meant that death could be around the corner. All around was an air of paranoia and dread.
THE FLYING-G TO THE RESCUE As the industry was searching for new talent and a feel-good marketing campaign, a young woman stepped out of the chorus of the Florentine Gardens and quickly became one of the feature performers who would go on to dominate burlesque on stages all over the world. Marie Van Schaak was a Glendale girl whose shape defied the burly norm: Tall, blonde, smallbreasted and sleek, she had an innate athletic sexuality. When Lillian Hunt, the brilliant Follies producer, got hold of her and renamed her Lili St. Cyr, a legend was created. She didn’ t strut around and preen, she didn’ t sing or even look in the audience’ s direction. St. Cyr acted out titillating— and decidedly voyeuristic— scenarios. Her most famous was taking a bath in a see-through tub. If Marilyn Monroe made 1950s sexuality delicious with a wink and a wiggle, Lili made peeping toms of her audiences and kept sexuality brooding. born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Schaak was doing ballet at age 5. It was obvious this girl had real talent and she pursued legitimate dance as a career in chorus and vaudeville productions. Schaak was no instant phenom, though. For a long time, she just blended in with the other dancers. In fact, she allegedly got down on her hands and knees to beg the producers of her first show to let her do a solo act. And with that performance, her routine got a standing ovation and word quickly spread on the circuit that a star was born. The Music Box in San Francisco came calling, with an act called the Duncan Sisters. It was here that she came to a revelation: A dancer’ s salary was only a small fraction of what the featured star’ s salary was. The difference? The featured star was nude. So she came up with what became the most famous act burlesque had ever seen.
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,” and such creative shows would be St. Cyr’ s trademark. Over the ensuing years and in a variety of different venues, many of St. Cyr’ s acts took on mythic proportions. With names like“ The Wolf Woman,”“ Afternoon of a Faun,”“ The Ballet Dancer,”“ In a Persian Harem,”“ The Chinese Virgin,” the“ Suicide”( where she tried to woo a straying lover by revealing her body), and“ Jungle Goddess”( in which she appeared to make love to a parrot), Cyr was determined to break ground and push the genre to places it had never gone. In fact, while performing at Ciro’ s in Hollywood( which shrewdly billed her as the“ Anatomic Bomb”), St. Cyr was taken to court by a customer who considered her act lewd and lascivious. In court, St. Cyr coyly tried to convince the jury that her act was refined and elegant and she was an“ artist.” As St. Cyr pointed out, what she did was“ slip off her dress, try on a hat, slip off her brassiere( there was another underneath), slip into a negligee.” Then, undressing discreetly behind her maid, she would step into a bubble bath, splash around, and emerge, more or less dressed. The jury was transfixed and aptly seduced. St. Cyr was acquitted.
GOODBYE ANGEL FACE Everyone was trying to make sure the show would go on— some by any means possible. Retired bookseller Andy Dowdy began going downtown in 1952 and recalls a bit of chicanery, delivered in lilting, theatrical tones.“ The Burbank had a great candy butcher working the aisles before the show started,” Dowdy recalls.“ He’ d say,‘ Gentlemen, I’ m offering a booklet for sale, intended for men of a certain age. Inside you’ ll find pictures, the nature of which I can’ t disclose because we’ re in a public place. Inside this booklet is a sealed packet. Inside this packet is something so stimulating that I’ m sure you understand why I’ m not at liberty to divulge its contents. So when you buy the booklet, the sealed packet comes with it. I’ ve also taken the liberty of placing a fifty dollar bill inside every tenth booklet.’ I never bought one but I saw one of the booklets and it was just what you’ d see in a book of old army jokes. Then the sealed pictures— you’ d open those up and they were silhouettes, like something left over from the 1930s. And then some guy— I’ m sure he was a plant— would jump up and exclaim that there was a fifty-dollar bill in the booklet he’ d just bought. It was a wonderful piece of rub-a-dub.”
A small, but essential adjunct to the downtown“ Burly Belt” was a nondescript photo studio near the intersection of Second and Broadway. French émigré Raoul Gradvohl labored quietly for decades, turning out saucy publicity portraits of exotic dancers. Gradvohl instinctively knew by a woman’ s body type how to pose and present her most advantageously. He knew to shoot a chubby girl straight on and a lean one from the side. That way he could retouch the outer contour of the thicker woman into something sleeker, and add some inches to the bra of a waif. Bad skin, scars, misshapen noses, and stretch marks— all were made smooth by the darkroom magic of his airbrush wand. But sometimes he was too good.
A Korean War vet named Roger Whittier was smitten with one of the Follies dancers— or more specifically, with Gradvohl’ s photo of her. He wrote love notes and sent flowers, but Loretta Miller failed to return his unwanted attention. Whittier upped the ante with a note that read: It will be a novelty and a thrill for you to dance and smile, knowing there is a gun trained on you. She immediately complained to the Follies manager, who alerted the police. However, Whittier slipped quietly into the deserted theater in the wee hours of December 1, 1954, but not before he bragged to the night editor of Associated Press“ that something newsworthy would soon transpire at the Follies.” Police swarmed the building. After the ensuing gun battle, Whittier lay dead, a police bullet in his gut and a slug from his own. 32 in his head. Scrawled in chalk, near where he fell, was written:“ Goodbye Angel Face.” The corpse clutched two Gradvohl glossies Whittier had purloined from the lobby. When Loretta Miller next took the stage, she wore a tiny black ribbon in her hair“ out of respect” for her fallen admirer.
treatsmagazine. com 47