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August 02, 2009 12:52 PM PDT
Time to go back to school for a lesson in Burlesque History!
Today's Lesson - Lilly Christine
Columnist Walter Winchell called her "genuine Gee-whiz boy-bait."
When Esquire ran color pin-ups of her, the issue flew off the shelves.
Boys who made the trek to Broadway to see her flail the air with her long peroxide-blonde hair while dancing on the Winter Garden stage in Mike Todd's musical "Michael Todd's Peep Show" came away tight-trousered, bug-eyed, and happily slack-jawed. Critic John Chapman of the New York Daily News reviewed the production, praising Christine and the show's other pretty girls, but deploring Todd's vulgarity. His verdict: an embarrassingly dirty show. To Critic Chapman's annoyance, thick-skinned Producer Todd called up to thank him for a good box-office notice.
The show ran from June 28, 1950 to February 24, 1951, a total of 278 performances. Its popularity made Christine a hotter commodity on the dance circuit.
After "Peep Show," Christine appeared on the Great White Way once more, in 1956's "Strip For Action."
But in between, she danced ... mostly on New Orleans' Bourbon Street, where men in droves delighted in the mechanics of Christine's saucy jiggy in the more intimate setting of Leon Prima's 500 Club. The club was a premier showplace for sexy excess in a town known for all kinds of excess. The town on that twisty jog in the Big Muddy celebrated decadence and frivolity with glamor and class. Nawlins' jazzmen played raunchy and Nawlins' ladies danced raunchy, but it was raunch with impeccable style.
Christine, known in NOLA's burlesque houses and later in girlie mags like DARE and VUE as the "Cat Girl" for the feline-inspired way she purred, stalked, and slunk across a stage, was born Martha Theresa Pompender on December 17, 1923 in windswept Dunkirk, New York. Not much is known about her life in the westernmost town in New York State, or what a girl like her did on a Friday night on the frigid shores of Lake Erie.
Then she started appearing as uncredited eye candy in several movies — "Irish Eyes Are Smiling" (1944), "Two Guys from Milwaukee" (1946), "My Wild Irish Rose" (1947), and "Two Guys from Texas" (1948). She had only seconds of screen time, as a bauble on the arm of a C-list male star in a crowded nightclub scene, or as a comely cigarette girl.
With her film career going nowhere fast, she started dancing in men's clubs full time in 1948. She caught someone's eye, and made her Broadway debut in the 1950 Bert Lahr production "Burlesque."
Physically, she was equal parts Lili St. Cyr (pronounced "sincere") and Marilyn Monroe. Her body was supremely toned, and her skin was a creamy combination of Coppertone and butterscotch.
In print, her pinups seemed to jump off the page from her sheer concupiscence. Hundreds of silver gelatin shots of her by "Pinup King" Irving Klaw fetch high prices today.
On stage, she radiated pure man-devouring danger and unabashed carnality — an irresistible combination to the males of any generation.
Somewhere along the line, she also danced under the name Za Za.
She was a physical specimen in every sense of the word, and her trademark was her talented belly — she had uncommonly fine control of her stomach muscles. A natural-born practitioner of the danse du ventre ("dance of the stomach"). She executed more pneumatic variations on the classic belly dance night after night to showers of applause, leaving roomfuls of men with trembling knees and fogged-over spectacles. After seeing Lilly perform, syndicated columnist Inez Robb wrote: "The audience was awed by this alarmingly talented dancer with the rotating innards. This estimable girl is equipped with revolving viscera, like a four-speed rotisserie!"
As an early fixture on America's 1950s exotica scene — a music and dance subculture that blended blues, jazz, vaudeville, striptease, the quasi-occult, and burlesque — Christine's image was carefully cultivated. Her legend was that she was born in New Orleans, the green-eyed wild child of an athletic Norwegian sailor and his buxom Swedish girlfriend. Men's mag profiles reported that she studied yoga, sun-bathed in the nude, belly-danced for the calesthenic benefits, studied the kama sutra, and adhered to a strict vegetarian diet. And when quizzed about the exotic flourishes she used in her performances, she replied: "Yes, I am a voodoo priestess."
Although she certainly was superficially familiar with Caribbean mysticism and the ways of Middle and Far Eastern erotic dance, she was, in fact, an Italian-Polish divorcee from upstate New York ... albeit one who weighed a taut 125 pounds and measured an eyeball-quaking 37C-22-35!
Lilly usually appeared on stage in a jewel-encrusted bikini bra and panties, black fishnet stockings, and sometimes opera gloves, tossing her long blonde mane back and forth like a whip while sensuously weaving across the floor and shedding some (but never all) of her attire to the hypnotic beat of jungle drums. Other times, she poured herself into a size-too-small polka-dot bikini and made like a runaway milkshake machine. Still other times she made like a serpent as a fez-wearing clarinetist accompianied her.
She never performed fully nude or even topless. She considered herself an interpretive dancer, not a stripper. Fellow terpsichorean Tajmah (Hall?) did not like to be referred to as a stripper either. She preferred the term "exotic dancer," and explained it this way. "You could put on a good show wearing an abbreviated wardrobe, and not take off anything. Lilly Christine was a good example of that."
Her performances would begin with movements initiated by the feet that spread up her legs and thighs, and throughout her sculpted, mannequin-smooth body. The focus of each dance was her pelvis and hips. Highly improvisational, highly erotic and suggestive, each of Christine's routines — no mere gyrations — fluidly integrated grindhouse thrusting with the music’s rhythm, whatever the style, though it generally waxed Afro-Cuban-Brazilian.
