Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

One of my Advisor Committee tier Patrons, Sarah V., suggested I review this documentary. If you want some input in my content here, become a Patron!

Immodesty Blaize Presents Burlesque Undressed, directed by Alison Grist, 2010.

This is a confection of a burlesque documentary. It’s light and sweet, extremely beautiful, carefully constructed, but ultimately insubstantial, and leaves you hungry for more. There’s some burlesque history, but it’s a lot of short interviews, some really only sound bites, and a great deal of burlesque performance footage.

There are interviews with five Legends, three of whom are no longer with us. You know how I feel about preserving the words and experiences of Legends, so this is a high point. Most of the Legends get to tell a brief origin story, illustrated with photos and footage, and they talk about their careers. (Side note: Scratch escorted one of said Legends to the Showgirl Museum for her interview, so I got a little behind the scenes info at the time.) . 

The film also features half a dozen of the top burlesque performers at the time, discussing their acts and inspirations. However, Immodesty dominates. She talks at length about her experiences in burlesque, often in a glamourous setting or backstage, getting ready for perform or model. More than once she’s interviewed while someone is doing her hair. I wish…

The documentary covers a wide variety of topics — costumes, music, glamour, act creation, what killed burlesque, and more. There are also appearances from a few male experts, mostly British, speaking on art, history, millinery, and showgirl headdresses, but their contributions are relatively brief.

Besides clips from several burlesque acts, including Dirty Martini’s balloon act and Perle Noir’s Josephine Baker tribute, there are a number of full or almost full-length performances, many from The Tease Show. Kalani Kokonuts performs “The Geisha”. Kitten DeVille shimmies and shakes as Marc Almond sings (the filmmakers liked this act so much it appears in the documentary and again during the credits).  Catherine D’Lish bathes in her champagne glass. Michelle L’amour does her Sally Rand tribute. And of course, Immodesty opens and closed the film with, respectively, her giant telephone and her rocking horse acts.

At times it feels like a commercial for Immodesty and The Tease Show, but it’s her project; she can spin it however she likes. And The Tease Show is pretty spectacular, with its high-end acts, gorgeous stage set, and 12-piece live band.

If you’re looking for a documentary about burlesque, either historic or neo-, there are far better ones out there, like Behind the Burly-Q or Exotic World & The Burlesque Revival. If you want to see beautiful burlesque performers doing beautiful things, with a little look backstage and a touch of history, this is a fine watch.

As far as I can tell, Burlesque Undressed is only available on DVD, in PAL format. There’s a short excerpt available here.

(Affiliate links in this post benefit the American Burlesque Collection, a 501(c)(3) non-profit)

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 11 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

This month celebrates the birthday of the most famous stripteaser, Gypsy Rose Lee. In her honor, I watched Lady of Burlesque, the movie based on her book, The G-String Murders.

Lady of Burlesque, United Artists, 1943.

Barbara Stanwyck stars as burlesque headliner, Dixie Daisy (a change from the book, in which the main character was Gypsy Rose Lee). She’s hit the big time, headlining at the Old Opera House. But not all is perfect; there’s a lot of tension backstage between singer Lolita LaVerne and well, everyone else, and Dixie is fending off the affections of comic Biff Brannigan. Things become even more tense as a haughty Russian princess arrives and takes Dixie’s spot in the show. And then there’s a murder… and another…

The plot is fairly faithful to the book, but the details have been sanitized for the audience’s protection. One of the plot points hinges on the broken toilet in the girls’ dressing room being replaced. No one ever actually says “toilet” and when the replacement porcelain is shown, it’s a sink. The producer’s affair with The Princess is also implied rather than stated.

We never get to see any real striptease on stage; Dixie takes off a fur muff, to reveal a smaller one, but her Edith Head-designed costumes stay firmly in place. During her big song, “Take It Off the E String, Play It On the G String”,  she sings “breaking out in bumps” and there’s an obvious associated move, but the camera focuses only on her face. Cut to Biff in the wings reacting to whatever is happening on stage. Later she does a little chest shimmy; apparently that was acceptable, where bumps weren’t. The Princess does have the outer layer of her costume removed in pieces with a whip. Maybe that was all right because she’s not doing the stripping.

The plot change that I liked best was that when Biff races in to save Dixie from the g-string strangler, she informs him that she had set a trap to catch the murderer and her friend Gee Gee Graham (based on Georgia Sothern) was waiting for her signal. Still, once the murderer is caught we go straight for the romance with Dixie and Biff rushing off to get married. Happy ending!

It’s light-weight fun. I wasn’t so interested in the murder mystery. Both of the murder victims are so unlikeable that it’s hard to care about their deaths and there’s little tension around the police accusations.

However, the on-stage bits are quite entertaining. We get some dance numbers and a bit of comedy, which was just a touch racier than I expected — they did the “pickle persuader” bit and a court room scene. And Pinky Lee, an actual burlesque comic, plays one of the comics. Dixie and the comics perform an “impromptu” dance to cover the sounds of LaVerne and her gangster boyfriend having a noisy fight backstage. There’s also an opening number with chorus girls (fulfilling all the tropes — the bored one, the clumsy one, the show-off, &c.) parading around the stage, to the melody provided by a tit singer, although they never call him that.

