate to more recent exotic dance contexts and are therefore outside the realm of this study.

The third wave of burlesque writing is divided between popular history and formal cultural studies. Burlesque, as popular entertainment, understandably often falls within the spectrum of popular histories which are heavily pictorial and anecdotal, designed to appeal to the hobbyist and burlesque fan. Many of these histories are bound in glossy coffee table editions and emphasize the glamour of burlesque styles in the

1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. These publications and documentaries appeal to a culturally nostalgic audience and a growing popular demand for vintage and vintage-inspired experiences. As a founding member of the Golden Days of Burlesque Historical Society,

Jane Briggeman created the “nonprofit group dedicated to reuniting those who worked the circuit in the years before 1965: the strippers and dancers, the comics and straight men — the feather boa crowd” that led to the publication of two books, Burlesque:

Legendary Stars of the Stage (2004) and Burlesque: A Living History (2009), as well as an updated second edition of the latter in 2011.33 The books include beautiful full-page spreads of burlesque performers along with excerpts from letters and interviews

13 addressed to Briggeman herself. The strength of the popular histories is in the many firsthand accounts from performers, and this is where Briggeman’s work is most successful.

Of course, the usefulness of anecdotes is limited by their lack of sociological and historical contexts. Burlesque popular histories rely simultaneously on generalization and specific performers’ accounts, which often contradict one another.

This is the most serious flaw in another recent popular history, Leslie Zemeckis’ documentary, Behind the Burly Q (2010) and follow-up book of the same title. Roger

Ebert wrote in his review of the documentary, “[The film] settles too easily for an editing formula which alternates talking heads, too cursory performance footage and montages of headlines and photographs. The time line is unclear and the structure seems too random….”34 Though the book version contains additional interview material not included in the documentary, it shares the documentary’s disorganization and inadequate historical framework. Zemeckis fails to properly contextualize or evaluate statements made by performers, instead offering free standing quotations from the interviews as empirical data without independent verification. Unfortunately, both texts also include inaccurate information and dates which have been regurgitated in online media. While both the Briggeman and Zemeckis texts fail to offer critical context for their research, their books remain valuable as anecdotal evidence of trends in the field, as well as cultural touchstones signifying the popularity of the burlesque renaissance and neo- burlesque emergence in recent decades.

Amongst the popular histories, Liz Goldwyn’s Pretty Things: The Last

Generation of American Burlesque Queens, a HBO documentary (2005) and follow-up book (2006), offers a more complete history of the field with the transparent intention of

“’legitimizing’” the work of burlesque performers, whom Goldwyn frames as pioneers in both art and women’s liberation.35 Goldwyn holds a deep and apparent appreciation for the art form, particularly emphasizing costuming in her research. More problematic for

Pretty Things is its mostly uncomplicated romanticization of burlesque dancers as feminist heroes, as historian Rachel Shteir comments on the documentary:

Front and center is Goldwyn's Third Wave feminist point of view, which projects onto the octogenarian burlesque strippers a glamorous sheen: For Goldwyn, who is in her late 20s or early 30s, burlesque is "liberating.”…Goldwyn worships the strippers as models of sexual self-empowerment, but the film is confused by the projection of her own post-feminist ideas about sex onto these women, and her desire to wield the kind of sexual power she sees them as having had.36

Goldwyn is not alone in this framing of burlesque. Michelle Baldwin’s Burlesque and the

New Bump-n-Grind (2004) is similarly glowing in its treatment of burlesque although

Baldwin, who performs under the stage name Vivienne VaVoom, focuses on the neo- burlesque movement, touching its history primarily as a means of contrast. Baldwin offers readers an awareness of the ways the contemporary burlesque is privileged and informed by that same “Third Wave feminism” and acknowledges the disadvantages and power differentials that existed for women in burlesque historically. Several other popular documentaries, as well as countless articles and exposes, nod to historical burlesque but focus mainly on the neo-burlesque movement including A Wink and a

Smile (2008), Burlesque Undressed (2010), Dirty Martini and the New Burlesque (2011), and Exposed: Beyond Burlesque (2013). These documentaries offer insight into neo- burlesque motivations, styles, and training but their scholarship suffers from the same feminist essentialism that seeks to root contemporary burlesque—welcoming body positivism, LGBTIQ communities, and political art into its practice—in historical fact.

The Guardian addresses this in its review of Exposed:

The noble mission of burlesque is to reclaim erotic cabaret from the commercial chill of lap-dancing clubs and restore some of the style, theatricality and artistry of days gone by (although the nostalgically remembered turns may have been regarded at the time with the same disapproval as today's pole-dancing venues)…But there's a fair bit of narcissism and self-satisfaction here.37

As part of this project’s work in “active undoing” of cultural hierarchy, however, I acknowledge the ways that even the term “popular history” smacks of derision for the discipline. While these works are framed for popular consumption, they offer valuable contributions to the field and are particularly interested in documentation of the lives of performers and their personal motivations. Most significantly, these recent popular histories, written almost exclusively by women, approach burlesque, unquestioningly, as legitimate art, a strong departure from earlier writing. Still, popular histories are most valuable in conjunction with independent verification since many of them lack citation or sourcing of facts.

Finally, two major cultural studies texts on burlesque have been published, Robert

C. Allen’s Horrible Prettiness (1991) and Rachel Shteir’s Striptease (2004). Horrible

Prettiness focuses on American burlesque in the nineteenth century; Striptease focuses on the development of striptease, primarily in the twentieth century. Allen frames burlesque as an art form which connects the transgressive, grotesque, inverted, and

“reviled” with that which is “simultaneously the object of desire and/or fascination,” a tension between high and low.38 Allen dismisses most burlesque after the appearance of the striptease in the early twentieth century because, for him, it degenerated: as increasing nudity and the strip became essential elements of burlesque, they caused the

“performer to lose her ‘voice’ and much of her transgressive power.”39 While Allen’s text

16 does not interrogate much burlesque performance after 1900, his analysis of the burlesque dancer as an object of both disgust and desire informs this dissertation’s larger argument. Shteir’s text traces the history of the striptease as “a distinctly American diversion that flourished from the Jazz Age to the era of the Sexual Revolution.”40 The book stays primarily within this 1920-1970 window, although it touches on the outer edges of the proposed timeline, beginning in the nineteenth century and ending with the contemporary state of stripping and neo-burlesque entertainments. Like other burlesque historians, Shteir remains somewhat dismissive of exotic dance in the last third of the twentieth century. Additionally, in the ten years since Striptease was published, the neo- burlesque scene has exploded in a way that challenges some of Shteir’s assumptions about the art form’s future viability, which she has questioned. Within this dissertation,

Shteir’s work is arguably the most significant in its scope and depth, and the most vital to interrogate. Besides being a robust and detailed history, Shteir’s work complicates notions of cultural hierarchy present in burlesque as practice and history. Yet, she remains unable to escape it:

And what about the claim that striptease is an art form? Is this just hype? Our skeptical, modern tendency would have it thus. Striptease is, of course, neither Rembrandt nor Beckett. And yet there is something to be said for the idea that golden age striptease offered its audience more than pornography—it was a popular art.41 [emphasis mine]

Shteir must preface her evaluation of striptease by comparing it to legitimate art—

“Rembrandt nor Beckett.” Then she qualifies striptease – only the “golden age” is acceptable as a sort of art. Shteir’s “golden age,” incidentally, is the 1930s.

All burlesque historians have, to a certain extent, done what Shteir has done here.

Each has felt a compulsion to pinpoint the moment at which the form was at its most

“legitimate” and when it began its degenerative slide. Bernard Sobel says burlesque is at its best in the first decades of the twentieth century, before it is destroyed by the increase in strip acts. Robert Allen places the best years of burlesque even earlier, at the end of the nineteenth century, prior to the emergence of the strip altogether. It seems that while no one can quite agree on when exactly this “golden age” of burlesque occurred, most historians and/or enthusiasts agree that there was, indeed, such a time, and whatever their contemporary moment, that golden age is not now. Virtually all burlesque cultural histories yield to this narrative of degeneration—that is, that burlesque was once good and is now degraded. My dissertation seeks to interrogate this narrative, to examine its consequences in practices for performers negotiating the spectrum of legitimacy, and to contextualize performers who complicated and reconfigured perceptions of legitimacy through ownership. Among the performers who complicated and reconfigured, none is a clearer example than Rose La Rose, whose career comprises this dissertation’s most critical case study.

ROSE LA ROSE

Rosina DaPello was likely born in Brooklyn, New York between 1916 and 1918.

She would attend grade school in Brooklyn and complete cashier’s training as a teenager.

Her early timeline is complicated by a number of conflicting reports about her age.

According to most print media, she left school around the age of 15 and took a job working as a cashier for the Minsky’s, New York premiere burlesque family, at their 42nd

Street location, the Republic. After reportedly seeing the pay grade for burlesque dancers, she auditioned for Minsky who hired her “on the spot.” Other more obscure accounts

18 place DaPello in New Jersey for her initial entry into burlesque after which time she was

“discovered” by Minsky and became Rose La Rose.

On stage, La Rose was innovative, trying new things all the time, referencing current events and popular culture in her act. Her latest act was always guaranteed to make headlines as it did when she rigged her costume with a light-up heart and battery pack for her Valentine’s Day show during World War II, or “constructed a new strip routine that embodies an ingenious mixture of song, chatter, audience participation, a two-dimensional costume change and acrobatics,” as reported in The Billboard in 1953, or a rock n’roll-themed strip inspired by Elvis in 1956 who, according to La Rose, “stole his bumps from the strippers…I’m taking ‘em back.”42 According to Collyer:

Rose was never satisfied to do last season’s routine or even last month’s…She kept her basic stock in trade—the lusty humor filtering through the long, sexy tease—but she strove continually to offer something new and unexpected. She was the first to employ classical and semi-classical musical to serve as background to her strip. She was the first to use extensive props and story motifs…43

Variety reviewed her 1941 appearance in Leon & Eddie’s nightclub in New York, commenting mainly on her “frank style.”44 La Rose was known for her lengthy performances (Collyer references one that lasted almost fifty minutes) and for speaking directly to the audience. She told a reporter early in her career, “I feel very savage when

I’m on stage. I like to hear the audience gasping.”45 La Rose toured in burlesque from

1935 to 1958, also appearing in two films and several regional stage plays, before moving to Toledo, Ohio, to take over operations of the Town Hall Theater and later the Esquire

Theater [Figure 1]. She died in 1972. This dissertation will include La Rose’s biography and detailed career timeline as no complete biography currently exists.

Figure 12: Rose La Rose in production still of her "Oriental Dance" from the film, Queen of Burlesque (1946), Reproduced with special permission from The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

CHARLES H. MCCAGHY

Finally, this dissertation owes a great debt to the work of Dr. Charles H.

McCaghy, a sociologist who, among many contributions to his field, researched and wrote on exotic dance beginning the 1960s. In 1968, sociologists James K. Skipper and

Charles H. McCaghy conducted a series of interviews with “approximately 75 performers,” using a uniform series of questions about personal histories, motivations, and attitudes regarding their careers as strippers.46 Published in the major journal Social

Problems, their article, “Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a

Deviant Occupation” (1970), was a landmark study. At the time of its publication,

Skipper and McCaghy could find only one other sociological examination of striptease

(1965) but it had not been published.47 Their own study attempted to identify motivations for entering a “highly visible” and simultaneously “deviant” profession. While this study was groundbreaking in the field of exotic dance research, it has since been criticized as problematic by several contemporary scholars. Katherine Frank, for example, wrote that

“[d]uring the 1970s, there was some interest in the social sciences in stripping as a deviant occupation, and a number of articles were produced on the lives of strippers, the possible psychological reasons for their entry into such a stigmatized occupation, and the hazards of the job (Gonos 1976; McCaghy and Skipper 1969; G. Miller 1978. Salutin

1973).” Frank referred, provocatively, to this type of research as “a kind of academic slumming...”48 In “Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970-2008”

(2011), Wahab, Baker, Smith, Cooper, and Lerum discussed the Skipper and McCaghy study as an example of dated research:

Over the course of nearly four decades the tenor of scholarship on this topic has taken a marked turn away from constructing exotic dance as ‘dirty work’ and a

‘deviant occupation’…towards constructing exotic dance as a legitimate form of labor or a site of continuously negotiated power relations.49

These researchers found Skipper and McCaghy’s “tone and methodologies…serve[d] to simultaneously understand, exoticize, and pathologize dancers.”50 These working assumptions are evident in Skipper and McCaghy’s article, as well as others published by the researchers:

Traditionally, in American society, the human body has been considered relatively private and sacred. This has been especially true of females. Generally an adult woman is not expected to expose her nudity to any male not her spouse, with the exception of a physician…Over the past 20 years the amount of female skin which may be uncovered in the presence of males and the situations where it may be properly displayed have rapidly become more liberal. Despite liberalization, stripping remains a deviant or at best marginal occupation. A large segment of the society probably considers being paid to take off one’s clothes for no other purpose than to allow others to stare and ogle an unusual and low status, if not outright promiscuous, occupation.51

Skipper and McCaghy worked from a basic assumption that stripping is, if not inherently immoral, then at least socially deviant. They were also interested in intersections of deviance--ie. the intersections between lesbianism and stripping, and abuse/neglect and stripping. A portion of their article hypothesized that women become strippers because they did not receive adequate attention from their fathers. In one paragraph, they make a problematic comparison to an anecdote about a 9-year-old girl who is sexually assaulted by a stranger but remembers it positively because she felt loved, cared about, and “held” in a way that her home life did not provide and because of this experience, that child went on to become sexually active at a very young age, seeking to replicate that attention.52

Though the primary thought behind including this example was to illustrate the power of the father figure in female psycho-sexual development, in an article about the motivations of strippers, it is troubling that women who work as strippers are placed on a continuum

22 with traumatized rape survivors and sexually precocious children. As David A. Scott points out in Behind the G-String (1996):

[A]rguing backward from present behavior to motivations rooted in childhood is speculative at best. In Wagner’s hypothesis strippers act out the methods they used to get attention in childhood. In Skipper and McCaghy’s hypothesis they are compensating for the attention they did not get. Perhaps it is a bit of both, but is any other occupation fundamentally different? Do not doctors, lawyers, sports figures, and politicians seek approval through their respective vocations?53

In an attempt to explain a socially deviant profession, Skipper and McCaghy focused on deviance that occurred before a woman became a stripper [ie. child abuse, neglect]. Their publications mostly ignored connections between artistic expression and stripping as an occupational choice.

While the Wahab study is somewhat critical of Skipper and McCaghy’s focus on deviant behavior in relationship to exotic dance, it admits that these attitudes are characteristic of early exotic dance scholarship. They examined 13 articles published between 1970 and 1989 and found that they “reveal an assumption by researchers that stripping is a problematic (‘deviant’) occupational category.”54 Skipper and McCaghy themselves acknowledged the need for cultural context in the study of deviance. In

McCaghy’s text, Deviant Behavior (1976), he reminded his readers that the concept of deviance is relative to the society in which it has been determined to be a “departure from social norms.” Moreover, he states, notions of Otherness complicate definitions of social deviance and “agreement concerning the deviant character of actions applies only when they are directed against members of one’s own group or society.”55 Or, as Lefton,

Skipper, and McCaghy wrote in their preface to Approaches to Deviance (1968):

Thus far no common frame of reference has been devised which will adequately account for any of these types of behavior [various types of deviance], let alone a rubric which would encompass all of them. Furthermore, these behaviors are not

at all casually regarded by the public at large and hence, it seems reasonable to assume that any useful frame of reference would have to include social values, norms, mores, and folk-ways as integral components.56

Despite changes in sociological perspectives about deviance and stripping, Skipper and

McCaghy’s work remains invaluable to a complex understanding of burlesque as it existed in the 1960s, a time when documentation of exotic dance practices is almost entirely lacking. Skipper and McCaghy published several articles on strippers in and around 1970; however, much of their primary research on exotic dance was never fully utilized in formal scholarship. While several later scholars quote Skipper and McCaghy’s published research findings, there is no evidence that any returned to the source material to study the original interviews conducted in 1968. Though originally gathered for sociological data analysis, those interviews hold great potential for performance historians. As of 2015, the unpublished interviews Dr. Skipper and Dr. McCaghy conducted with 35 performers are archived in the McCaghy Exotic Dance Collection

From Burlesque to Exotic Dance in the Ohio State University Special Collections. These firsthand accounts are evidence of a larger gap in exotic dance analysis—an entire generation of burlesque and stripping history that remain largely undocumented. Their work in exotic dance is without precedent and remains some of the only documentation of exotic dance practice during this time period.

Beyond these interviews, however, the archived collection of burlesque materials housed in the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute coalesces through the interests of its benefactor, McCaghy, whose extensive donations to the collection stem from his own research and from additional gifts to the university collection in more recent years. In this way, McCaghy functions as an invisible hand, framing the incredibly

24 wide-range of materials through which a researcher might enter this topic. Beyond his interviews and personal research notes, I have been highly aware of McCaghy’s deep respect for his subject in the sheer breadth of materials archived for study. I was formally introduced to burlesque through his collection and I enter the conversation with grateful acknowledgment.

CHAPTER BREAKDOWN

Chapter Two analyzes the narrative of degeneration that permeates representations of burlesque in the popular imagination, particularly examining how it reinforces familiar cultural jokes and assumptions made about exotic dancers. Secondly, the chapter explores the ways in which burlesque performers played out this narrative in public discourse, trading upon the tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy ingrained in American culture. Finally, it analyzes specific touchstone examples of popular culture that replicates these tensions.

Chapter Three begins as a history of the American burlesque circuit, framed with a close reading of one particular burlesque route, the so-called Burma Road, as it existed in the middle of the twentieth century in order to consider larger practices on the circuit over the twentieth century. This chapter traces the primary shifts in ownership, power, and censorship in burlesque from the beginnings of the formalized circuit through its fractured years. It explores the consequences of the narrative of degeneration on the circuit’s development. Finally, it examines the ways in which performers were willing to operate as illegitimate on dangerous road tours in order to achieve legitimacy within their field as principals and features on more prestigious circuits.

Chapter Four argues for a paradigm shift beginning in the 1950s in which male- dominated burlesque ownership was challenged by several burlesque dancers who began opening or running their own theaters and clubs. These performers reclaimed physical and historical space through theater ownership. This chapter offers a case study of Rose

La Rose’s years in Toledo as she operated the Town Hall and Esquire Theaters, and re- defined legitimacy through the reclamation of historical space, meticulous business practices, mentorship/training of new performers, and legal action. Ultimately, these new owners would alter the course of burlesque in the United States and influence contemporary burlesque practices.

Appendix A is a timeline of the American burlesque circuit from 1898-1968.

This timeline includes details of ownership, policy, and major circuit changes. Appendix

B is a timeline of the life and career of Rose La Rose and includes a comprehensive touring history, as well as the various legal proceedings connected with her time as a theater owner in Toledo, Ohio. Currently, neither of these timelines exist in totality in any publication. Appendix A and Appendix B were constructed from the archives of The

Billboard, Variety, ProQuest Historical Newspaper Database, Newspapers.com, the

Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, the Jess Mack

Papers, and BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection.

6 Gerard Barney, "Legitimate: -- Its Rise and Demise," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), January 4, 1956, pg.

#, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1017027812/57C25FC19A4B4017PQ/1?accountid=9783.

7 "Biography," Ann Corio: The Official Site, accessed July 14, 2015, http://www.anncorio.com/bio.html.

8 Robert Pollack, "Critically Speaking," Suburbanite Economist(Chicago), July 21, 1965, http://www.newspapers.com/image/54194900/?terms=%22Suburbanite%2BEconomist%22%2BAND%2B

%22critically%2Bspeaking%22.

9 Martin Collyer, Burlesque (New York: Lancer Books, 1964), 1-2.

10 Rachel Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show(Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2004), 323.

11 Seymour Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Follows Burlesque In Death," Toledo Blade, July 28, 1972, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19720728&id=VOhOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8AEEAAA

AIBAJ&pg=7283,3213598&hl=en

12 Chris Roberts, "Tawdry Old Trocadero Becomes Honorable Chinese Movie House," Gettysburg

Times (Pennsylvania), May 13, 1981, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19810513&id=Qo9eAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HFENAAAA

IBAJ&pg=6391,960942&hl=en.

13 Robert Clyde Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1991), 236.

14 Bernard Sobel, 1931), 262.Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days (New York: Farrar &

Rinehart, 1931), 262.

15 Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, 258.

16The Billboard was renamed Billboard Music Week in 1961 and then Billboard in 1963; Jimmy Stanton,

"The Forum: Plugs Comedy as Essential Burlesque Aid,"The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 19,

1938, 33, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032150460/85B1DDF0032A4069PQ/1?accountid=9783.

17 Joe Schoenfeld, Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), January 8, 1941, 146, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1505748116/C01013D13B684A90PQ/1?accountid=9783.

18 Irving Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967), 11.

19 American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, , s.v. "Legitimate," http://www.thefreedictionary.com/legitimate.

20 Lucinda Jarrett, Stripping in Time: A History of Erotic Dancing (London: Pandora, 1997), 59; Allen,

Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, 225-32.

21 "Girls from Happyland," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 14, 1929, 33, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1031918781/F925A2D94FC9449BPQ/3?accountid=9783.

22 Anonymous et al., The Language of Show Biz, a Dictionary, ed. Sherman Louis Sergel (Chicago:

Dramatic Pub., 1973).

23 Abel, "Vaude-Nite Clubs: Nitery Reviews - Leon & Eddie's, N. Y,"Variety (Archive: 1905-2000),

February 23, 1938, 52, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1476068204/C8A22B4B7B524824PQ/1?accountid=9783; "Vaude-Burlesque: Burlesque

Reviews - 42D ST. APOLLO, N. Y.,"Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), November 17, 1937, 59, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1505783504/9FD691030A384798PQ/1?accountid=9783; "Vaudeville: La Sothern's

Bumps Too Torrid for Newark, N. J.," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), February 9, 1944, 47, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1285849015/4A47B511281C40B1PQ/1?accountid=9783; Ed Barry, "N.J. BRAND OF

BURLESK NEEDS PLENTY OF FLIT,"Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), November 5, 1947, 1, 63, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio-

state.edu/docview/1285959623/EAD0409500D548AAPQ/1?accountid=9783; "Georgia Sothern Tagged

Again on 'Lewd' Charge," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), April 14, 1948, 47, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1285956374/B3C2BCAD175E4278PQ/2?accountid=9783.

24 William Safire, "Erotic or Exotic?," New York Times, May 21, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/magazine/21wwln_safire.html?_r=0.

25 Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary,, s.v. "Ecdysiast," accessed July 2, 2015, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ecdysiast.

26 Generally, neo-burlesque refers to any part of the so-called burlesque “revival,” that is, burlesque performance after the emergence of performers like Dita Von Teese in 1992, troupes like The Velvet

Hammer Burlesque in Los Angeles in 1995, along with venues like the Coney Island Burlesque and the Va

Va Voom Room. Since then, neo-burlesque has increasingly diversified to encompass several sub-cultural styles. Nerdlesque or geeklesque combines “classical” or traditional burlesque performance and striptease elements with popular culture fandoms like Star Trek, Doctor Who, Breaking Bad, Indiana Jones, Sesame

Street, among countless others. Boylesque generally refers to male burlesque dancers, as opposed to comics. While boylesque is frequently embraced within the LGBTIQ community and includes queer- identified performers, there are also many boylesque dancers who perform striptease routines that emphasize straight sexuality. Boylesque is particularly characterized by its playfulness in terms of gender roles and gender expression, especially as they pertain to classic burlesque routines. For example, a typical boylesque performance often includes male dancers wearing pasties and/or tassels on their nipples.

Importantly, boylesque, like most neo-burlesque, caters to a wide audience of male and female audience members. Neo-burlesque also often overlaps with other subcultures like the fetish, pinup, and vintage movements. Many neo-burlesque performers are trained and work in other performance arts—particularly circus, clowning, mime, ballet, jazz, modern, and tap dance, as well as avant-garde performance art and musical theatre. There is some disagreement in usage with some artists like Columbus, Ohio’s Ooh-La-La’s using neo-burlesque to signify a particular style related to nerdlesque, boylesque, or some other

contemporary form, but the majority of performers using neo-burlesque to indicate primarily time period

(1990 or later), as this dissertation will do.

27 John Storey, Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.,

2003), 93-94.

28 John Storey, Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.,

2003), 51.

29 "John L. Spivak," Wikipedia, accessed July 15, 2015, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Spivak.

30 Collyer, Burlesque, 2-6.

31 Collyer, Burlesque, 12.

32 Collyer, Burlesque, 153.

33 Dan Barry, "Burlesque Days Again for the Feather Boa Crowd," New York Times, October 1, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/us/02land.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

34Roger Ebert, "Behind the Burly-Q Movie Review (2010) | Roger Ebert," RogerEbert.com, August 18,

2010, section goes here, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/behind-the-burly-q-2010.

35 Mike Tribby, review of Pretty Things, Booklist, 2006, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060889446/ref=dp_proddesc_2?ie=UTF8&n=283155.

36 Rachel Shteir, "Strippers Are Us: The Sexual Naiveté of Pretty Things, HBO’s New Documentary on

Burlesque," Slate, July 19, 2005, http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2005/07/strippers_are_us.html.

37 Peter Bradshaw, "Exposed: Beyond Burlesque," review of Exposed: Beyond

Burlesque, Guardian (United Kingdom), January 9, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/09/exposed-beyond-burlesque-review.

38 Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture, 26.

39 Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture , 198.

40Shteir, Striptease: The untold history of the girlie show, 1.

41 Shteir, Striptease: The untold history of the girlie show, 341.

42 Uno, “Burlesque Bits,” March 21, 1953; Dorothy Kilgallen, "Voice of Broadway," The Daily

Reporter (Dover, Ohio), October 16, 1956, Newspapers.com.

43 Collyer, Burlesque, 48.

44 Abel, "Night Club Reviews - N. Y. Nitery Followup," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 27, 1941,

49, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

45 Collyer, Burlesque, 50.

46 James K. Skipper, Jr. and Charles H. McCaghy, "Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant Occupation," Social Problems 17, no. 3 (January 01, 1970): 393, accessed May 3, 2013, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/799557?ref=no-x-route:912fc3f6644f16bcb9e8c02f1e04e077.

47 Skipper and McCaghy, "Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant

Occupation," 392.

48 Katherine Frank, G-strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire (Durham: Duke

University Press, 2002), 49-50.

49 Stéphanie Wahab et al., "Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to

2008," Sexuality & Culture 15, no. 1 (2010): 57, doi:10.1007/s12119-010-9084-8.

50 Stéphanie Wahab et al., "Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to 2008," 65.

51 Skipper and McCaghy, "Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant

Occupation," 396.

52 Skipper and McCaghy, "Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant

Occupation," 396.

53 David Alexander Scott, Behind the G-string: An Exploration of the Stripper's Image, Her Person, and

Her Meaning (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co, Inc, 1996).

54 Stéphanie Wahab et al., "Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to 2008," 65.

55 Charles H. McCaghy, Deviant Behavior: Crime, Conflict, and Interest Groups (New York: Macmillan,

1976), 4.

56 Mark Lefton, James K. Skipper, and Charles H. McCaghy, Approaches to Deviance; Theories, Concepts, and Research Findings (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968).

Chapter 2: The Stripper in Popular Discourse

“[T]here’s Rose La Rose, one of the star ‘strippers’ in burlesque… ‘This act I do,’ says she,‘is just a stepping stone to the legitimate theater… One learns about character when strip…I mean, disrobing in public.’” -George Ross, In New York, December 1936

INTRODUCTION

By all accounts, the 1953 arrest was inevitable. The Old Howard had, for years, been garnering a whispered reputation for bucking the censors and riding the line of legality. The theatre had gone so far as to install a pedal on the floor of the ticket booth that could trigger a warning light backstage, signaling that members of law enforcement were in the audience.57 Seeing the light, performers knew to play the censor-friendly version of their acts. The actual content of this particular performance at the Old Howard is unclear—how scant the clothing, how bumpy the grinds—but newspaper accounts allege that three dancers removed every last stitch, appearing “au naturel one cold night.”58 In the first week of November 1953, undercover members of the Boston Vice

Squad attended a performance at the Old Howard Theatre, 16 mm cameras hidden under their coats, and filmed a violation of local decency ordinances. Boston District Attorney

Byrne would later insist in court, “[The evidentiary films] reveal a combination of indecent nudity combined with body motions of a most extreme intensity which have but one purpose—to arouse and excite members of the audience.”59 Two managers and three performers were consequently arrested – Frank Engel, Max Michaels, Irma the Body,

Marion Russell, and Rose La Rose. Both film and police testimonies were entered into evidence during the ensuing trial.60

Long-time municipal-court Judge Elijah Adlow presided over the hearing. In his

45 years in the in the 73rd Precinct of the Boston Municipal Criminal Court, Adlow would garner a reputation as something of a cowboy judge, dispensing his own personal brand of justice and showmanship. He had little patience for lawyers or for anything else that might hinder a speedy trial. Lawyers who asked for continuances or other favors were ignored or dismissed. Richard Harris’s exposé in The New Yorker suggests a theatrical quality to Adlow’s courtroom, noting that the judge relished the attention of his audience, a group of older men who congregated regularly in the front row of his courtroom. 61

Court transcripts from the day in question aside, one might imagine the curious and full courtroom, packed with criminal respondents and Adlow enthusiasts alike. On November

5, 1953 was a typical day for the court, which saw as many as 334,000 cases each year— a full docket and a judge who prided himself on expediency.62 In his autobiography, published 20 years later, Judge Adlow references this trial as a point of comparison in several obscenity cases over which he presided. In his mind, the case was a symptom of a growing epidemic of indecency borne out of a legal system which had failed to draw clear divisions between obscenity and artistic expression:

In evaluating the moral breakdown in America let us not overlook the role played by libertarian judges in thwarting the champions of decency. It is paradoxical to observe that while men are serving sentences in our institutions for indecent exposure, the producers of ‘Hair,’ ‘O, Calcutta,’ and ‘The Killing of Sister George’ are enjoying virtual immunity.63

The judge issued fines to all five respondents in the case. On November 12, the three- person City Censorship Board revoked the licenses of both the Old Howard and the

Casino, another burlesque theater run by Engel, effectively closing them forever.

Newspapers across the country reported fervently on the events, interviewing performers and legal experts, writing censorship commentary, and drawing comparison to the general state of burlesque in the United States.

The widely publicized case in Boston is an apt illustration of the larger public discourse surrounding the legitimacy of burlesque in American life. This discourse is particularly transparent in print media. In the wake of the Boston ruling, an AP reporter named James Calogero describes an irate Rose La Rose speaking to the press: “[I]t’s a legitimate art, just like any other form of musical expression.” He describes her physically presenting reporters with reviews of her performances; one “clipping compared her act with ‘a wine festival dance calling for a chorus of Bacchante and lots of revelry.’” Calogero himself reaffirms the popular tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy in the media with the last sentence of his article: “Judge Elijah Adlow and the censorship board called it only ‘dirty.’”64

This chapter argues that a consistent narrative of degeneracy has existed within public perceptions of exotic dance from the beginnings of modern burlesque in the late nineteenth century through its contemporary iterations. This chapter will analyze tensions between notions of legitimacy and illegitimacy that infiltrate representations of exotic dance in the print media and in popular culture over the past century. This chapter will offer a close reading of a number of tropes common in depictions of strippers in popular culture as they reinforce or disrupt this narrative.

