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Above: burlesque dancer Lilly Christine in a promo shot made for an unknown magazine. She often wore prop claws, as befits anyone nicknamed The Cat Lady. This image has no date, but it’s from her heyday, call it 1955-ish. Click her keywords and you can see plenty more of her.
We have a tremendous amount of material on burlesque in Pulp Intl., yet it’s been eight years since we put together a full collection of mid-century burlesque dancers, go-go girls, and strippers. That day has arrived again. Above and below you see some of the better shots we’ve run across of late, featuring the famous and the obscure, the restrained and the explicit, the domestic and the foreign, and the blonde, red, brown, and brunette. Where possible we’ve identified the performer, such as above—that’s Carol Ryva, sometimes known as Carol Riva, Carole von Ryva, Cara Rive, et al, a French dancer who rose to fame during the early 1960s. Other familiar faces you’ll see are Lilly Christine, Maria Tuxedo, Gay Dawn, Yvonne Ménard, and Virginia Bell.
Occasionally, when we post something that contains nudity, we feel, in this age of new puritanism that we should comment about it. We saw a survey recently indicating that a large percentage of Gen Z’ers think nudity in movies is unnecessary in all circumstances, especially sex scenes. And we’re like, really? The wonderful thing that virtually every person does, or which practically everyone wants to do, and which is how nearly all of us came to be here on the planet, is somehow taboo, but the horrible thing that virtually none of us do—kill—must be part of nearly every film, book, and television show? Programming works. If you sell sexual shame unceasingly new generations will absorb it, and believe they’ve come to their views organically.
The reality is that sex and nudity are freeing. Burlesque and erotic dance are valuable because they take our DNA driven sexual desire and package it as an art form, fit for public consumption and contemplation. Moving one’s body rhythmically feels good, and watching those who work so very hard but make look so easy the pushing of their physical limits within the realm of such expression is pleasing to the eye and psyche. That’s why we love erotic dance. Our two previous burlesque collections, “Infinite Jest,” and “Dancers Gotta Dance,” are here and here, and we have some notable smaller burlesque forays here, here, and here. But if you want to kill some time for real, instead click the keyword “burlesque” at bottom, then scroll, scroll, scroll. Make sure you pack a lunch.
Virginia Bell
Noel Toy, and more here.
Lee Sharon.
Dixie Brandy.
A group shot from the legendary Crazy Horse, Paris.
Stacey “Stormy” Laurence at Louisiana State University in 1948.
Maria Tuxedo. More here.
The incomparable Lilly Christine. We also have a set of photos from one of her performances here, and more links from that point.
The Follies Theater at 337 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, 1946.
Tempest Storm.
Gay Dawn.
Yvonne Ménard, and more photos here.
Carol Jane, aka Spider Woman.
Jackie Miller.
Debra Paget, who performed one of the most provocative screen dances ever in 1959’s De indische grabmal.
Blaze Starr. We also saw her recently here.
This is an item you see other places around the internet, but we like it enough to post it anyway. It’s a foldable table tent of Lilly Christine made around 1956 for the dual purpose of promoting one of the world’s most famous burlesque dancers, and serving as a price list for drinks. This was made for Leon Prima’s 500 Club in New Orleans, and a glance at the other side reveals that the price list was short: all drinks—$2.55; repeat drinks $1.55. Does that strike you as pretty steep for 1956? Us too. Plugging that into the old currency converter we get a 2022 price of—holy shit!—$27.28 for that first drink.
Prices like that will certainly keep the riff-raff out. The back of this particular table tent was written on by a guest (see below). It’s dated October 10, 1956, and declares: Lilly is a really beautiful and sensuous creature and an “artist” (quotation marks in original). It also says her harem gave a sensational performance too, and since her harem was male that strikes us as a nicely enlightened comment for the time. We’d think most customers would be dismayed seeing muscular hunks up there with the object of their lust, but not this person.
You’ll also notice the table tent advertises a second act named Carrie Finnell. We bet you’ve never heard of her, but she was an early—if not original—burlesque dancer who was born twenty years before Christine and had carved out an impressive career on the live stage, first as a Ziegfeld Girl, then as a peeler. You see her here checking to make sure her right boob is still where it’s supposed to be.
The legend goes that Finnell was famous for the gimmick of the world longest striptease, which involved removing an article of clothing each week to higher and higher admission fees. It lasted fifty-four weeks. That’s a lot of clothes, but then Finnell was a lot of woman. It’s also a lot to pay, whether you take the entire multi-week journey or show up just for the finale, but since Finnell mainly danced in Cleveland we’re betting the drinks weren’t $2.55. So that’s something, at least.
It’s interesting, don’t you think, that in the 500 Club a lifetime ago you had nights of gender equality (female and male erotic dancers on the same stage) and body equality (Finnell)? It’s amazing the things that were done long before anyone thought to get exercised about them. We’ve cleaned up the table tent a bit from the form in which we found it, but it’s still a bit worn, so we thought we’d give you Lilly—unfolded, unbent, uncreased, and incomparable—below. And of course we have plenty more of her in the website, so feel free to look around. She’ll be back. That’s a promise.
Some people say Christmas. A few say X-mas. Many just say happy holidays. Whatever your preference, here’s burlesque legend Lilly Christine—or if you prefer, Lilly X-ine—looking festive in a candy striped outfit. She’s appeared on our website often, most notably in this series of photos from Carnival magazine we were the first to scan and upload. If you have the time and inclination, click her keywords below. And enjoy this day.
