This shot shows Ann Corio sitting on a pile of fox furs—black fox furs with their distinct white tips, to be exact—a popular animal in the mid-century fur industry. Corio was popular in a different industry. As a burlesque performer, she launched her career in 1925 at the age of sixteen (we know, we know), and later, at Minsky’s Burlesque in New York City she earned, at her height, as much as $1,000 a week, according to legend. Depending on the exact year (Minsky’s was shut down in 1939 by New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia, so we’re thinking 1935) that would be the equivalent of $22,000 today.
Corio fled to Los Angeles and, like other top dancers, made the leap into cinema, appearing in seven movies, among them Swamp Woman, Call of the Jungle, and The Sultan’s Daughter. Later, she leveraged her popularity to release the record you see here, How To Strip for Your Husband, which she recorded with Sonny Lester and His Orchestra and which appeared in 1962, then again in the 1970s. She put out a couple of other albums, but we liked the art on this one best.
Also in 1962 she produced, directed, and danced in the Broadway show This Was Burlesque, which must have represented something of a triumphant return to the city she’d had to leave years earlier. As her long career continued, she eventually even appeared on Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show, and later earned her way into the Exotic World Burlesque Museum’s celebrated Hall of Fame. The foxtail shot dates from around 1938.