A NARRATIVE OF DEGENERACY

The consequence of this tension over the issue of legitimacy is that while

American burlesque practice remained largely unchanged from decade to decade, it was consistently called on to defend its validity among the popular arts. The public perception of burlesque has been a narrative of degeneration, depicting an art form in almost constant decline. The public determination of legitimacy has been primarily centered on the presence of the female body, and particularly, its various iterations of nudity and eroticism. American anxieties over increasing permissiveness in virtually every aspect of life are replicated in the evaluation of burlesque performance as censors, critics, and morality watchdogs have decried smut and nudity on the stage. Public standards have often been enforced in arbitrary ways—the absence of certain costume properties like g-strings, pasties, garters, or even shoes have been cited as evidence of indecency, while legal advocates have tried to measure elements of the presentation itself, such as the acceptable amount of hip-grinding dance or even the physical proximity of performers to audience. Various politicians, like New York mayor, Fiorello LaGuardia, attempted crackdowns on the so-called “prurience” of burlesque by issuing fines, arresting performers, conducting raids, and closing theaters. The reality of burlesque, however, is that while the show has always been about being “dirty,” the actual amount of smuttiness has not changed so drastically over time. Though legal requirements and stage customs have varied through the decades, the general practice of burlesque performance, including those measurable elements of nudity and suggestive dancing, has altered considerably less than depictions of burlesque in the popular imagination would suggest. Irving Zeidman argues in 1967 that the predominant characteristic of American burlesque is “a remarkable uniformity and sameness…evident in every season….From

1880 to date, burlesque has made a complete cycle, ending precisely where it began.”65 It is, in fact, the constant narrative of degeneration, rather than the reality of degeneration itself, that characterizes burlesque in the public imagination, reinforcing a system of hierarchies meant to legitimize or not. As critics, media, scholars, and experts continually signal the decline of “real” burlesque, they strengthen the cultural belief that a clear line dividing art and smut, legitimate and illegitimate, can and must be drawn. Thus, a tension between legitimacy and illegitimacy as an art became burlesque’s most salient marker in the popular imagination. To gain power and recognition, performers themselves traded on these tensions, fighting to distinguish what they do as different, classier, or more artistic than the average burlesque queen.

GENDER AND LEGITIMACY

From their nineteenth century beginnings through contemporary practice, women on American burlesque stages have operated across a publicly-determined spectrum of legitimacy. Circa the arrival of Lydia Thompson on the American stage in 1868 (and the many similar troupes that appeared in her wake), burlesque embraced the female body as central to its performance mode. Its audiences quickly came to associate burlesque with the presence of women on stage (though, at various times, not as welcome in the audience). In 1909, Sime Silverman wrote in Variety: “Were there no women in burlesque, how many men would attend? The answer is the basic principle of the burlesque business.”66 At various points across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, public determinations of legitimacy have been made based on the amount of bare skin exposed, the frequency of nudity, the degree of sexual suggestiveness in the physical performance, and the body type of the performer – all through evaluation of the female

37 body on stage. While burlesque critics have been quick to cite the many famous male comedians who came from “humble beginnings” in burlesque and reached stardom through hard work and talent like Abbot and Costello, Red Skelton, Bob Hope, and Phil

Silvers, the same has seldom been said of women performing in burlesque. Reviewers of stage plays and films starring former burlesque queens often express surprise at a performer’s ability to sing, act or do anything besides remove her clothing to a beat. In the evaluation of artistry, men and women in burlesque experienced a sharp double- standard. The same admonition from Zeidman over the “sameness” in burlesque is often a criticism of burlesque comedians who have been widely reported to have recycled the same few well-known sketches for almost a century of performance. In contrast, burlesque performers like Rose La Rose made frequent attempts to innovate and develop new acts in order to keep top billing. And though male comics contributed greatly to the

“blueness” of burlesque, it was female burlesque performers who met with the most derision and condemnation for their participation in performances defined by their bodily presence. Crucially, then, the question of legitimacy was and remains a deeply gendered discourse.

BURLESQUE VS. STRIPPING

Ultimately, the contemporary line of demarcation between “burlesque” and

“stripping” grew out of this same tension, forcing performers into one category or another. More recently with the emergence of the neo-burlesque movement in the 1990s and continuing into the present, performers frequently fight to identify themselves as burlesque artists—not strippers—while paying open homage to burlesque “legends” for whom there was less distinction between the categories. Many burlesque performers

38 today are quick to disavow the term “stripper,” even as they appropriate the performance practices and styles of earlier generations of performers who operated primarily in the realm of “adult entertainment” and were often identified as “strippers” in print media and popular culture. Performer and historian Michelle Baldwin acknowledges this in her history of “the New Bump-n-Grind:”

The early to mid-twentieth century burlesque that most modern burlesque performers were emulating was not a sanitized strip show by any means….Interestingly, revisionist views of the dance’s history would rather see the early ecdysiasts as more saintly than sexy….Burlesque dancers were…not considered respectable by any means. Being a stripper, no matter the era, has never been a respectable thing to do….there is a part of that history that is related to modern stripping, with some dancers showing more than others and a prevalence of men in positions of power dictating what women did.67

While Baldwin argues that that the majority of the founders of the neo-burlesque movement have a deep respect and appreciation for the performers of earlier decades, she acknowledges the intentional divide made by some performers and companies in contemporary burlesque. The Minneapolis burlesque club, Le Cirque Rouge de Gus, advertises: “No Fake Boobs, No Stripper Moves.” In an interview with Baldwin,

Francean Fanny says, “I am a burlesque dancer, but I don’t consider myself a stripper, at least not in the modern sense, and I work to keep that distinction evident.”68 The reclaiming and, in some cases, subversion of “classical” burlesque art by contemporary performers is hugely celebrated by a community who frame neo-burlesque as empowering, LGBTIQ-friendly, feminist, body-positive, inclusive, and counter-cultural.

But with this reclaiming comes an increased nostalgia and romanticization of “classical” burlesque that rarely includes an acknowledgment of the reality for working burlesque performers in previous generations. Unlike the burlesque queens they seek to follow (and whose acts they often recreate or reimagine), the majority of neo-burlesque performers do

39 not make a living exclusively in burlesque. The privilege of the contemporary burlesque performer is her ability to self-determine the content of her act, to make artistic decisions based almost solely on her or her troupe’s aesthetics, and simply to call herself an artist with the general expectation of acceptance and respect from the artistic community. As

Baldwin herself writes, “From a distance of fifty-years, we are able to take what we like about traditional burlesque and leave what we don’t.”69 Twenty-first century practice has largely shifted the perception of the word “burlesque” in popular culture from a context of deviance and vice to a part of a trendy, hipster aesthetic. The sentiments underlying cultural attitudes about women who remove their clothing (primarily) for money remain.

Portrayals of strippers or exotic dancers in popular culture remain frequently derisive.

And though the performance modes between contemporary burlesque and stripping practices have grown more distinct contemporary practice, understanding the ways the issue of legitimacy has been embedded in popular culture over a century is key to understanding the development of burlesque. The argument over legitimacy continues to permeate cultural understandings of women in burlesque’s contemporary lineage.

LEGITIMATE IN PRINT AND IN PUBLIC

Much of the public conversation around burlesque in the mid-twentieth century took place within the print media. The highest achieving burlesque stars were celebrities whose off-stage personalities and proclivities were as reported as the performances themselves. Like celebrities in other fields, burlesque performers worked to curate their public image for maximum impact on their financial and social successes. The public was curious about their private lives and details about their families, habits, and relationships fueled further interest in seeing them in person. If the fascination with the private lives of

40 women in burlesque was and is somewhat heightened, it is the seeming incongruity between the performance of sex and the reality of daily life that is most striking to the public imagination. Performers themselves played into these fascinations. The relationship between Rose La Rose and her mother, Jennie, exemplifies this dichotomy

[Figure 2]. Jennie Da Pella traveled frequently with Rose, making her costumes, and accompanying her on the circuit. “’Mama says I show too much fanny,’” Rose told

Monroe Fry in an interview with her mother in the adjoining room, “’Show a little less fanny, darling; you leave nothing for the customers’ imagination.’”70 Rose and Jennie’s relationship was a novelty in the press, making Rose simultaneously charmingly relatable and “normal,” and yet defiantly alien.

At the same time, performers cashed in on their public reputations. Ann Corio was known widely as the most lady-like of burlesque dancers. Gypsy Rose Lee was considered sophisticated. All of them, however, traded on the tension between the perceived poles of artistry and smut. In 1937, burlesque star Margie Hart was among those interviewed by Helen Welshimer for an article on women in burlesque “graduating” to legitimate theatre. Between stage numbers, “Margie Hart, who is called the most daring of the strip-teasers” was writing a play called, Move Faster which, Welshimer writes, “will show the white collar audiences how proper and wholesome the conduct of the burlesque girls is backstage.”71 In 1940, Herman R. Allen remarks with surprise that

“[s]he wore a modest pair of slacks and a jacket, looked little like the flashing creature on the stage.”72 Among performers and censors, however, Hart maintained a reputation for riding the line of legality in her acts. Several performers have cited Hart as one of the first to flash in the 1940s.73 She was arrested more than once and her performance in the

Broadway production of Wine, Women, and Song shuttered a major theater and sent its producer to prison for six months.74 While most performers instinctively employed the tensions in popular opinion to shape their public persona, few did it as knowingly as Rose

La Rose.

Figure 13: La Rose with her mother, Jennie in personal snapshot, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

From the very beginning of her career, Rose was an adept curator of her public image. She understood the power of the press to shape public perception [Figure 3].

Instinctively, she stepped into the discourse with a passionate (and consistent) defense of burlesque, and of her work in burlesque. After the ban on burlesque in New York in 1937 and being charged personally with performing an indecent act, she gave an interview to a member of the Central Press, saying:

[J]ust what is wrong with burlesque?...Everyone works hard in burlesque. If anyone really wants to stage an indecent act, she can do so elsewhere…Burlesque, I suppose, does have its rough spots…Yet, the indictments returned against my

profession are irritating to me. I guess there always will be those who never will understand art and artists…75

“Miss La Rose contends,” one New York newspaper wrote in 1946, “stripping is an art, and bases her claim to classicism on the fact that she uses such classics as ‘The Anvil

Chorus’ as background for her bumps and grinds.” The picture of Rose that accompanied the article is labeled “Artiste.”76 In the same year, she told Virginia Macpherson:

‘I’d have to sell sex, of course,’ she says. ‘But I’d do it legitimately and with a row of nice-looking chorus girls behind me. I’ve already talked it over by phone with a man down at the philharmonic, and he wants me to come down and see him.’ By ‘legitimately’ Miss La Rose means she’d like to tie in her routines with the famous sirens of history. ‘Cleopatra danced,’ she insisted, ‘and so did Salome. They’re famous for their sex. So is Helen of Troy, but I haven’t looked up what her specialty was yet.’…For dance music she prefers the rhythms of Tschaikowsky, Brahms, Verdi, and Liszt. Wagner she hasn’t gotten around to yet. But she thinks his stuff has possibilities for a ‘bump and grind’ tempo.77

Repeatedly, Rose situates her own work among the classical, a “tie in,” as Macpherson calls it. Macpherson herself frames her interview with Rose somewhat facetiously:

‘It’s a legitimate art,’ she says. ‘Just like any other form of musical expression. Just because we take off our clothes is no reason we should be kept out of places like the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium or Carnegie Hall in New York.’ And besides, added the dark-eyed graduate of the Minsky circuit, she does all her stripping to classical music. That oughta help out a little.’78

Figure 14: Rose La Rose with unknown reporter backstage, location/date unknown, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

E.B. Radcliffe’s article, “Did the Greeks Have Word For It?,” somewhat amusedly quotes Rose as she described her plans for future acts:

‘I’m going back to William Tell again. But this time I’m going to use a new part—the Storm Scene. And I’m going to combine this with some of Rubinstein’s ‘Kammennoi-Ostrow.’ Also maybe a popular number if my arranger can work it in. It will all go well this wine festival dance which calls for a chorus of bacchantes and lots of revelry.’

In a 1951 interview about the state of burlesque in Europe, Rose further demonstrates her understanding of the cultural hierarchies she worked within: “Over there, there’s no tease to the strip game. They just come out with no clothes on. A strip is not artistic unless it has a tease.”79

In stark contrast with Rose La Rose’s interview with James Calogero in 1953 in which she expressed “mystification” at the closing of the Old Howard, her interview with

Monroe Fry for Esquire magazine just a year or two later reveals a different side of the burlesque star: “I just love to expose my body. I love to excite men. If there is a man in the audience, I want to make him conscious that I’m a woman—that I have female attributes I want to show him….as much as the law will let me.”80 In another interview, she even plays with her own definition of “art,” as she describes how difficult it was for her to avoid bumping and grinding her hips while filming Queen of Burlesque (1946): “‘I couldn’t seem to please them,’ she complained. ‘My natural artistry kept creeping into my dance.’”81 La Rose clearly understood her audience, both in person and in print. She not only recognized the spectrum of legitimacy in which burlesque operated but demonstrated a keen ability to frame herself within the continuum in accordance with the needs of the moment, to play both with and against the narrative of degeneracy. In the public imagination, Rose could perform a number of roles as it suited her audience –the

45 artist, the stripper, the dancer, the innovator, the “sex exciter.” Rose is certainly not the only burlesque performer who was able to navigate and manipulate the tensions over legitimacy through the press but she remains a great example of a performer who excelled at it [Figure 4].

Figure 15: La Rose posing for photographers, location/date unknown, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

Despite the self-awareness with which performers operated in media interviews and public relations, the tone of journalists and critics covering burlesque often bordered on cynicism and derision, particularly when women in burlesque have described their artistic principles and inspirations, protested censorship, or demanded better working

46 conditions and compensation. Tongue-in-cheek headlines like “Stripper Insists Girlie

Show Descendant from the Ancient Bacchanalia” were so common they evolved into cultural shorthand for attitudes about women in burlesque. Monroe Fry published a series of articles on vice in Esquire Magazine in the 1950s, including an expose on burlesque in which he interviewed several performers in Hudson City, New Jersey. A performer Fry describes as “a cold blonde” complains about the pressures placed on women in burlesque to make a living by working not only in theaters, but also in night clubs:

[Y]ou can’t get a night club booking if you don’t agree to become a B-girl—to mingle with the customers between numbers….I just hate those lousy saloonkeepers who run gyp joints as clubs and turn us into B-girls if we want to eat. When I play a theater, the manager treats me like a performer. I’m an artist and not a tramp, even if my art is throwing my can around.82

Fry’s interviews include a conversation with Mila, the Illuminated Peeler: “’I don’t sell sex excitement,’ she said with dignity. ‘I sell entertainment…I’m not an ordinary stripper.”83 Similarly, Martin Collyer writes in 1964: “The stripper…was often a humorless pain in the neck offstage, eager to advise reporters that she was anything else than as vulgar as a stripper (she invariably announced that ‘interpretative exotic’ sounded more refined), and that her serious art form was something in the nature of a cultural mission.”84 In each article, the performer’s insistence that her work is artistic, noble, or legitimate is set against and embedded in the sarcasm of the article’s rhetoric, implying that not only is the burlesque dancer not legitimate, but she has no hope of becoming so.

She is adorable in her pretense; her attempts to reach beyond her station are met with amusement and derision.

Neither is this a new phenomenon. In 1869, actress and critic Olive Logan wrote a scathing review of burlesque:

I say that it is nothing less than an insult to the members of the dramatic profession, that these nude women should be classed among actresses and hold possession of the majority of our theatres. Their place is in the concert-saloons or the circus tents. Theatres are for artists…85

Logan’s line of demarcation is somewhat ironic, given the similarity of cultural attitudes toward “legitimate” theatre actresses in preceding decades.

In 1931, Bernard Sobel advertised his new book, Burleycue, as “An Underground

History of Burlesque Days.” In one chapter, he interviewed several performers backstage: “‘Because you’re in burlesque, they think you’re no good. All they say is:

“Oh, you’re in burlesque, no good.’ But we fool ‘em sometimes. I don’t smoke or drink, and I know others that don’t, either. But you can’t get ‘em to believe you.”86 While he was there, another woman who entered the dressing room, carrying books, told him defiantly:

Lot of us are readers…We read Marcel Proust, James Branch Cabell, Williams James, Omar Khayyam, Schopenhauer, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and The Satyricon of Petronius . If you don’t believe me I’ll bring my copy down from my dressing room.87

Sobel reported all of this with a measure of incredulity as he compared them to previous generations of performers: “Alas! You will never get a chance to see one of the real burlesque shows again. They are gone forever…”88

A FAMILIAR JOKE

The Stripper-Who-Thinks-She-Is-An-Artist is a familiar joke. Elevator Repair

Service, lauded New York downtown theatre company, premiered its new play,

Arguendo, at the Public Theatre in New York in 2013. Arguendo is a dramatic verbatim reconstruction of the Barnes v. Glen Theatre case heard by the United States Supreme

Court in 1991, in which the supreme justices address the legality of all-nude dancing and

“ask whether naked erotic dancing is artistic expression or immoral conduct.”89 The point of disagreement was between two strip clubs in Indiana and the state. The clubs attempted to have the courts overthrow the ordinance which prevented all-nude dancing in the state of Indiana. The theatre company included recreations of several televised interviews, including an impromptu interview with a dancer from Michigan named

Rebecca who had come to show solidarity with the Indiana clubs. Elevator Repair

Service devised Arguendo entirely using verbatim found text from interviews and official transcripts. They watched footage of the interview with Rebecca on C-Span and the performer portraying her attempted to adopt her exact idiosyncrasies and speech patterns—a practice that extends to all of the people represented in the play. The appearance of Rebecca on the stage, however, read immediately as caricature. Dressed in a hot pink synthetic jacket and micro-mini skirt, hair teased to the point of exaggeration, the actress shifted her body from side to side, loudly smacking her gum, primping before the microphone. The reporters pummeled her with questions about her intentions (ie. Was she sure she was not dancing fully nude simply to make more money? Was this really about artistic expression? What exactly did she think she was expressing through the act of full-nudity on stage?) Her answers were reasonable, if occasionally contradictory. “I’m expressing a sensual spirit,” she said. “I don’t necessarily make more money than I did wearing a g-string and pasties. But I don’t plan to dance forever. Eventually I’ll do something else. I’m saving money.” Audience response to Rebecca reinforced this interpretation. When Rebecca hesitated or stumbled over an answer, said something circular in logic, or seemed confused, spectators tittered. Her comments about the nature of her nude expression and her explanation of her artistic sensibilities elicited particularly

49 loud laughter.90 If “Rebecca” is a carefully recreated version of reality taken directly from

C-SPAN interviews, then the “joke” is that a real woman who performs in a strip club in

Michigan believes that she is an artist.

The humor of Arguendo is not an isolated example. Popular culture is rife with jokes about strippers based on a handful of tropes about women in exotic dance— performers who identify as burlesque dancers, strippers, and striptease artists. In more sympathetic portrayals in the popular imagination, strippers are framed as victims of circumstance, abuse, and neglect or as women on their way to better careers. The performance venues, ranging from burlesque houses to night clubs, are often the backdrop for illicit activity. In less sympathetic representations, strippers have little education, come from lower class backgrounds, and are often marked as insincere and financially motivated women who prey on men. In the majority of these popular representations, “exotic dancer” or “burlesque dancer” or “stripper” is euphemistic for an unfortunate or badly reputed woman.

EUPHEMISM AND EXOTIC DANCE

Not unlike the earliest stage actresses, performers in exotic dance are often compared or equated with prostitutes. Though the first actresses were frequently associated with prostitution, either because of their off-stage relationships or other socio- cultural realities, the exotic dancer experiences an added layer of marginalization based on a number of factors: 1) the expectation of partial or full nudity as a key ingredient of exotic dance (as opposed to an actress who may or may not reveal her physical form or bare flesh in the course of performing a role), 2) the stripper is more often placed on the adult entertainment continuum with pornography and sex work through marketing,

50 performer crossover, and proximity to actual sites of pornography (ie. burlesque houses that showed ‘blue’ films, peep shows, and adult stores), and 3) actual prostitution has been known to take place in strip clubs. In the stag film, The Ecstasies of Women (1969), four men at a strip club make dates with a group of go-go dancers. The entire group leaves and proceeds to have an orgy on a houseboat. In Porky’s (1982), a group of sexually-frustrated teenage voyeurs –after an unsatisfying encounter with an actual prostitute—make the journey through the Florida swamp to the strip club, Porky’s, where they try to talk their way into “Porky’s Playpen” – a secret upstairs room where strippers can be paid for sex. Rapper Dizzy Wright’s album, The First Agreement (2012) features the song, “Hotel Stripper” in which he convinces a stripper to come back to his hotel for drugs and money.91 In the film Welcome to the Riley’s (2010), a bereaved couple grieves in different ways. In the year since their daughter’s death, Lois Riley (Melissa Leo) has become increasingly agoraphobic and distant and Doug Riley (James Gandolfini) seeks solace in an extra-marital relationship. While visiting New Orleans on a business trip,

Doug finds himself an unwilling audience member in a strip club. He is approached by

Mallory (Kristen Stewart), an underage runaway who has begun dancing at the club, whom he rebuffs. Eventually, Mallory persuades him to pay for some time in “the champagne room,” where she offers him sexual favors for cash. The film presents the strip club venue as no more than a thinly-veiled vehicle for prostitution. Online summaries of the film identify Mallory as the “stripper/hooker” in a way not dissimilar to an Internet Movie Database list entitled, “Movies feat. Popular Actress as Ho/Stripper.”92

While the reality of prostitution within burlesque houses and strip clubs has varied

51 greatly, the conflation of exotic dancer with prostitute in popular entertainment is culturally engrained.

Exotic dance has often been used as a cultural signifier for wrong-doing or crime.

Both Lady of Burlesque (1943) and Queen of Burlesque (1946) feature greed, extortion, and murder set backstage in a burlesque theater. From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) is set in a

Mexican strip-club/bordello full of vampires called the Titty Twister. In the wildly acclaimed HBO series, The Sopranos (1999-2007), a large number of scenes are set in the

Mob-connected strip club, Bada Bing, where the dancers serve as a backdrop for corruption. In a scene in Season One, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) openly instructs one of the Bada Bing dancers to show his daughter’s soccer coach “a good time.” Beyond occasional passing dialogue, the strippers in Bada Bing do little. Many camera shots show only the lower halves of their bodies as they dance, effectively cutting them into set pieces and cinematic background for Mafia activity.

One of the most common tropes regarding exotic dancers is the notion that abuse and neglect are the primary motivations for a woman to enter the field. As prominent scholars in their field in the 1960s and 1970s, researchers Skipper and McCaghy investigated the work and sociological impact of exotic dance. As part of their research, they asked the dancers they interviewed about past sexual abuse and their relationships with their parents. Though some of these findings have been challenged in recent sociological publication, beliefs about the motivations and past experiences of strippers are highly legible in popular culture.

Ihe film, Welcome to the Riley’s (2010), for example, assumes the tone of this scholarship, that is, that stripping is deviant behavior caused by environmental and

52 familial issues from childhood. In scene after scene, Doug fashions himself as a father figure to Mallory. Mallory is fairly quick to fall into the role of daughter. In one scene outside a Laundromat, after failing to follow his rules about appropriate language, she begs, “Don't be mad at me. I don't like being told what to do. I can't help it. And I'll lay off the curse words. I will. I promise, okay?... You're acting like you're mad at me. Just don't be mad at me.” Doug invites her closer and she lays a head on his shoulder.93 In the long-running sit-com, That 70’s Show!, Steven jokes that he should thank a deadbeat father for giving him his stripper wife.94 In the popular adult cartoons of Seth

MacFarlane, Family Guy (1999--) and American Dad! (2005--), the stripper represents human damage. In one episode, Stewie Griffin puts starfish on his nipples as pasties and says, “Hey Brian, look, I’m a stripper. I’m working my way through college. I should be more reluctant to take my clothes off but I’m not because my stepfather had boundary issues.”95 In another, Peter Griffin takes a group of D.C. politicians to a strip club where one of the senators kills a dancer. At the very end of the episode, Peter gives a Public

Service Announcement: “…I’ll tell you what’s not funny. Killing strippers. Strippers are people, too. Naked people who may be willing to pleasure you for a price you negotiate later behind the curtain at a VIP room. Besides, there’s no need to kill ‘em. Cause most of them are already dead inside.”96 In American Dad!, Stan Smith’s daughter Hayley rebels against her father by becoming a stripper. In a later season, when Hayley again will not listen to Stan’s advice, Stan adopts a stripper named Tanqueray and begins molding her into the daughter he longs for. Throughout the episode, Tanqueray repeatedly seeks

Stan’s approval. In the end, Tanqueray advises Hayley to listen to her dad because good fathers are hard to find.97 In 1999, Bloodhound Gang, released their album, Hooray for

Boobies, which includes the satirical single, “A Lap Dance is So Much Better When the

Stripper is Crying.” The song relates the first-person narrative of a man who meets a stripper named Bambi who “gives me such a thrill when she grinds me against her will.”

Bambi is willing to have sex with him “to buy baby formula.” By the end of the song, the singer realizes Bambi is a missing child when she discovers her picture on the back of a milk carton.98 In Patton Oswalt’s comedy-special, Finest Hour (2011), he jokes, “Look, I know that the bellwether for bad parenting is the stripper but…”; the punchline being that comedians are worse because at least strippers actually take their clothes off before they expect you to pay them, as opposed to a stand-up comic who will only speak about his genitals on stage. Incidentally, Oswalt follows that with, “How crazy would you think the stripper was if she came out…fully clothed, ‘Guys, let me tell you about my vagina for the duration of this REO Speedwagon song.’ […] Wow, her dad must have fucked her in a Garfield mask.”99

In addition to the numerous stereotypes about the stripper who was abused or abandoned, stripper bodies are often sites of violence and aggression in popular culture.

An entire sub-genre of horror films uses the stripper as its central plot device. In Penance

(2009), Amelia (Marieh Delfino), a single mother trying desperately to pay for her daughter’s medical bills agrees to strip for several private parties, including one at a secret location. She arrives, only to find that she, along with several other strippers, has been taken prisoner to be tortured for her wickedness. The villain, Geeves (Graham

McTavish) believes he is doing the work of God by helping sinful women to redemption through suffering. Popular melodramas like Demi Moore’s Striptease (1996) feature a

54 hard-working single mother forced to work as a stripper to provide for her child while being preyed upon by possessive customers and slimy club owners.

In Chris Rock’s stand-up special, Never Scared, he describes what he calls “the stripper myth:” “You know the stripper myth! There’s a stripper myth that has been perpetuated throughout society. The stripper myth is, ‘I’m stripping to pay my tuition.’

No, you’re not. There’s no strippers in college! There’s no clear heels in biology!...I didn’t know they had a college that only took one-dollar bills. And if they got so many strippers in college, how come I never got a smart lap dance? I never got a girl that sat on my lap and said, ‘If I was you, I would diversify my portfolio. You know, ever since the end of the Cold War, I find NATO obsolete.’”100 During his imitation of the “smart lap dance,” Rock imitates the movement of an exotic dancer. The “myth” that Rock discusses is one of the most promulgated tropes about exotic dancers and has led to a large number of jokes about dumb strippers. Mirroring Bernard Sobel’s cynicism about the actual education of women in burlesque in 1931, films like Doll Face (1945) and Queen of

Burlesque (1946) reinforced this notion. Vivian Blaine, the star of Doll Face, plays Doll

Face Carroll, a woman who left school in 6th grade when “Pop beat up the principal.”

Queen of Burlesque, one of Rose La Rose’s only Hollywood ventures, features an intentionally humorous scene where one dancer cannot read and another in which someone asks the burlesque star, Crystal, if she can read. “ABC’s,” Crystal replies,

“Sure.” In 1952, a story by Elliot Nugent and James Thurber was made into the Virginia

Mayo, Ronald Reagan vehicle, She’s Working Her Way Through College, in which Mayo plays a burlesque star begins pursuing her degree. She encounters a great deal of prejudice from the university administration but is defended by her theatre professor,

55 played by Reagan.101 The film’s audience is meant to sympathize with Mayo who is only trying to better herself. Society can forgive her for her work in burlesque—a sanitized and Hollywood version—because she does not mean to be in burlesque forever. Several decades later, the sitcom That 70’s Show echoes this sentiment when Jackie tells another woman that a rumor is being spread that she stripped her way through college. The other woman replies that no one will believe her because her father is rich and she did not need the money. “Oh, no…” Jackie replies, “You didn’t strip cause you needed the money.

Word around the water cooler is you stripped because you liked it.” Horrified, the other woman runs away, crying.102

In the popular 1970s medical drama, Emergency!, Los Angeles firefighters John

Gage (Randolph Mantooth) and Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe) were presented with weekly medical emergencies that offered social commentary on a variety of issues contemporary to the decade including women’s lib, returning Vietnam veterans, drug use, hippie culture, domestic violence, child abuse, behavioral health, as well as introducing the fairly new concept of the paramedic as part of emergency services into popular culture.103

In its fourth season, Gage and DeSoto are dispatched to a strip club where a dancer, Suzy

Clark, is lying on the corner of the stage while the performance by another dancer continues above her. No one seems particularly concerned about the paramedics treating her during the show, except the club management who are irritated by the disruption and yell at Gage to crouch down while taking the dancer’s pulse, so as not to impede sightlines. Gage and DeSoto, true to their characterization on the show, are consummate professionals but even so, they occasionally glance up distractedly at the go-go dancer who smiles and tosses her hair in their direction. A television watcher is meant to smirk

56 at the lovable, gentlemanly heroes attempting to offer emergency medical services in a strip club. Their presence is meant to live in contrast to this space and this space is meant to feel alien. The significance of Suzy Clark herself is just as much about who she is not, as who she is. Suzy is written as an anomaly. “Believe it or not, I don’t drink,” she tells the paramedics. Nor does she dance full time: “My class load won’t allow it…. I’m working on my master’s in Sociology.” She has her reasons for dancing: “The money pays for school. And besides, I’m writing my thesis on the sociological impact of go-go dancing on middle-class America.” Like the majority of positively-imagined strippers in popular culture, Suzy is not going to be a dancer for long. And when the doctor diagnoses her with mononucleosis as a result of over-exertion at school and work, she promptly decides to quit dancing since she has enough research for her thesis. “The end of a promising career,” she jokes to the doctor and the audience knows that it was never meant as such.104

Similarly, the orphaned Alex Owens played by Jennifer Beals in the film,

Flashdance (1983), an 18-year-old waif who attends confession weekly and works in, not one, but two male-dominated industries—industrial welding and stripping. Alex is framed as heroic, not degenerate – as she represents the untrained genius compelled by an inner spirit to dance wherever she can. In an early scene, she is so mesmerized by images of ballerinas on her television set that she begins to pirouette in her living room, immediately spilling Diet Pepsi all over herself. She works at the strip club, all the while practicing for her audition for a Pittsburgh repertory dance company. Though she does remove clothing and dance provocatively, her stage numbers are highly choreographed modern dance numbers, demonstrating her innate artistic sensibilities. An audience can

57 sympathize with Alex, whose heavy work boots and lack of training contrast starkly with the literal marble halls of the repertory company she enters for her first audition. An audience can cheer for Alex, a true aesthete trapped in a bad world, “made of steel, made of stone.” But, our audience is reminded, exotic dance is only acceptable as a profession when it leads to some better, higher place. Alex’s friend Jeannie dreams of being an ice skater but after sustaining an injury during a competitive skating event, she moves from the artist-friendly strip club, Mawby’s Bar, where she waitresses, to the all-nude club,

Zanzibar, across the street. Zanzibar, whose lurid manager has been creeping around for most of the film, is the darkest end of the exotic dance spectrum. When Alex discovers that Jeannie is working there, she drags her naked friend from the stage and out into the street. “Look at you!” Alex shouts, “You wanna make a living rolling around on your back?...I thought you wanted to be a dancer! You call that dancing?” Flashdance also showcases the result of stripping to strip. Hardened by years as an exotic, the aging dancer who is often rude to Alex finally admits the truth to her:

[W]hen I started out, I was 17. I used to work in these old movie theaters. Every cent I had I spent on costumes. I had more fancy costumes and dresses than you do. Boy, when I went on that stage, I was looking so good. One day I just stopped buying them. I don’t even know what happened. I thought about it a lot. I just can’t seem to pin it down. The dresses got old. And I just stopped wearing them…105

She stands up in her brassiere and heads for the door, “What the hell, it’s show time.”106

The hierarchy is clear. Stripping might be legitimizing, but only as a stepping stone.

