Intl. Notebook

July 26 2024

THONG AND DANCE

The anatomy and the ecstasy.

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.

Vintage Pulp

June 10 2017

DELUXE BERGERE

Paul Derval and the pleasure factory.

Is it pulp? Technically no. But then technically most of what we share isn’t pulp, if you want to be doctrinaire about it. But this cover for Paul Derval’s The Folies Bergère has pin-up style art, so that’s good enough for us. This is from Digit Books, 1956, an English version of a book originally published by Methuen & Co. in France, and is a behind-the-scenes rundown of the famed burlesque theater written by the guy who managed the place from 1918 to 1956. It was under Derval that the Folies achieved arguably its greatest fame. In addition to his story, you also get eight photo pages inside, including the one you see below. If that image looks familiar, it may be because we showed it to you back in 2015, but a much sharper version scanned from a glossy photo. She’s none other than the talented and beautiful Yvonne Ménard, and you can learn a bit about her, and see more of her, at this link.

France, Digit Books, Folies Bergère, Paul Derval, Yvonne Ménard, burlesque, cover art, literature

Femmes Fatales

November 29 2015

LA SIRENE JOSEPHINE

Ménard was a star but Baker was a groundbreaker.

Since we recently featured Josephine Baker’s Folies Bergère successor Yvonne Ménard it seemed only fair to feature la grande Baker herself. Here she is backstage at the Folies in February 1930. She had been in Paris since 1925 and was by this time twenty-eight years old and one of the most famous performers in France, if not all of Europe.

France, Paris, Folies Bergère, Josephine Baker, Yvonne Ménard, burlesque

Femmes Fatales

November 21 2015

FINE FEATHERED FRENCHY

What are you staring at, chérie? Have you never seen a hat before?

French burlesque dancer Yvonne Ménard is all smiles, and why not? That thing she wears between her legs probably tickles. Ménard also may be smiling because when these photos were taken she was about as famous as a dancer could be. She had started as a nude mannequin at La Cigale, then joined the cast of Folies Bergère as a replacement for a departing Josephine Baker after understudying the great American star during the 1949 season. Ménard was twenty when she took the lead role—the photos above were made backstage at the Folies shortly afterward. One of the acts Ménard developed showed her struggling against the lure of opium. She wore only her famous glittering leaf, and battled dark male figures only to be eventually carried by them into a smoking pit.

Ménard’s performances were a bit different from Baker’s—she couldn’t sing as well, and her dancing was a work in progress, but she would eventually master various flips and aerial maneuvers, which she once demonstrated for a photo feature in Life magazine.

She toured the U.S. numerous times, making stops in New York, Miami Beach, and Las Vegas, and also performed in South America. Somewhere in there she made time to appear on the cover of the third issue of Playboy, in February 1954, and writer Georges Tabet said inside the issue, “Yvonne is the crystallization of Paris. She’s got a petit quelque chose—a little something—that you have to be born with. Chevalier, he has it in his smile. Edith Piaf has it in her voice. This one—she has it all over.”

France, Paris, Folies Bergère, La Cigale, Playboy, Yvonne Ménard, Josephine Baker, Georges Tabet, burlesque

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

April 30

1927—First Prints Are Left at Grauman's

Hollywood power couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, who co-founded the movie studio United Artists with Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, become the first celebrities to leave their impressions in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood, located along the stretch where the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame would later be established.

April 29

1945—Hitler Marries Braun

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.

April 29

1967—Ali Is Stripped of His Title

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.

April 28

1947—Heyerdahl Embarks on Kon-Tiki

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.

April 28

1989—Soviets Acknowledge Chernobyl Accident

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.

April 27

1945—Mussolini Is Arrested

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.