perfect body, moondust-white skin and a cult following— even Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote her fan letters. It was said that Hart was the first stripper in New York to routinely work without a G-string. The night before the police raided her room, she had performed an“ indecent performance” witnesses claim; she suggestively took off her top and“ wiggled” at the audience. After Hart was arrested, she was set free with a $ 500 bail. but there were bigger consequences for the Minsky’ s— and the whole Gotham burlesque world: That same year, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, who believed that burlesque(“ incorporated filth”) was just a front for prostitution, closed all the city’ s burly houses. In the blink of an eye, the entire industry fled for the endless sunshine and noir nights of Los Angeles.
THE BURLESQUE QUEEN & THE GOLDEN GIRL Up to the late-1920s, California was seen as a frontier outpost for headliners, stock players, vaudeville acts and companies from the East Coast and Midwest. But as time went on, and with the relocation of the film industry from the East Coast to Hollywood, more and more opportunity could be found in the City of Angels. Burlesque may have gestated and matured on the East Coast but the lure of Hollywood and Southern California’ s unbeatable weather turned LA into a burlesque powerhouse. by the late-1930s, Hollywood had replaced downtown as LA’ s hub. These years marked the final transition from LA as a land of sprawling, dusty foothills and vast orange groves to the new Los Angeles— a sophisticated playground for the world of entertainment.
Nightlife flourished in the new movie capital. Clubs such as the The Trocadero, a French-themed, late night supper club, attracted all manner of showbiz luminaries: Fred Astaire, Tyrone Power, Clark Gable and movie moguls such as Irving Thalberg, Darryl Zanuck, and Sam Goldwyn. Just down the road was The Melody Room, an intimate jazz bar that had a secret den in the back for gangsters like Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen, who would win and lose fortunes nightly playing cards. however, pre-war downtown Los Angeles was now swollen with military personnel from nearby bases— and the new burlesque owners saw a golden opportunity. Theaters sprang up everywhere, with extra shows booked to packed houses. Crime novelist Eddie Bunker( Mr. Blue in Quentin Tarantino’ s Reservoir Dogs) described the 1942 scene in his book Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade:“ I got off a big, red streetcar at the Pacific Electric Terminal on 6th and Main Street in Downtown, Los Angeles. The sidewalks teemed. Uniforms of all the armed services were abundant. There was a long line outside the Burbank, the burlesque theater on Main Street. Two blocks away was Broadway, where the marquees of the movie palaces flashed light in the gray December night.”
Los Angeles burlesque effectively began at the Follies Theater, on South Main Street. It had been called The Majestic Belasco until it moved to Hill Street, in the 1920s. Up-andcoming performers used burlesque as an entry point and as a training ground. Pay was minimal, but the experience could be priceless for a developing comic, dancer, singer or musician. Comics and straight men had to know a repertory of tried-andtrue comic skits. The best could improvise like a jazz musician and add their own spins to develop their stage persona. Burlesque graduated many notable stars, among them Bert Lahr, Eddie Cantor, and, most significantly, Abbott and Costello, one of the greatest comedy teams of all time, who employed a classic burlesque“ straight-man-and-a-comic” format. The“ Who’ s On First” exchange was not only a burlesque milestone but a sketch that the two masters of timing and expression took to radio, movies and, eventually, TV. in July of 1938, a young headline dancer named Betty Rowland made a splash at the Follies. Vivacious and pretty yet sexy and dangerous, like a film noir temptress, she filled the seats nightly, including the Saturday midnight shows, where a ringsider might be lucky enough to glimpse a flash of what the g-string hid. Known as the“ Burlesque Queen,” Rowland had had a vaudeville act with her two sisters, until one died of a heart attack. She and her other sister went into the chorus line in 1932 and progressed to solo acts, both as exotic dancers. Her sister, Rozelle, became known as the“ Golden Girl” and Betty, a whirling dervish, was called the“ Ball of Fire,” as she slowly peeled the clothes off her satin skin for $ 2,000 a week.( The Rowland sisters’ parents nearly died when their daughters became stripteasers but finally came around. Her dad even kept a scrapbook of their careers.) Though the shows were racy and dominated mostly by the sensual Rowland sisters, audiences were not exclusively male. A patron might roar at comics Eddie Collins and Jack“ Beetlepuss” Lewis, only to discern a nearby female wildly cackling. Actress Jean Arthur, the blonde star of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and often called“ the best comedic leading lady in Hollywood,” was just one woman who liked burlesque and could often be found hooting and hollering at midnight showings. When Hollywood made movies in burly settings— Lady of Burlesque, Murder at the Vanities, Ball of Fire— they often sent their principals on scouting trips to the Follies. by all accounts, one of the greatest comics— and drinkers— to come from this era was Joseph Yule.( Yule reportedly bedded more dancers than anyone else at the time.) Born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1892, he was onstage at five years of age in legit theater. From there, he went on to vaudeville, stock companies, film character parts— even the title role in Finian’ s Rainbow. A stage pro who could seemingly do it all, the tomato-nosed Joe didn’ t even have to speak to draw laughs. He would silently shuffle along, stop, squirm uncomfortably, and then sniff the air, adjust the seat of his baggy pants with a pained expression, feel something travel down his pant leg, then look to his feet to silently kick away an invisible turd— audiences roared. but Yule’ s real claim to fame was his son, Joe Yule Jr., aka Mickey Rooney, practically born in a burly theatre; he made his movie debut at six. Rooney would go on to become the biggest box office star in the world and by 1939 marry the most beautiful woman on the planet, Ava Gardner. It was around this time that papa Yule was being routinely identified as“ Mickey
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