Finally, in the film, Doll Face (1945), a burlesque queen Doll Face Carroll tries to make the leap onto the legitimate stage in a theatre production produced by a Ziegfeld- type, Flo Hartman. In the middle of her impressive audition, an assistant to the producer recognizes her and begins catcalling, “That’s it, Doll Face! Give it to ‘em, girlie!” When

Hartman is told Doll Face is a burlesque star, he quickly dismisses her from the audition,“She’s quite good, of course. After all, she’s a sort of professional. But I can’t have anybody with her background in one of my productions.” May Beth’s manager and boyfriend, Mike Hannagan protests, “What ain’t she got that you need?” “Culture, class, the unusual and interesting approach,” Hartman replies. Hannagan schemes to get Doll

Face the cultural capital she needs to impress Hartman. He hires a ghost writer to help

Doll Face pen a book. The autobiography that ghost writer Freddie Gerard writes changes significant details about May Beth’s life in order to make her appear “cultured,” changing the occupation of her father from plumber to engineer, the neighborhood she grew up in, publishing photographs of May Beth playing the harp and talking about art.

Gerard also includes a “history” of burlesque that links it to Commedia dell Arte and ancient Greek theatre. The plot eventually devolves into a love triangle between Mike,

Freddie, and Doll Face. After Mike breaks up with Doll Face and fires her from her job in the burlesque house, she proceeds to publish her book, The Genius DeMillo and dedicate it to Freddie. Hartman offers Doll Face the starring role in a musical based on the book as he sees now how wrong he was. She convinces him to hire the entire cast from her burlesque theater, although she warns him, teasingly, “They all have a lot of talent, Mr.

Hartman. But there’s one thing I think you should know: They don’t have much culture.”

Thereby, burlesque is embraced by Broadway and made legitimate. As one of several screenplays by Gypsy Rose Lee based on her own experiences in burlesque, Doll Face simultaneously pokes fun at class assumptions buried in public perception of burlesque, while reinforcing and reveling in the permanent illegitimacy of burlesque. Education, in these representations, can be a means of legitimacy but only if it is sought for higher,

59 nobler purposes than exotic dance itself. Ultimately, all of these tropes illegitimate the exotic dancer making it more difficult for her to frame her work as artistic.

Popular culture has held the stripper up as an object of both curiosity and condemnation. She has been situated on the edges of American society and marked as prurient, deviant, lowbrow, and yet, she remains a central and commonplace figure in the cultural imagination. A series of common assumptions regarding the stripper permeates most depictions of exotic dance in popular culture. The promulgation of these tropes matters because the dominant narrative of exotic dance history is a narrative that separates burlesque and stripping as distinctly different entities, the former being a legitimately artistic art form and the latter being a close cousin to pornography and sex work. The neo-burlesque movement has, in the last decade or so, felt the need to almost entirely separate itself from “just stripping” for precisely this reason – that is, that the stripper icon is so engrained in our cultural memory as an example of degradation and deviance that a performer must make clear the divide or risk falling into pockets of illegitimacy.

Popular culture has since taken up the issue of the stripper and, through one of a handful of common stories, has echoed Logan (and Elijah Adlow and the Boston

Censorship Board) in some way or the other. Though varied in their approach and genre, the representations of the stripper in popular entertainment tend to tell us one of three stories: 1) Stripper as synonymous with Prostitute, 2) Stripper as Victim, and 3) Stripper on Her Way. Ultimately, all of these stories lead us back to Olive Logan’s conclusion – that the stripper herself can have no hope of legitimacy. If burlesque is required to be

60 degenerative in order to be burlesque, then by extension, its performers must operate always as degenerative.

57 Jane Briggeman, Burlesque: Legendary Stars of the Stage (Portland, Or.: Collectors Press, 2004).

58 James Calogero, "Burlesque Struck By Censors," in Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State

University.

59 "Striptease Lost Art in Boston: Burlesque’s Last ‘Bump.’," News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan),

November 13, 1953, Newspapers.com.

60 There is some disagreement about Marion Russell. Several newspapers refer to the woman pictured as

Helen Russell or Eloise Adams or Princess Domay. However, the court photographs matches performance photographs of Marion Russell. Based on published interviews, I believe that the arresting officer reported an incorrect name to reporters in his later recollection of events.

61Richard Harris, "In Criminal Court – I," The New Yorker, April 14, 1973.

62Harris, “In Criminal Court-I.”.

63 Despite his many records and diary entries from throughout his career, Adlow confuses the date of the case he is describing, an obscenity charge for a production of artist and playwright, Rosalyn Drexler’s The

Investigation. Adlow writes that this case was brought before him in 1946 but Drexler first produced “The

Investigation” in Boston in 1966 and published it in 1969. I mention this only because Adlow writes that

“[s]ome years before I had heard a similar complaint against the operators of the ‘Old Howard Burlesque

Theatre.’ Adlow’s 1946 date would mean there was an Old Howard case he had ruled on more than a decade before the 1953 incident that would close the Howard. I believe this is incorrect, however, and was merely an error on the part of Adlow in his memoir; Elijah Adlow, Threshold of Justice: A Judge's Life

Story (Boston, MA: Marlborough House, 1973), 168-170.

64 "Striptease Lost Art in Boston: Burlesque’s Last ‘Bump.’," News-Palladium.

65 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 12-13.

66 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 11.

67 Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-n-grind, 53-54.

68 Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-n-grind, 50.

69 Baldwin, Burlesque and the New Bump-n-grind, 54.

70 Monroe Fry, Sex, Vice, and Business (New York: Ballantine Books, 1959), 65.

71 Helen Welshimer, "Burlesque’s Strippers Graduate to Broadway,"Ogden Standard Examiner, February

14, 1937, Newspapers.com.

72 Herman R. Allen, "Farm Girl Won’t Fool ‘Em in Strip-Tease," Record Herald (Washington Court

House, Ohio), September 25, 1940, Newspapers.com.

73 Douglas Martin, "Margaret Hart Ferraro, Burlesque Queen, Dies," New York Times, January 30, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/30/nyregion/margaret-hart-ferraro-burlesque-queen-dies.html.

74 See Chapter 3 for more on this.

75 Robert J. Rhodes, "’Striptease Dancer’ Is ‘Mystified’ Over Clamps Put on Burlesque," Morning

Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania), August 21, 1937, Newspapers.com.

76 "Artiste," Dunkirk Evening Observer (New York), April 5, 1946, Newspapers.com.

77 Virginia Macpherson, "Burlesque Queen Will Try to Shimmy Right Up to the Concert," In Hollywood,

April 1, 1946, Newspapers.com.

78 Macpherson, "Burlesque Queen Will Try to Shimmy Right Up to the Concert.”

79 "All Strip, No Tease," Lebanon Daily News (Pennsylvania), October 30, 1951, Newspapers.com.

80 Fry, Sex, Vice and Business, 56.

81 "Night Side: The Return of the Rose," in Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from

Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State

University.

82 Fry, Sex, Vice and Business, 65.

83 Fry, Sex, Vice and Business, 62.

84 Collyer, Burlesque, 2.

85 Robert M. Lewis, From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830-

1910 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 227.

86 Sobel, Burleycue, 269.

87 Sobel, Burleycue, 270.

88 Sobel, Burleycue, 262.

89 "Elevator Repair Service," : Arguendo, accessed July 22, 2015, https://www.elevator.org/shows/arguendo/.

90 Arguendo, by Elevator Repair Service, Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University,

Columbus, Ohio, November 2013.

91 Dizzy Wright, Hotel Stripper, Kato, 2012, Spotify.

92 Ignich7, "Movies Feat. Popular Actress as Ho/Stripper," IMDb, accessed July 22, 2015, http://www.imdb.com/list/Kw9KBYgphyE/.

93 Welcome to the Riley's, dir. Jake Scott, screenplay by Ken Hixon, perf. Kristen Stewart and James

Gandolfini (Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2010), DVD.

94 Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, and Mark Brazill, writers, "That 70's Show," dir. David Trainer, Fox.

95 Seth MacFarlane, writer, "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey," in Family Guy, Fox, 2007.

96 Seth MacFarlane, writer, "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington," in Family Guy, Fox, 2001.

97 Seth MacFarlane, writer, "Stan Knows Best," in American Dad!, Fox, 2005.

98 Bloodhound Gang, A Lap Dance Is So Much Better When the Stripper Is Crying, Jimmy Pop, Richard

Gavalis, 1999, CD.

99 Patton Oswalt, perf., Finest Hour, Comedy Central Records, 2011, CD, Spotify.

100 Never Scared, dir. Joel Gallen, perf. Chris Rock (DreamWorks/Geffen, 2004), http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2iwz26.

101 She's Working Her Way Through College, dir. H. Bruce Humberstone, by Elliot Nugent and James

Thurber, perf. Virginia Mayo and Ronald Reagan (Warner Bros. Entertainment, 1952), DVD.

102Bonnie Turner, Terry Turner, and Mark Brazill, writers, "That 70's Show," dir. David Trainer, Fox.

103The television show is credited with helping to advance paramedic programs in the United States in the

1970s.

104 "Nagging Suspicion," in Emergency!, NBC, October 5, 1974.

105 Flashdance, dir. Adrian Lyne, perf. Jennifer Beals and Michael Nouri (Los Angeles: Paramount, 1983),

Netflix.

106 Flashdance.

CHAPTER 3: WORKING STRONG ON THE BURLESQUE CIRCUIT

“I think the loneliness is part of it. When you travel around two or three weeks here and there, with no friends, no love, being a piece of anatomy to many people, and a person to no one…this is why I gave up traveling in the…circuit, even when I had top billing and was well on the way to becoming a big star.”

-Fanne Foxe, 1975

INTRODUCTION

In a box in the Special Collections at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, a letter sits among the donated papers of Jess Mack, late burlesque comedian, well-known talent agent, and publisher of the magazine Cavalcade of Burlesque. Beneath a stationery header reading: SPECIALS TODAY, a poem has been neatly copied and signed only

“Written By Shuffles Levan.” The poem begins:

“There’s a circuit of theatres so I have been told It’s known to all as the ‘New Burma Road.’”107

The rest of the poem is a detailed description of a burlesque circuit familiar to the comedian who wrote it. Described as “an eccentric Hebrew comedy man” and celebrated for his signature shuffling dance routine, Harry (Shuffles) Levan was working actively in burlesque right up until his death in 1945.108 In the 1940s, he appeared frequently on the

Hirst Circuit, including a tour in a “black and white”—a burlesque show featuring both black and white performers—and at the Rialto in Chicago.109 Levan’s poem sent to Jess

Mack, an informal joke between showmen, offers a rare, unfiltered insider’s perspective on burlesque touring practices, and particularly highlights the ways the tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy were experienced by performers in road shows.

Burlesque and its touring structure was a familiar topic in American popular culture in the first part of the twentieth century. For example, Babe Ruth was asked in a

1930 interview with a Lincoln, Nebraska, newspaper if he was a “baseball prima donna.”

“Well, I got prima donna ankles,” he replied, “but the rest of me is more Mutual

Burlesque Wheel.”110 Ruth’s quip would not have landed if a Midwest reading audience was unaware of exactly what kind of tough woman was likely to be encountered in shows touring on that circuit. Reputation was a consistent concern for theatre owners and burlesque managers. In order to keep their theaters open and avoid fines and arrests, burlesque interests tried serve two masters. They advertised as clean, family-friendly entertainment while simultaneously providing the content audiences expected. In one breath, they both appealed to their fan base and disavowed them. Burlesque as a performance form danced between prurience and propriety; this balancing act was, not surprisingly, replicated in the power structures of burlesque business itself, in the daily machinations of the circuit, and in the bodies of the performers themselves.

In order to demonstrate these key tensions in burlesque, this chapter offers a historical overview of the burlesque touring circuit from 1900 through the end of the

1960s, analyzing the key shifts of power between companies, theater owners, managers, and performers. It will examine the ways typical performance practices on the road replicate those same tensions on the bodies of burlesque performers. It will consider the touring history of Rose La Rose from 1935 to 1958. Finally, it will offer a close reading of the “Burma Road” burlesque circuit, exploring the complex history and cultural meaning of the route, as well as its broader implications in burlesque history.

CIRCUIT HISTORY

The history of burlesque circuit routes, often referred to as “wheels,” is complex.

Throughout the twentieth century, circuits formed, merged, disbanded, or were swallowed by larger circuits. They frequently changed owners and booking agents. They typically went by multiple names. In later decades, performers jumped circuits with regularity, making routes difficult to trace. Not surprisingly given the fragmentary historical record, no complete history of the American burlesque circuit in the nineteenth or twentieth century exists. The majority of published research on the formal burlesque circuit focuses between 1868 and 1931, describing the several following decades of touring spottily and without clear understanding of their function. The research undergirding this chapter, then, is a combination of national newspaper archives, The

Billboard periodicals, and several existing burlesque histories, particularly Irving

Zeidman’s The American Burlesque Show (1967). This reconstruction is focused on mapping the key changes and shifts in touring in order to analyze the ways in which the business of burlesque replicates larger cultural perceptions about the legitimacy of burlesque as an art form.

Tracing the public archive, a narrative emerges—a story of warring businessmen and financial interests, hampered mainly by various political and legal censors intent on controlling an increasingly distracted American audience. Performers operated with little agency, dependent on a primarily male organizational conglomeration of circuit presidents, theater owners, managers, and booking agents. The few who managed to attain stardom and celebrity status gained some measure of clout, allowing them more opportunity to negotiate salary and contract terms. In burlesque, the difference between

67 unknown stripper and star was more than a financial matter. The burlesque queen or

“feature” headlined a show. She could expect increased publicity. She could make regular, calculated leaps between circuits, giving her increased mobility and forcing theater owners to compete for bookings. In this way, achieving headliner status signaled a kind of legitimacy, in practice if not public perception. And yet, thousands of women made their living on burlesque circuits over the course of the century. The majority of those women are now a largely nameless, indistinguishable part of burlesque history. Yet, the effort to move from anonymity to fame meant that many women got their start in less legitimate stock houses or on less legitimate tour routes. Ultimately, the quest for legitimacy within burlesque itself required women to operate in less legitimate circumstances.

By 1900, burlesque interests had coalesced into the Burlesque Managers

Association (BMA) which sought control over the major touring circuits. In the first decade of the twentieth century, various burlesque and vaudeville interests competed for tour routes and theater space. In 1902 the BMA succeeded in convincing the Empire circuit, the Northwestern circuit, and the Eastern circuit (as they were all then known) in agreeing to “combination,” which would allow producers to save on rail transportation and booking.111 The BMA struggled to keep tight rein over the fluctuating 35-40 burlesque houses within its purview. In 1903, the New York Times reported a “Serious

Burlesque War” between the BMA and the house managers of theaters on their newly combined circuit. The wage dispute was settled with a firm squashing from the BMA which threatened to remove its programming entirely from the 40 theaters if the

68 protesting theater managers did not back down.112 This wrestling for power between factions of owners, managers, and performers reverberates throughout the century.

SCRIBNER AND THE COLUMBIA

Out of the early chaos of circuit competition, a hugely successful circus operator in the 1880s and on, Samuel Scribner began what would be a lengthy career as a burlesque producer, heading the Columbian Burlesquers touring company in the late

1890s.113 He remained an “imperial” character, with a goal “to present burlesque shows as he and he alone wanted them to be…brook[ing] no interference.” Variety magazine wrote in 1928 that “‘[h]e only knows how to give orders and has never taken any.’”114

Early in the formalization of the burlesque circuits, Scribner emerged as an organizational leader and a shrewd politically-driven businessman. Zeidman describes

Scribner’s “perfect” connections, “Treasurer of the Actors Fund, President of the Theatre

Benefit Authority and of the Vaudeville Managers Protection Association.”115 He was listed as an arbiter between the BMA and the Local and Traveling Vaudeville

Association’s negotiations in 1900.116 In 1903, in an effort to compete with the controlling interest of the Empire Circuit, he led a group of show managers in forming the Columbia Amusement Company which began immediately to acquire its own theatres through lease or purchase.117 By 1905, CAM had leased or bought 35 theaters on a route referred to, variously, as the Columbia Burlesque Circuit, the Columbia Wheel, or the

Eastern Wheel. Scribner had developed a reputation for business savvy and work ethic, from his earliest years producing minstrel shows, medicine shows, sideshows, and circus all the way through his tenure in burlesque; as one newspaper put it, “Sam Scribner was always doing things and doing them well.”118 Scribner’s role and influence on the

69 development of the circuit in the twentieth century is itself a signpost for the wrenching of control by the theater owner-manager from individual companies and artists. Though he himself came from production and the Columbia was meant to represent “the authentic showmen of burlesque…whatever talent and originality there was…”, Scribner’s success in burlesque came as a result of the administrative control of the various organizations he headed. The wheel system, of which Scribner was a primary engineer, wielded an extraordinary amount of control over individual companies, and those companies’ individual performers, as is evidenced by the rigid wheel system and its lottery deployment. According to the 1908 Trenton Evening Times, during a yearly meeting, each company manager and theater manager received, at random, a number between 1 and 40. The numbers drawn determined where each company would begin on the wheel for the season. Once on the circuit, companies were required to move from spoke to spoke along the prescribed wheel, with few exceptions, on a weekly basis. Lottery numbers carried financial significance since companies that began in Louisiana, for example, would end in Alabama and require a costly trip back to New York where many companies were based. Such was Scribner’s control that companies went where they were ordered or they did not perform on either the Columbia or Empire Wheel.119 Under

Scribner’s leadership, the burlesque wheel became synonymous with efficiency and professionalism. A reporter for The Pittsburgh Courier, an African-American newspaper, went so far as to remark that the black vaudeville circuit under the Theatre Owners

Booking Association (TOBA) would benefit from “[t]he definite rotation of units as practiced on the burlesque wheels,” ending unfair and inconsistent booking practices.120

Undeniably, the burlesque wheel guaranteed steady work for companies and reliable box

70 office for theaters along the circuit since burlesque houses could now guarantee a new show almost every week of the year. Yet, the increasing commercialization of burlesque clearly favored circuit-heads and owners at the expense of performers’ autonomy.

The public tension over legitimacy in burlesque is highly legible in the business practices of Samuel Scribner. Scribner was infamous for his interest in controlling production content. At the height of his career with the Columbia, he had a small group of foot soldiers deputized to travel the circuit as censors and report back violations of his decency code. Publically, Scribner made much of this control, advertising Columbia burlesque as a kind of rescued, pure burlesque, free of the smut of previous decades.

Scribner’s entire marketing strategy for Columbia centered around this assertion: “We have strict rules in our burlesque, the burlesque that is most in the public’s attention. We permit no profanity. We permit no suggestive remarks. We permit no undressing, no nudity, not even bare legs…”121 When Scribner wrote that impassioned plea for clean burlesque in 1924, however, he was also actively profiting from a secondary wheel, the

Mutual, where the majority of Scribner’s rules of decency were almost entirely ignored.

“We’ve shaken that old crowd. We don’t want their attendance. They aren’t welcome in our theaters. Burlesque had lost its real meaning in the dirt sense,” he insisted.122 But later, as the Columbia experienced a decrease in box office and, ironically, in an effort to compete with the Mutual, Scribner would change many of his content policies to cater to audience expectations, reinforcing the argument that Scribner’s obsession with “clean burlesque” is merely a savvy business decision, and an entirely performative act. This simultaneous two-wheel system meant that, in practice, burlesque functioned as both legitimate and illegitimate, at least in terms of its public image, and that the dominant

71 power structure benefitted directly from these tensions. As Zeidman argues, Scribner’s quiet control of the sub-wheel, while publically denouncing anything that smacked of the prurient, allowed him, for a time, to have his public image and his profits, too.123

Samuel Scribner presented an intentional and carefully curated public image, as the many newspaper and magazine articles published about him make plain. The Scribner origin stories are particularly telling. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle tells it, Scribner began as a blacksmith before becoming a performer, then a circus operator, and finally, a burlesque manager: “This was the fellow who demanded cleanliness in burlesque shows!...They gave him a sardonic haw-haw—and at last one of these guffaws got him.

He drew back his blacksmith’s arm and socked the laughter in the chin…A great, brawny man, he has the appearance of a granite mound, an immovable, unalterable force.”124 The

Trenton Evening Times describes a young Scribner with “prodigious strength…[whose] huge shoulders helped hoist many a wrecked wagon back into its proper place on the road.”125 Contrast this with the same article’s description of Scribner’s early burlesque rival, the Empire Circuit’s president, James Fennessy, “tall, slender, nervous, but of excessively quiet demeanor…”126 Even the few published photographs of Scribner, with his clean-shaven and masculine jaw tilted up in ever so slight a smile, communicate this contrast. Scribner’s careful cultivation of his public presence is as at least as political as it is moral and his close ties to politicians and city censors in New York and elsewhere should be noted. Above all, Scribner was a businessman --a controlling, dominating force who shaped the key burlesque practices for the rest of the century.

In 1913, “a fight of eight years” between wheels came to an end when Fennesy’s

Empire Circuit (or Western) agreed to sell its burlesque interests to Scribner’s Columbia

Circuit. Scribner absorbed a number of theaters, built new locations, and abandoned others. Many of these abandoned houses not adopted by the Columbia remained open only by agreeing to show no burlesque and to provide alternative entertainments, like vaudeville.127

I.H. HERK AND THE NO. 2 CIRCUIT

Also in 1913, a small circuit called the Progressive Burlesque Circuit sprang up, in an effort “to gain proprieters of houses who were left out of merger as well as managers and those who had musical comedies to sell.”128 Between 1913 and 1915, the

Progressive competed in houses in nearly 30 cities. In these early years, the inclusion of

African-American burlesque companies on the Progressive Circuit was national news.

The African-American newspaper, The New York Age described the success of the burlesque show, Darktown Follies, in 1914, commenting: “the colored attraction is waging a successful fight for recognition and patronage over the Progressive Burlesque

Circuit.”129 The financial success of Darktown Follies, among other shows led to increased (though still largely segregated) inclusion of African-American burlesque companies on what had been predominantly white circuits. The Progressive Circuit was shortlived, however. Newspapers reported that the smaller circuit was in talks with

Columbia, “their bitterest foe,” about a merger but the proceedings were called off without agreement.130 By 1915, the Progressive had dissolved under financial difficulty and failing box office.131

During the short-lived Progressive years, Columbia struck back with a secondary circuit, called the Number 2, formed intentionally to appeal “to audiences clamoring for rougher entertainment.”132 As the Progressive officially died in 1915, the Number 2 was

73 re-named the American Burlesque Association. Isidore Herk, who had come from the absorbed Empire Circuit and assisted in the merger with Columbia, now assumed leadership of the American. The Columbia and the American enjoyed a mostly symbiotic relationship, even sharing New York office headquarters for a time.133 In 1921, newspapers reported that the ABA and Columbia had officially merged.134 Behind the scenes, things were more dismal. The relationship between Scribner and Herk grew more and more contentious, due in part to Scribner’s simultaneous disavowal of and profit from the secondary circuit run by Herk. In 1922, Herk attempted, unsucessfully, to move from burlesque to vaudeville. The American Wheel broke up with the Columbia and, lacking the power and establishment of the older wheel, “its death was almost instantaneous.”135

Though Scribner was increasingly lax in his enforcement of decency rules on the

Columbia, the wheel was beginning to decline. In personal financial straits, Herk returned quickly from vaudeville to burlesque and became president of the year-old Mutual

Burlesque Association in 1923. In 1927, newspapers reported that the Mutual and the

Columbia had reached a no-competition “merger” of sorts, agreeing not to play cities simultaneously. The merger was the result of a lawsuit brought by the Mutual against the

Columbia for defamation resulting in loss of box office. Formally, the two organizations together became “the United Burlesque Association.” Herk assumed presidency and

“Scribner [was] officially given the face-saving title of Chairman of the Board of

Directors.”136 Thereafter, Scribner’s control of burlesque interests waned significantly, though he remained influential until his death in 1941.137 In 1932, Herk was publicizing the “new” Columbia circuit but also running the re-emerged Empire Circuit, which had

74 agreed to “merge” with Columbia almost 20 years earlier. This Empire Circuit seems to have survived until 1941 after which time it is ceases to be mentioned in newspaper accounts. Though Herk persisted in producing variety entertainment of various sorts for a number of years, in 1942, he was arrested for his role as producer of Wine, Women, and

Song, a Broadway production featuring the burlesque star Margie Hart, and charged with indecency. By the end of the juried trial, the stage manager, company manager, and Herk were all convicted, though only Herk received prison-time, a six-month sentence.

Counsel pleaded for leniency, “that this elderly man had a heart condition, that imprisonment might kill him.” Herk served only three months but his career was effectively over. He died in 1945.138 The last public references to Herk in the 1940s were warnings to other producers. He had become another cautionary tale in show business, a reminder not to take too many risks with content. Zeidman describes Herk’s perpetual inability to successfully “step out of his class” and escape burlesque.139 Isidore Herk had constantly sought both the legitimitacy within burlesque so associated with the controlling Samuel Scribner and outside of burlesque in other entertainment fields.

Though the burlesque circuit continued past Scribner and Herk, the wheel mechanism the two had employed for the first three decades of the twentieth century splintered.

SPLINTERING

Allen’s claim that “[i]n 1931 wheel burlesque came to an end…[t]hereafter, there was only stock” is, thus, understandable, if not entirely accurate. 140 The “wheels” themselves persisted but operated steadily less and less like the heavily structured wheels of Scribner and Herk, though circuit operators continued to borrow the idea of the wheel for decades. The Columbia and Mutual reached their end by 1933 but, as before, other

75 burlesque producers were quietly amassing theaters and organizing new circuits. Isadore

(Issy or Izzy) Hirst was already turning out burlesque shows on the Columbia by 1923, one half of the Howard & Hirst producing team. After his initial purchase of the

Trocadero and the Gayety Theaters in Philadelphia, he began the more formal organization, the Independent Burlesque Circuit, incorporated as the Independent

Burlesque Association (or I.B.A.), but mostly referred to as the Hirst Circuit by performers and producers. In the early 1930s, both Hirst and Herk were running their own circuits and attending meetings for the National Burlesque Assocation of America.

In 1935, the Hirst and the Midwest began coordinating circuit exchange but seem to have maintained independent circuits within the midwest and eastern regions, through an arrangement to “interchange units during the season.” 141 Following earlier wheel models, the Hirst Circuit used numbered units through the 1940s. Hirst died in 1948 but the circuit survived for another half a decade, under the direction of his widow through the mid-1950s.142. By the 1950s, unit numbers had been replaced by the names of individual show-runners.

As Hirst was producing burlesque on the Columbia in the 1920s, Jack Kane, the son of minstrel stars, Elizabeth Ennis and James Kane, was producing stock burlesque in

Indianapolis. In partnership with his brother, Buddy Kane, a burlesque comic, he established Kane Bros. as a successful stock burlesque organization that was soon leasing a handful of theaters and moving its seasonal stock shows amongst them every six months or so. Beginning in Indiana, Kane soon expanded his operations across state lines.

By 1936, he incorporated his efforts as Tri-State Theaters, Inc. and his leased holdings included Indianapolis, Nashville, Youngstown, Milwaukee, Atlanta, and Cincinnati. Kane

76 was ambitious and seemingly never satisfied with his holdings. Between 1925 and the time of his death in 1953, he leased countless theaters throughout the eastern half of the country. Some of his ventures were small—the Park Theater in Erie, PA was only open for about four weeks. Others were much longer investments. From 1935 to 1937, for example, he leased and ran the Empress in Cincinnati, at which time he entered a legal battle with burlesque producer, Arthur Clamage, over the theater lease. He relinquished the Empress to Clamage that year. Almost two decades later, in 1952, he bought Clamage out of his lease of the Gayety Theater in Cincinnati for $20,000.143 Kane was deliberate in his business expansion and, in tracking his business deals through the decades, a clear pattern emerges. Kane would make a bid for open theaters and if successful in leasing them, he poured money into big renovations like air conditioning and sound systems, and began operating each as a burlesque house. The majority of his theaters showed film shorts or movies along with live shows and operated on what operators referred to as a

“grind policy” of four shows a day with a midnight show on the weekends. As economics dictated, Kane operated both stock and circuit houses throughout his career. Houses switched between stock and road shows, depending upon the season, the cost of transportation, and box office. Road shows offered more variety to local patrons but the lack of “jump-breakers” between his houses kept travel costs high.144 A circuit could only really succeed in the long term with enough houses to sustain its routes and Kane was a relatively small operator compared with the buying power of the Hirst and Midwest

Wheels.

The years directly after the Columbia and Mutual died out demonstrate the increasingly fractured quality of the circuits in the mid-century. The Hirst ran

77 concurrently with the Empire, the Midwest, and the Kane circuits and all three routes crisscrossed, overlapped, and, at times, shared leadership and organization. As a result, featured performers were circuit-jumping with regularity. Many contracts grew shorter

(as little as 3 weeks) and performers were booked onto circuits individually, joining up with other units, and working with stock chorus lines. The burlesque company unit grew more splintered and by the 1960s, most burlesque headliners were traveling entirely independently, moving between circuits, night clubs, and independent houses as they (or their agents) were able to book them. The new policy of only touring the featured performers saved theater managers money since they had to pay to transport fewer performers, though they still paid travel expenses for features and co-features as outlined in the standard AVGA contract. This splintering, however, left performers increasingly vulnerable to personal safety issues, as well as simple loneliness, isolation, and lack of camraderie on the road.

The importance of a periodical like The Billboard to both performers and circuit operators cannot be overemphasized. Until 1960, The Billboard functioned primarily as a news source and message board for performers across the country. Though the burlesque section of the magazine shrunk in later decades, it continued to allow show people to keep track of each other by including show routes, changes in contracts, theater closings, as well as the personal news for individual performers. Readers of The Billboard would know from week to week who had given birth, gotten married, gone on vacation, purchased land, retired, been injured on the road, and passed away. It reviewed productions, offered box office numbers, shared union updates, sold carnival and trade equipment, and advertised job opportunities. As a trade magazine, The Billboard covered

78 burlesque news without irony. Box office statistics were regularly reported, suggesting that the perception of legitimacy in burlesque was mainly important in relation to its financial success.

Though all circuits advertised for fresh talent in the trade magazine, Kane’s advertisements are of particular note for their hardboiled quality. A glimpse at a few of them indicates also the difficulties in hiring performers from a distance: “Only people who can stand to work steady and stay sober need answer. In answering please give age, weight, etc. JACK KANE, Gayety Theatre, Louisville, KY.”145 Every one of his ads offers information about audience expectation: “WANTED BURLESQUE PEOPLE –

ALL LINES. Principals and Girls; must be new to Indianapolis,” “Salary for Girls,

$15.00. Must be attractive and experienced,” “20 sensible women with good wardrobe”146 Kane’s ads in The Billboard demonstrate a high level of pragmatism about burlesque, framing it almost exclusively as business rather than artistic endeavor. Kane was not exceptional in his pragmatism but that practicality so characteristic of burlesque business informed the development of Kane’s own circuit.

Although Kane would operate both stock and road shows throughout his career, his efforts to establish his own tour route continued. In 1936, the Eastern Burlesque

Association officially began as a circuit but the name that truly stuck was Kane’s. By

1941, it was called, simply, the Kane Circuit. Kane’s holdings changed frequently and it remains difficult to trace which theaters were assigned as stock and which as part of the official circuit in any given year. The Kane Circuit most frequently included the following theaters: Rochester, New York; Columbus, Akron, Canton, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown, OH; Milwaukee, WI. Jack Kane died in 1953 but the Kane Circuit

79 continued on for another year or two after, in the hands of his employees, Helen and Joe

Zarconi, and Mary Turner. Helen Zarconi had previously been Kane’s secretary.147

The last of the formalized circuits was run by Frank Bryan and Frank Engel.