In addition to the "Cat Dance," her hallmark cavitations were the "Voodoo Love Potion Dance" and something simply called "Harem Heat," which she performed in diaphanous genie pants and veil. She also performed more playful numbers called "Getting Gertie's Garter" and the "Pillow of Love." Such signature routines are right up there with Tajmah's "The Spider and the Virgin" bit and Blaze Starr's Smoking Couch act.
Crescent City backing musician Sam Butera, who worked with Christine frequently at Prima's 500, recalls her popularity with one anecdote: "One time they had a hurricane threatening, and people were standing outside the club in a line a block long waiting to get in. That’s how popular she was. Hundreds of men waiting in line to see her with a hurricane coming!"
She was still a big draw in Miami night clubs at age 41, when she died of peritonitis on January 9, 1965. It seems somewhat ironic that the condition that killed her — an inflammation of the peritoneum, the membrane which lines part of the abdominal cavity — flared up in that amazing solar plexus. She who made a living from her abdomen, doing the sweet shim-sham a stone's throw from the Old Absinthe House all those years ago.
Here's an article that riffs on her Cat Girl moniker, "What I Like About Men," that appeared in the January 1954 issue of HE - The Magazine For Men:
I’ve always been in love with men — the "tom-cats"!
In my travels I have never met one I didn’t like. There are many who moved me greatly and given me a greater glow either through the stimulus of penetrating minds or the force of their charm and build. I’ve always been drawn to a strong man. My weakness is a man who's all man. I melt to a sexy masculine voice — tall, rangy, wide shoulders, athletic — a little rough, a little demanding, but with enough sensitivity to smooth the edges.
But what a dull existence this would be without the different male types — especially the wolves which I place into two classes.
The "Lynx Cats" are the slick sinister ones and the "Jaguars" are the wholesome ones who make a game of it. The latter are my favorites for they are safe, amusing and show you a good time. The "lynx" I laugh at but stay clear of because their scratching can be serious.
The GIs and college boys are my pet "Bob Cats" for they are refreshing, athletic, interesting, with a sense of humor and a lovable American approach (from their long low whistle — to their sailor on leave attitude and their zest for fun and laughter).
The Bald "Puma" (a catnip crown to adorn their pates!). Some of the sexiest men I’ve met haven’t had a hair on the top of their heads! I've never thought a full head of hair was a man’s most endearing quality anyway.
The "Lion" (an old Tom). Today there exists no such creature as an old lover — if they retain their charm, are active and interested in things (and take their vitamin E!). These are soooooo energetic and irresistible: these darling go-getters.
The "Manx" — the tailless cat (the married man). Doesn’t matter a catling’s purr who you are: college girl, secretary, debutante, or dancer, there’s one thing you look for — a ring on your finger. Once the vows are exchanged — meow! Metamorphosis sets in. Ah me, I’m so sorry for the husbands! They work so hard at marriage being the courteous and considerate husband to make their wives happy. They make it all so serious — this business of marriage! 'Tis sad that this bit of $2.00 paper can carry so much magical power to change a tiger into a dutifully obligated tabby. The wonderment of male infidelity and romance-hungry wives!
Given half a chance our men are wonderfully, poetically romantic. But it's the woman's job to create a romantic atmosphere to encourage him to show that side of his nature: Men respond joyfully to this treatment. Women just don't seem to bother to give their men opportunities and encouragement.
The American men are the most wonderful lovers in the whole world! But most of them are very bad at dating. For one reason he is frequently too extravagant. He seems to think that he must impress a girl on the first date, so he takes her to the most select restaurant, the most costly play, and the most glittering nite club. But perhaps he cannot afford all this and because he has spent more than he should have on that one date ha cannot ask her out again for a long time. (Poor Kitty!) He doesn’t realize that the main purpose of dating is for two people to get to know each other, to find out about each other — and they can do that over a hamburger or on a trip to the beach. The trimmings of a date are not important.
Men, men ... the indispensable catus felis! I love them all!
Track listing:
PEEK-A-BOO - Legendary Pink Dots
THE PROWLER - The Harry Roche Constellation
SCATTY CAT - Bob Bunny
VOODOO DOLL - Glenda & Glen
THE LION - Duke Mitchell
LONELY FLUTE - Bianchi & The Jungle Sextet
NAUGHTY NUMBER NINE - Schoolhouse Rock
SCHOOL FOR UNCLAIMED GIRLS - Radio Spot
HYPNOTIQUE - Martin Denny
CAT NIP - Dave Baby Cortez
??? - Shunsuke Kikuchi
TOPLESS - The Zulus
PINK CARPET - Charles Wilp
ALLO - Marcheselli Produzioni
SORRY SIR - Unknown Artist
THE SCHOOL TEACHER - Radio Spot
REPRODUCTION - Grease 2 (OST)
FRANK SINATRA - Miss Kitten & The Hacker
FEMALE HERCULES - Carlisles
WINCHESTER CATHEDRAL - Nelson Riddle
MIZZY - Vic Mizzy
GYMNASTY - National Lampoon Radio
HELLO LUCILLE, ARE YOU A LESBIAN? - T. Valentine
REVOLUTION - The Brothers Four
THE DEVIL'S DAUGHTER - Dave S. Trio
TOO DARN HOT - Kiss Me, Kate (OST)
EDUCATION - Ruth Wallace
PISSING IN A RIVER - Patti Smith
ODD JOB MAN - Leroy Holmes
VOODOO DREAMS VOODOO - Les Baxter
Peek-A-Boo Revue's Official Site
Peek-A-Boo Revue Myspace
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