Oh, The Glamourous Life!

Dear Constant Reader,

Another book review from the archives! I originally wrote this review years ago on another platform. I should get back to my current books to review, but this was low-hanging fruit, so to speak.

Always Something Doing: Boston’s Infamous Scollay Square by David Kruh (1999).

Boston has a reputation (rightly so) for being full of Puritans and blue-noses. And, right in the heart of the city was a hotbed of low past-times and pursuits. Always Something Doing (the motto of the Old Howard) is a history of Scollay Square from its very beginnings to the 20th century. Although the square as a location existed before the American Revolution, it didn’t get its famous name until 1838. The Charlestown trolley line that stopped in front of the Scollay’s Building had been using that as the unofficial name of the area.

Although Scollay Square is remembered for seedy entertainment (think of it as the Times Square of Boston), it was a respectable and ritzy area until the mid-19th century when the Brahmans fled for the newly created Back Bay and the Square became more commercial and affordable for the majority of Bostonians, including the influx of Irish immigrants. Besides being a major shopping district, it was full of restaurants and entertainment, including the famed Howard Atheneum. Despite hosting the first American performance of Giselle and other highbrow performances, by the end of the Civil War the Old Howard was presenting more popular entertainment at lower ticket prices.

By the 1920’s Scollay Square was well known as a haven for burlesque. Many of the biggest names, including Ann Corio and Georgia Sothern, played the Old Howard and Sally Keith, tassel twirling queen, was a standard at the Crawford House. Boston had such a great history of burlesque and I’m proud to be a part of that now.

But there’s more than just burlesque to Scollay Square. The book is full of vintage photographs and anecdotes from those who remember the Square well. I was particularly amused by the poor sailor who woke up after a drunken night in the Square to discover a pink elephant tattooed on his butt. Boston has never had another haven for sailors since the Square was demolished.

Scollay Square fell pray to urban renewal when it and the entire West End of Boston were razed in the early 1960’s to make way for the new City Hall and other government buildings. This plan had the side effect of creating the much deplored Combat Zone.

It’s clear the author’s sympathies are with the long-gone lively, sleazy neighborhood of cheap eats, burlesque theatres, tattoo parlors, and photo studios, than with the stark, soulless Government Center that replaced it.

Dear Constant Reader,

I know it’s been forever since I reviewed a book! The Boston BeauTease just had a photoshoot and in preparation, I pulled out this book.

Plain Jane to Pinup Queen: Pinup Modeling Workshop in a Book by Bombshell Betty (2008).

This is one of Bombshell Betty’s famed pinup workshops, recast as a book. She give the readers all the basics of how to have a successful photoshoot, illustrated with unretouched photos from her own shoots.

Part one is all about posing and it’s rightly the bulk of the book. Good posing is key to a successful shoot. She covers how to pose in the most flattering way for your figure and how to use props and clothing items so they enhance your pose, rather than hiding you and taking over. She explains why certain poses work better in the medium of photography and how to think of yourself in 2-D. I found the section on facial expressions to be particularly useful, but I’m almost never happy with my expressions.

In the second part, she covers styling, but it’s just a brief overview. After some basic tips for makeup, she covers makeup styles by decade for 1920’s through 1950’s. The section on hair is similar — basic tips on curling and then iconic styles by decade. There’s a very brief section on costume styling by decade. There’s a URL for further resources, but it doesn’t seem to be currently active. If you’re looking for more in-depth help in creating vintage looks, I’d recommend Retro Makeup and Vintage Hairstyling.

The third part is about photoshoots, with sections on how to work with a photographer, what to expect from a shoot, &c. There’s important information on safety at shoots and the does & don’ts of modeling releases. I like the timeline of preparing for a shoot and (or course) the check list of what to bring.

The book wraps up with an cheat sheet of key points for posing and a URL of further resources which sadly seems to be dead. Sic transit gloria Internet…

Obviously a book isn’t going to replace a workshop where the participants are coached and can see the results of their poses on camera, but it’s still a fine resource. It’s directed at the novice model looking for guidance, but it’s also useful for the more experienced pin-up looking to improve her posing skills. It’s out of print, but I’m sure my clever readers can find a copy out there.

Dear Constant Reader,

Here’s another review from the archives.

My Journey: Burlesque: The Way It Was by Doris Kotzan (2005).

This is the memoir of burlesque dancer Dolores Rozelle, also known as Bambi Brooks, Bambi Jones, and Joi Naymith. These days she’s know as Bambi Sr., to distinguish her from her daughter, Bambi Jr. Her story well documents the declining days of burlesque in the 1950’s & 60’s, as the shows moved from theatres to nightclubs and the performers went from stars to glorified B-girls. I was particularly interested because she was from Massachusetts. Unfortunately, her run at the Crawford House with Sally Keith was over before it began, since she wouldn’t mix (hustle drinks from the customers). She did work the Casino Theatre and saw Winnie Garret flash the audience.

She met a lot of luminaries of the burlesque world, like Blaze Starr, Carrie Finnell, Zorita, Hedy Jo Star, and Candy Barr, but there are mostly just snippets about each one. During the height of Joe Namath’s fame, she hit upon the gimmick of a football act, billing herself as “Joi Naymith”. At one point, she was booked with that act in Suriname, a Dutch colony in South America and it was an utter dud. Her audiences knew nothing about American football. A lesson for us all when drawing from pop culture for our inspiration…

As with all the other autobiographies of burlesque performers that I’ve read [at the time I originally wrote this], it is in desperate need of an editor (probably more than most). Ms. Kotzan does not have a great writing style. Her tone is very casual and more than a little rambling. In fact, it feels more like a transcript of an oral history than a memoir. It’s mostly a random collection of stories and thoughts with little logical order. Each chapter title is a town where she performed, and it might be sort of vaguely chronological (with lots of divergences), but it’s hard to tell and there is no organization other than that. My biggest gripe is the truly atrocious punctuation: randomly sprinkled commas, erratic capitalization, and an egregious and often incorrect use of quotations marks. It made me want to whip out my red pen.

There are some gems that make it worth plowing through. When performing at a club in a dry area of Kansas, she got paid more than she expected, she was told she got a commission on steaks. Normally the dancers had to hustle drinks, not meat! The same club held church services Sunday morning. One of her bookings, in Western Massachusetts, required that her costume be weighed at the end of her act. In Las Vegas (New Mexico, not Nevada), the audience showed their appreciation by flinging silver dollars at her.

Although the author is not a polished writer, she was a burlesque performer and her memories and stories are valuable to our understanding of our history.