Bryan, a former Broadway dancer for Shubert, began as a burlesque choreographer in the mid 1930s. Engel got his professional start in theater management at approximately the same time. By 1941, the two had formed a partnership to produce and manage a fourteen-week season at the Grand in Canton, Ohio. In the 1940s, they were managing and producing at several theaters in Ohio, Baltimore, and Boston, including the Old

Howard, as members of the Midwest Circuit run by Milton Schuster. In 1956, as the

Kane Circuit quietly dissolved, Bryan and Engel formalized their circuit which included theaters in Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Canton, Ohio. By 1964, the

Bryan and Engle Circuit had absorbed the majority of burlesque houses in the east.

Throughout the 1960s, the number of theaters on the B&E Circuit fluctuated.148 Frank

Bryan died in 1969. The circuit survived at least through 1971 when it included eleven theaters on its route.149

THE “LOST” YEARS

Though circuits in the 1970s and 80s lost the unifying control of previous organizers, they persisted in less formal systems. Control of bookings grew even more individualized and performers depended increasingly on booking agents and personal managers to find them engagements. Booking agents like Jess Mack worked on commission to find work for performers they represented and to fill show bills for theaters who requested it. Burlesque continued to operate as a “road show,” though performers could count less on steady work or a stable tour route. Burlesque performers

80 were more frequently diverted into other kinds of performance venues like night clubs and carnivals to subsist between longer gigs. With the popularity of Playboy and other so-called “adult entertainment,” some of the more well-known burlesque stars moved into nude modeling and pornography. American performers were increasingly shut out of foreign markets where audience expectations differed greatly. In 1964, a Japanese manager exchanged several letters with Jess Mack: “On Strippers, they must be tall, fairly good looking, but not SLIM... They should also be young. …Very truly yours,

Ronnie K. Nomura…PS: Mai Ling is enjoying her stay. It sure is a pity that she has scars on her stomach, otherwise she is very fine.”150 1978, another manager in Japan, Michael

G. Hayashi, wrote to Jess:

For your information I am now booking artists mostly from Europe and Australia since I find American girls wholly unreliable. However, if you come across someone who is an exception, please let me know…but they must be serious artists, not whores trying to use their supposed ‘talent’ to go pants chasing. Regarding novel acts, yes I am very much interested. Especially if the female part of the act is nude. This is a nude happy country and if the girl is not nude –all nude—audiences are not happy.151

Similarly, an agency in Paris replied to Jess in 1979:

It is very difficult to book here these girls from the USA. They are too many actually in Europe booked by several different agencies and the managers of the night-clubs are not satisfied with them enough. I think it is because these girls have quite another mentality than the European girls. They are either used to drugs or are not good at mixing like girls from our countries (the system). Also in many cases the quality of the acts and of the tapes as well as of the costumes are not at the level. Also when they are speaking to the managers after their arrival, they try to explain them they do not understand the system of mixing, that in the States they are used to do it other ways etc. They do not give by this a nice impression to the books from the star. Then the opinion of the director is: for the same money I could have one dancer from here who understand our system well and speaks also the languages of the customers. Therefore it is more and more difficult to book them [reproduced exactly as written].152

In two letters from London in 1979, a British talent agent wrote:

It is very rare that we now book foreign strips…We found that over the last few years, when travelling around the world, most of the exotic strips were becoming very old fashioned. However, we do book guest artists from time to time …please remember they would have to be outstanding and very modern… I really do believe that the type of entertainment we now present here in England would not be suitable for an American Burlesque performer. It is just a completely different approach.153

This was certainly the least stable period for burlesque in American history. Even star headliners like Tempest Storm had to remain diligent to keep their performance calendar full and book their own dates. In a letter typical of her correspondence with Mack, Storm wrote to the booking agent in 1982 regarding a booking: “[P]laying one week in

Indianapolis would be very nice…the only week I could give them is May 3 through the

9th. I’m sorry but I cannot give you an alternate date. If you work it out, I will send pictures direct to the club…Love, Tempest.”154 In other letters, Storm described the frustration of dealing directly with various venues and negotiating contract details. Like all eras since the beginning of modern burlesque, however, performers survived in the ways that they could and burlesque survived, as well.

ROSE LA ROSE ON THE ROAD: A CLOSE READING

Tracing the circuit histories themselves presents one sort of challenge. Tracing the performers on these routes is another. The trajectories of the women on the circuit could be divided between feature and chorine. As the Scribner and Herk years came to a close, top-billed women, or “features,” increasingly traveled independently of the shows they appeared in. They also gained negotiating power and flexibility, in terms of salary and venue. Chorus girls and anyone billed lower than “co-feature” found themselves much more stationary. They were paid less, traveled less frequently, and were mostly reviewed

82 as a unit. The anonymity of the chorus girl is striking, as in the case of Buddy Wade155. In

January of 1936, Buddy was performing in the chorus at the Old Howard in Boston when, during a tap number, her shoe touched a lamp base, setting her costume on fire. An article ran a week later in The Billboard:

Buddy Wade, chorus girl, who was severely burned a week ago…at the Howard Theater here, died early Sunday morning at the Haymarket Relief Hospital. Altho afire, the girl had the presence of mind and was heroic enough to stay away from the house drops and the other chorus girls so that the fire should not spread.156

Prior to her death in 1936, which warranted attention from people like Walter Winchell on the radio, there is no mention of her in any print publication I can locate. We have no way of evaluating her performance skill, aesthetic, appearance, or public persona. In current burlesque scholarship, Buddy Wade’s death is included in a single, oft-replicated sentence. The contrast between the public exposure and awareness of Buddy Wade and a feature performer like Rose La Rose is stark. Rose once had a head cold and was absent from the stage for a week. She broke her arm hanging a painting in her hotel room. A bracelet was stolen from her dressing room. All three stories received national press.

Every aspect of Rose’s public and personal life were commented on. Her performance choices were constantly evaluated. Her box office numbers were reported with relish. She was given a great amount of flexibility in terms of contract and often requested for hold- overs in cities where she sold out whole weeks. So the chorines who moved to feature spots competed fiercely for such opportunities. There was pressure to communicate personality, to produce gimmicks and novelties, and to offer something “new” to audiences. The majority of chorines never made that move. Had Buddy Wade not burned alive on stage, it is unlikely any historian would know her name.

Though the most famous accounts of her career begin with her “discovery” by

Minsky in 1936, Rose La Rose began in burlesque in 1935, touring on a small circuit called the Supreme Circuit, followed by the Hirst. She appeared in a show headlined by

Ann Corio called “Girls in Blue.” Whether Rose’s time as a cashier was in 1936 or before her first tour a year earlier, Rose began performing at the Minsky’s Republic on 42nd in

1936. After La Guardia banned burlesque in 1937, Rose moved to the West Coast where performed at the Follies in Los Angeles. By the end of 1938, she was touring the

Midwest for the first time, including the first of many tours through Ohio and to the Old

Howard in Boston [Figure 5]. She was frequently held over by a theater or brought back by popular demand. In Ohio, Rose found particular popularity and she returned frequently for long engagements at places like the Cat and Fiddle night club and the

Gayety Theater in Cincinnati, and the Roxy in Cleveland. Between 1938 and 1957, she appeared in at least 27 separate engagements in Ohio alone. She toured multiple times on the Hirst, Midwest, and Kane circuits, and worked in a Bryan and Engel theater shortly before their circuit officially started. She also did a European tour and appeared at least once in Mexico. Characteristic of headliners, Rose frequently jumped circuits to appear in a club booking. Her many appearances, particularly in the Midwest, yielded enormous box office. At the height of her career, she was reported to be the highest paid stripper in burlesque at $2500 a week. A review of her performance at the Alvin in Minneapolis in

January 1943 raved:

Harry Hirsch, house operator, is mumbling to himself, ‘Give me more Rose LaRoses.’ And with reason. LaRose stood them on end here this week. She gave the customers everything she had and they cried for more.… She was the sweetheart of the town. Knows all the angles to this stripping business. Her finale was the best ever seen here. No glamorous wardrobe, just a simple street dress as

she came running down the aisle, ‘late for the show.’ A sensation with this new wrinkle to peeling.157

Billboard later reported that she had grossed $5000 in that week at the Alvin.158 When the

Gayety closed in Cincinnati in 1950, the theater operator, Morris Zaidins reportedly said,

“There is always a big letdown in business after a LaRose engagement…We just can’t take it, so we’re closing up.”159 While Rose fought to frame her work as art in the public media, she found the strongest signs of her success were financial. Like the pragmatic owners of the circuits she traversed, Rose realized that burlesque as art and burlesque as business were inextricably linked. She toured from 1935 to 1958, at which time she made the decision to open her own burlesque house in the state which had so enthusiastically embraced her during her time on the road. Rose’s years on the circuit, years under the systemic tutelage of male-driven business practices, had shaped her, even as women who had survived harsh economic and social realities both because of burlesque and in spite of burlesque, had shaped her. Rose’s several tours on the “Burma

Road” Circuit, the circuit on which she later opened two theaters, must have been particularly formative.

Figure 16: Newspaper advertisement featuring Rose La Rose at the Rialto in Chicago, dated between 1938-1940, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection

THE NEW BURMA ROAD

In 1937-1938, during the Second Sino-Japanese war, the Burma Road was constructed in order to transport goods and materials between Myanmar (Burma) and

China. It was closed and taken over by the Japanese during World War II, threatening supplies. Throughout the Sino-Japanese conflict and the ensuing Pacific Theatre of the

Second World War, the Burma Road remained a major headline in American newspapers. Its construction, occupation, closure, the construction of the alternate Ledo

Rd, and the Burma Road’s partial re-opening were all reported in detail. Journalists’ accounts emphasized the perils of travel on the road. “[A] dangerous, slender thread through the foothills of the menacing Himalayas,” The Salt Lake Tribune opined; the

Pampas Daily News wrote, “The desperate flinging of a road from the Burmese border to the Chinese city of Kumming…over nearly 800 miles of mountains…This road is narrow with barely room for two trucks to pass;” 160 The Greeley Daily Tribune described the route as “[s]panning turbulent rivers and crossing high mountain passes…”161 In 1940,

Nicol Smith published his best-selling account of traveling over the Burma Road, “a personal narration of adventurous marvels.”162 A review of his book appeared in the

Brooklyn Daily Eagle: “…a breathless view of 14,000-foot mountains and suspension bridges of one-way traffic, and sliding hills and tattered men, and working women.”163

The book was so popular, it was reprinted several times over, published in Great Britain, and Smith even appeared in a lecture series to discuss his travels and show film footage from the Burma Road.164 In 1941, Universal Studios released Burma Convoy, starring

Evelyn Ankers and Charles Bickford. “A Chinese chop-suey of thrills that kids, old and young, will devour with gusto;” and “…a timely and thrilling melodrama of life on the most hazardous highway in the world.”165 Newspaper critic Lee O. Lyon commented,

“Timely as today’s headline, ‘China Caravan’ brings to screen the dramatic thrills of the great human conflict waged to keep open the lifeline of a nation through the precipitous and battle-scarred passes of the famed Burma Road.”166 Several columnists noted the crop of Burma-themed films being produced during the war. Warner Brothers

87 purportedly trademarked the title “Burma Road” without even having a picture in development.167 In her Star Dust column, Virgina Vale writes, “The fourth picture dealing with the Burma road will be Metro’s ‘China Caravan.’ Columbia plans ‘Burma

Road,’ Fox plans ‘Over the Burma Road,’ Universal has ‘Burma Convoy’ all done.

Evidently everybody decided at the same moment that the Burma road was news.”168 169

In news media, literature, and film, the Burma Road loomed large in the American imagination, referencing not only the war effort in the Pacific Theater, but gaining larger cultural connotations. Dickson writes that “Figuratively, [Burma Road] came to mean any supply route of similar importance.”170 Partridge’s entry on Burma Road reads: “Rice:

Army in the Far East: 1942+. Rice is the staple Burmese food. –2. Hence, in 1943-5, in

Service messes in Irak and Persia, ‘as an exclamation at frequent rice’. (L.A.)—3. The

Burma Road. ‘The principal lowerdeck fore-and-aft passage on an aircraft carrier: RN:

1950s (and later). (Peppit.) All 3 senses derive from the famous highway driven, at great cost in lives and courage, through jungle and mountain, to keep China supplied ‘through the back door’, via the south-west, during WW2.”171 In nautical terminology, “Burma

Road” indicates: “Access alleyways below main deck, either side of hatches on a container ship running full length of ship.”172 “Burma Road” entered popular vernacular as cavalier shorthand for the dangerous and the remote.

No published slang dictionaries reference the use of “Burma Road” in show business, though the phrase appeared with some frequency beginning in the early 1940s.

All references in the entertainment industry to “Burma Road” imply something far away, out of the way, and perilous. In 1943, a columnist reporting from behind the scenes of

Ringling-Barnum Circus writes: “Speaking of Chi, we notice the city is still working on

88 the Burma Road beneath State Street. Two new low four-pole canvas stables have replaced the padroom.”173 A review of an event at the Friars Club in 1951 includes the price of tickets: “$15 for Burma Road to $25 for ringside.”174 An appearance by Jimmy

Durante at the Copacabana in 1953 elicited the need for “extra tables. Side balconies

(Burma Road), both right and left, were not only full, they were overflowing.”175 “A critic commenting on Rosemary Clooney’s vocal articulation wrote that “’[e]very word she utters is understood, even unto the far reaches of the Burma Road sections of the room.’”176 But most significantly to burlesque, “Burma Road” came to identify a specific tour route traveling through Ohio.

Shuffles Levan’s poem begins:

There’s a circuit of theatres so I have been told It’s known to all as the ‘New Burma Road.’ You do four shows a day and oh how you toil.177

The unofficial nickname for a touring route focused in the northeast and Midwest of the

United States, the Burma Road was a tough circuit, “a boot camp” for the greenest of performers. “Burma Road” speaks to its reputation among performers – distant, remote, unpredictable, dangerous, a figurative and literal battle ground. Burlesque producer

Eddie Lynch told a reporter in 1947: “Kids are broken in on what the performers call the

‘Burma Road,’ a derisive tag for Rochester, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown. After eight weeks in that boot camp they’re supposedly ready for the big league.”178 Theaters along this route had terrible reputations. Tom Phillips of the Burlesque Artists

Association cited the Burma Road houses for failing to meet union standards for performers.179 Women also feared for their personal safety in several of the theaters. In the 1968 McCaghy/Skipper interviews which took place at the Roxy in Cleveland, one

89 performer told them “[I]t is very dangerous for a girl to leave backstage when it means going through an alley, such as at the Roxy, because of the danger of being attacked or being propositioned by someone who has some perverse intent.”180 Amongst burlesque performers, however, “the big league” signaled legitimacy. Women who wanted to make it in the big league were often willing to face dangerous road show tours because the hierarchy of their field demanded it. In order to reach the most legitimate of heights within burlesque as a feature or maybe stepping over into stage/film acting, one had to begin in the less “legitimate.”

Levan continues:

And the people you work with are out of this world First take the chorus, you can be sure that I’m right Most of them don’t know their left from their right The routines they go through the [sic] sure must be brave If Ziegfeld saw them, he’d turn in his grave. Now come the ‘strippers’ who can’t open their mouth When it comes to doing scenes, they don’t know what its [sic] about181

The popular stereotype about women in burlesque being poorly educated or stupid is replicated here. While many comics and strippers had good working relationships, and frequently got married, Levan’s attitude hints at the possibility of additional barriers for women in burlesque. Not only must performers contend with almost exclusively male circuit owners, theater managers, and booking agents, but male comics as, well.

Unlike the performers Levan references in the poem, some women were also employed as “talking women.” A talking woman was generally a woman who performed in the sketches with the comedians. The Language of Showbiz, an encyclopedia Harold

Minsky and Alan Alda contributed to, defines a talking woman as “A very valuable asset to a comic. Usually a former stripper or a girl who still stripped but doubled into the

90 scenes. She was experienced and usually knew all the scenes, and was a quick study.

Comics usually competed to get a certain woman, as they were in great demand and always worked.”182 During the interviews that Leslie Zemeckis conducted with burlesque performers for her documentary and book, Behind the Burly Q, she describes a reluctance by some performers to become talking women: “…to some, it was a trap doing scenes and bits with the comics. To open one’s mouth on the stage cost the girl’s star status and a star’s salary. ‘If you were a good talking woman, you would never get any more money and you would never become a feature,’ explained Val Valentine.”183 However, being a talking woman in addition to your work in the chorus or as a stripper did mean extra money.184 It was also fairly common for comics and talking women to work as regular teams, and a lot of them were married.185 The Billboard often advertised comic/talking woman teams looking for work. In the 1968 McCaghy/Skipper interviews, at least two performers reference the role of the talking woman as something they might do occasionally. “[E]very time they let her go out on stage in one of the comic skits she finds this is very satisfying, and she would like to be known in the business as a talking woman,” McCaghy observes in his interview notes.186 A job as a talking woman provided a measure of personal satisfaction to the performer; some describe it as their favorite part of performing in burlesque. The premise of nearly all the comedic sketches was still focused exclusively on the male response to the female body. Though the “talking woman" was often the focus of the male gaze in the sketch, this performance phenomenon was perhaps the most closely tied to Lydia Thompson’s burlesque - a verbal sparring or punchline aimed most frequently at male desire. It also offered dancers a respect among the men they spent the majority of time with during work hours, the

91 comics. To garner the professional respect of the men with whom you shared a stage was its own kind of legitimacy. And yet, the possibility that “opening your mouth” might prevent you from advancement once again complicates the tensions between legitimacy and illegitimacy. If legitimacy is making it “the big league,” then it required a troubling kind of silence which, in turn, is mocked in Levan’s poem.

They walk on the stage & they start to sing There’s only one thing on their mind & that’s the “G” string187

The term “working strong” refers to the act of flashing during a performance. Certain theaters were known as “strong houses” where a woman would be expected to put on a

“tough act.” The first flashing in burlesque is impossible to determine. Rumors about certain burlesque stars like Margie Hart and Rose La Rose circulated backstage. Whether performers were truly flashing or were employing merkins, or pubic wigs, is unclear. Use of merkins did not originate in burlesque but Margie Hart was known for her “Chicago

G-string.” Hart was accused more than once of performing without any G-string, at all, in the late 1930s.188 The Burma Road theaters had a reputation for raunchier content and, later, for actively encouraging performers to flash. Perhaps the “strongest” house on the circuit, the Park Theatre in Youngstown was especially known for its “tough acts”

[Figure 6]. In the McCaghy/Skipper interviews, one performer “points [out] that in

Youngstown where it’s a strong house, that you have to work strong because that’s the kind of house it is and that this type of house attracts primarily men.” McCaghy observes that “she appeared mortified at the idea of having to flash. She pointed out that her agent had signed a contract and had not informed her of this necessity. She was very apprehensive about having to go to Youngstown where she felt that it would be even worse.” In a letter from the Park Theatre manager, and former comedian, Al Baker to Jess

Mack in 1965, he apologizes profusely for getting Jess in trouble with Frank Engel over

“this Betty Peters” who Mack had booked to perform at the Park. The letter implies that

Engel had wanted to cancel Peters’ appearance, possibly because of her unwillingness to work strong. “I will play Betty Peters and maybe I can talk her into flashing when she gets here…” Baker writes, trying to smooth things over.189

Figure 17: 1960s newspaper advertisement for the Park, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection

The implications of flashing or appearing on “the flash circuit” are complex. The constant tension between legitimacy and illegitimacy in public perception of burlesque mean that performers are pressured to justify their work as art, not smut. The simultaneous tension within burlesque itself required women to perform in less legitimate ways, in some cases breaking the law, in order to achieve legitimacy through economic

93 stability and celebrity. These competing tensions were placed on the literal body of the performer. Women were also required to assume legal responsibility for their acts. House raids by censors were a common occurrence. Hundreds of arrests and theater closings occurred. The Old Howard in Boston went so far as to install a warning light backstage to let performers know when censors were in the audience so that they could soften their performance. The implication, naturally, is that performers would be regularly performing within the realm of illegitimacy while claiming legitimacy. Performers like

La Rose and Hart became known for flashing and were characterized as exhibitionists, naughty women who liked to make trouble. “’[Rose] used to like taking off her clothes,’”

Alan Alda told Leslie Zemeckis, “’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…Perhaps she had a form of ‘naked-osis.’’”190

It is entirely possible some performers enjoyed this element of their act. It is just as possible that hundreds of disadvantaged women competing for top billing, adequate pay, and career advancement might “dirty up” their act to survive.

And when they finish + don’t get a hand They say the theatre is “Lousey” + so is the band There’s a theatre in Milwaukee that takes up a few blocks It’s run ass-backwards by a guy called Chas. Fox He comes back with a run down + see how get to work And when you finish the first day you feel like a jerk And without any warning he starts into shout ‘Bit 4 and 5 are in, but 6-7 are out.’ This goes on all week untill [sic] you start into curse And on Sunday you start with the 2nd act first You do all the Bits until a quarter to Eleven You’ve done all the Bits except Bit number seven On Thursday night when you finish your show You’re waiting to hear where the next place you go

They give you a ticket and you get on a train191

Levan’s description of train travel is a fair indication that performers booked on a circuit were likely to travel by rail in the 1940s. Performers traveled using a combination of trains, buses, and, increasingly, automobiles. The January 19, 1942 burlesque news column in The Billboard mentions numerous transportation-related incidents including two accidents, a breakdown, hitch-hiking, and a specially rigged station wagon.192 In burlesque’s earlier years, producers paid for entire companies to travel but as costs grew, more and more stock choruses were produced so that only headliners need travel.

Performers increasingly traveled alone or in smaller numbers between circuit stops.

And wind up in Youngstown for guy called Jack Kane The show opens with no chorus it sure is a pip First comes, an act, a Black out and strip This goes on all week till you near goe [sic] insane193

When the Burma Road circuit first received its nickname in the early 1940s, it was formally known as the Kane Circuit. Although not used by the general public, “Burma

Road” was common enough slang among performers and producers so as to be interchangeable in circuit route listings in The Billboard. The term was ubiquitous with the Ohio “spokes” and with Jack Kane.194 Perhaps more significantly, the Burma Road route maintained its rough reputation long after its nickname vanished from the vernacular. After Kane’s death, Bryan and Engel assumed control of the “Ohio spokes,” including the Park in Youngstown. The last lines of Levan’s poem are weary:

“And the first thing you know you’re back on a train You finish the circuit & they book you right back But the last ticket they give you is for Lake Saranac.”195

The tensions over legitimacy that permeate through popular culture impact both the machinery of the circuit and the business of burlesque as a whole. As a business,

95 burlesque must continually operate both as legitimate and illegitimate by framing itself for both its critics and its audiences.

107 ""The New Burma Road"" Harry "Shuffles" Levan to Jess Mack, Jess Mack Papers, Special Collections,

University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

108 "Dimpled Darlings Due At Gayety Next Week," Cecil County Star (Elkton, Maryland), January 9, 1936,

Newspapers.com; UNO, "Burlesque Notes," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), December 29, 1945,

ProQuest.

109 UNO, "Burlesque Notes," April 4, 1942; October 31, 1942.

110 Neal O'Hara, "Telling the World: The Story of Success," Lincoln Evening Journal, June 4, 1930,

Newspapers.com.

111 "Combining the Show Places," The Evening Transcript (San Bernardino), August 7, 1902, ProQuest

Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

112 "Serious Burlesque War," New York Times, August 20, 1903, Newspapers.com.

113 "Amusement Notes," The Times (Philadelphia), January 30, 1898, Newspapers.com; William N. Purtill,

"Old Time Wagon Shows I Have Seen,"Bandwagon, Circus Historical Society 2, no. 7 (December 1943):

1-2.

114 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 74.

115Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 74.

116 "Vaudeville Men Do Not Agree," New York Times, August 3, 1900, Newspapers.com.

117 "Burlesque: Circuits Join Hands," Cincinnati Enquirer, March 15, 1913, Newspapers.com.

118 "Scribner and Fennessey Direct Burlesque ‘Wheels’," Trenton Evening Times, November 24, 1908,

Newspapers.com; Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show,73.

119 "Scribner and Fennessey Direct Burlesque ‘Wheels’," Trenton Evening Times.

120 Wesley Varnell, "Varnell’s Review," Pittsburgh Courier, June 23, 1923, Newspapers.com.

121 "Sam Scribner, Who Made Burlesque the Cleanest Show on Broadway,"Brooklyn Daily Eagle,

November 9, 1924, Newspapers.com.

122 "Sam Scribner, Who Made Burlesque the Cleanest Show on Broadway,"Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

123 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show.

124 "Sam Scribner, Who Made Burlesque the Cleanest Show on Broadway,"Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

125 "Scribner and Fennessey Direct Burlesque ‘Wheels’," Trenton Evening Times.

126 "Scribner and Fennessey Direct Burlesque ‘Wheels’," Trenton Evening Times.

127 "Burlesque: Circuits Join Hands," Cincinnati Enquirer.

128 "Burlesque Combine Will Have Opposition," Oakland Tribune, March 20, 1913, Newspapers.com.

129 Lester A. Walton, "New Season Will Feature Three Colored Road Shows," New York Age, August 27,

1914, Newspapers.com.

130 Lester A. Walton, "Theatrical Comment," New York Age, October 8, 1914, Newspapers.com.

131 "Progressive Circuit Is Called Bankrupt," Pittsburgh Daily Post, accessed January 17, 1915,

Newspapers.com.

132 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 77.

133 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 76-82.

134 "Big Merger Arranged By Burlesque Companies-R.K. Hynicka Remains Treasurer," Cincinnati

Enquirer, September 18, 1921, Newspapers.com.

135 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 91-92.

136 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 90-98.

137 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 75.

138 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 106.

139 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show, 107-07.

140 Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 249.

141 Zeidman, The American Burlesque Show; UNO, “Burlesque Notes,” January 10, 1942. 28.

142 "Obituaries," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), December 29, 1948, ProQuest Multiple Databases

[ProQuest].

143 UNO, “Burlesque Bits,” March 29, 1952.

144 "Burlesque: Kane Quits Nashville; Atlanta Goes to Stock," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960),

October 31, 1936, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

145 Advertisement. The Billboard. January 16, 1932. 2.

146 Advertisement. The Billboard. January 26, 1935. 5; March 2, 1935. 5; August 22, 1936. 24;

147 UNO, “Burlesque Bits,” December 18, 1954.

148 In 1964, the Saturday Evening Post reported that the theaters included Toledo, Cleveland, Youngstown,

Canton, Dayton, OH; Pittsburgh, Allentown, Reading, PA; St. Louis, MO; Baltimore, MD. In 1968, a stage manager at the Roxy told Skipper and McCaghy that the Bryan and Engle circuit was Cleveland, Toledo,

Canton, OH; Buffalo, 2 theaters in NYC, NY; Baltimore, MD; Allentown, PA: St. Louis, MO; Honolulu,

HI.

149 Shteir, Striptease, 332.

150 Jess Mack Collection, MS 22, (Las Vegas: Special Collections, UNLV Libraries, 1990).

151 Jess Mack Collection.

152 Jess Mack Collection.

153 Jess Mack Collection.

154 Jess Mack Collection.

155 The following account is disputed by historian David Kruh in Always Something Doing: A History of

Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square, Faber & Faber, 1990 on the basis that he can find no Boston newspaper account of a fire on the date in question. I argue this is not definitive proof since the theater did not catch fire. Currently, I am only able to locate the several articles from The Billboard regarding the incident.

156 "Heroic Chorine Dies From Burns," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), January 18, 1936, ProQuest

Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

157 "Minn. Biz Good," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), January 23, 1943, 14, ProQuest Multiple

Databases [ProQuest].

158 "Rose La Rose 5G Biz Best of Minn. Year," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), February 13, 1943,

14, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

159UNO, “Burlesque,” April 1, 1950.

160 "Nippon Bombs Railroad to Indo-China," Salt Lake Tribune, April 15, 1939; NEA Service, "China

Counts on American Trucker to Give Nation Highway to Victory," Pampas Daily News (Pampas, Texas),

August 15, 1939, Newspapers.com.

161 "Japanese Army Threatens China Overland Routes," Greeley Daily Tribune (Greeley, Colorado),

November 27, 1939, Newspapers.com.

162 Bernice Harrell Chipman, ""What Do You Think?"" The Bakersfield Californian, March 11, 1940.

163 Arthur Rhodes, "Passed in Review," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 10, 1940.

164 "Ye Town-House Forum Lists Highlights of New Season," Long Beach Independent, June 14, 1940.

165 Jimmy Fidler, "Fidler in Hollywood," Paris News (Paris, Texas), October 1, 1941; "Autry Film at

Capitol," Oregon Statesman (Salem), October 12, 1941, Newspapers.com.

166 Lee O. Lyon, "Broadway & Hollywood," Daily Inter Lake (Kalispell, Montana), April 23, 1942,

Newspapers.com.

167 Louis Sobol, "New York Cavalcade," Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), September 20, 1941,

Newspapers.com.

168 Western Paper Union, "Star Dust: Stage Screen Radio," Rock Valley Bee(Iowa), October 10, 1941,

Newspapers.com.

169 Paul Walker, "Reviews and Previews," Harrisburg Telegraph(Pennsylvania), January 12, 1942,

Newspapers.com.

170 Paul Dickson, War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases since the Civil War (Washington,

D.C.: Brassey's, 2004), 136, https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Slang.html?id=qFgvCgiCpUsC.

100

171 Eric Partridge and Paul Beale, A Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English from "A

Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English" by Eric Partridge (London: Routledge, 1991), http://www.partridgeslangonline.com/.

172 "Nautical Terms and Slang," Nautical Terms and Slang, accessed July 22, 2015, http://www.bluestarline.org/nautical_terms_1.htm.

173 "Dressing Room Gossip," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 11, 1943, ProQuest Multiple

Databases [ProQuest].

174 Bill Smith, "Friars’ Funfest a Wham," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), May 26, 1951, ProQuest

Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

175 Bill Smith, "Copa Digs the Mad Durante with SRO for Tumult King,"The Billboard (Archive: 1894-

1960), April 25, 1953, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

176 Ken Crossland and Malcolm Macfarlane, Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary

Clooney (Oxford University Press, 2013), 97.

177 Jess Mack Collection.

178 "Burlesque Goes Elegant, Employs Symphonic Music," Sunday News and Tribune (Jefferson,

Missouri), February 2, 1947, Newspapers.com.

179 "Closed Shop Due Again for Burly," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), October 26, 1946, ProQuest

Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

180 James K. Skipper and Charles H. McCaghy, comps., "Interviews," inCharles H. McCaghy Collection of

Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute,

The Ohio State University, 2.

181 Jess Mack Collection.

101

182 The Language of Show Biz, a Dictionary (Chicago: Dramatic Pub., 1973), 219.

183 Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q, 108.

184 Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q, 213-214.

185 Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q, 113.

186 Skipper and McCaghy, "Interviews," 6.

187 Jess Mack Collection.

188 Shteir, Striptease, 201-202.

189 Jess Mack Collection.

190 Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q, 272.

191 Jess Mack Collection.

192 UNO, “Burlesque Notes,” January 10, 1942.

193 Jess Mack Collection.

194 UNO, “Burlesque Notes.” Feb 16, 1946; October 26, 1946.

195 Jess Mack Collection.

102

CHAPTER 4: RE-OWNERSHIP

“Someday I’m gonna own this place.” -Blaze Starr

INTRODUCTION

When Rose La Rose took the stand in U.S. District Court on April 19, 1968, she not only stood in opposition to the City of Toledo and to the 15 businessmen who had filed a petition to prevent the relocation of her theater into the downtown area, but also in opposition to a narrative of illegitimacy she had been challenging throughout her career.

By entering a legal space in which she had often had to legitimize her art as a defendant, she was able to re-own that space, now as a plaintiff. In her suit filed against the City of

Toledo for violation of her constitutional rights to own and operate a business, and to public expression in such business, La Rose declared her right to exist as a legitimate and lawful entity. La Rose’s career and legal victory as a theater owner in Toledo offer a key example of the kind of legitimacy burlesque performers gained through ownership – both literally and figuratively.

