My Burlesque Inspiration - Paris Chantilly

Sally Rand

Sally Rand was an American icon in the world of entertainment. Her real name was Helen Gould Beck. She became interested in dance at a young age with her inspiration of ballerina Anna Pavlova and left home to join a carnival when she was a teenager. She invariably became a cigarette girl, chorine, café dancer, artist’s model, and circus performer through a series of introductions. She joined a theatre company which was when she started to take acting seriously for the first time. During the 20s she appeared in a number of stage shows which lead to her being in feature films with her name Sally Rand which was given to her by DeMille.

Sally Rand then decided to work on incorporating her talent for dancing back into her career and with the right mixture of enticement, imagination and intricate feathery placement she became an exotic burlesque performer.

Sally Rand ignited male libidos as well as finding herself a steady gig for the rest of her days. She had a long-standing job at the Paramount Club in 1932 which is where the idea of her “fan dance” was created. Her “Lady Godiva” stunt at the Chicargo’s World’s Fair had her arrested on lewd charges but she was eventually released. All the brouhaha increased her notoriety. She later created the “bubble dance” which she did a taunting dance with a huge five foot specially constructed translucent bubble to the delight of male audiences.

Sally Rand continued to appear on stage doing her fan dance past the age of 60. Her final appearance took place in Kansas City in 1978 and she died the following year in August 1979.

I love watching videos of Sally Rand, the way she moves with the fans is exquisite and her body lines are nothing more than captured beauty. She inspired me to learn the art of fan dancing which is a skill I have loved learning and a skill I have mastered to a fine art to the point where I have five sets of my own fans, ostrich, peacock, and pheasant. I love dancing with all of them and creating routines that are alluring and full of imagination giving the audience the art of imagination while I dance. It’s a beautiful skill and one of my most favorite props to dance with.

Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer and vedette, famous for her striptease act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright.

which earned her legendary status as an elegant and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself, encouraged by the audience’s response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance.

Her innovations were an almost casual stripping style compared to the herky-jerky styles of most burlesque strippers, and she bought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became famous for her onstage wit as for her stripping style, and changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee, she became one of the biggest stars. She was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brother’s shows.

One of the famous known quotes from Lee was “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing slowly… very slowly”

In 1937 and 1938 she made five films in Hollywood as Louise Hovick, which was her birth name. She returned to New York City where she had an affair with film producer Michael Todd and co-produced and appeared in his 1942 musical revue, “Star and Garter”

Lee viewed herself as a “high-class” stripper, and she approved of H.L.Mencken’s term “ecdysiant”, which coined as a more “dignified” way of referring to the profession. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoffed in Rodgers and Hart’s “Pal Joey”, a musical in which Havoc had appeared on Broadway opposite Gene Kelly. Lee performed an abbreviated version of her act in the 1943 film “Stage Door Canteen” Her routine starts at about 1 hour and 29 minutes into the film and lasts about 6 minutes. In 1941, Lee authored a mystery thriller called “The G-String Murders”, which was made into the sanitized 1943 film “Lady of Burlesque”. Lee’s second murder mystery, “Mother Finds a Body” was published in 1942.

Lee died of lung cancer in Los Angeles in 1970 aged 59.

One of my favorite films I love to watch is “Gypsy” which is a 1962 musical comedy-drama. It is based on the book of the 1959 stage musical “Gypsy”, which was adapted from Gypsy: A Memoir by Gypsy Rose Lee.

My grandma use to refer to me as a little Gypsy Rose Lee when I was dressing up and I never really understood as a child what she meant. Never would I have known in my later years she would be one of my biggest inspirations in burlesque.

Gypsy also reminds me of Cher who is another one of my biggest inspirations, the way she dresses and looks it is quite remarkable the resemblance and the styling of costumes in Cher’s earlier years when she was Sonny and Cher.