Not long ago we shared some covers from the Milanese publishers Longanesi & Co., and the lure of those for us was the presence of U.S. model Virginia Gordon on two of them. Here’s another Longanesi offering—James Kieran’s translated novel Come Murder Me—with burlesque legend Lilly Christine reclining on an ottoman. Longanesi published this in 1957.
What better way to complement the collection of paperback covers above than with photos of actual dancers doing what they do best—making their strenuous and often unglamorous work look easy and fun? We present assorted burlesque dancers, showgirls, and strippers from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, both onstage and off, photographed in such hot spots as London, Paris, Tokyo, Rome, New Orleans, and of course New York City. Among the performers: La Savona, Lilly Christine, Lynne O’Neill, the gorgeous Misty Ayres, Patti Cross, Tina Marshall, Carol Doda, Nejla Ates, Barbara Köckritz (we know, we know) fully nude, Lili St. Cyr, Wildcat Frenchie, and more. If you like these, check out our previous set of dancers here.
This issue of Laff from this month in 1949 contains a rather amusing story about burlesque queen Lilly Christine being censored from University of Oklahoma campus newspaper Covered Wagon by scandalized administrators. Seems members of the newspaper staff had been in New Orleans the previous year for the Sugar Bowl and had caught Christine in residency at the 500 Club.
When later she toured through Oklahoma City the newspaper staff arranged a trip to see her, and that led to the quite logical idea of working up a story about her—which was when administrators stepped in to nix the plan. Christine saw a chance for free publicity and proceeded to appear at the campus health clinic seeking a chest x-ray. You couldn’t make this stuff up. After a bit of runaround she was refused. Meanwhile newspaper staff were seething over their unceremonious shackling—they saw it as a free speech issue, while the greyhairs saw it as a morals issue.
The editor declared that there would be no more issues of Covered Wagon, but that’s when one of OU’s frats quickly ran off a scab issue of the paper to prove the point that Covered Wagon staffers were replaceable. Leave it to a bunch of entitled Greeks to side with the establishment, right? Checkmated, the editor and several loyalists quit. Meanwhile, Lilly Christine had long since minced on her merry way, no doubt accustomed to leaving a bit of chaos in her wake. See more Christine at this link (and elsewhere in the site if you search).
Often mistaken by casual observers for Lili St. Cyr because of their similar names and looks, Lilly Christine, née Martha Theresa Pompender, was known in burlesque as the Cat Girl. Where Lili St. Cyr projected a regal beauty, Lilly Christine fashioned herself as a feral animal, grimacing and stalking her way through famed routines such as “Harem Heat” and “The Voodoo Dance,” performing to the sound of tribal drums and showing off the bellydancer-like control she had over her six-pack abs. You can get a sense of all that from the photos below, which come from a series shot at Leon Prima’s 500 Club in New Orleans, where Christine enjoyed her greatest fame. Strangely, though she was quite a celebrity, today she has only a modest online presence, and no uploaded video at all. Hopefully, someone out there will one day digitize a film and put it online, because she probably needs to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated. Lilly Christine died in 1965 at age forty-one and was born today, ninety years ago.
During the last days of the Third Reich, as Russia’s Red Army closes in from the east, Adolf Hitler marries his long-time partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker during a brief civil ceremony witnessed by Joseph Goebbels and Martin Bormann. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the next day, and their corpses are burned in the Reich Chancellery garden.
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before due to religious reasons, Muhammad Ali is stripped of his heavyweight boxing title. He is found guilty of a felony in refusing to be drafted for service in Vietnam, but he does not serve prison time, and on June 28, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses his conviction. His stand against the war had made him a hated figure in mainstream America, but in the black community and the rest of the world he had become an icon.
Norwegian ethnographer and adventurer Thor Heyerdahl and his five man crew set out from Peru on a giant balsa wood raft called the Kon-Tiki in order to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. After a 101 day, 4,300 mile (8,000 km) journey, Kon-Tiki smashes into the reef at Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947, thus demonstrating that it is possible for a primitive craft to survive a Pacific crossing.
After two days of rumors and denials the Soviet Union admits there was an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Reactor number four had suffered a meltdown, sending a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Today the abandoned radioactive area surrounding Chernobyl is rife with local wildlife and has been converted into a wildlife sanctuary, one of the largest in Europe.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, his mistress Clara Petacci, and fifteen supporters are arrested by Italian partisans in Dongo, Italy while attempting to escape the region in the wake of the collapse of Mussolini’s fascist government. The next day, Mussolini and his mistress are both executed, along with most of the members of their group. Their bodies are then trucked to Milan where they are hung upside down on meathooks from the roof of a gas station, then spat upon and stoned until they are unrecognizable.
The Geheime Staatspolizei, aka Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. It begins under the administration of SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police, but by 1939 is administered by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security Office, and is a feared entity in every corner of Germany and beyond.
In Spain during the Spanish Civil War, the Basque town of Guernica is bombed by the German Luftwaffe, resulting in widespread destruction and casualties. The Basque government reports 1,654 people killed, while later research suggests far fewer deaths, but regardless, Guernica is viewed as an example of terror bombing and other countries learn that Nazi Germany is committed to that tactic. The bombing also becomes inspiration for Pablo Picasso, resulting in a protest painting that is not only his most famous work, but one the most important pieces of art ever produced.