This chapter will offer a case study of Rose La Rose’s time operating two burlesque houses in Toledo, Ohio from 1958 to 1972. It will situate her work in a moment when a group of prominent burlesque queens owned/operated their own theaters, a crucial change from previous decades of male ownership and management of burlesque. This chapter examines the ways the move from performer to owner is a reclaiming of space, both physical and historical. As an operator, Rose La Rose re-owned

103 space in three ways: 1) by garnering a reputation as a shrewd, meticulous businesswoman, 2) by mentoring young dancers, passing on burlesque practices and teaching burlesque as a craft, and 3) by asserting her legal rights as a burlesque owner in

United States District Court.

Terminology in this chapter remains permeable. The term ownership is defined as

“belonging to oneself or itself,” “to have or hold as property, to legally possess,” and “to have control over.”196 This chapter will borrow the word owner as commonly used in The

Billboard to mean a professional who “ran” a theater. In the context of this chapter, owner is an umbrella word that encompasses the leadership roles women increasingly took in burlesque production including producer, manager, and operator. While these terms are not interchangeable and do signify a spectrum of responsibilities and individual agency, women who became producers, managers, operators, and owners in burlesque share some common characteristics and collectively represent a significant shift in power structures within the burlesque business. In this context, ownership is both literal and figurative, and describes a definite cultural shift within burlesque practice in which women re-own their spaces.

PRECEDENT

La Rose’s decision to produce and manage her own burlesque theater was not entirely unprecedented. During her touring career, she worked in proximity to several women producers in burlesque. Generally, in these contexts, “producing” was a primarily artistic act, referring to directorial arrangement, choreography, musical choices, and supervision of technical/scenic elements. While not common, a number of women had established and lengthy careers in burlesque production and choreography. Some of them

104 rose to significant national prominence and were included in the weekly burlesque column in The Billboard where they were framed as consummate producing professionals.

In 1935, for example, former chorus girl Beverly Carr became assistant to Grover

Franke, a burlesque producer for shows in Long Island and New York. That same year,

Carr produced for the Civic in Syracuse and for the Follies, formerly the State Theater, in

Albany, New York.197 Her work was well-reviewed, particularly for its engaging “color” and pace.198 The critic at the Syracuse Herald wrote:

[P]atrons of the Civic are indebted to Miss Beverly Carr, the ‘Little Edison of Burlesque,’ erstwhile University of Wisconsin student and embryonic English teacher until a few short years ago. Miss Carr, whose ambition is leading her rapidly toward Radio City, is doing a neat job with the somewhat scanty material available. At 27, she has already made considerable stir in the production world…199

Carr was in high demand as a producer and went on to produce at the Republic in New

York City, the Embassy in Rochester, the Palace in Buffalo, and the Globe and Bijou theaters in Philadelphia. 200 In 1941, Carr became the chorus director at the Casino

Theater in Toronto.201 She went on to produce on the Hirst Circuit and at the Burbank in

Los Angeles.202

Another example of women producers, Ida Rose assistant-produced on the

Supreme Circuit in the 1930s.203 She later produced at Irving Place in New York where

The Billboard critic reviewed her work, remarking:

This downtown house has come to an uptown level, meaning that from a production standpoint it’s swell and that business rivals Times Square bonanza…Production numbers are all swell, with producer Ida Rose evidently trying to be different and succeeding at it.204

105

By 1937, Ida Rose had begun producing and touring her own “six-girl line.”205

Throughout the 1940s, she produced burlesque numbers at theaters in Pittsburgh,

Toronto, and Buffalo. During her lengthy tenure at the Palace Theater in Buffalo, New

York, she produced the chorus line, Ida Rose’s Palacettes.206 In 1952, she moved from producing in theaters to night clubs.207

Many other women produced during these years. Rose Gordon worked at the

Embassy in New York and the Gayety in Norfolk, Virginia in the 1940s, and also helped produce several USO shows during the Second World War. 208 Muriel Abbott, who had begun as an acrobat and dancer in vaudeville and night clubs in the 1920s and toured her own dance troupe internationally in the 1930s, produced shows for the Empire Room at the Palmer House in Chicago and booking acts for other hotels in the 1940s. 209 In partnership with her husband Max Wilner, Stella Wilner operated the Shubert Theater in

Philadelphia from 1936 to 1938, followed by the Apollo Theater in New York City.210

Wilner later opened a costume shop that designed and supplied wardrobe for burlesque performers, including Rose La Rose.211 In 1951, Pearl Irons took over her late husband’s partnership with Jack Rubens in management of the Gayety in Toledo, Ohio.212 While women were successfully producing burlesque prior to the 1950s, that decade witnessed a new trend – women owning and operating their own spaces.

When Vickie Welles began operating the Colony Club in Union City, New Jersey in 1955, The Billboard cited her as “the only female burly house owner in the business.”213 In her wake, a stream of women leased or purchased their own burlesque theaters or clubs, often venues they had appeared in as performers. Zorita opened a theater in Ft. Lauderdale and then Zorita’s Show Bar in Miami in 1954.214 After

106 performing nearly seven years in New Orleans, Stacey “Stormy” Lawrence purchased and ran Stormy’s Casino Royale on Bourbon Street and according to her Cabaret

Magazine profile in 1956 was “the only exotic dancer in the country who has her own night club with her name on the marquee,” where she continued to perform.215 Lillian

Reis purchased the Celebrity Room nightclub in 1960.216 Coby Yee purchased the

Forbidden City nightclub in San Francisco in 1962.217 In 1968, Blaze Starr bought the place where she had started her career, the 2 O’Clock Club in Baltimore.218

Though female choreographers and producers worked in the 1930s and 40s, the agency of the new crop of manager-operators beginning in the late 1950s marks a shifting in power systems within burlesque. Women who had established themselves in a male- controlled industry found that the increasing fracture of the circuit and owner power structures allowed opportunities for women to take control of the business. Though the contemporary burlesque business model has mostly moved away from ownership of physical space, these early owner-operators served as a model for female entrepreneurship in a male-dominated business. Women like Rose La Rose and Vickie

Welles were a part of a major shift that made burlesque the mostly woman-centric enterprise it is in contemporary practice. In her 2013 interview with neo-burlesque star

Dita Von Teese, Megan Henshall observed, “Although there are men in burlesque…and

‘boylesque’ houses…women predominantly run the industry. Von Teese says that roughly ‘90 percent of the industry is owned by females.’”219 Among the group of new owners beginning in the 1950s, there are several common characteristics – they were performers with serious clout attached to their stage names, they possessed adequate

107 investment money to start their own businesses, and they chose to start those businesses in spaces which carried personal history.

THE NAME

The most well-known of these operators were burlesque queens, star performers who had achieved a great deal of success. All of them advertised their theaters with their stage names, as a kind of branding and extension of their public personas. Most of them did not rename the theater itself but rather tacked their name on to the beginning – the

Casino became Stormie’s Casino, the Show Bar became Zorita’s Show Bar, and the

Town Hall and Esquire became Rose La Rose’s Town Hall and Rose La Rose’s Esquire

[Figure 7]. The use of the owner-operator’s name is not dissimilar to previous decades in which theaters and entire circuits bore the names of their owners. In this context, however, names take on a different significance. First, names distinguished theaters from one another. Hundreds of burlesque theaters bore names like Gayety, Follies, Casino,

Sho-Bar, etc. Attaching the name of a performer was a practical means of demarcation.

108

Figure 18: Newspaper advertisement for one of Irma the Body's appearances at Rose La Rose's Town Hall, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection

Secondly, burlesque performers maintained a huge stake in the value of their stage name. After Rosina DePella’s audition for the Minsky brothers in 1935, the oft- repeated story goes that the one of the Minsky brothers had chosen it since the sign painters were pressed for time. She recalled the first time she saw her stage name to

Seymour Rothman:

I remember walking back to the dressing room on the day of my tryout…There was a fancy sign with the name ‘Rose La Rose’ painted on it in beautifully

109

decorated letters. I thought that it must be a new star coming in to work. When my turn to dance came, I strutted out onto the stage, and as the spot hit me I heard a voice announce, ‘Introducing the lovely, tempting, and tantalizing Rose La Rose!’ I almost flipped. First I thought, ‘he got the name wrong. She’s really gonna be upset when she sees what’s out here in her place.’ Then I thought that maybe I’d taken the wrong turn.220

La Rose admitted later to hating the name and when she took a job at Leon and Eddie’s night club and decided to change her name to “Connie Ray.” Gossip columnist Walter

Winchell ruined it for her when he mentioned that Rose La Rose was now performing under a new stage name. La Rose told Rothman, “[I]t jammed the place. All the tourists started coming in to see what a Minsky stripper looked like. That taught me what the name ‘La Rose’ was worth, and I, in turn, taught it to the trade.”221 La Rose recognized the value of the reputation she was building as a performer and, though she had not been given the agency to choose her own name, the Connie Ray incident led her to take full ownership of it. Less than a year after receiving a name she hated from the Minksy’s, she was performing a “rose routine” at the Star Theater in Brooklyn “novelly capitaliz[ing] on her name.”222 She would later legally change her name to Rose La Rose.223 La Rose’s decision not only to trade on the value of her established name as a performer but also to

“teach it to the trade” was a decision to move into proprietorship over her name. This proprietorship is clearly demonstrated in La Rose’s 1955 lawsuit against Rose Irene

King.

In the summer of 1955, La Rose sued an African-American performer named

Rose Irene King, who was then performing under the name Rosa La Roso. “[She] was a mere child when I was established,” Rose La Rose testified before the New York

Supreme Court, asking the judge to prevent Rosa La Roso from using such a similar stage name.224 The Washington Afro-American reported that “The white Rose contends she has

110 been using the name Rose La Rose for lo these many years and that as a result of her bumping and grinding under that name she has come to be known as the ‘Queen of

Burlesque’ and pulls down as much as $3,000 a week under that name.”225

La Roso’s desire to separate herself from La Rose’s reputation speaks to the spectrum of legitimacy performers traded upon and to the necessity of hierarchy in popular dance performance. She protested that “[La Roso] is colored and that the other

Rose is a white woman…[and] it is ridiculous…that people are confusing the two Roses.”

226 She also insisted that the “type of act she puts on at the Savannah Club can in no way be associated with the low brow acts of the white strip dancer.”227 La Roso’s press notices may sound remarkably similar to press for burlesque performers like La Rose.

Reviews for La Roso’s performances at the Apollo Theater in New York the previous year describe her as an “exotic” and as a “stripper.” In her club appearance advertisements, La Roso is listed as “The Queen of the Exotic Dancers,” “Torid exotic dance stylist,” “The Most Invigorating Girl in Town,” “With a Body to Rave About,” and

“doing her strip tease.”228 La Roso, however, performed most frequently in Harlem clubs along with jazz bands, singers, and comedians, including Moms Mabely, and is identified in articles about the trial as a “Harlem shake dancer” and a former Katherine Dunham dancer, the latter intended as evidence of her training and lineage as a performer.229 A week after the trial had begun, Justice Nathan Edgar, Jr. issued an injunction that forced

King to stop using the stage name, Rosa La Roso.

The timing of the lawsuit itself, covered almost exclusively by African-American newspapers and magazines, is puzzling. The New York Age gossip columnist, Edward

(Sonny) Murrain suggested that “a performer can parlay a summons and court complaint

111 into a million-dollar publicity gimmick.”230 Though Murrain cited La Rose as the instigator of the gimmick, he remarked that “[t]he Sepia Rosa…grabbed off the lion’s share of publicity (and photos)…[and] is responsible for a horde of new customers finding their way to the Village’s Club Savannah, where she ‘shakes’ nightly. Who said

‘A rose by any other name?...’”231 The paper printed only La Roso’s photo under the column. Even Rose La Rose’s motivations for filing the lawsuit are uncertain. Among her personal papers in the McCaghy Exotic Dance Collection, there is an unpublished photograph in a souvenir frame embossed with the words “Snookie’s Jazz Club. Dinner and Dancing.” The photograph is of Rose La Rose standing at a jukebox inside the club

[Figure 8]. Directly above her is a long banner with the words “Rosa La Roso 1953” printed across it.232 In September of 1953, La Roso was performing “her strip tease at

Snookie’s on W. 45th St.”233 Whether the banner is old and La Rose discovered it when she visited the night club much later or whether she knew (and attended) La Roso’s show two years before she brought the lawsuit to the Supreme Court is unclear. Regardless, the court case’s existence remains significant for two reasons: 1) it illustrates Rose La Rose’s shift into ownership of her name and reputation, and 2) it demonstrates the weight and legitimacy performers attached to their stage names. When performers attached their name to an external space it was more than a declaration of ownership, it was an act of legitimating the space. If performers built their reputations on a single stage name, then their theaters became an extension of that reputation. Like the rest of their carefully cultivated public personas, a performer’s name signified box office draw, billing order, and ultimately, legitimacy.

112

Figure 19: Rose La Rose posing in front of a banner at Snookie's night club, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

Another characteristic the new owners shared was financial. The majority of these women were contemporaries who had entered the industry around the same time in the late 1930s and 1940s. As burlesque stars, they had experienced great financial success at

113 the height of their performing careers which provided them with capital to start their own businesses. In the 1940s, La Rose was often referred to in the press as “the highest paid stripper,” with a $2500 weekly salary.234 In the 1953-1954 season, Rose La Rose earned more than $100,000 performing, and another $50,000 from investments.235 In 1955, she was “one of burly’s highest-priced featured strippers.”236 When she died in 1972, she reportedly left an estate valued at over $800,000.237 Burlesque gave performers like La

Rose remarkable earning power which she was able to harness as she stepped into business ownership.

Another characteristic these owners share is reclaimed space. Many of the women who became owners during this period sought opportunities in places they had toured as performers. In a letter to Jane Briggeman near the end of her life, Zorita wrote, “I worked for other people for years and finally decided to buy my own theatre.”238 Baltimore historian Gilbert Sandler described a deep intentionality in Blaze Starr’s ambitions:

“Blaze always said that the first time she walked into the 2 O’ Clock Club she told herself, ‘Someday I’m gonna own this place.’”239 Rose La Rose herself had tried to lease the Gayety in Cincinnati, a city she had loved and returned to often over her two decades of touring. “She’d always wanted a theater of her own,” Seymour Rothman, the Toledo critic wrote.240 And when she chose Toledo, she associated it with its burlesque history and her place in it, as she once told Rothman:

And Toledo had a burlesque reputation. Ann Corio’s first husband, Emmett Callahan, was from Toledo; Isidor Herk, the great burlesque promoter, was from Toledo; Gypsy Rose Lee did her first strip in Toledo; Oscar Markovich, the concessionaire, started here, so it wasn’t exactly unheard of in our field. 241

By establishing “ownership,” often literally, of theaters from burlesque’s past, this group of women operator-manager-owners who emerged in the 1950s and 1960s reclaimed

114 spaces from their own histories and worked to re-define them. Among these women, the last fourteen years of Rose La Rose’s life clearly demonstrate this reclamation through ownership.

CASE STUDY: ROSE LA ROSE

When Rose La Rose retired from touring and took over leasing and operation of the Town Hall Theater in Toledo, Ohio in 1958, she had her reasons. To begin with, her mother, Jennie, was sick. Jennie DePella had been touring with her daughter for more than two decades and remained the one consistent familial presence in her daughter’s life.

“I was her baby and now she’s mine,” she told a reporter once.242

La Rose picked Toledo out of practicality, and perhaps, out of personal history.

Initially, she had hoped to lease the Gayety in Cincinnati. She had appeared in Cincinnati with frequency throughout her career and had fond memories of the city. When obtaining the Gayety proved impossible, she turned to the Town Hall for consideration.

“‘I’d played the theater when it was the Capitol in 1943,’“she recalled in an interview.243

In fact, she had also played the theater after it had been renamed the Town Hall, appearing four times between 1952-1955 (twice in 1952) to great box office success.244 In

1958, La Rose bought a house and signed a lease for the Town Hall. Before she could settle them both in Toledo, however, her mother died in New York. Though La Rose had planned to tour a few months a year and produce work in Toledo for the rest of the time, she found herself entirely preoccupied with running the theater. In characteristic Rose La

Rose, she told a reporter in Toledo, “‘Running the theater was a lot of work, and I was the girl who had to do it.’”245

115

From the beginning of her move from performer to owner, La Rose charted her own course with great intentionality, marking a clear reclamation of space, both physical and historical. As an owner, her production choices were largely rooted in her own experiences as a performer. As La Rose’s most prolific journalistic biographer, Seymour

Rothman wrote, “When La Rose took over the Town Hall Theater she set out to do everything the way most other managers did not.”246 Some of these decisions are straightforward. La Rose was meticulous in the remodeling and upkeep of the theater.

She told Rothman, “I painted the building inside and out, fixed up the marquee the best way I could…remodeled the dressing rooms, set up equipment so that we could build props for the acts…” She kept a careful daily task chart for the porter that detailed every cleaning task for the entire week, down to the polishing of the brass handles in the lobby, the weekly vacuuming of the vestibules, and removing all “writings and smudges” from the walls and ceilings of the men’s room. Among her personal papers is a note for the porter that reads in Rose’s neat block handwriting: “Why is ladder way on entrance of wing during the week, is it being used every day on stage??? There seems to be extra

‘clutter’ near entrance.’”247 In another note, this time addressed to George, the Town Hall stagehand: “Do not smoke on stage in wings, do not drink coke or eat, in wings. It is up to you to keep others from doing it ‘the same,’ you are to enforce this, so therefore, you cannot do it either....Rose La Rose.” Below the note, George signed off: “I read this.

George.”248 For a performer who had spent more than two decades touring theaters and clubs in various states of disrepair, a meticulously well-kept theater set her space apart from theaters that had fallen into disrepair, signaling legitimacy in reputation.

116

Beyond the care and upkeep of the theater, La Rose distinguished herself as an owner in other ways. “I threw the candy butchers out because I felt that they were insulting to the girls and the audience…” A candy butcher, as Shteir describes him, was

“the man who gave the spiel about strippers in between numbers and sold cheap gifts,” had been a part of the burlesque tradition since the 1920s.249 The butcher’s script was riddled with innuendo and his wares most popularly included nude photographs, cartoon pornography, or booklets of dirty jokes, along with cheap watches and jewelry. La Rose carried a strong dislike for them and her choice as an owner to eliminate them was a bold one, given that the candy butcher was a strong source of revenue in burlesque theaters.

Rothman himself notes this later:

Rose frequently was referred to as a “good businesswoman,” which she well may have been, but she ran her theater more as a hobby than a business. For example, the candy pitch concession is extremely valuable, frequently earning more money than the show itself, but Rose wouldn’t have pitchmen in the theater. She said that their pitches degraded the girls and insulted the intelligence of the audience, and that was that.250

Though meant as a kind of tribute to La Rose’s tenacity, Rothman’s words are a clear reminder of the ways in which a woman operating in a formerly male-dominated business continued to be challenged as illegitimate, ie. “a hobby.” Though removing the candy concessionaires from her theater broke with tradition, by removing something that

“degraded the girls,” Rose La Rose’s re-ownership of her space challenged and reconfigured notions of legitimacy.

In her 1966 expose on burlesque in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Helen Borsick quotes a dancer backstage: “’On the stage, you’re protected…But you have to watch yourself on the runway. The runway is very narrow, and if you ever fall off—it’s like a bunch of barracudas. Those guys would eat you up, chop chop chop.’”251 Just three years

117 later, when La Rose moved to the Esquire Theater, she made the decision not to include a runway in her $25,000 remodel. Though she never directly stated the reason for removing the runway, La Rose’s interest in creating a safe and “nice” space for performers is clearly linked to her own experiences as a performer. As Borsick wrote after visiting the theater in Toledo:

Several strippers said Town Hall is the nicest theater on the circuit to work in. Having been through the mill herself, Rose fixes up the dressing rooms and puts a star on the feature stripper’s door “to make her feel important.252

La Rose’s literal transformation of space based on personal experience is a way of re- owning space and redefining ownership itself.

During her first few years in Toledo, La Rose reclaimed the Town Hall in other ways. “I started booking shows independently so that I could go after the best talent available. That booking lasted for three years, and I am proud of the shows I put together,” she told Rothman.253 La Rose’s independent booking method was uncommon, mostly because it was a drain on resources. The majority of major theater owners employed a booking agent or booked an entire company. Though she ended independent booking for financial reasons and began using bookers like Jess Mack, her efforts to “go after the best” are reflective of La Rose’s directorial leadership and sense of quality in her theater, as well.

La Rose kept a detailed weekly calendar of production responsibilities. On

Sundays, she received the props list for the show that week. On Mondays, she checked ad proofs. On Tuesdays, she finished taping the music arrangements for the week’s performances. On Wednesdays, she would “check that stagehands have all props out for

Friday’s new show.”254 Every day of the week featured a to-do list that included work for

118 the current week and the next two weeks. She also kept a notebook for weekly set-lists that included the names of every performer, song, and all technical cues. The care and detail in her planning reveal a strong ownership over every aspect of production from start to finish.

La Rose’s hand-written instructions for stagehands offer an incredibly detailed description of the typical show on her stage [Figure 9]. Generally, each show showcased five strippers, including the feature, or headliner. As the overture played, strobes and flashing lights were brought up, followed by a blackout, and the opening of the first traveler (“medium fast,” according to La Rose’s notes). A follow spot lands on the first performer as she travels down stage into the footlights. She hand wrote a detailed cue-to- cue list and underlined words multiple times for emphasis:

Girl’s name announced, count 4 (beats) into music then open #1 pink traveler…At end of 4th girl, do same as usual, but at this time, we have a house announcement (H.A.) for 1 to 1 ½ minutes during which you can (if necessary) finish feature set and listen for ‘And now Ladies + Gentlemen it is star time.’ (Don’t open during fanfare) Open after feature’s name (after a few beats).255

119

Figure 20: Rose La Rose's handwritten instructions for the stagehand, likely written late 1960s, reproduced with special permission from the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute

120

All of her instructions and notes are similar to this and demonstrate a keen sense of timing and production value. Most significantly, they demonstrate La Rose’s absolute control over all aspects of production.

When she initially took ownership of the Town Hall Theater, “she inherited Bill

Smith, an old-time carny” who had been with the theater for a number of years.256 On the official theater letterhead, William Smith is listed as “Manager,” and Rose La Rose as

“President.” “Smitty,” as he was known to La Rose, was in bad health, however. La Rose built an apartment for him inside the theater itself and arranged to have Tom, the porter, clean his room and change his sheets as part of his weekly duties.257 Though Smitty had a great deal of experience as a theater accountant and worked for La Rose for her entire time in Toledo, La Rose’s notes indicate that his responsibilities may have fallen to her or others more often as the years went on. She went so far as to draft a list entitled, “In the

Event Manager is Incapacitated.”258 Not only does her care for Smith demonstrate the ways in which she operated in multiple roles within theater operation, it also reflects the maternal character attributed to La Rose as an owner. There is little doubt from the multiple personal accounts from friends and employees of La Rose that she exhibited a high moral character and keen desire to care for those around her. Just a year after La

Rose began operating in Toledo, gossip columnist Ray Tucker wrote that “Tinker Bell, the star stripteuse reports she has her happiest booking working for Rose La Rose’s

‘ideal’ Burlesk Theater in Toledo.”259 Alexandra the Great told Zemeckis, “Rose’s was the most fun of all” and Dixie Evans said “[Rose] was strict.”260 Before caring for Smith,

La Rose had famously provided for her mother for her entire career. Even in her final days terminally ill with cancer, La Rose was actively caring for others—leasing an

121 apartment for her housekeeper, arranging for her dog’s care after her death, and informing her closest friends in person about her illness. The multiple descriptions of La

Rose in the press speak to her moral character but also to the framing of female ownership as maternal and distinctly womanly, as opposed to descriptions of the masculine leadership of Scribner and Herk.

In 1961, Rose La Rose began featuring a semi-annual amateur stripping contest she called the “Battle of the Strips,” as part of her regular season at the Town Hall

[Figure 10]. The winner of the contest would receive a cash prize and a contract to appear on the burlesque circuit. Though not a new phenomenon (burlesque owners like Herk had previously used similar contests to find new talent), La Rose’s contests were more than entrepreneurial; they were active mentoring relationships. In preparation for the contest,

La Rose ran a burlesque school during which she would choreograph and mentor individual contestants’ first burlesque acts. At the end of the program, participants were awarded a “striploma.” A 1960s article by Ray Oviatt described La Rose’s training methods:

Miss La Rose’s student bodies last week included go-go girls who were hoping to branch out, an IBM operator, beauticians, a waitress, and a wig stylist. For each, the teacher had devised a routine and costuming. Each was prompted by helpful suggestions during final run-throughs before the contest’s start. ‘Travel, honey, travel,’ urged the professor to an undergraduate with a tendency to remain in one spot. Another was reminded not to neglect the shoulder quiver while tugging at a zipper. Among this group of tyros, Dean La Rose hopes to develop some who will measure up to the standards she outlines for a good teaser.261

La Rose had good practical reasons for training new performers. She and her contemporaries in burlesque were aging, some beginning to retire. The large formalized circuits had been deeply fractured. Training new dancers was a smart business move for a

122 burlesque theatre owner who needed new attractions. The Toledo Blade observed in

1964:

Rose La Rose currently concluding her sixth semi-[annual] competition for amateur exotics, at the Town Hall, has calculated that nearly half of the previous contestants have gone into burlesque dancing professionally. According to Miss La Rose’s figures, 22 of 46 competitors are now playing the circuit. Four of her protégés have become headliners, she says.262

La Rose’s strip contest was not simply a box office draw, however. It also encouraged and empowered women to enter burlesque which was considered, at the time, a

“struggling” art form. Beyond business, La Rose’s school was an act of “passing on” burlesque art from one generation to the next. Oviatt reiterates this, “Some in other phases of show business may constantly echo the refrain: Where are the future stars coming from? Professor La Rose does something about it.”263 A number of burlesque performers credit Rose La Rose as their mentor including Val Valentine, Alexandra the

Great 48”, Pat the Hippie Strippie, Marinka Amazon, and Marilyn Mitchell.

123

Figure 21: Newspaper advertisement for the annual stripping contest at the Town Hall, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection

La Rose’s burlesque school was part of a new tradition among burlesque performers that began in the late 1950s. As burlesque continued to be represented as a degraded and illegitimate art form in the popular imagination, and increasingly had to compete with its close cousin, the modern strip club, women in burlesque began mentoring and passing on burlesque practice to younger performers in an effort to preserve the form. Tee Tee Red credits Zorita as her first teacher in burlesque, including giving Red her stage name. Zorita is also said to have mentored Blaze Starr and

Sequin.264 Even Ann Corio’s nostalgic Broadway production, This Was Burlesque,

124 although a somewhat sanitized version of burlesque performance, re-introduced burlesque practice to younger performers both in its original iteration in 1961 and its numerous revivals and iterations until her retirement in 1993, “training new dancers and working to preserve the routines of burlesque comedians.”265 This tradition of passing on performance practice requires an active ownership of those practices.

VS. CITY OF TOLEDO

In 1959, the city council of Toledo approved what came to be known as the

Vistula Meadows urban renewal project, as part of a plan meant to revitalize Toledo’s downtown, improving pedestrian viability, and increasing parking availability or, as the

Toledo Blade wrote later, a plan meant to eliminate Toledo’s “Skid Row.”266 The 101- acre project was one of eight urban renewal projects in Toledo that began between 1959 and 1967. It struggled financially for several years for lack of funding.267 In 1965, the project was awarded federal aid totaling near $19 million.268 The city would go on to raze over 200 buildings by 1970, many of them over a hundred years old at the time of demolition.269 The urban renewal projects in Toledo were part of a trend towards large- scale renewal projects in Midwest cities like Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago, among others, in the decades following the Second World War.270

One of the stipulations for urban renewal projects to receive federal assistance required all dislocated businesses to be offered relocation assistance.271 When city planners announced in 1967 that the Town Hall was slated for demolition, they were also required to assist in the relocation of La Rose’s theater.272 One of the proposed sites for this relocation was the Esquire Theater, a former movie palace built in 1941 on Superior

Street in the heart of downtown Toledo. On February 18, 1968, when La Rose publicly

125 announced plans to relocate from the Town Hall on St. Clair and Orange Street to the

Esquire where she planned to complete a $25,000 remodel of the property to convert it to a live performance space, she had no way of knowing the reaction it would inspire.

Just one week later, on February 26, fifteen businessmen filed a petition with the city, demanding that Rose La Rose be prevented from relocating her burlesque theater to

Superior Street. The majority of the fifteen petitioners, including several women, owned businesses on the Superior block. The manager of several hotels in the area, Charles

Daugherty told the Toledo Blade, “Locating a burlesque theater across from a business college and near a finishing school in a block dedicated to high class enterprise is not our idea of improving the downtown area.”273 The issue quickly became a significant problem for the city. Though the petition had initially “died” in committee, city council soon received “pressure from on high” to pursue legal means of preventing La Rose from relocating. On March 18, Rose La Rose presented a petition that included 370 signatures of citizens protesting a potential ban on burlesque at a city council meeting. The council still voted on the measure, which passed 6-1 but required three readings of the ordinance to become law. A week later, on March 25, the City Council of Toledo passed an ordinance to ban all “burlesque as live entertainment presented in a theater, ‘during the performance of which an erotic dance or a dance commonly known as strip tease is performed or which entertainment includes the presentation of any episode or material of a sensual, lewd, indecent, lascivious, or obscene nature’” within city limits.274 The ban on burlesque would not only prevent Rose La Rose from moving to the Esquire Theater, it also rendered her current operation of the Town Hall Theater also illegal. On the afternoon of March 25, shortly after the ordinance officially passed, La Rose was notified

126 by “Sgt. Glen Pfeifer, morals squad head” that she was now in violation of Toledo law.275

She shuttered the Town Hall the same day.

On April 8, La Rose’s attorneys Dan McCullough and Jack Gallon filed lawsuit in

U.S. District Court, challenging the constitutionality of the new ordinance, claiming “the burlesque ban violates seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution – the 1st, 5th, 6th, 8th,

9th, 10th, and 14th,” and accusing the city of discrimination “in that it ‘applies only to live presentations in burlesque theaters…’” and “‘does not apply to performances in moving picture theaters, or performers in bars, night clubs, and other places of entertainment.’”276

Three days later on April 11, La Rose’s attorneys requested a temporary injunction against the ordinance and a license to operate either the Town Hall or Esquire until constitutionality of the law was determined. The Toledo Blade reported, “In a signed affidavit…Miss La Rose attempted to answer some of the questions posed by businessmen in the Esquire area who opposed the move,” asserting that she had never had legal trouble at the Town Hall, had implemented a strict policy to prevent minors from attending shows, had never displayed “female nudes” in front of the theater, and had run the theater for ten years “one block away from two schools,” and two blocks from a children’s organization and two churches.277

In February 1968, the death toll of U.S. troops in Vietnam reached its highest level with more than 500 deaths in a single week. Draft numbers continued to climb and anti-war protests were growing. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis on April 4. A year earlier, protesting and riots in neighboring Detroit had spilled over into

Toledo. There had been fear that Dr. King’s assassination would prompt the rioting happening in Chicago, Louisville, Baltimore, Kansas City, and Washington D.C. Toledo

127 implemented a city-wide curfew for juveniles from April 5-15.278 Though the curfew had been formally lifted four days earlier, April 19 was likely an uneasy afternoon.