It’s nice to see burlesque treated positively and even somewhat accurately, if cleaned up, by Hollywood during the Hays Code years.

Available on DVD, Prime Video, and the Internet Archive.

Affiliate links in this post benefit the American Burlesque Collection, a 501(c)(3) non-profit.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my 11 Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

Ages ago I said I was going to review my way through my collection of burlesque DVDs. So far, with a big gap between, I’ve reviewed a movie, an instructional video, and a vintage burlesque film. Time for a documentary!

Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America by Leslie Zemeckis (2010)

You aren’t mistaken; I already reviewed Behind the Burly Q. But that was the book. The documentary came first. In fact, it turned 10 this year!

Zemeckis  traveled the country interviewing burlesque performers and others associated with the art or, in some cases, their descendants, to get as full a picture as possible of American burlesque. Seeing the interview subjects and hearing their stories in their own words has an impact the printed page can not match. Zemeckis herself is invisible, allowing the focus to remain on the history. She may be guiding the interviews off-camera, but she’s not a part of them and there’s no obvious agenda other than collecting the stories, where ever they may lead.

The interviews are interspersed with photographs, newspaper clippings, and film footage. Rather than a chronological history of burlesque, the stories are loosely grouped into sections like “Occupational Hazards”, “Too Many Husbands”, or “Big Money”. Of course many burlesque dancers are featured, some well-known like Dixie Evans and Tempest Storm, some more obscure, but the documentary also tells the stories of comics, singers, variety performers, producers, and more.

The history is further fleshed out by relatives of those no longer with us, such as the son of “tit singer” and straightman Robert Alda (actor Alan Alda), Lou Costello’s daughter, Ann Corio’s husband, Lili St. Cyr’s sister (burlesque dancer Dardy Orlando, who was also married to burlesque producer Harold Minsky). Zemeckis also includes a couple of modern day experts, like David Kruh and Kelly DiNardo.

Since the footage was collected, a number of the interview subjects passed away and in the ten years since, we’ve lost even more. With their words and images captured on film, this documentary is a precious record of our past.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.

Dear Constant Reader,

We have a large collection of Something Weird videos. For those not familiar, these are vintage burlesque films released on DVD. This disc is two shorts, each about 15 minutes, featuring Lili St. Cyr: Love Moods and Bedroom Fantasy.

The first, Love Moods: A Ballet Pantomime (1952) was filmed at Ciro’s, the Sunset Strip nightclub where Lili frequently performed. It was directed by Lilian Hunt, the choreographer and talent agent who discovered Tempest Storm. With the stage covered in elegant furniture, including an elaborate bath tub, you get a great idea of the opulence of Lili’s stage shows.

Lili parades around the stage, occasionally throwing in some dance moves, and pouting for the camera. She directs her longing looks at a photo on her vanity. As she prepares to go out, presumably with the man in the photo, she tries on and removes four glamourous gowns and a negligee, as well as jewelry, furs, and other accessories. The centerpiece of her preparations is her famous bubble bath in her gilded tub.

Her striping is the height of tease. The audience never sees more than the slightest flash of her pasties or g-string. She’s always concealed, behind her dressing screen, her garment, a towel, or her maid’s body.

The film is not in great condition, with a number of small jumps; the worst being when Lili’s second stocking mysteriously appears on her leg while she’s dressing at her vanity.

The second film, A Bedroom Fantasy (1953), is a little more like an excerpt from a burlesque show. It opens with The Folliettes, a mob of chorus girls dancing the cancan with more or less skill. After a minute or two this turns into a stately parade as a singer begins crooning off-stage. Then they become a backdrop for the Duponts, dancers who perform a somewhat comedic duet. The Folliettes reprise their can-can and everyone takes a bow.

Now the curtain opens on the main show. Lili is returning to her boudoir after an evening out. The setting is slightly different from Love Moods — instead of an ornate bath tub, she has a lavish bed on a platform. She slowly and expertly strips out of her evening attire and poses languidly on her chaise before putting on her night attire with the help of her maid (a different maid from the previous short).

She dances and poses and even does some calisthenics (gracefully, of course) before climbing into bed. But then the phone rings and she rapturously listens to a singer “on the phone” as she writhes on the bed and wriggles out of her nightgown. The act ends with her going to sleep.

Of the two, I like Love Moods better. She seemed to be having more fun with it. Also, you get to see more outfits, more teasing and, of course, her signature bubble bath. As it was filmed at Ciro’s, this is probably about as close as we can get to seeing an actually Lili St. Cyr stage performance.

The rest of the disc is filled with trailers for other burlesque films, but I’ll be honest — I haven’t watched them.

The performances by Lili St. Cyr highlight why she was such a popular performer in her day and why her legend lives on today. Few performers today come close to matching her opulence and her grace on stage.

These writings and other creative projects are supported by my Patrons. Thank you so much! To become a Patron, go to my Patreon page. Or you can just tip me if you liked this.