The recent neo-burlesque revival lacks the raw, unselfconscious verve of the original incarnation. You can’ t put the genie back in the bottle and much of the acts lack the sheer freedom, innate naughtiness and feral thrill that burlesque once provided.
The remaining burly houses were seeing a new breed of performer stealing the shows: women with gargantuan breasts— who couldn’ t dance. In fact, few of them could even do the two-step but men seemed happy just to see them strut and jiggle. One was Virginia Bell, a petite with a 48-inch bust, who was on the Follies stage at the end of the decade. Veteran comic Billy Hagan described her act this way:“ She crawls out on stage... and tries to get up.”
Satana was born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaido, Japan, the daughter of a famous Japanese silent film actor and exotically beautiful mother— a circus performer— of American Indian and Scots-Irish descent. After World War ii, the family relocated to the USA— but that wasn’ t the only big change in Tura’ s life. Shortly after the move, she developed unusually large breasts and curvy figure for such a young girl. Her whole world changed one sunny afternoon when she was
The recent neo-burlesque revival lacks the raw, unselfconscious verve of the original incarnation. You can’ t put the genie back in the bottle and much of the acts lack the sheer freedom, innate naughtiness and feral thrill that burlesque once provided.
Doris Kotzan— Bambi Jones to her admirers— once shared a bill with one overly endowed girl.“ There were some girls who couldn’ t dance,” Doris points out.“ They just stood there. I saw Busty Russell going through her mail one night. She didn’ t even read the letters, she just tore open the envelopes, looking for the money.” Satan’ s Angel observes:“ The huge boobs? Yeah, there was a market for that: Busty Russell, Chesty Morgan, and those others— they were all freaks. I guess they made more money because a lot of guys like those. When the clubs hired them they were not getting dancers— they were getting a freak show.”
FASTER, PUSSYCAT! KILL! KILL!. Traditional burlesque shows— with a variety performers— were essentially evaporating by the early-sixties, giving way to raunchy“ stripper” shows introduced by vitriolic comic emcees like Lenny Bruce or Jackie Gayle. There were, however, a couple of Hollywood clubs that maintained some class. Harry and Alice Schiller turned their Seville Club on Santa Monica Boulevard into the Pink Pussycat. It was a pink-lined, high-end striptease emporium where the featured dancers were billed as Rat Packer knockoffs: Fran Sinatra, Deena Martin, Samya Davis Jr., Peeler Lawford, Joy Bishop and Toni Curtis. The Schillers also presided over the Pink Pussycat School of Striptease, taught by Sally Marr, Lenny Bruce’ s mother. Joan Collins prepared for her role in Seven Thieves by auditing at the school. one Pussycat feature came with her own stage identity, the exotic, big-busted Tura Satana. Proficient in martial arts, her act involved acrobatics and swordplay; she could do a back bend and spin tassels— one at a time. John Maloney knew her in 1959.“ I started dating dancers when I was about 18 or 19,” he says.“ I dated Tura Satana. She was a fabulous character— huge, really big. I was 19 and she was 29. She was also dating Jim Arness. He came backstage to pick her up one night and he filled up the entire doorway. She was a terrific woman.” just nine years-old. Innocently walking home from school, she was gang raped by five men. According to Satana, her attackers were never prosecuted.( It was rumored that the judge had been paid off.) Satana told how this prompted her to learn the martial arts of aikido and Karate and, over the next 15 years, track down each rapist and exact revenge.“ I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow, get even with all of them,” she said years later.“ They never knew who I was until I told them.”
Dancer April Daye knew Tura from the Midwest and East Coast burlesque circuit.“ Tura was a star,” she stresses.“ Very Asian, very cool, very expensive, very aloof, and very smart. We left notes on the walls of the dressing room as we each came and went. She wiped the floor with the audiences: talented, beautiful, and sexy as a mother.” Billy Wilder spotted her at the Pussycat and found a part for her in Irma LaDouce. Russ Meyer saw her and cast her as one of the leads of Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Bob Hope spoke at the opening of the Music Center downtown, in 1964, and contended,“ LA needs culture and the Pink Pussycat can’ t do it alone.”
Satana’ s life was just as colorful, chaotic and outlandish off stage as it was on. She was married twice. She was once gravely injured but survived when, after making Ted V. Mikels’ The Doll Squad in 1973, she was shot by a former lover. She dated Elvis Presley, whose marriage proposal she reportedly turned down.( Of course, she kept the ring.) She even has an alternative metal band named after her.
THE CURTAIN CLOSES The final knife in the flesh for burlesque were the raucous and drunkenly-seedy strip clubs that began to sprout through Hollywood in the late-60s and 70s. The once pristine, bucolic charm of the area had by this time all but vanished. Smog choked the hills, nondescript buildings lined the boulevards, the
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