Chief city attorney John Burkhart recalled the day bitterly in 1991:

Rose La Rose got on the stand and told how she was trying her best to bring culture to culturally starved Toledoans by preserving the best of burlesque in her small but humble theater across from Dyers. Judge Don Young, impressed with Rose’s testimony and her shapely knee which she managed to display for the edification of the judge without being immodest about it, promptly ruled the city was indeed nuts and Rose could stay in business. Justice had prevailed once again.279

Burkhart admitted to feeling “like the bad guy” in a city where, despite business and political concerns, a vocal group of Toledoans wrote scathing editorials, letters of concern, and even marched in the street to protest the ordinance. His memory of the court case is incredibly simplified, however, since the initial hearing on April 19 was only the beginning of a series of legal battles that would continue for more than a year. On April

29, Young granted a temporary injunction of the city’s ordinance, allowing La Rose to continue operation of burlesque until the question of constitutionality could be tried. On

May 7, the city filed a motion for dismissal of the case saying,

The ordinance does not ban burlesque…It only bans the performance of an erotic dance commonly known as the ‘strip tease’ in a theater, or entertainment which includes the presentation of any episode or material of a sensual, lewd, indecent, lascivious, or obscene nature, provided, however, that to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of that entertainment taken as a whole appeals to a prurient interest. While the complainant (Ell Gee) may complain that the passage of the Toledo ordinance has put it out of business, a reading of the ordinance discloses this not to be the fact. It can operate a burlesque show and not be in violation…280

The city’s division between a burlesque show and a performance “in violation” marks a way in which the spectrum of legitimacy within burlesque has been applied in the legal realm. As the burlesque performer’s body which had been told to both exist and not exist

128 in legitimate spaces, Rose La Rose was told by city officials to both exist and not exist –

“it can operate a burlesque show,” just not a burlesque show in violation of the ordinance, or as La Rose recognized it, just not her burlesque show. For La Rose, the legal battle with the City of Toledo was both a literal contestation of space and the right to fully exist within and own that space.

Despite the efforts of the city council, La Rose officially opened her Esquire

Theater on Friday, June 21, 1968. Toledo theater critic Norman Dresser described frantic, last-minute repairs and a one-hour curtain delay during which ‘Miss La Rose, who had only a few hours’ sleep Thursday night, scurried about busily, rushing from the basement dressing rooms to back stage to lobby and office.”281 An audience of about a hundred started lining up around noon on Friday for a one o’clock matinee. In July, Judge Young overruled the city’s motion to dismiss and though city attorneys offered several additional legal challenges to La Rose’s lawsuit, the case proceeded. For the next year and a half, the Esquire remained open, operating on the temporary injunction. Finally, on November

3, 1969, Judge Young gave his 15-page opinion in which he asserted that “the city—had only one purpose in mind, ‘and that was to block the plaintiff from opening its business among the shops of its pious neighbors’” and “‘The plaintiff has a right of expression and the public has a right to hear.’”282 The ban on burlesque in Toledo was struck down.

From 1968 to 1971, La Rose continued her meticulous production habits, carefully planning every week’s set lists, keeping careful inventory of every set piece and prop with an enormous binder of Polaroid photographs clearly labeled, training performers, proofing her weekly newspaper ads and mailers, and continuing to donate and advertise for her favorite charities. Sometime in 1969, she began showing adult films

129 in conjunction with the live burlesque shows. Operating as a film house came with its own set of problems, including negotiation for the film shorts to show between acts.

Characteristically, she negotiated skillfully with film distributors like David Friedman who would write in detail about Rose La Rose decades later in his memoir, A Youth in

Babylon (1990). Friedman describes La Rose as a tough negotiator with a lively personality. In one exchange, he recalls telling her that the series of films he would like to sell her is worth more because “[t]hey’ll show more than any stripper dares…Within six months, you won’t even need a stage show.” La Rose had reportedly fired back, “I’m in the burlesque show business, David Friedman. Movies they can see in forty other theaters in Toledo. They can only see burlesque here. I’ll give you $600.”283 She told the Toledo

Blade her decision to show films was just “keeping up with the times,” and that she feared losing the theater altogether if she got left behind.284 Still, as she had told

Friedman, “In a burlesque house, the audience wants to see their favorite exotics live, on stage, not on film.”285 La Rose believed fervently in the power of her art form to draw crowds because she had seen it and experienced it herself as a performer.

And then, in October of 1971, quite abruptly and “without fanfare,” the Esquire

Theater ended its live performances. The Toledo Blade writer wrote, “Operator Rose La

Rose was out of town and not available for comment.”286 Though La Rose never publicly stated when she learned that she was terminally ill or that she had been diagnosed with advanced-stage cervical cancer, in what was likely her last interview, she told Seymour

Rothman that “[i]t was only after she learned how critical her illness was that she admitted she was just talking [about reviving live burlesque at the Esquire]….”287 It can be speculated that La Rose initially stopped producing live shows when she first became

130 ill and had hoped to resume them when she recovered. The following June, she entered the hospital for a short time until it was determined that no further treatment would be useful. She left the hospital on July 8, 1972, sold her lavish dream home on Shoreland

Avenue and made a deal with the buyers to provide for her fourteen-year-old dog,

Towny, strikingly named after her reclaimed space—her theater, the Town Hall. She moved into an apartment she would live in for just nineteen days. Rose La Rose died on

Thursday, July 27, 1972 [Figure 11].

Rothman’s obituary, “Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death,” is dreary and he finds in La Rose’s tired, terminally ill voice a sense of despair:

‘When I stopped live burlesque and substituted a second movie instead, I told myself that it was just temporary. My customers would protest or stay away, and I’d find a way to bring burlesque back. But my customers did neither. They said nothing and kept coming. I knew then that burlesque was through. I just couldn’t bring myself to say it out loud.’288

For Rothman, her death marked the end of real burlesque. But La Rose was always tenacious. Had she survived her bout with cancer, she might have found a way “to bring burlesque back.” In some ways, though she would not live to know it, she had already sparked the paradigm shift that would not only bring burlesque back, but would change burlesque practice itself. Women, many who were mentored or produced by La Rose herself, were owning their burlesque practices and passing them on to others. La Rose’s work and the work of her students would inspire many of the first wave of neo-burlesque artists who are now teachers, managers, and producers of burlesque. In contemporary practice, performers now manage, produce, and run their own companies and brands.

131

Figure 22: Likely Rose La Rose's last public performance, 1971, reproduced with special permission from BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection

Rose La Rose’s years in Toledo are marked by intentional ownership and reclamation of space, as Ray Oviatt remarked in 1959, just a year after Rose La Rose had first taken possession of the Town Hall Theater in Toledo: “Miss La Rose, despite her pre-eminence in an exclusively women’s domain, feels a need to be important in a man’s world. This is one reason for her moving into the management end of burlesque.”289

Through the meticulous ownership of a good businesswoman, through the mentoring and

132 passing on of burlesque practice to another generation of performers, and through the assertion of legal rights to exist, to own space, and to express within that space, Rose La

Rose reclaimed burlesque as her own. From the first moment in 1935 when she was given the name, Rose La Rose, a name she did not choose or like, to the very last years of her life in Toledo when she testified before the Ohio Supreme Court as a burlesque business owner, La Rose’s trajectory was so clearly a reclamation of self. She learned early the value of pragmatism. She would accept reality – the reality of her stage name, the lonely years of touring, the toll on her two marriages, the illness of her mother, running a theater in Toledo virtually alone, and eventually her terminal illness and death. But she reclaimed it, too. She had learned the value of “‘La Rose’…and…in turn, taught it the trade.”290

196 American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed., s.v. "Own," accessed July 15, 2015, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/own; Merriam-Webster.com, , s.v. "Own," accessed July 15, 2015, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/own.

197"Burlesque: Katz Settles Salary Claims," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), August 31, 1935, 28, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032070685/72452B4BD6424CCFPQ/1?accountid=9783.; UNO, "Burlesque U-

Notes," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), July 13, 1935, ProQuest; UNO, "Burlesque U-Notes," The

Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), August 3, 1935, ProQuest.

198 Paul Denis, "Burlesque Reviews - Eltinge, New York," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 28,

1936, 22, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032087547/37E96668AC9148AAPQ/15?accountid=9783.

133

199 Beverly Carr took out a large ad in The Billboard in June 1936. Notably, her name appears at the top in enormous letters, larger even than the headlines on the page, and features testimonials and reviews of her productions from the last season. This kind of savvy self-promotion is remarkable for its time and speaks to

Carr’s agency in a male-dominated industry; "Beverly Carr," advertisement, The Billboard (Archive: 1894-

1960), June 13, 1936.

200 UNO, "Burlesque U-Notes," June 26, 1937; UNO. “UNO, "Burlesque Notes," The Billboard (Archive:

1894-1960), September 9, 1939, ProQuest; "Burlesque: Atlantic City," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-

1960), July 23, 1938, 22, 26, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032171778/7CD8905630654679PQ/2?accountid=9783.

201 “UNO, "Burlesque Notes," October 18, 1941.

202 “UNO, "Burlesque Notes," February 7, 1942, February 28, 1942, August 4, 1945, March 12, 1949.

203 "Supreme Burlesque Circuit," advertisement, The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), December 29, 1934,

101.

204 Sidney Harris, "Burlesque Reviews: Irving Place, New York," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960),

January 23, 1937, 24, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032124068/33B3656289354F78PQ/3?accountid=9783.

205 "Vaudeville-Burlesque: Notes," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), December 11, 1937, 29, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032150074/38182130044942DFPQ/13?accountid=9783.

206UNO, "General News: Burlesque," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), February 26, 1949, 54,

ProQuest.

207 UNO, "Night Clubs-Vaude: Burlesque Bits," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), November 22, 1952,

49.

134

208 UNO, "Night Clubs-Vaude: Burlesque Bits," October 3, 1942, March 20, 1943, May 15, 1943,

September 21, 1946, November 22, 1952.

209 "Vaudeville Notes," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 26, 1927, 16, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1031829134/52B78EDE452F4765PQ/41?accountid=9783; "Night Spots-Gardens:

London Club Notes," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), July 21, 1934, 12, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032049671/695292F1D28D49E6PQ/5?accountid=9783; "Night Clubs-vaudeville:

NIGHT CLUB REVIEWS - Empire Room, Palmer House, Chicago," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960),

January 4, 1947, 22, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1040063374/C125E25A159C4863PQ/14?accountid=9783; "Music: Valdez To Open

New Puerto Rico Caribe Hotel Nitery Dec. 9,"The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), November 12, 1949,

17, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1438309099/69A1936CD9F2478CPQ/1?accountid=9783.

210 In 1940, Stella Wilner faced multiple tax evasion charges. The judge in the trial offered leniency because Wilner had used the owed money to pay performers for their work. She owed the government close to $30,000 in 1940 and was required to pay it off over time; UNO, "Night Clubs-Vaude: German,

Mrs. Wilner Indicted," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), June 12, 1937. 26. "Vaudeville-Burlesque:

Mrs. Wilner Fined 1G for Burly SS '38 Tax Default," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 28,

1940, 25, http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032226182/6C2DEA340FFE4E49PQ/1?accountid=9783;

211 UNO, “Burlesque Bits,” July 26, 1952.

212 UNO, “Burlesque Bits,” May 12, 1951, June 14, 1952, July 26, 1952, November 22, 1952.

213 Welles’ name has been given a number of spellings including Vicki, Vickie, Wells, and Welles; Vickie

Welles: Vintage Newspaper Ad for Vickie Appearing at the Strand Theater in Youngstown, Ohio.,

135

BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection, Private, accessed July 17, 2015, http://burlyqnell.tumblr.com/post/104947913279/vickie-welles-vintage-newspaper-ad-for-vickie; UNO,

“Burlesque Bits,” November 26, 1955.

214 Briggeman.

215 Lawrence’s name has been given a number of spellings including Stacie, Stacey, Lawrence, and

Laurence; Rawls, Maurice. Maurice Rawls, "Queen of the French Quarter," in BurlyQNell: The Janelle

Smith Collection, comp. Janelle Smith.

216Lilian Reis was involved in several prolonged legal battles. She was indicted on charges of burglary, larceny, and conspiracy for her alleged role “masterminding” the “Pottsville Heist,” in which $478,000 was stolen from the home of John B. Rich, a coal mining executive. During the two trials, Reis’ club was raided and shut down by the police multiple times on charges of violation of various city ordinances, including serving alcohol to minors, serving liquor after hours, illegal transiency, mixing between performers and audience, and serving alcohol to intoxicated persons. In 1963, the club’s license was revoked following a conviction on charges of “customers…encouraged to buy drinks for others, a person of ill repute frequented the premises and patrons were solicited for immoral purposes.” Interestingly, in the same year, Reis played a B-girl in a film called The Block about the “Congressional B-girl probe.” In 1969, after two trials (during one of which, the jury found Reis guilty), various delays and appeals, the murder of two of the alleged conspirators, and a psychiatric hold for Reis (who had herself committed for suicidal thoughts), all charges were dropped “reluctantly” by the state of Pennsylvania. Reis also won a libel suit against the Saturday Evening Post and was awarded $415,000. Jerry Gaghan, "Chatter:

Philadelphia.”," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), December 30, 1959, 54, ProQuest Multiple Databases

[ProQuest]..; "Vaudeville: Trial Over, Lil Reiss Reopens Philly Club," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000),

November 8, 1961, 11, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest]; "Vaudeville: Lil Reis Beats Attempt To

Void Her Café License,"Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), February 21, 1962, 55, ProQuest Multiple

Databases [ProQuest]; "Vaudeville: Lillian Reis’ Arrest in A.C. to Test Whether Actors Are

Transients," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 1, 1962, 51-52, ProQuest Multiple Databases

136

[ProQuest]; "Vaudeville: Philly Cops Raid Lil Reis’ Celebrity Rm.; Beats Rap In A.C. Registration

Case," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 15, 1962, 50, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest];

"Vaudeville: Philly Ct. Again Padlocks Lil Reis’ Celebrity Club; City Calls It A Nuisance," Variety

(Archive: 1905-2000), May 29, 1963, 54, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest]; "Pictures: From

Ottawa, News of Philadelphia Film Starring Its Lillian Reis," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), June 5, 1963,

7, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].; "Vaudeville: Lil Reis’ Celebrity Club, Philly, Pa.

License," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), October 23, 1963, 54, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest];

"Vaudeville: Delay Lil Reis’ 2d Trial As Alleged Heist Femcee Gets Psychiatric Care," Variety (Archive:

1905-2000), January 22, 1964, 76, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest]; "Vaudeville: Drop Charges

Vs. Lil over 478G PA Heist," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 13, 1969, 53, ProQuest Multiple

Databases [ProQuest].

217 Arthur E. Dong, Lorraine Dong, and Lisa See, Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs,

1936-1970 (Los Angeles, CA: DeepFocus Productions, 2014), 35.

218 Gilbert Sandler, Small Town Baltimore: An Album of Memories (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 2002), 204-205, Google Books.

219 Megan Henshall, "Why Are Women Attracted to Burlesque?," Creative Loafing, October 9, 2013, section goes here, http%3A%2F%2Fclclt.com%2Fcharlotte%2Fwhy-are-women-attracted-to- burlesque%2FContent%3Foid%3D3233049.

220 Seymour Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose," Toledo Blade, February 18, 1968, Google News.

221 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

222 UNO, "Burly Briefs," The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), April 25, 1936.

223 It remains unclear when La Rose changed her name legally. As of the November 1953 arrest in Boston, newspapers were reporting her legal name as “Rosina Dapelo.” However, the same newspapers cite her

1953 age as 29, which would make her birth year 1924, at least six years later than most sources give.

137

224 "Shaker, Burlesque Queen Vie for Name," in BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection.

225 James L. Hicks, "N.Y. Court Weighs ‘Battle of Roses’: Ex-Dunham Dancer Raps Burlesque

Rival," Washington Afro-American(Washington, D.C.), June 14, 1955, Google News.

226 Hicks, “N.Y. Court Weighs ‘Battle of Roses’: Ex-Dunham Dancer Raps Burlesque Rival,” Google

News.

227 Hicks, “N.Y. Court Weighs ‘Battle of Roses’: Ex-Dunham Dancer Raps Burlesque Rival,” Google

News.

228 "Display Ad 73 -- No Title," New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), August 22, 1953 ProQuest

Historical Newspapers [ProQuest]; Alan McMillan, "New York Is My Beat," The New York Age,

September 12, 1953, ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest]. "Classified Ad 4 -- No Title," New York

Amsterdam News (1943-1961), March 6, 1954, ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest]." "Display Ad

77 -- No Title," New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), October 16, 1954, ProQuest Historical

Newspapers [ProQuest]. Art, "New Acts: ROSA LA ROSO," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), October 27,

1954, 73, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest]; "Display Ad 120 -- No Title," New York Amsterdam

News (1943-1961), October 16, 1954, ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest]; "Display Ad 30 -- No

Title," The Washington Post and Times Herald (1954-1959), April 8, 1955, ProQuest Historical

Newspapers [ProQuest].

229 Katherine Dunham (1909 -2006) is widely regarded as the “Matriarch of Black Dance” who founded the

Negro Dance Group and later the Katherine Dunham Company. She was particularly known for

“combining innovative interpretations of Caribbean dances, traditional ballet, African rituals and African

American rhythms.” Interestingly, though Rose Irene King’s reference to Katherine Dunham is meant to separate her from the burlesque stage, other burlesque performers were also advertised as “Katherine

Dunham graduates” in June 1955, such as Tobi Winters in The Billboard;"Biography," Katherine Dunham

Pratt, section goes here, accessed July 17, 2015, http://www.katherinedunhampratt.com/bio.html.

138

230 Edward Sonny Murrain, "Front and Center," The New York Age, June 18, 1955, ProQuest Historical

Newspapers [ProQuest].

231 Murrain, "Front and Center," June 18, 1955.

232 Rose La Rose - Photographs, 1953, Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to

Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University,

Columbus, Ohio.

233 McMillan, "New York Is My Beat.”

234 Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show.

235 Walter Winchell, "Walter Winchell of New York," The Daily Times-News (Burlington, North Carolina),

June 4, 1954, http://www.newspapers.com/image/52919690/?terms=.

236 UNO, “Burlesque Bits,” June 18, 1955.

237 Jack O'Brian, "Last Round of Applause for Many," Pottstown Mercury(Pennsylvania), January 18,

1973, Newspapers.com

238Jane Briggeman, Burlesque: Legendary Stars of the Stage (Portland, Or.: Collectors Press, 2004), 121.

239 Sandler, Small Town Baltimore: An Album of Memories, 205.

240 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

241 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

242 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

243 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

139

244 "Rose La Rose Set For Return Week," Toledo Blade, December 4, 1952, Google News; "Rose La Rose

Heads Town Hall's Revue," November 27, 1953, Google News. Mitch Woodbury, "Mitch Woodbury

Reports," Toledo Blade, March 7, 1955, Google News.

245 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

246 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

247 Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and

Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Series 5.

248McCaghy Collection, Series 5.

249 Shteir, Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show, 84.

250 Seymour Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death," Toledo Blade, July 28,

1972, Google News.

251 Helen Borsick, "The Shape Burlesque Is In," in Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from

Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State

University.

252 Borsick, “The Shape Burlesque Is In.”

253 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

254 Rose La Rose - Weekly Duties, Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to

Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University,

Columbus, Ohio.

255 Rose La Rose - Stagehand Instructions, Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From

Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State

University, Columbus, Ohio.

140

256 Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death.”

257 Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death.”

258 Rose La Rose - In the Event Manager Is Incapacitated, Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance

From Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State

University, Columbus, Ohio.

259 Walter Winchell, "On Broadway," Eureka Humboldt Standard(California), February 10, 1959,

Newspapers.com.

260 Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q, 156.

261 Ray Oviatt, "Dean La Rose’s Grind School Unveils Art of Public Molting," in Charles H. McCaghy

Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre

Research Institute, The Ohio State University.

262 Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and

Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University.

263 Oviatt, "Dean La Rose’s Grind School Unveils Art of Public Molting.”

264 Leslie Zemeckis, Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America (New York: Skyhorse

Publishing, 2013), 131-134.

265 "Bio," Ann Corio: The Official Site.

266 C. E. Neubauer, "How Three Cities Have Pioneered In Attacking Decline of Downtown," Decatur

Herald (Illinois), March 6, 1960, Newspapers.com.

267 "Thousands Still Like to Reside Downtown," Sandusky Register (Ohio), June 23, 1960,

Newspapers.com; "Urban Renewal on Toledo Agenda," Circleville Herald (Ohio), October 24, 1963,

Newspapers.com.

141

268 "Grant Approved," Newark Advocate (Ohio), September 30, 1965, Newspapers.com.

269 "Urban Renewal Project Takes Shape in ’68," Blade (Toledo), February 2, 2015, http://www.toledoblade.com/memories/2015/02/02/Urban-renewal-project-takes-shape-in-68.html.

270 Two post-war housing acts designed to help residents of “slums” to relocate to public housing encouraged an explosion of urban renewal programs across the country. The term “urban renewal” was replaced by the term “Negro removal” by James Baldwin, as a criticism of the ways in which urban renewal projects impacted poor African-American families. The urban renewal program in Toledo is today widely viewed as a failure by city planners and historians in terms of economic stimulus and city development; James Stevens Curl, "Urban Redevelopment," Encyclopedia.com, January 01, 2003, section goes here, accessed July 17, 2015, http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Urban_renewal.aspx.; Dan

Fitzpatrick, "The Story of Urban Renewal," Post-Gazette.com, May 21, 2000, section goes here, accessed

July 17, 2015, http://old.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20000521eastliberty1.asp.

271 "Burlesque Ban Feared Risk to Vistula Project," Toledo Blade, March 22, 1968, Google News.

272 "Vaudeville: Urban Renewal Razing Toledo Burley Site," Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 2,

1967, 47, ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

273 "Center of City’s Stage For Burlesque Protested," Toledo Blade, February 27, 1968, Google News.

274 "Burlesque Ban Fought By Suit in U.S. Court," Toledo Blade, April 8, 1968, Google News.

275 "Town Hall Burlesque Stage Dark," Toledo Blade, March 26, 1968, Google News.

276 "Town Hall Burlesque Stage Dark," Toledo Blade.

277 Toledo Blade, March 14, 1968.

278 Smith, Ryan E. "Turmoil Recalls City's Race Riots from Late 1960s ,” Toledo Blade, October 16, 2005. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2005/10/16/Turmoil-recalls-city-s-race-riots-from-late-1960s.html.

142

279 Chase Clements, "Political Notebook," Toledo Blade, February 11, 1991, Google News.

280 "Dismissal of Burlesque Suit Asked," Toledo Blade, May 8, 1968, Google News.

281 Norman Dresser, "Burlesque’s Back: And Rose La Rose Has It," Toledo Blade, June 21, 1968, Google

News.

282 "Esquire Operator Backed By Court," Toledo Blade, November 3, 1969, Google News.

283 David F. Friedman and Don DeNevi, A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-film King (Buffalo,

NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), 256.

284 "Esquire Drops Live Burlesque," Toledo Blade, October 7, 1971, Google News.

285 Friedman, et. al. A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-film King, 257.

286 "Esquire Drops Live Burlesque," Toledo Blade.

287 Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death.”

288 Rothman, "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death.”

289 Ray Oviatt, "There’s More to Stripping Than Taking Off Clothes, Claims Town Hall’s Rose

La Rose: “’It’s a Great Art,’ Ecdysiast Says," in Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The

Ohio State University.

290 Rothman, "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose.”

143

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

“I want to develop my person as an individual. I want to be myself….But then all us strippers are supposed to talk in two syllable words and be illiterates. I wouldn’t want to disappoint anybody.” - Stormy Lawrence, 1956

From her very first step on to the American stage, the burlesque dancer has been dogged by a persistent and nagging narrative of degeneration. She has been asked to justify her performance through an almost scripted public discourse oscillating between legitimacy and illegitimacy. But when she dared to call her performance “art,” as she almost always has, she has been met with derision and mockery. As Collyer put it:

The stripper…was…eager to advise reporters that she was anything else than as vulgar as a stripper...that her serious art form was something in the nature of a cultural mission. But once the drum roll sounded and she heard the male singer introduce her as the one, the only, the delectable, the delicious, the glamorous, the breathtaking, the sublime, she cut out the crap and went to work…She knew why the men had paid to see her. They wanted her to give them a thrill. That was her job, essentially her only responsibility, and she performed it.291

Simultaneously, she was warned not to go too far, for then she risked fines, arrest, or outright banning. Burlesque dancers have walked this knife edge throughout most of the twentieth century and have been chastised when they have fallen on either side.

The cultural hierarchies embedded in the narrative surrounding burlesque have affected the realities of the American touring circuit where businessmen profited by the very path between legitimacy and illegitimacy that the form and its performers have traversed. The road to legitimacy was paved with illegitimate acts. Performers initiated onto this circuit found in its fractured reality opportunities to take ownership of physical

144 and historical space, and through this re-ownership, were able to reclaim and redefine their legitimacy within burlesque. The overt reclamation of burlesque is certainly echoed in today’s contemporary contexts.

OWNING THE NEW BURLESQUE

The shifts in ownership that began in the 1950s now heavily characterize contemporary burlesque, or neo-burlesque. One of the clearest examples of ownership in contemporary burlesque is the active passing on of burlesque tradition to new generations. Though some classic acts like the half bride/half groom, the beauty and the beast, the bath tub, and the underwater strip have so many claims of origin that they are difficult to trace, other acts have become synonymous with certain dancers. In recent years, several prominent former burlesque queens have set their unique choreography on the bodies of younger performers In 2006, for example, Blaze Starr gave neo-burlesque star Angie Pontani permission to perform a “tribute,” recreating Blaze’s “smoking couch” act in which Starr would strip on a couch rigged to begin emitting smoke and fabric flames because her dance was so “hot.” When burlesque queen Dixie Evans invited

Pontani to perform the act at the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Starr and Evans allowed Pontani to use Starr’s original smoking couch set piece. ““That’s how the tribute act started. It has changed over the years, but it’s certainly become one of my most popular routines. I’ve always felt honored to do it,” Pontani told a reporter shortly after

Starr passed away in 2015.292 Starr’s act of handing down both choreography and physical props indicates a strong sense of ownership of her work. It is hers to hand on.

Similarly, in 2012, burlesque queen Kitty West, famous for her Bourbon Street

“Evangeline the Oyster Girl” act in which she emerged from a giant oyster shell on stage,

145

“officially sanctioned” Ginger Valentine’s recreation of her act and appointed her the new “Evangeline.” As part of this sanctioning, West trained Valentine in an exact recreation of the original piece.293

Ownership has operated in the reverse, as well, when performers feel their act has been unfairly appropriated. In 2014, Marinka Amazon wrote a scathing review of a performance she had seen in Las Vegas on her Facebook page:

Last Night [at the] Viva Las Vegas Burlesque show, I saw a dancer doing my famous “Curtains.” This was given to me by Rose La Rose and it has been my trade mark everywhere I did my act for thirty-five years and this lady does not have my permission or has never asked me and it is very sad that a young lady wants to make fame in a legends act. This person has not even taken a class from me and has not had the decency to call me and ask me if she can do [it.] She is young and attractive and why [does] she have to take on what has been for fifty years part of my routine? Miss Rosie De Lite, I was there in the room when you did my “Curtains.” I never try to copy any one. Why don't you ask? Marinka.294

Marinka’s emotional response to seeing choreography—choreography that she herself had formally received—“stolen” demonstrates the importance of the inheritance process within burlesque culture. Other neo-burlesque dancers have performed “tribute” acts to legends, like Dirty Martini’s recreation of Zorita’s spiderweb number in 2010, Pinky

DeVille’s tribute to Satan’s Angel in 2015, and Miss Carrie-Ann’s Dita Von Teese- themed tribute show that premiered in 2008.295

In its contemporary context, the handing down of burlesque practice, as it was for

Rose La Rose, is often entrepreneurial in spirit. Many burlesque performers have simply responded pragmatically to the reality of the marketplace by supplementing their income with other products. Ann Corio’s popular vinyl recording of her music and tutorial, How to Strip For Your Husband (1963) has its modern counterpart in things like The Pontani

Sisters’ Go-Go Robics exercise DVD (2003).296 La Rose’s stripping school has been

146 followed in recent years by Jo “Boobs” Weldon’s New York School of Burlesque, today housed in the Slipper Room, a well-established burlesque venue in New York City, and taught by a faculty of burlesque queens including Jo “Boobs” Weldon, Amber Ray,

Calamity Chang, Doctor Lucky, Perle Noire, and World Famous *BOB*, among others.

Weldon has also published a comprehensive how-to manual for burlesque students called

The Burlesque Handbook.297 In 2003, the same year Weldon founded the New York

School, Miss Indigo Blue founded the Academy of Burlesque in Seattle. In her website bio, her own education notes her burlesque lineage: “Miss Indigo first trained with

Burlesque Legends Wild Cherry and Kitty West in 2001. Shortly thereafter she met Dixie

Evans, the proprietor of Exotic World and the Burlesque Hall of Fame, and Indigo’s life changed…”298

Too, one of the most well-known contemporary burlesque institutions, the

Burlesque Hall of Fame hosts a “Finishing School” program during its annual weekend festival and competition during which “Legends” teach short classes and workshops.

Burlesque queens who have taught classes during the BHOF Weekender include Camille

2000, Toni Elling, Gina Bon Bon, Delilah Jones, and Tiffany Carter. Probably the most educationally-driven burlesque training event in 2015 is BurlyCon, “an annual community-oriented professional growth and educational convention for burlesque performers, producers, fans, and aficionados…BurlyCon is committed to providing an affordable opportunity for performers of all levels to learn, grow, and develop their skills.”299 Individual burlesque legends teach classes and workshops. In 2015, Satan’s

Angel offered a “Burlesque 101” class. Performers could reserve sixty or ninety minute private lesson for Satan’s Angel to review a video of an act they were developing,

147 followed by a feedback session on Skype focusing on elements like “costuming, originality, presence, [and] choice of music.”300

Moreover, a large market for instructional DVDs that frame burlesque as seduction or exercise has been cornered by working burlesque performers. Examples include Weldon’s Striptease for Burlesque, Exotic Dance & Every Day (2009) and

Burlesque Chair Dance: Techniques & Routines (2014), Michelle L’amour’s Tease &

Tone (2012), Peekaboo Pointe and Gal Fridays’ Best Assets: Burlesque Booty Workout

(2013), Peekaboo Pointe’s Stripper Housewife: Burlesque Routines & Recipes for Stage

& Kitchen (2013), and Katalin Schafer’s Refined Sugar: Burlesque Dance (2015).

Outside of the confines of the neo-burlesque community, women in the larger exotic dance, adult entertainment, and fitness industries have also released DVDS like

Dolphina’s The Goddess Workout: Cardio Burlesque – Striptease (2008), Lady

Morrighan’s Exotic Dance – Private Dancer with Lady M: An exotic dance how-to for pros and amateurs, includes complete lap dance training, Rodney James’ Burlesque Beat

(2010). Even the exercise brand Jazzercise released their own burlesque-themed workout

DVD in 2012. Out of necessity, contemporary burlesque is an industry, not just of performance, but of product. But implicit in these how-to’s and tutorials is something larger—that is, a kind of initiation into burlesque performance practices. Burlesque’s tradition of mentorship and performer-to-performer training has continued both as preservation of an art form and as commodity. Not unlike its historical counterpart, twenty-first century burlesque practice aims to be both.

