Lady of BurlIves, Label of Burlesque by Pia Santaklaus

I really enjoyed and appreciated tonight’s Cinemateque screening. Thanks for the fine choices.

TAKE OFF (1972) the 10 minute film about a stripper who takes it all off, then literally ‘takes off’ like a rocket. Actually, to be more precise, she spins herself into the form of a space rock... perhaps this unintentionally symbolizes the meteoric rise of the feminine force as her cosmic connections surpass even her sexual powers.

Once everything came off; her clothes, panties, stockings, shoes, hair, legs, face, head, arms, torso and all, the voyeur is left with something universal.

One mustn’t forget that it was only about a decade earlier that the pill contributed to the female’s newfound strength as she could increasingly and more aggressively revisit and play the roles of the ancient Goddess. Here, woman becomes the rock again. Free at last!

THE STRIPPER (1960): This 1 minute long film may have inspired TAKE OFF. Certainly there is an overlap with the idea that the stripper can keep ‘taking off’ well-after all her clothes have been removed, as her various body parts are strewn across the floor in a pile along with her lingerie.

LADY OF BURLESQUE (1943) with Barbara Stanwyck is set in the 1930s, centering around some backstage murders in a burlesque theatre. Stanwyck plays ‘Dixie’ a portrait of the real-life, beautiful and intelligent fan- dancer, actress and writer ‘Gypsy Rose Lee’.

Burlesque was a louche and often sleazy male entertainment that was all the rage in the 1930s. The immoral skin performances had been gradually building up after WWI as many men had been to war leaving many women independent and poor. The women did what they could to survive; many found and enjoyed new freedoms; their ‘selfishness’ and happiness grew away from male controls. As the First World War closed, burlesque boomed.

With the approach of WWII, the burlesque fad began to fade considerably and so perhaps to create alternative income, the popular burlesque dancer of the 30s (Gypsy Rose Lee), wrote (co-wrote?) a murder mystery called ‘The G-String Murders’ (1941) on which LADY OF BURLESQUE is based.

This movie, made during the dark apocalyptic days of WWII, seems to be a kind of nostalgic trip back to a recent time when outrageous characters were spilling over each other in an overpopulated world where each hustled for a piece of the action, struggling to make an existence.

During the 1920s and 1930s, New York was a hotbed for Jewish (and other immigrants) gangsters heavily involved in racketeering, drug dealing, pimping, gambling and loan sharking. It was a period of rampant anti-Semitism in America which saw the rise of American Nazism.

It is said that over 2 million Jews were living in New York in the 1930s, making them the most populous group in the city. The force of such vast numbers created desperately-crowded ethnic neighbourhoods where competitive conditions drove criminal behaviour as individuals and gangs tried to ‘make good’. The vice market boomed during Prohibition as Jew, Irish, Italian and other immigrants benefited from bans on alcohol, gambling, prostitution and narcotics. Gangster culture flourished with pulps, movies and books often painting the gangsters as thugs (sometimes heroes) committed to acts of evil (sometimes righteousness) during crazy times of economic boom and crisis.

One can imagine the innocents, victims and outsiders crying and praying for help and release from the rampant violence. This no doubt led to the rise of the hero-messiah who might be called upon to clean up the wicked streets.

The Jewish experience in America was very mixed; for some, America was the land of golden opportunity, for many it was the opposite. Watching a movie like LADY OF BURLESQUE, one gets some idea of the raw energy, drive and struggle of the era. The crowded conditions were a fact of daily existence whether it was backstage, on the streets or in the home; privacy was a very scarce commodity. It seemed that everyone’s business was known. Gossip thrived. The popular Cole Porter song ‘Don’t Fence Me In’ (originally written in the 1930s) gives a sneak peak at the American human psyche of the times. The importance of having room to move was even acknowledged and appreciated in the stories of many fictional, new, super-beings, including Superman (1932 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), Doc Savage (1933 by Lester Dent) and Gladiator (1930 by Philip Wylie); each of these heroes had their own private retreat to go to when they needed escape from the packed city…even Batman (1939 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane) had a Bat Cave to run off to. Once the heroes entered their ‘Fortress of Solitude’, they could find the privacy they needed in order to discover themselves again.

(Note: Superheroes were first found mostly in pulp magazine and comic books of the 1930s. These characters often had two sides, the lost, mild, downtrodden public persona that tried to assimilate into society, and of course the powerful, private and hidden hero within that none should penetrate).

The language and dialogue in LADY OF BURLESQUE was fast, furious and funny; the in-jokes were sometimes hard to grasp; the sexy stage performances were entertaining, though I imagine 1940s audiences would have found them quite risqué; some of the costumes outrageous; one of the dancers presented a splendid cliché cute dumb blonde (I wonder if Marilyn Monroe had seen this performance when she later created her own blonde persona). Good entertainment.

Jimmy Vargas gave an extremely theatrical and appropriate introduction to the movie. He is a great talker; perhaps one of the most fascinating and enthusiastic people I’ve met in years. He made an immediate impression upon me. Jimmy’s voice, words, poise, dress and name ooze by-gone-American energy. His specific interests (1920s-1950s?) importantly cover a time and place that is gradually and sadly being forgotten and yet whilst conversing with him, I also discovered a very idiosyncratic thinker with some brave ideas, some of which I myself have often pondered. I see him carrying on traditions from a grittier time. He’d make a welcome spokesman and role-model for those seeking a glimpse into something revived and different.

My knowledge of that historical period has been mostly-undernourished thus-far, but my recent studies have coincidentally led me in that direction and pricked my attention to various details of that period.

I imagine Jimmy Vargas is an authority on many aspects of that era. I’m looking forward to checking out his website and learning a thing or two.

Cheers

Pia Santaklaus