Rooney’ s dad.” And he took the association gracefully, even quipping one night,“ It’ s the first time I’ ve ever been asked for my autograph.”
“ THROUGH THESE PORTALS PASS THE WORLD’ S MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRLS” The Burbank Theatre was another, though perennially lesser, burlesque venue. A legitimate theater-turned-vaude house in 1936, it hosted a touring company called The Brown Skin Models. The all-black unit featured young women who posed behind a filmy curtain, nearly nude and backlit— quite a thrill for its time. The show was enlivened by the one-legged tap dance sensation, Peg Leg Bates.( Legend had it that Bates lost a leg as a teenager in a cotton gin accident and subsequently taught himself to tap dance with a wooden peg leg.) And every night, toiling anonymously in the band pit, was the once great pianist, Jelly Roll Morton. Morton was a mean man, but he understood the art of self-promotion— and talking loud. He would drunkenly boast that he“ invented jazz” outright in 1902.
Couch. Admission was one dollar, and on any given night the audience might include Tyrone Power, Betty Grable, Errol Flynn and Frank Sinatra.
BLONDES, BRUNETTES & BULLETS Soon after arriving, however, Carroll faced stiff competition. The Florentine Gardens on Hollywood Boulevard hired the larger-than-life Swedish showbiz wizard, Nils Thor Granlund, to produce lavish shows— and this Swede thought big: his revues had singers, scantily clad girls, chorus lines, comics, bands and accordion players. The venerable New York Times credited the handsome and suave-looking Granlund with creating the modern night club. As publicist for Marcus Loew, the man who founded media giant MGM, Granlund is said to have invented the movie trailer— and filmed the first one— ostensibly launching the careers of both Joan Crawford and Yvonne De Carlo. He partied with literary master F. Scott Fitzgerald and was New York City’ s first true radio disc jockey, introducing jazz music to the world with his broadcasts from the Cotton Club and other New York City venues.
At the end of her dance, a stagehand would pull a fishing rod attached to St. Cyr’ s G-string. It would fly into the balcony and the lights would go dim. This famous act was known as“ The Flying G.”
however, a new trend was developing, spearheaded by visionary impresario Earl Carroll: burlesque in high-class nightclubs. Carroll was a show-man to the bone. As a young man, he had produced and directed numerous Broadway musicals, including 11 editions of Earl Carroll’ s Vanities, Earl Carroll’ s Sketch Book, and Murder at the Vanities, which was also made into a film starring Jack Oakie. Known as“ the troubadour of the nude,” Carroll’ s productions often featured the most lightly clad— and voluptuously beautiful— showgirls on Broadway. Carroll, too, followed the burlesque diaspora and made a new start in Los Angeles. Earl Carroll’ s Vanities, on Sunset Boulevard, was a spectacular theater / restaurant. The stage revolved so that acts transitioned seamlessly, and Carroll, an old school showman, made sure the show kept moving:“ Through These PortALS PASS the WorLD’ s Most BeAUtiFUL GirLS” was the club’ s motto, and it wasn’ t far from the truth. Aside from great comedians, acts and bands, Carroll presented women who conformed to his personal standard of beauty: Tall, wasp-waisted, with big-bosoms and smiles as wide as the prairies that once dominated the very land upon which they were now burlying their way to fame. Purportedly, applicants auditioned for his discerning eye in the nude. After all, this was Los Angeles and at the time Hollywood was perfecting the art of the Casting
A Florentine show might feature the Mills Brothers, Ozzie Nelson’ s orchestra, singer Ethel Shutta and Betty Rowland’ s stripping sister Dian( complete with a fresh Hollywood nose job), along with a whole company. Los Angeles Times columnist Jimmie Fidler reported that Charlie Chaplin— at a ringside table next to Marlene Dietrich— once had to duck a somersaulting acrobatic dancer. But Granlund was not long for Los Angeles and fled back to New York City, where he found himself broke and desperate. burly star Margie Hart rode the war-time wave of burlesque talent that swept into Hollywood movies. Monogram Studios was the most receptive to burly performers from both coasts and Margie starred in their 1942 movie, Lure of the Islands. Neither the film nor her performance was terribly memorable— a critic suggested she“ take up welding instead”— but it presaged her entry onto legit stages. Hart did so well in productions like Wine, Women and Song, Light Up the Sky and Cry Havoc that she was able to purchase a home in the Valley with her husband in 1947, later transitioning into domestic life. if war-time Los Angeles was a city in transit, post-war LA was in transition. As returning GIs looked to settle down with jobs and families, burlesque took on a film noir patina. It was one of the lower rungs of the entertainment industry, full of people on the make. A young woman who had only previously
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