148

CULTURAL HIERACHY IN THE AGE OF FORGETTING

Neo-burlesque, in large pockets, is a generally progressive, inclusive community seeking to absorb a wide swath of identities, styles, and artistic disciplines. Despite the desires of its sub-cultural leaders, institutions like the Burlesque Hall of Fame, online communities like 21st Century Burlesque, and successful performers like Dr. Lucky,

Dirty Martini, and Imogen Kelly who often voice larger community concerns, the neo- burlesque movement is not monolithic. Within its community, there are challenges to the ethos of inclusivity that popularly espoused, as in 2015 when the New Orleans burlesque venue, Lucky Pierre’s, banned the dancer Ruby Rage explicitly for her body size, releasing a public statement on their Facebook page:

Let’s face the facts, in the long history of the art there is an expected image. Josephine Backer, Gypsy Rose Lee, Bettie Page, Blaze Starr, Dita Von Teese, and Mae West…. The world has a standard for burlesque and our dramatically comical musical show will achieve that standard.301

The Ruby Rage firing sent the larger neo-burlesque community into a tailspin, prompting numerous editorials, blog posts, boycotts, and ended with the resignation of several burlesque stars from Lucky Pierre’s. This is in sharp contrast to burlesque throughout the majority of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, Isidore Herk, for example, set weight, height, and figure measurement requirements in his trade magazine advertisements: “He will hire no girls, regardless of their looks, if they don’t fit into these measurements:

Height, 5 feet 3 inches; shoulders 13 ½ inches; waist, 26 inches; hips, 34 inches; bust, 34 inches; thigh, 18 ½ inches; calf, 13 inches; ankle, 7 inches.”302 In its political activism and feminist bent, neo-burlesque is almost entirely separate from the burlesque that came before it. These differences have been widely hailed as societally positive. The

149 consequences of creating intentional divide between contemporary burlesque and “just stripping” are double-edged, however.

There are increasingly wider gaps between the words used by performers— burlesque, exotic dance, stripping—in a never-ending attempt to claim legitimacy. Two years ago, I spoke with a new burlesque dancer at a state festival who informed me in hushed tones that prior to beginning in burlesque, she had worked in a strip club but it was important to the burlesque troupe she now performed with that she not publicly advertise that: the troupe wanted to make it clear that what they were doing was not stripping. In reaction to the narrative of degeneracy, as well as to the male-dominated business of earlier years, neo-burlesque has often drawn a hard line of demarcation between burlesque and other exotic dance—“just stripping.” Yet, the distancing of neo- burlesque from its own history is complicated by its community’s concurrent desire to reference and celebrate its past. Neo-burlesque performers seek to differentiate themselves from modern strip club dancers while appropriating the history of burlesque—a history of women who, in their time period, were perceived largely as “just strippers.”

The feminist essentialism that accompanies factions of neo-burlesque—an essentialism that claims burlesque as a positive, progressive community that embraces diversity in body, race, orientation, and gender identity—occasionally leads to clashes between progressive ethos and romantic nostalgia. The Burlesque Hall of Fame, formerly

Exotic World, hosts an annual weekend festival inviting burlesque “legends,” women who worked in burlesque prior to its resurgence in the 1990s, as well as neo-burlesque dancers to perform. Performances by burlesque stars of previous generations like

150

Tempest Storm, Jean Idell, and Lottie the Body at the BHOF weekend event are a widely celebrated event within the burlesque community, clips appear quickly on Instagram and

YouTube, and neo-burlesque stars discuss the influence of these “legends” on their own work. Performance by legends at the BHOF event are often described as moving and empowering for both the women on stage and in the audience. Yet, without full acknowledgment of the realities that faced performers in previous generations, the conflation of historical burlesque with twenty-first century practices is problematic. In

June 2015, for example, New York burlesque company, Jenny Rocha and Her Painted

Ladies performed their piece, “The Surgery” at the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend and were subsequently awarded the 2015 titles for Best Large Group and Most Innovative.

The piece begins with a choreographed abstraction of a breast augmentation during which company members dressed in sexy nurse and doctor costumes operate on a dancer in scrubs center stage. The patient emerges from the surgical act, stripping off her scrubs to reveal a sequined top filled out by enormous, clearly artificial breasts. She dances provocatively before beginning the classic burlesque move to remove her corset and reveal her breasts. The audience begins to cheer wildly until her “breasts” actually become visible. The dancer is wearing a bandeau bra with pantyhose attached and stuffed into the toes of the pantyhose, tennis balls. The effect is an obvious simulation of aging breasts. The other dancers consequently strip to also reveal sagging “breasts” and the company twirls them in unison as they lip-sync to Cher’s 1989 hit, “If I Could Turn Back

Time.” At the very end of the piece, the lone dancer remains onstage. She pulls the tennis balls up to her chest as if to return them to their original place and then lets them fall as she slumps forward and the curtain closes.303 Though Rocha’s statement about breasts

151 ignores medical studies about the impact of aging on breast tissue, in general, it is decidedly anti-breast augmentation. The piece is unsurprising within the neo-burlesque community which prides itself on embracing a woman’s “natural” body. The inclusion of

“The Surgery” in the BHOF line-up, however, is particularly troubling, not only for its un-ironic body-shaming, but for its message to the legends in attendance at the event. The majority of those dancers who received a breast augmentation did so in order to compete in an increasingly fractured performance field. For women who made a living dependent upon their bodies, plastic surgery was increasingly part of the job description. Many burlesque performers chose to have extra-legal breast augmentation surgery in the 1960s and 1970s when the procedure was dangerous and often led to long-term scarring and medical complications. A number of prominent burlesque stars suffered major health problems as a result of their plastic surgery and several were diagnosed with breast cancer including Kitten Navidad, Ezi Rider, and Jennie Lee, the founder of Exotic World.

While Rocha’s choreography is well within her rights to perform, its selection and staging at an event that seeks to subvert ageism and to celebrate the achievements of burlesque legends is complicated. While the Burlesque Hall of Fame seeks to bridge the gap between historical and contemporary burlesque, the romanticization and lack of acknowledgment of the realities faced by performers in previous decades is a disservice to a community seeking to root itself in historical legacy. The narrative of degeneration that has accompanied so much of exotic dance throughout the twentieth century has fostered a dissonance within contemporary burlesque worth further exploration.

152

FUTURE RESEARCH

From the use of the phrase “exotic dance” to Roso La Roso’s sly appropriation of

Rose La Roses’s fame, significant questions about representations of race and ethnicity in burlesque performance haunt these pages. It is a fact that in the period of time covered by this dissertation, performers of color danced in both segregated and integrated venues.

Despite many performers’ successes and popularity, the majority of formal burlesque scholarship has not adequately documented or analyzed their work. Today organizations like the Burlesque Hall of Fame and private burlesque curators like Janelle Smith of

BurlyQNell have toured regional exhibits on the contributions to burlesque by performers of color but to date, no book solely on the history of non-white burlesque dancers has been published. The name recognition given to white dancers like Rose La Rose, Lili St.

Cyr, Sally Rand, Tempest Storm, and Gypsy Rose Lee is almost entirely absent.

Prominent African American burlesque dancers contemporary to Rose La Rose (1935-

1972) include: Toni Elling, Jean Idell, Lottie the Body, Ditty Boo, Princess R’Wanda,

Venus La Doll, Ginger LaForte, Rose Hardaway, Rosa La Roso, Juanita Holloway,

Cousin Ida, Pat Daye, Del Avalle, Yolanda Lossee, Janette French, and Zi Zi Richard.

Asian-American burlesque dancers contemporary to Rose La Rose (1935-1972) include

Coby Yee, Tai Ping, Lily Pon, Mai Ling, Vivian Lee, Lon Tai Lee, Princess Chiyo,

Florence Him Lowe, Amy Fong, Jade Lin, Hazel Jay, Princess Ahi, Noel Toy, Frances

Chun, Kimi Toy, Lotus Wing, Dorothy Sun, Gia Mo, and Barbara Yung. Native

American burlesque dancers contemporary to Rose La Rose (1935-1972) include

Princess Domay and Princess Lahoma. The sheer number of performers who have

153 received little or no attention in popular burlesque history points to a significant gap in a full understanding of burlesque history.

Burlesque has a long history of appropriating race and ethnicity, framing representations of non-whiteness as exotic. Moreover, burlesque shares close historical ties to blackface minstrelsy and throughout the greater part of the twentieth century, where white performers took the stage as as “ethnic” or “exotic” by employing interpretations of various “native” dress and dance-styles. Thus, future analysis of the

American burlesque circuit should consider the impact performers of color and non-white burlesque companies had on touring routes. By 1914, the Progressive Wheel was featuring black revues like J. Leubrie Hill’s Darktown Follies and receiving rave reviews.304 By 1923, the Columbia Wheel had begun incorporating several black companies on their route, citing “the proven drawing power of the Negro acts that have been presented on the circuit.”305 Later labor disputes between black and white musicians in burlesque orchestra pits would make headlines. Consideration of African American performers’ contributions on the development of the American circuit is vital to burlesque scholarship.

In addition to a study of how race and ethnicity operated and was represented on the circuit and in popular discourse about burlesque, further study is needed to discuss the influence of drag, camp, and female impersonation on the development of American burlesque. Though some scholarship on the more recent developments in burlesque including boylesque and gender queer performance exists, its history and, in many ways, hidden presence in mainstream burlesque over the last century remains largely unexplored.

154

Similarly, though much of neo-burlesque intentionally challenges and reconfigures representations of age and sexuality on stage, the historical visibility of the aging body in burlesque has not been researched. In addition to the annual Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender event, a number of prominent burlesque stars have continued to actively perform into their seventies and eighties. The aging body and its historical implications in burlesque performance deserve further research.

Additionally, a full exploration of the history of burlesque’s unionization, a lengthy process over the course of the twentieth century, is needed. Researchers may consider the numerous failed attempts, the connections to the American Guild of Variety

Artists (AVGA), and the eventual founding of the Exotic Dancers League of America

(EDLA). A researcher interested in AVGA contract disputes and agreements should explore Minksy’s Burlesque Collection at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

Unionization, in its attempts to establish equity and safety for its members, is, at its heart, an establishment of publicly perceived legitimacy.

Finally, a gap in the historical record remains, primarily between 1980 and 1990 when neo-burlesque emerged. Future research is needed to determine what kinds of burlesque performance existed in this decade. Were there pockets of resistance to the modern strip club? What socio-cultural realities in the 1980s inspired the emergence of neo-burlesque around 1990? Did burlesque, out of its own performance contexts, survive in cultural memory? Do other sorts of performance during this decade reference and preserve burlesque?

155

FINAL QUESTIONS

Neo-burlesque dancer Imogen Kelly calls burlesque “a show of ownership,” a radical reclamation of self amongst a narrative of degeneration. As burlesque historians consider the already twenty-five year-old neo-burlesque movement, will new patterns emerge? How will changing cultural hierarchies impact burlesque’s future? Does burlesque have an actual expiration date? My gut instinct is that, despite the continuing obituaries written for it, burlesque remains in a state of reclaiming and redefining itself, always worse to be better and better to be worse, and yet, in the words of Olive Logan,

“always peculiarly and emphatically herself…”306

291 Collyer, Burlesque, 1.

292 Hayes, Anthony C. Blaze Starr: Angie Pontani recalls recreation of iconic act. Balitmore Post-Examiner. June 16, 2015.

293 “Evangeline the Oyster Girl.” New Orleans Burlesque, LLC. 2012. http://neworleansburlesque.wix.com/oystergirl.

294 "Marinka Amazon Page," Facebook, accessed July 22, 2015.

295 Jeremy X. Halpern. “Dirty Martini – Zorita Tribute.” YouTube. June 15, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tl1RgKAWEio; Chickpea204.“Pinky DeVille – Satan’s Angel

Burlesque tribute act.” YouTube. Mary 25, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPmKkoYz-10;

156

Contraband International. “Carrie Ann – Dita Von Teese Tribute Burlesque Act.” YouTube. February 4,

2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL7cx_9FeiI;

296 Lester, Sonny. “Ann Corio Presents: How to Strip for Your Husband.” Audio recording. 1963;

“Merchandise: Go-Go Robics.” The Pontani Sisters. http://www.pontanisisters.com/GoGoRobicsSl.html.

297 “The Burlesque Handbook.” The New York School of Burlesque. http://www.schoolofburlesque.com/theburlesquehandbook/

298 “About.” The Academy of Burlesque. 2015. http://academyofburlesque.com/about/

299 “FAQ.” BURLYCON. 2015. http://burlycon.org/about/faq/

300 Satan’s Angel. Facebook page for public figure.

301 Hollie-Mae Johnson, "Lucky Pierre's Drops Burlesque Performer Due to Her Size. Burlesque

Community Erupts.," 21st Century Burlesque, February 21, 2015, http://21stcenturyburlesque.com/lucky- pierres-drops-burlesque-performer-due-to-her-size-burlesque-community-erupts-ruby-rage-bella-blue/.

302 Grant Dixon, "Lights of New York," Indiana Weekly Messenger(Pennsylvania), August 8, 1929,

Newspapers.com.

303 The Surgery, perf. Jenny Rocha and Her Painted Ladies, Vimeo, accessed July 15, 2015, https://vimeo.com/83933218.

304 Lester A. Walton, "Theatrical Comment," New York Age, October 8, 1914, Newspapers.com.

305 "Big Acts for Burlesque," Pittsburgh Courier, September 15, 1923, Newspapers.com.

306 Lewis, From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, 226-227.

157

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abel. "Night Club Reviews - N. Y. Nitery Followup." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 27, 1941, 49. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Abel. "Vaude-Nite Clubs: Nitery Reviews - Leon & Eddie's, N. Y." Variety (Archive: 1905-

2000), February 23, 1938, 52. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1476068204/C8A22B4B7B524824PQ/1?accountid=9783.

Adlow, Elijah. Threshold of Justice: A Judge's Life Story. Boston, MA: Marlborough House, 1973.

"All Strip, No Tease." Lebanon Daily News (Pennsylvania), October 30, 1951. Newspapers.com.

Allen, Herman R. "Farm Girl Won’t Fool ‘Em in Strip-Tease." Record Herald (Washington Court House, Ohio), September 25, 1940. Newspapers.com.

Allen, Robert Clyde. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed. Accessed July 15, 2015. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/own;.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. 5th ed. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/legitimate.

158

"Amusement Notes." The Times (Philadelphia), January 30, 1898. Newspapers.com.

Anonymous, Alan Alda, Claudia Cassidy, Alvin Deutsch, Irvin Feld, Lewis Funke, Sheldon Hamick, Vance Johnson, F. Beverly Kelley, John Kenley, Phillip J. Lang, Jerome Lawrence, Robert E. Lee, Harold Minsky, Ben Pearson, David Rogers, Harvey Sabinson, Jack Schlissel, Richard Seff, Sammy Smith, and Sam Zolotow. The Language of Show Biz, a Dictionary. Edited by Sherman Louis Sergel. Chicago: Dramatic Pub., 1973.

Arguendo. By Elevator Repair Service. Wexner Center for the Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, November 2013.

Art. "New Acts: ROSA LA ROSO." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), October 27, 1954, 73. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Artiste." Dunkirk Evening Observer (New York), April 5, 1946. Newspapers.com.

"Autry Film at Capitol." Oregon Statesman (Salem), October 12, 1941.

Baldwin, Michelle. Burlesque and the New Bump-n-grind. Denver: Speck Press, 2004.

Barney, Gerard. "Legitimate: Burlesque-- Its Rise and Demise." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), January 4, 1956, 419-22. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1017027812/57C25FC19A4B4017PQ/1?accountid=9783.

Barry, Dan. "Burlesque Days Again for the Feather Boa Crowd." New York Times, October 1, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/us/02land.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Barry, Ed. "N.J. BRAND OF BURLESK NEEDS PLENTY OF FLIT." Variety (Archive: 1905- 2000), November 5, 1947, 1-63. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1285959623/EAD0409500D548AAPQ/1?accountid=9783.

159

"Beverly Carr." Advertisement. The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), June 13, 1936.

"Big Acts for Burlesque." Pittsburgh Courier, September 15, 1923. Newspapers.com.

"Big Merger Arranged By Burlesque Companies-R.K. Hynicka Remains Treasurer." Cincinnati Enquirer, September 18, 1921. Newspapers.com.

"Bio." Ann Corio: The Official Site. Accessed July 14, 2015. http://www.anncorio.com/bio.html.

"Biography." Katherine Dunham Pratt. Accessed July 17, 2015. http://www.katherinedunhampratt.com/bio.html.

Bloodhound Gang. A Lap Dance Is So Much Better When the Stripper Is Crying. Jimmy Pop, Richard Gavalis, 1999, CD.

Borsick, Helen. "The Shape Burlesque Is In." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research

Institute, The Ohio State University. First published in Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1966.

Bradshaw, Peter. "Exposed: Beyond Burlesque." Review of Exposed: Beyond Burlesque. Guardian (United Kingdom), January 9, 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/09/exposed-beyond-burlesque-review.

Briggeman, Jane. Burlesque: Legendary Stars of the Stage. Portland, Or.: Collectors Press, 2004.

"Burlesque: Atlantic City." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), July 23, 1938, 22-26. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032171778/7CD8905630654679PQ/2?accountid=9783.

160

"Burlesque Ban Feared Risk to Vistula Project." Toledo Blade, March 22, 1968. Google News.

"Burlesque Ban Fought By Suit in U.S. Court." Toledo Blade, April 8, 1968. Google News.

"Burlesque: Circuits Join Hands." Cincinnati Enquirer, March 15, 1913. Newspapers.com.

"Burlesque Combine Will Have Opposition." Oakland Tribune, March 20, 1913. Newspapers.com.

"Burlesque Goes Elegant, Employs Symphonic Music." Sunday News and Tribune (Jefferson, Missouri), February 2, 1947. Newspapers.com.

"Burlesque: Kane Quits Nashville; Atlanta Goes to Stock." The Billboard (Archive: 1894- 1960), October 31, 1936. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Burlesque: Katz Settles Salary Claims." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), August 31, 1935, 28. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032070685/72452B4BD6424CCFPQ/1?accountid=9783.

BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection. 2015.

Calogero, James. "Burlesque Struck By Censors." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. First published in December 5, 1953.

"Center of City’s Stage For Burlesque Protested." Toledo Blade, February 27, 1968. Google

News.

Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University.

161

Chipman, Bernice Harrell. ""What Do You Think?"" The Bakersfield Californian, March 11, 1940.

"Classified Ad 4 -- No Title." New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), March 6, 1954. ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

Clements, Chase. "Political Notebook." Toledo Blade, February 11, 1991. Google News.

"Closed Shop Due Again for Burly." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), October 26, 1946.

ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Collyer, Martin. Burlesque. New York: Lancer Books, 1964.

"Combining the Show Places." The Evening Transcript (San Bernardino), August 7, 1902. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Crossland, Ken, and Malcolm Macfarlane. Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary Clooney. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Curl, James Stevens. "Urban Redevelopment." Encyclopedia.com. January 01, 2003. Accessed July 17, 2015. http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Urban_renewal.aspx.

Denis, Paul. "Burlesque Reviews - Eltinge, New York." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 28, 1936, 22. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032087547/37E96668AC9148AAPQ/15?accountid=9783.

Dickson, Paul. War Slang: American Fighting Words and Phrases since the Civil War. Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 2004. https://books.google.com/books/about/War_Slang.html?id=qFgvCgiCpUsC.

162

"Dimpled Darlings Due At Gayety Next Week." Cecil County Star (Elkton, Maryland), January 9, 1936. Newspapers.com.

"Dismissal of Burlesque Suit Asked." Toledo Blade, May 8, 1968. Google News.

"Display Ad 120 -- No Title." New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), October 16, 1954. ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

"Display Ad 30 -- No Title." The Washington Post and Times Herald (1954-1959), April 8,

1955. ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

"Display Ad 73 -- No Title." New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), August 22, 1953. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/225748114/C0AFAA73B95C4BD9PQ/3?accountid=9783.

"Display Ad 77 -- No Title." New York Amsterdam News (1943-1961), October 16, 1954. ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

Dixon, Grant. "Lights of New York." Indiana Weekly Messenger (Pennsylvania), August 8, 1929. Newspapers.com.

Dizzy Wright. Hotel Stripper. Kato, 2012. Spotify.

Dong, Arthur E., Lorraine Dong, and Lisa See. Forbidden City, USA: Chinese American Nightclubs, 1936-1970. Los Angeles, CA: DeepFocus Productions, 2014.

Dresser, Norman. "Burlesque’s Back: And Rose La Rose Has It." Toledo Blade, June 21, 1968. Google News.

"Dressing Room Gossip." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 11, 1943. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

163

Ebert, Roger. "Behind the Burly-Q Movie Review (2010) | Roger Ebert." RogerEbert.com. August 18, 2010. http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/behind-the-burly-q-2010.

"Elevator Repair Service." : Arguendo. Accessed July 22, 2015. https://www.elevator.org/shows/arguendo/.

"Esquire Drops Live Burlesque." Toledo Blade, October 7, 1971. Google News.

"Esquire Operator Backed By Court." Toledo Blade, November 3, 1969. Google News.

Fidler, Jimmy. "Fidler in Hollywood." Paris News (Paris, Texas), October 1, 1941.

Fitzpatrick, Dan. "The Story of Urban Renewal." Post-Gazette.com. May 21, 2000. Accessed July 17, 2015. http://old.post-gazette.com/businessnews/20000521eastliberty1.asp.

Flashdance. Directed by Adrian Lyne. Performed by Jennifer Beals and Michael Nouri. Los Angeles: Paramount, 1983. Netflix.

Frank, Katherine. G-strings and Sympathy: Strip Club Regulars and Male Desire. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.

Friedman, David F., and Don DeNevi. A Youth in Babylon: Confessions of a Trash-film King. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990.

Fry, Monroe. Sex, Vice, and Business. New York: Ballantine Books, 1959.

Gaghan, Jerry. "Chatter: Philadelphia.”." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), December 30, 1959,

54. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Georgia Sothern Tagged Again on 'Lewd' Charge." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), April 14, 1948, 47. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1285956374/B3C2BCAD175E4278PQ/2?accountid=9783. 164

"Girls from Happyland." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 14, 1929, 33. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1031918781/F925A2D94FC9449BPQ/3?accountid=9783.

"Grant Approved." Newark Advocate (Ohio), September 30, 1965. Newspapers.com.

Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary. Accessed July 2, 2015. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ecdysiast.

Harris, Richard. "In Criminal Court – I." The New Yorker, April 14, 1973.

Harris, Sidney. "Burlesque Reviews: Irving Place, New York." The Billboard (Archive: 1894- 1960), January 23, 1937, 24. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032124068/33B3656289354F78PQ/3?accountid=9783.

Henshall, Megan. "Why Are Women Attracted to Burlesque?" Creative Loafing. October 9, 2013. http%3A%2F%2Fclclt.com%2Fcharlotte%2Fwhy-are-women-attracted-to-

burlesque%2FContent%3Foid%3D3233049.

"Heroic Chorine Dies From Burns." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), January 18, 1936. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Hicks, James L. "N.Y. Court Weighs ‘Battle of Roses’: Ex-Dunham Dancer Raps Burlesque

Rival." Washington Afro-American (Washington, D.C.), June 14, 1955. Google News.

Ignich7. "Movies Feat. Popular Actress as Ho/Stripper." IMDb. Accessed July 22, 2015.

http://www.imdb.com/list/Kw9KBYgphyE/.

"Japanese Army Threatens China Overland Routes." Greeley Daily Tribune (Greeley, Colorado), November 27, 1939. Newspapers.com.

165

Jarrett, Lucinda. Stripping in Time: A History of Erotic Dancing. London: Pandora, 1997.

Jess Mack Collection. Las Vegas: MS 22, Special Collections, UNLV Libraries, 1990.

"John L. Spivak." Wikipedia. Accessed July 15, 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._Spivak.

Johnson, Hollie-Mae. "Lucky Pierre's Drops Burlesque Performer Due to Her Size. Burlesque Community Erupts." 21st Century Burlesque. February 21, 2015.

http://21stcenturyburlesque.com/lucky-pierres-drops-burlesque-performer-due-to-her- size-burlesque-community-erupts-ruby-rage-bella-blue/.

Kilgallen, Dorothy. "Voice of Broadway." The Daily Reporter (Dover, Ohio), October 16, 1956. Newspapers.com.

The Language of Show Biz, a Dictionary. Chicago: Dramatic Pub., 1973.

Lefton, Mark, James K. Skipper, and Charles H. McCaghy. Approaches to Deviance; Theories,

Concepts, and Research Findings. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1968.

Lewis, Robert M. From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Spectacle in America, 1830- 1910. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Lyon, Lee O. "Broadway & Hollywood." Daily Inter Lake (Kalispell, Montana), April 23, 1942. Newspapers.com.

MacFarlane, Seth, writer. "Bill and Peter's Bogus Journey." In Family Guy. Fox. 2007.

MacFarlane, Seth, writer. "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington." In Family Guy. Fox. 2001.

MacFarlane, Seth, writer. "Stan Knows Best." In American Dad! Fox. 2005.

166

Macpherson, Virginia. "Burlesque Queen Will Try to Shimmy Right Up to the Concert." In Hollywood, April 1, 1946. Newspapers.com.

"Marinka Amazon Page." Facebook. Accessed July 22, 2015. https://www.facebook.com/marinka.amazon?fref=ts.

Martin, Douglas. "Margaret Hart Ferraro, Burlesque Queen, Dies." New York Times, January 30, 2000. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/01/30/nyregion/margaret-hart-ferraro-burlesque-

queen-dies.html.

McCaghy, Charles H. Deviant Behavior: Crime, Conflict, and Interest Groups. New York: Macmillan, 1976.

McMillan, Alan. "New York Is My Beat." The New York Age, September 12, 1953. ProQuest Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

Merriam-Webster.com. Accessed July 15, 2015. http://www.merriam-

webster.com/dictionary/own.

"Minn. Biz Good." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), January 23, 1943, 14. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Murrain, Edward Sonny. "Front and Center." The New York Age, June 18, 1955. ProQuest

Historical Newspapers [ProQuest].

"Music: Valdez To Open New Puerto Rico Caribe Hotel Nitery Dec. 9." The Billboard

(Archive: 1894-1960), November 12, 1949, 17. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1438309099/69A1936CD9F2478CPQ/1?accountid=9783.

"Nagging Suspicion." In Emergency! NBC. October 5, 1974. 167

"Nautical Terms and Slang." Nautical Terms and Slang. Accessed July 22, 2015. http://www.bluestarline.org/nautical_terms_1.htm.

NEA Service. "China Counts on American Trucker to Give Nation Highway to Victory." Pampas Daily News (Pampas, Texas), August 15, 1939. Newspapers.com.

Neubauer, C. E. "How Three Cities Have Pioneered In Attacking Decline of Downtown." Decatur Herald (Illinois), March 6, 1960. Newspapers.com.

Never Scared. Directed by Joel Gallen. Performed by Chris Rock. DreamWorks/Geffen, 2004. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2iwz26.

""The New Burma Road"" Harry "Shuffles" Levan to Jess Mack. Jess Mack Papers, Special Collections, University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

"Night Clubs-vaudeville: NIGHT CLUB REVIEWS - Empire Room, Palmer House, Chicago." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), January 4, 1947, 22.

http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1040063374/C125E25A159C4863PQ/14?accountid=9783.

"Night Side: The Return of the Rose." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The

Ohio State University.

"Night Spots-Gardens: London Club Notes." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), July 21,

1934, 12. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032049671/695292F1D28D49E6PQ/5?accountid=9783.

"Nippon Bombs Railroad to Indo-China." Salt Lake Tribune, April 15, 1939.

168

"Obituaries." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), December 29, 1948. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

O'Brian, Jack. "Last Round of Applause for Many." Pottstown Mercury (Pennsylvania), January 18, 1973. http://www.newspapers.com/image/42939920/?terms=%22The%2BVoice%2Bof%2BBr oadway%3A%2BLast%2BRound%2Bof%2BApplause%2Bfor%2BMany%22.

O'Hara, Neal. "Telling the World: The Story of Success." Lincoln Evening Journal, June 4, 1930. Newspapers.com.

Oswalt, Patton, performer. Finest Hour. Comedy Central Records, 2011, CD. Spotify.

Oviatt, Ray. "Dean La Rose’s Grind School Unveils Art of Public Molting." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. First published

in Toledo Blade.

Oviatt, Ray. "There’s More to Stripping Than Taking Off Clothes, Claims Town Hall’s Rose La Rose: “’It’s a Great Art,’ Ecdysiast Says." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. First published in Toledo Sunday Blade, July 19, 1959.

Partridge, Eric, and Paul Beale. A Concise Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

from "A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English" by Eric Partridge. London: Routledge, 1991. http://www.partridgeslangonline.com/.

169

"Pictures: From Ottawa, News of Philadelphia Film Starring Its Lillian Reis." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), June 5, 1963, 7. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Pollack, Robert. "Critically Speaking." Suburbanite Economist (Chicago), July 21, 1965. http://www.newspapers.com/image/54194900/?terms=%22Suburbanite%2BEconomist% 22%2BAND%2B%22critically%2Bspeaking%22.

"Progressive Circuit Is Called Bankrupt." Pittsburgh Daily Post. Accessed January 17, 1915.

Newspapers.com.

Purtill, William N. "Old Time Wagon Shows I Have Seen." Bandwagon, Circus Historical Society 2, no. 7 (December 1943).

Rawls, Maurice. "Queen of the French Quarter." In BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection, compiled by Janelle Smith. First published in Cabaret 1, no. 9 (January 1956): 14-18.

Rhodes, Arthur. "Passed in Review." Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 10, 1940.

Rhodes, Robert J. "’Striptease Dancer’ Is ‘Mystified’ Over Clamps Put on Burlesque." Morning Herald (Uniontown, Pennsylvania), August 21, 1937. Newspapers.com.

Roberts, Chris. "Tawdry Old Trocadero Becomes Honorable Chinese Movie House." Gettysburg Times (Pennsylvania), May 13, 1981.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19810513&id=Qo9eAAAAIBAJ& sjid=HFENAAAAIBAJ&pg=6391,960942&hl=en.

Rose La Rose - In the Event Manager Is Incapacitated. Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

170

Rose La Rose - Photographs. 1953. Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

Rose La Rose - Stagehand Instructions. Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

Rose La Rose - Weekly Duties. Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance From Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio.

"Rose La Rose 5G Biz Best of Minn. Year." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), February 13, 1943, 14. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Rose La Rose Heads Town Hall's Revue." November 27, 1953. Google News.

"Rose La Rose Set For Return Week." Toledo Blade, December 4, 1952. Google News.

Rothman, Seymour. "The Daring Miss Rose La Rose." Toledo Blade, February 18, 1968. Google News.

Rothman, Seymour. "Ex-Ecdysiast Follows Burlesque In Death." Toledo Blade, July 28, 1972.

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19720728&id=VOhOAAAAIBAJ &sjid=8AEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7283,3213598&hl=en.

Rothman, Seymour. "Ex-Ecdysiast Rose La Rose Follows Burlesque in Death." Toledo Blade, July 28, 1972. Google News.

Safire, William. "Erotic or Exotic?" New York Times, May 21, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/21/magazine/21wwln_safire.html?_r=0. 171

"Sam Scribner, Who Made Burlesque the Cleanest Show on Broadway." Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 9, 1924. Newspapers.com.

Sandler, Gilbert. Small Town Baltimore: An Album of Memories. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Google Books.

Schoenfeld, Joe. Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), January 8, 1941, 146. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio-

state.edu/docview/1505748116/C01013D13B684A90PQ/1?accountid=9783.

Scott, David Alexander. Behind the G-string: An Exploration of the Stripper's Image, Her Person, and Her Meaning. Jefferson, NC: McFarland &, 1996.

"Scribner and Fennessey Direct Burlesque ‘Wheels.’." Trenton Evening Times, November 24, 1908. Newspapers.com.

"Serious Burlesque War." New York Times, August 20, 1903. Newspapers.com.

"Shaker, Burlesque Queen Vie for Name." In BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection. Company. First published in Jet, June 16, 1955.

She's Working Her Way Through College. Directed by H. Bruce Humberstone. By Elliot Nugent and James Thurber. Performed by Virginia Mayo and Ronald Reagan. Warner

Bros. Entertainment, 1952. DVD.

Shteir, Rachel. "Strippers Are Us: The Sexual Naiveté of Pretty Things, HBO’s New

Documentary on Burlesque." Slate. July 19, 2005. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2005/07/strippers_are_us.html.

Shteir, Rachel. Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. 172

Skipper, James K., and Charles H. McCaghy, comps. "Interviews." In Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. First published in 1968.

Skipper, James K., Jr., and Charles H. McCaghy. "Stripteasers: The Anatomy and Career Contingencies of a Deviant Occupation." Social Problems 17, no. 3 (January 01, 1970): 391-405. Accessed May 3, 2013. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/799557?ref=no-x- route:912fc3f6644f16bcb9e8c02f1e04e077.

Smith, Bill. "Copa Digs the Mad Durante with SRO for Tumult King." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), April 25, 1953. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Smith, Bill. "Friars’ Funfest a Wham." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), May 26, 1951. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

Smith, Ryan E. "Turmoil Recalls City's Race Riots from Late 1960s Read More at

Http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2005/10/16/Turmoil-recalls-city-s-race-riots-from- late-1960s.html#QEbojwEVKJ8BWRQS.99." Toledo Blade, October 16, 2005. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2005/10/16/Turmoil-recalls-city-s-race-riots-from- late-1960s.html.

Smith, Ryan E. "Turmoil Recalls City's Race Riots from Late 1960s." Toledo Blade. July 17, 2015. Accessed July 17, 2015. http://www.toledoblade.com/local/2005/10/16/Turmoil- recalls-city-s-race-riots-from-late-1960s.html.

Sobel, Bernard. Burleycue: An Underground History of Burlesque Days. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1931.

173

Sobol, Louis. ". New York Cavalcade." Evening News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), September 20, 1941. Newspapers.com.

Stanton, Jimmy. "The Forum: Plugs Comedy as Essential Burlesque Aid." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 19, 1938, 33. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032150460/85B1DDF0032A4069PQ/1?accountid=9783.

Storey, John. Inventing Popular Culture: From Folklore to Globalization. Malden, MA:

Blackwell Pub., 2003.

"Striptease Lost Art in Boston: Burlesque’s Last ‘Bump.’." News-Palladium (Benton Harbor, Michigan), November 13, 1953. Newspapers.com.

"Supreme Burlesque Circuit." Advertisement. The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), December 29, 1934.

The Surgery. Performed by Jenny Rocha and Her Painted Ladies. Vimeo. Accessed July 15,

2015. https://vimeo.com/83933218.

"Thousands Still Like to Reside Downtown." Sandusky Register (Ohio), June 23, 1960. Newspapers.com.

Toledo Blade, March 14, 1968.

"Town Hall Burlesque Stage Dark." Toledo Blade, March 26, 1968. Google News.

Tribby, Mike. Review of Pretty Things. Booklist, 2006. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060889446/ref=dp_proddesc_2?ie=UTF8&n=2831 55.

174

Turner, Bonnie, Terry Turner, and Mark Brazill, writers. "That 70's Show." Directed by David Trainer. Fox.

UNO. "Burlesque Notes." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), 1934-1955. ProQuest.

UNO. "Burlesque U-Notes." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), 1934-1955. ProQuest.

UNO. "Burly Briefs." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), 1934-1955.

UNO. "General News: Burlesque." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), 1934-1955. ProQuest.

UNO. "Night Clubs-Vaude: Burlesque Bits." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), 1934-1955.

"Urban Renewal on Toledo Agenda." Circleville Herald (Ohio), October 24, 1963. Newspapers.com.

"Urban Renewal Project Takes Shape in ’68." Blade (Toledo), February 2, 2015. http://www.toledoblade.com/memories/2015/02/02/Urban-renewal-project-takes-shape-

in-68.html.

Varnell, Wesley. "Varnell’s Review." Pittsburgh Courier, June 23, 1923. Newspapers.com.

"Vaude-Burlesque: Burlesque Reviews - 42D ST. APOLLO, N. Y." Variety (Archive: 1905- 2000), November 17, 1937. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio-

state.edu/docview/1505783504/9FD691030A384798PQ/1?accountid=9783.

"Vaudeville: Delay Lil Reis’ 2d Trial As Alleged Heist Femcee Gets Psychiatric Care." Variety

(Archive: 1905-2000), January 22, 1964, 76. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville: Drop Charges Vs. Lil over 478G PA Heist." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 13, 1969, 53. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

175

"Vaudeville: La Sothern's Bumps Too Torrid for Newark, N. J." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), February 9, 1944, 47. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1285849015/4A47B511281C40B1PQ/1?accountid=9783.

"Vaudeville: Lil Reis Beats Attempt To Void Her Café License." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), February 21, 1962, 55. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville: Lil Reis’ Celebrity Club, Philly, Pa. License." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000),

October 23, 1963, 54. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville: Lillian Reis’ Arrest in A.C. to Test Whether Actors Are Transients." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 1, 1962, 51-52. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville Men Do Not Agree." New York Times, August 3, 1900. Newspapers.com.

"Vaudeville Notes." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), March 26, 1927, 16. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio-

state.edu/docview/1031829134/52B78EDE452F4765PQ/41?accountid=9783.

"Vaudeville: Philly Cops Raid Lil Reis’ Celebrity Rm.; Beats Rap In A.C. Registration Case." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 15, 1962, 50. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville: Philly Ct. Again Padlocks Lil Reis’ Celebrity Club; City Calls It A Nuisance." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), May 29, 1963, 54. ProQuest Multiple

Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville: Trial Over, Lil Reiss Reopens Philly Club." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), November 8, 1961, 11. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

176

"Vaudeville: Urban Renewal Razing Toledo Burley Site." Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), August 2, 1967, 47. ProQuest Multiple Databases [ProQuest].

"Vaudeville-Burlesque: Mrs. Wilner Fined 1G for Burly SS '38 Tax Default." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), September 28, 1940, 25. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032226182/6C2DEA340FFE4E49PQ/1?accountid=9783.

"Vaudeville-Burlesque: Notes." The Billboard (Archive: 1894-1960), December 11, 1937, 29. http://search.proquest.com.proxy.lib.ohio- state.edu/docview/1032150074/38182130044942DFPQ/13?accountid=9783.

Vickie Welles: Vintage Newspaper Ad for Vickie Appearing at the Strand Theater in Youngstown, Ohio. BurlyQNell: The Janelle Smith Collection, Private. Accessed July 17, 2015. http://burlyqnell.tumblr.com/post/104947913279/vickie-welles-vintage-newspaper- ad-for-vickie.

Wahab, Stéphanie, Lynda M. Baker, Julie M. Smith, Kristy Cooper, and Kari Lerum. "Exotic Dance Research: A Review of the Literature from 1970 to 2008." Sexuality & Culture 15, no. 1 (2010): 56-79. doi:10.1007/s12119-010-9084-8.

Walker, Paul. "Reviews and Previews." Harrisburg Telegraph (Pennsylvania), January 12, 1942. Newspapers.com.

Walton, Lester A. "New Season Will Feature Three Colored Road Shows." New York Age,

August 27, 1914. Newspapers.com.

Walton, Lester A. "Theatrical Comment." New York Age, October 8, 1914. Newspapers.com.

177

Welcome to the Riley's. Directed by Jake Scott. Screenplay by Ken Hixon. Performed by Kristen Stewart and James Gandolfini. Samuel Goldwyn Films, 2010. DVD.

Welshimer, Helen. "Burlesque’s Strippers Graduate to Broadway." Ogden Standard Examiner, February 14, 1937. Newspapers.com.

Western Paper Union. "Star Dust: Stage Screen Radio." Rock Valley Bee (Iowa), October 10, 1941. Newspapers.com.

Winchell, Walter. "On Broadway." Eureka Humboldt Standard (California), February 10, 1959. Newspapers.com.

Winchell, Walter. "Walter Winchell of New York." The Daily Times-News (Burlington, North Carolina), June 4, 1954. http://www.newspapers.com/image/52919690/?terms=.

Woodbury, Mitch. "Mitch Woodbury Reports." Toledo Blade, March 7, 1955. Google News.

"Ye Town-House Forum Lists Highlights of New Season." Long Beach Independent, June 14,

1940.

Zeidman, Irving. The American Burlesque Show. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1967.

Zemeckis, Leslie. Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013.

178

APPENDIX A: American Burlesque Circuits Timeline

1898 Sam Scribner and the Columbian Burlesquers.

1899 Future burlesque booker for the Midwest circuit, Milton Schuster, enters show business as a child.

1902 The Burlesque Managers Association reaches agreement between the Northwestern, Eastern, and Empire (Western) Circuits to combine for the season to “save railroad fares and booking expenses.”

1903 Columbia Amuseument Company organized.

1900 - 1913 Empire Burlesque Circuit (the Western Wheel)

1905 New burlesque circuit headed by Scribner (later to become the Columbia)

1904-1905 Disagreements and competition between Empire and Columbia who had historically agreed to split “territories”

1905 Columbia Amusement Company collects 35th theater.

1905-1916 Organization of the Independent Burlesque Circuit managed under the umbrella of the Columbia.

1909 Columbia Amusement Company incorporates

179

1910 “A new burlesque circuit, starting at Milwaukee and swinging through the South and the West to the Pacific coast, is being planned by a Chicago Syndicate.”

1913 Empire Burlesque Circuit (Western) sells to Columbia Amusement Company (Eastern) or Columbia Wheel (President: J. Herbert Mack, Vice President: Jules Hurtig, Secretary and GM, Samuel A. Scribner, Treasurer: Rud K Hynicka, “Scribner and Herk” according to Allen).

1913 – 1915 Progressive Amuseument Company or Progressive Burlesque Circuit forms to challenge Columbia monopoly. J.D. Barton is president in 1915. Theaters in New York City, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto, Buffalo, Binghamton, Schenectady, Pittsfield, Holyoke, Pittsburgh, Trenton, Philadelphia, Newark, Lynn, Mass, Omaha, Topeka, Louisville, Hartford, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Montreal. (“it is hoped to gain proprieters of houses who were left out of merger as well as managers and those who had musical comedies to sell.” First show at Majestic Theatre in Harrisburg, PA – “Fay Foster and Her 20th Century Burlesquers.” Includes Englewood Theater in Chicago, built and managed by Charles S. Hatch and Edward T. Beatty. Advertises a return to clean, family-friendly “old- time” burlesque. Chicago newspapers refer to it as “elevated burlesque.” In 1914, they gain the

180

American Music Hall in Chicago. In 1914, they have the Mishlee Theatre in Altoona, PA. In 1914, they lose the Victoria in Pittsburgh to Columbia and make a play for the Pitt Theater in Pittsburgh. The Star Theater in Scranton, managed by George Nelson Teets. Included the J. Leubrie Hill show in 1914 – a “colored attraction” that encouraged further companies of African-American performers to be included on circuits and in stock). It seems that the company suspended production in late 1914 but may have continued into 1915 in some capacity. Columbia, “their bitterest foe”

1914 Star Theatre in Cleveland – burlesque dancers organize a union led by Hazel Watson.

1914 Progressive and Columbia are in talks but deal is called off in May.

1914 “New burlesque circuit upon the co-operative basis” (Sam Ross and Jeanette Dupree)

1915 – 1922 American Burlesque Association or American Wheel (transferred from 2nd wheel owned by Columbia, in 1915 included “40 theatres, 34 traveling companies…owned or leased by”, office located in Strand Theatre Building in New York, officers include: “Gus Hill, President; George E. Lothrop, Vice President. Charles Franklin, Secretary; Rud K. Hynicka, Treasurer; Charles E. Barton, General Manager. The incorporators are: George E. Lothrop of Boston, Samuel Levy of Detroit, Charles Waldron of Boston, Rud K.

181

Hynicka of Cincinnati, and Charles K Franklin, Charles M. Barton, and Gus Hill of New York.” Herk is president of American in 1921.

1915 Metropolitan Amuseument Company (formed in New York, included Daly’s Theatre and Union Square Theatre in New York, National in Philadelphia, the Star in Scranton, PA, a Washington, D.C. theatre, and a Wilmington, Delaware theatre.) Is never heard from again.

1916 Independent Burlesque Circuit (formed in New York, included 18 theaters, including People’s Theater in Cincinnati)

1917 Weingarten, “a Chicago magnate,” sues the ABA for $25,000 in damages for “disenfranchisement” of “September Morning Glories”

1919 Milton Schuster retires from burlesque comedy.

1920 ABA bans bare legs.

1921 Two Chicago theaters, the Columbia and the Star and Garter, are bombed. The violence is linked to labor dispute between ABA/Columbia and stagehand and musican unions. Union members would not accept a 25 percent pay cut and were promptly dismissed.

1921 Merger of Columbia and ABA.

1922 ABA halts much of touring, moving to primarily stock theaters.

182

1922-1931 The Mutual Wheel (formerly associated with Columbia) (Scribner and Herk) (William Vail, general manager, Al Singer president until 1923 when I.H. Herk becomes president.) Interesting to note that in 1926, critics note the increasing expense and lavishness of touring productions on this circuit. Main office in Cleveland, Ohio.

1925 Scribner allows “bluer” shows on Columbia Wheel

1927 Columbia and Mutual merge and/or come to agreement to not play cities simultaneously

1928 The Mutual Burlesque Association sends a percentage of box office receipts for matinees on September 27, a $7,680.35 check to the Red Cross for hurricane relief after the Okeechobee hurricane results in more than four thousand deaths.* *The aftermath of this hurricane and its impact on black migrant workers inspired Zora Neale Hurston’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

1931 The “new” Columbia Burlesque Circuit under Herk

1932 The Empire Circuit reappears (with 26 “traveling shows”)

1932 Hirst producing on the Empire Circuit

1932 Herk in charge of the Empire Circuit

1933 National Burlesque Association of America

1933 The Hirst Circuit (Izzy Hirst)

183

1934 Supreme Burlesque Circuit – Minsky – Brooklyn Theatre

1935 – 1937 Independent Burlesque Circuit- Izzy Hirst president

1937 The Independent Burlesque Association – Izzy Hirst

1935 Eastern Burlesque Managers Association is formed.

1939 –1950 Midwest Burlesque Circuit (Schuster Circuit) – 19 cities in 1940 (Embassy in Rochester,

1939 Western Burlesque Circuit (included Canton)

1941 A burlesque circuit with 15 theaters asks patrons to vote for the Queen of Burlesque by ranking performs on a ballot. Ann Corio wins.

1941 Midwest Burlesque Circuit offers contract to winner of burlesque contest. An “applauso-meter” measures the success of contestants.

1942 Empire Circuit

1937 Independent Burlesque Association (I.B.A.) signs “closed-shop agreement” with American Federation of Actors, which forbids the use of the word “burlesque” and requires a clean-up of content in the 27 IBA theaters (the Hirst wheel). IBA seems to move from using the word burlesque, but “Hirst Circuit” or Hirst Wheel continues and includes striptease and “racy” comedy. Wheel run by Izzy Hirst from Philadelphia. By 1938, “burlesque” is

184

back on the Hirst, name included with “firey semi- nude exotic dancing” and “girly offering.”

1938 Frank Bryan producing on the Hirst Circuit

1941 Samuel Scribner dies.

1941 Frank Bryan and Frank Engle re-open Grand in Canton, Ohio.

1942 Milt Schuster is running the Midwest Circuit and also booking for the Empire

1942 Jack Kane managing the Grand (later replaced by The Park).

1942 I.H. Herk convicted of indecency, sentenced to six- months in prison for producing Broadway show, Wine, Women, and Song starring Margie Hart.

1944 Johnny Kane managing the National in Detroit on the Hirst Circuit

1945 I.H. Herk dies.

1945 Johnny Kane managing both the National and the Roxy

1945 Johnny Kane has six theaters in Ohio

1948 Jack Kane buys The Park in Youngstown. Now has 4 theaters

1948 Frank Bryan owns the Casino in Boston.

1948 Isidore Hirst dies.

1950 Ohio Circuit (Kane)

185

1952 Jack Kane leases Gayety in Cincinnati. Now manages theaters in Dayton, Youngstown, Columbus, Canton, and Rochester, NY. Leases Town Hall in Toledo.

1953 Jack Kane passes away in Philadelphia on September 2. At the time of his death, also had theaters in Toledo and Geneva-on-the-Lake.

1953 Frank Bryan co-owns the Old Howard and Casino in Boston. Frank Engle is the manager of the Casino. They are charged with production of lewd performances in conjunction with the closing of the Old Howard and Caisno, after RLR, Irma, etc. are arrested.

1954 Hirst Circuit cuts some theaters from its wheel

1954 Johnny Kane managing the Gayety, Cincinnati. Undergoing treatment for cancer.

1954 Johnny Kane passes away on December 8

1955 Last Billboard mention of Hirst Circuit I can find

1957 Bryan and Engle close Casino Theatre in Pittsburgh citing financial difficulty.

1964 The Bryan and Engle circuit consists of theaters in Cleveland, Dayton, Canton, Youngstown, Toledo, OH, Pittsburgh, Reading, Allentown, PA, St. Louis, MO

1968 The Bryan and Engle circuit consists of theaters in Baltimore, MD, Buffalo, NY, Cleveland, Toledo,

186

Canton, OH, Allentown, PA, NYC, St. Louis, MO, Honolulu, HI

1941-1968 Bryan and Engle circuit

187

APPENDIX B: Rose La Rose Career Timeline

1916 OR 1918 Born – Brooklyn, New York

December 2, 1934 Married J. Harrington Price in New York

February 26, 1935 Supreme Circuit – Republic, New York – “Sweet and Pretty”

September 1935 Gayety Theatre (Jimmie Lake) – appeared in Ann Corio show, “Girls in Blue”

September 15, 1935 Started Hirst Circuit at Gayety in Baltimore in show called “Bagdad to Broadway”

September 22, 1935 Gayety – Washington DC.

September 29, 1935 Howard - Boston

October 6, 1935 Trocadero - Philadelphia

October 13, 1935 Empire - Newark

October 20, 1935 Werba’s - Brooklyn

October 27, 1935 Republic – New York

November 3, 1935 Orpheum – Paterson, NJ

November 10, 1935 Hudson – Union City, NJ

April 1936 Star – Brooklyn

May 28, 1936 Closed at Star, went on four-week vacation to “lake near Detroit” (Billboard)

June 1936 Leaves Star - Brooklyn

July 1936 Republic – New York

August 1, 1936 Minsky’s Republic on 42nd – New York City, New York

188

August 23, 1936 Leon and Eddie’s (night club) – New York City – 4 weeks. While at Leon and Eddie’s, Rose changes her stage name to Connie Raye.

October 12, 1936 Gaiety – New York (owned by Minsky) through end of November 1936

December 13, 1936 Gotham – New York

January 9, 1937 Rose out sick from Gotham – New York

April 26, 1937 Gaiety – New York

1937 Leaves New York for Los Angeles after burlesque ban

December 26, 1937 Follies – Los Angeles, California

April 9, 1938 Files for annulment from marriage to Price who she claims misrepresented his financial situation and was still married to a common law wife in New York state.

October - November 1938 Rialto – Chicago

November 26, 1938 Roxy (owned by George Young at the time) – Cleveland, Ohio

December 30, 1938 Gayety, Cincinnati

January 8, 1939 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

March 21, 1939 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

March 30, 1939 Gayety – Minneapolis, Minnesota

April 1939 Rialto – Chicago

May 13, 1939 Howard – Boston

August 19, 1939 Howard – Boston – “Night Life in Paris”

August 26, 1939 Eltinge – New York

September 1939 Rialto - Chicago

September 15-30, 1939 Hirsch’s Gayety – Minneapolis, Minnesota

189

October 6, 1939 Minsky’s Maryland Theater – Baltimore, Maryland (formerly Keith’s Maryland Theater)

October 13, 1939 Gayety -Minneapolis

December 10, 1939 Gayety – Washington, D.C.

February 11, 1940 Rialto – Chicago, Illinois (film playing is “Marihuana”)

February 17, 1940 Palace – Buffalo, NY

April 28, 1940 Hudson – Union City, NJ

May 6, 1940 Gayety – Washington, D.C.

July 1940 Eltinge – New York

July 8, 1940 606 Club - Chicago

July 17 1940 cafe in the Loop District – Chicago, Illinois

November 3, 1940 Republic – New York City

November 10, 1940 Hudson – Union City, NJ

November 20, 1940 Gayety – Washington, D.C. (Girls, Girls, Ahoy!)

December 13, 1940 Palace – Buffalo, NY

December 1940 Hirst Circuit tour (“with her mother”)

January 8, 1941 Casino – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (suicide of John Kennington)

January 15, 1941 Orpheum – Reading, Pennsylvania (one day engagement)

January 21, 1941 Hirst - Troc – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (“Bouquet”)

February 9, 1941 Old Howard – Boston, Massachusetts

March 1, 1941 Hirst Circuit – Loew-Poli-Lyric Theater – Bridgeport, Connecticut (asked to leave town by police for raunchy performance, completing only four performances – this happened previous season

190

when she had visited Bridgeport and was kicked out after just 2 shows)

March 9, 1941 Gayety – Washington, D.C.

April 1941 Gayety – Baltimore, Maryland

April 12, 1941 Palace – Buffalo – New York

August 1941 Leon and Eddie’s – New York City

September 19, 1941 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

October 3, 1941 Grand – St. Louis, Missouri

November 7, 1941 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio (along with “Beef Trust Girls”)

November 1941 Rumors circulate that Rose La Rose is dating recently divorced Harry Richman

December 5, 1941 National – Detroit

December 12, 1941 Palace – Buffalo, NY

December 22, 1941 Independent Burlesque Circuit - Gayety – Washington, D.C.

1942 (?) Montreal

January 18-23, 1942 Follies, Old Howard, and night club– Boston, Massachusetts

February 21, 1942 Gaiety – Norfolk, Virginia (?)

February 28, 1942 & March 7, 1942 Gaiety - Norfolk, Virginia (extra week holdover, record-breaking box office)

March 20, 1942 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota (another date conflict in Billboard) – reported box office for week: $5, 150

March 21, 1942 Gayety - Cincinnati, Ohio

April 10, 1942 The Grant – Canton, Ohio

May 9, 1942 & May 16, 1942 Gaiety, Norfolk, Virginia

191

June 27, 1942 Palace – Buffalo, New York

September 21, 1942 Cat and Fiddle – Cincinnati, Ohio (Billboard reports “indefinite stay”)

October 8, 1942 Rose is granted divorce from J. Harrington Price after 8 years of marriage, after over a year of contentious news publicity

October 26, 1942 Thief pretending to be a reporter breaks into Rose’s dressing room at the Hudson in Union City and steals a $700 bracelet

December 19, 1942 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

December 31, 1942 Grand – Canton, Ohio

January 8, 1943 Gayety - Milwaukee, Wisconsin

January 15, 1943 Rialto – Chicago

January 22, 1943 Alvin- Minneapolis, Minnesota

January 28, 1943 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota (date conflict in Billboard)

February 6, 1943 Gayety – Cincinnati, Ohio – 2 weeks

February 20, 1943 Cat and Fiddle – Cincinnati, Ohio – 2 weeks

February 26, 1943 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

March 4, 1943 Capitol – Toledo, Ohio

March 20, 1943 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota

March (?) 1943 Midwest Circuit

April 18, 1943 Joins Hirst Circuit – Hudson – Union City, New Jersey

April 30, 1943 Palace – Buffalo

May 7, 1943 Gayety – Cincinnati

May 14, 1943 Victory Room – Fall River, Massachusetts (2 weeks)

192

May 15, 1943 Rose receives positive press for being “the first of a theatrical group to donate blood for the armed service and also to be honored by the Red Cross with the label ‘Blood Bank Ambassador At Large’” (Billboard)

June 12, 1943 Rialto – Chicago, Illinois

(1943?) Columbia – Los Angeles, California

June 21, 1943 Burbank – Los Angeles, California

September 29, 1943 Burbank – Los Angeles, California

October 21, 1943 Florentine Gardens – Hollywood, California (performed with Harry Richman)

February 19, 1944 Popkin and Ringer – the Burbank – Los Angeles, California (Rose La Rose is featured along with several African-American performers in regular performances. She is also exposed to “all-night stage shows…interspersed with movies.”) – billed as “The Torrid Uncover Girl”

July 15, 1944 Burbank – Los Angeles, California

August 3, 1944 Music Box – Hollywood, California (Rose appears in the stage musical sex-farce, Too Many Sarongs for which she receives generally favorable reviews in a badly reviewed play).

1944 or 1945 Meets Franco Ruocco (or Rocco Franco)

September 1945 Marries Rocco Franco, “quits burlesque” (reported by Walter Winchell)

October 7, 1945 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota

1945 Kool’s Cigarette ad

1945-6 Management: Jack Linder (Agency)

1945-1946 Burbank – Los Angeles, California

May 1946 Music Box – Hollywood, California (Lloyd Campbell’s supper club)

193

May 11, 1946 Cat and Fiddle – Cincinnati, Ohio

1946 Queen of Burlesque release

October 9, 1946 Bachelor’s Women opens – Los Angeles, California

October 16, 1946 Bachelor’s Women – Belasco – Los Angeles, California Directed by Robert St. Clair “the sultry story of a bachelor’s five loves”

1947 may have stopped touring and focused on night clubs, suffered from a slipped disc

July 22, 1947 Cat and Fiddle – Cincinnati, Ohio

December 31, 1948 Swimsuit Manufacturers of America publishes list of “Ten Best Undressed Women in America” that includes Rose La Rose

(1948?) Honolul

1948 (?) Gayety – Cincinnati (?)

1948 (?) Fox Burlesk – Indianapolis, Indiana

September 17, 1948 Empress – Milkwaukee, Wisconsin

September 24, 1948 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota

October 1, 1948 Gayety – Cincinnati

October 9, 1948 Palace - Buffalo, New York

October 16, 1948 Gayety -Cincinnati

October 29, 1948 Palace Burlesk – Buffalo, New York

November 21, 1948 Norfolk, Virginia

December 30, 1948 Swimsuit Manufacturers of America announce a list of the 10 “Best Undressed” Women in America, including Rose La Rose, Virginia Mayo, Ester Williams, Jane Russell, and Betty Grable.

January 1949 Hirst Circuit – Hudson – Union City, New Jersey; Washington, Baltimore, Newark (January 14), Cleveland, Boston

194

January 16, 1949 (date conflict) Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio (“American Beauty Parade”) – Rose’s train was coming from New Jersey, delayed in Pittsburgh so she missed her first two scheduled shows. Censored by police and Johnny Kane for wardrobe and songs – would not make changes to her performance.

March 9, 1949 Colonial Inn – Miami, Florida

July 18, 1949 Met for interview with Stuyvesant Van Veen at Minsky’s Carnival 51st Street & 8th Avenue, N.Y. (photo evidence)

October 6, 1949 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota

October 20- November 3, 1949 (approximate)Gayety – Cincinnati, Ohio

November 5, 1949 Gayety – St. Louis, Missouri

1949 Played Lady Chatterly at El Patio Theater in Hollywood.

March 9 & March 16, 1950 Gayety – Cincinnati, Ohio (Morris Zaidins closes the Gayety on March 22 permanently – “There is always a big letdown in business after a LaRose engagement…We just can’t take it, so e’re closing up.” (Billboard)

Summer 1950 “Strawhat circuit” – Lady Chatterly’s Lover

December 16, 1950 Rose sues the World Theater in St. Louis for $50,000 for advertising the 1936 film, Wages of Sin, with her image, claiming she only had a small role and “the theater advertisements made her blush.”

April 1951 City Club – Miami, Florida

Early 1952 appearances with Jack Kane circuit

February 14, 1952 Fox – Indianapolis

February 21, 1952 Grand – St. Louis, Missouri

February 28, 1952 Empress – Milwaukee, Wisconsin

195

March 6, 1952 Alvin – Minneapolis, Minnesota

1952 “White Cargo” tour – “summer barn theaters”

July 15, 1952 White Cargo – Lakeside Theatre - Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey

November 12, 1952 Town Hall – Toledo, Ohio

December 4, 1952 Town Hall – Toledo, Ohio (“Belle of the Gay Nineties”)

1953 Hirst Circuit & Kane Circuit

February 15, 1953 Gayety Theater – Baltimore, Maryland (operated by Bryan and Engel, considered the Midwest circuit)

March 27, 1953 Townhall (formerly Capitol) – Toledo, Ohio

April 3, 1953 Fox – Indianapolis, Indiana

April 10, 1953 Gayety – Cincinnati, Ohio

April 17, 1953 Gayety – Columbus, Ohio

May 15, 1953 Empire – Newark, New Jersey

October 1953 Old Howard – Boston, Massachusetts (arrest/closing of Old Howard)

November 1, 1953 Hudson – Union City, New Jersey

November 27, 1953 Town Hall – Toledo, Ohio

January 1954 Gayety - Columbus, Ohio

February 14, 1954 Hudson – Union City, New Jersey

April 6, 1954 Cincinnati Civic Club – Lecture on “artistic principles”

May 23, 1954 Hudson – Union City, New Jersey

April-May-June 1954 Kane Circuit – 12 week engagement

October 29, 1954 Park – Youngstown, Ohio

January 1, 1955 Grand – St. Louis, Missouri

196

January 28, 1955 Empire – Jersey City (?), New Jersey

May 9, 1955 Rose La Rose “reconciles with Franco Ruocco

May 28, 1955 Hudson – Union City, New Jersey (end of season on combination of Hirst, Kane, and Midwest circuits)

June 14, 1955 Rose La Rose sues Rosa La Roso for using similar stage name.

Week of June 21, 1955 New York Supreme Court Justice Edgar Nathan, Jr. rules that Rosa La Roso must discontinue use of her stage name for its similarity to the stage name, Rose La Rose.

October 7, 1955 Casino – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

November 22, 1956 Folly Theater – Kansas City, Missouri

March 15, 1957 Roxy – Cleveland, Ohio

March 25, 1958 Rex – Spokane, Washington

1958 Rose leases the Town Hall – Toledo, Ohio

May 18, 1964 Rose serves as technical director for local production of Gypsy at the Playhouse In the Park in Toledo

July 24-28, 1967 Race riots spread to Toledo. Curfew imposed. Dr. King’s visit cancelled.

February 18, 1968 Rose La Rose announces plans to relocate from Town Hall to Esquire, including massive remodel of the Esquire.

February 26, 1968 Petition protesting relocation of RLR’s burlesque to Esquire downtown signed by “15 businessmen,” including several women, all who own/work on or near the block of the Esquire.

March 18, 1968 Rose La Rose presents petition with 370 signatures protesting ban. Ban is passed 6-1 but requires three readings before becoming law.

197

March 25, 1968 City Council passes ordinance banning live burlesque in Toledo. Mayor Ensign, still the only nay vote, waives required third reading. Ordinance passes. Rose La Rose closes the Town Hall after receiving notice from “Sgt. Glen Pfeifer, morals squad head”

April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee

April 5-15, 1968 Unrest; curfew imposed for people under 22 years of age, 8 pm – 6 am.

April 8, 1968 Law suit filed by Ell Gee Corp, challenging constitutionality of ban on burlesque.

April 11, 1968 Rose La Rose requests temporary injunction and license to operate either Town Hall or Esquire theater

April 19, 1968 Hearing on injunction scheduled for 1 PM

April 29, 1968 Judge Don J. Young grants temporary injunction to RLR, allowing her to continue operation of burlesque until constitutionality of burlesque ban can be tested.

May 4, 1968 Public auction of Town Hall items

May 7, 1968 City of Toledo files motion for dismissal of lawsuit

June 21, 1968 Esquire Theater opens for afternoon matinee

July 18, 1968 Young overruled motion to dismiss Rose’s suit against City of Toledo

September – November 7, 1968 Curfew imposed after rioting

September 10, 1968 City of Toledo counsel claims U.S. District Court has no jurisdiction in a local ordinance ruling, asks for jury trial.

November 3, 1969 Judge Young rules temporary injunction permanent, includes 15-page opinion.

198

1969 Esquire begins showing adult films in addition to live shows.

October 7, 1971 Esquire stops producing live burlesque “without fanfare”

June 12, 1972 La Rose enters Toledo Hospital “critically ill”

July 8, 1972 La Rose leaves hospital, sold her home, rented apartments for her and her housekeeper Margaret, set up a fund for the care of her dog, Towny

July 27, 1972 Rose La Rose dies of cervical cancer in her apartment on Shoreland Avenue

199