56 Fun Facts About Burlesque

The word 'burlesque' comes through French from the Italian word burla, meaning what?

A joke or mockery is what burla means; in English the word described comic parodies of serious works for some two centuries before American theatres attached it to shows built around striptease.

Which poet wrote The Rape of the Lock, the classic 'high burlesque' about a snipped curl?

Alexander Pope based it on a real quarrel: Lord Petre had cut a lock of Arabella Fermor's hair, and the poem's grand epic style for so small a theft was meant to laugh their two families back into friendship.

Which lyricist wrote the words for Gypsy, the 1959 musical about Gypsy Rose Lee and her stage mother?

Stephen Sondheim had hoped to write the music too, but star Ethel Merman did not want an unknown composer, so Jule Styne wrote the score and Sondheim was talked into supplying lyrics only.

Which 1974 Tom Stoppard play puts Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara together in Zurich?

Travesties, Stoppard's 1974 burlesque, throws James Joyce, Lenin and Tristan Tzara together in wartime Zurich by way of The Importance of Being Earnest.

Which composer wrote a Burleske for piano and orchestra at 21, in 1885-86?

Richard Strauss, later famous for Also sprach Zarathustra, saw it go unperformed until 1890, when pianist Eugen d'Albert took it up; Strauss dedicated the revised score to him.

To show off their legs in tights, the actresses of Victorian burlesque often played which kind of part?

Male heroes went to actresses in what were called breeches roles, while men often took the older women's parts; the fashion faded in the 1890s, when London's burlesque houses turned to musical comedy.

How was the dialogue of Victorian burlesque generally written?

In rhyming couplets full of puns, usually awful ones: W. S. Gilbert learned his trade writing such burlesques, starting with a Donizetti send-up subtitled 'the Little Duck and the Great Quack', before he teamed up with Sullivan.

Which two London theatres were the home of Victorian burlesque from the 1860s?

The Gaiety and the Royal Strand made burlesque their speciality for some thirty years; when the fashion passed in the 1890s, the Gaiety switched to musical comedy and made stars of its chorus line instead.

Which troupe led by Lydia Thompson launched the burlesque craze in New York in 1868?

The British Blondes, a company of English actresses, introduced Victorian burlesque to America in 1868; home-grown troupes soon copied them, turning an English parody form into the American burlesque show.

What was Lydia Thompson's first American show, in 1868?

Ixion, her version of F. C. Burnand's 1863 burlesque of the Greek myth, opened at Wood's Museum in New York in September 1868.

In 1870 Lydia Thompson and colleagues did what to Wilbur Storey, owner of the Chicago Times?

Horsewhipped him in the street: after his paper attacked her dancers' virtue, Thompson, her manager and Pauline Markham waylaid Storey on his walk home; all three were arrested and fined for the assault.

Which 1866 musical extravaganza is remembered as an early American 'leg show'?

The Black Crook put a chorus of dancers in flesh-coloured tights into a melodrama at Niblo's Garden; it ran for more than a year, is often called the first American musical, and set off a craze for 'leg shows'.

Which family ran the famously racy burlesque theatre at New York's National Winter Garden?

The Minskys were brothers who started on the Lower East Side; when the Depression emptied Broadway's theatres they took burlesque to 42nd Street in 1931, into a house that is now a children's theatre.

In the early 1900s, America's burlesque circuits competed with which cleaner, family-friendly kind of variety show?

Vaudeville courted families with 'polite' bills, while burlesque grew bawdier: by the mid-1920s striptease had become its main attraction.

Which New York mayor's crackdown from 1937 effectively killed burlesque in the city?

Fiorello La Guardia called the shows a corrupting moral influence; in 1937 his licence commissioner refused to renew the city's burlesque licences, and by the early 1940s the business in New York was dead.

Which journalist coined 'ecdysiast' in 1940 as a grander word for a striptease artist?

H. L. Mencken built the word from ecdysis, the term zoologists use for a snake shedding its skin, and dictionaries have listed it ever since.

What was Gypsy Rose Lee's surname at birth?

Hovick was the family name, echoed in her sister June's stage name Havoc; their mother forged the girls' birth certificates so often, to get round child-labour laws, that neither was sure of her real age.

Which burlesque star made an onstage bubble bath her signature act?

Lili St. Cyr made stepping into an onstage bubble bath her signature; arrested over the act at Ciro's nightclub in Hollywood, she hired celebrity lawyer Jerry Giesler and was acquitted.

What was the title of Gypsy Rose Lee's 1941 mystery novel?

The G-String Murders (1941) is a backstage whodunit set in a burlesque theatre, narrated by a stripper named Gypsy Rose Lee herself; it was filmed in 1943 as Lady of Burlesque.

Which film director was the father of Gypsy Rose Lee's son Erik?

Otto Preminger fathered Erik during a 1944 affair, but Lee swore him to silence and gave the boy her husband's surname; Erik learned who his father was only as an adult.

Which Rodgers and Hart number satirised Gypsy Rose Lee's highbrow musings while stripping?

Zip comes from Pal Joey (1940), where a reporter recalls her interview with the star; by a neat twist, the show's original Broadway cast included Lee's own sister, June.

Sally Rand's most famous fan dance appearances were at which event?

Sally Rand rode a white horse to the 1933 Chicago World's Fair dressed, more or less, as Lady Godiva; the stunt won her a spot on the Midway, where her fan dance became the hit of the fair.

Sally Rand, born Helen Gould Beck, is said to have taken her stage name from what?

A Rand McNally atlas is said to have inspired Cecil B. DeMille when he renamed the young dancer; she later devised a second act, dancing with a giant bubble instead of her fans.

Which of these comedy duos first teamed up on a New York burlesque stage?

Abbott and Costello, both burlesque comics, first worked together at the Eltinge Theatre on 42nd Street in 1935; 'Who's on First?' grew out of the old wordplay sketches they had learned on the circuit.

Which actress played Gypsy Rose Lee opposite Rosalind Russell in the 1962 film Gypsy?

Natalie Wood played Louise, the shy daughter who becomes the star stripper, and sang the part herself, though her songs in West Side Story a year earlier had been dubbed by another singer.

Who won a Tony as a television comic in the 1951 Broadway musical Top Banana?

Phil Silvers, later television's Sergeant Bilko, played Jerry Biffle, a character said to be modelled on Milton Berle; 'top banana' was show-business slang for the lead comedian of a burlesque bill.

Which 1979 Broadway revue starred Mickey Rooney in a tribute to old-time burlesque?

Sugar Babies gave Mickey Rooney his Broadway debut more than fifty years after his first film, opposite MGM dancer Ann Miller, and brought him a Tony nomination.

Which stripteaser assembled the nostalgic 1962 off-Broadway show This Was Burlesque?

Ann Corio, a striptease headliner of the 1930s, put the show together, directed it and performed in it herself, then took it out on the summer-stock circuit for several seasons.

Which young comedian wrote the 1954 burlesque film Dream Follies?

Lenny Bruce wrote it while working the strip clubs of Los Angeles with his wife, the stripper Honey Harlow; a year earlier the couple had acted together in another of his scripts, Dance Hall Racket.

Which Broadway star played Chauncey Miles, a gay burlesque comic in 1930s New York, in the 2013 play The Nance?

Nathan Lane earned a Tony nomination as Chauncey, who plays the 'nance', a camp stock character of burlesque bills, on stage while keeping his own life secret off it.

To which city did the Burlesque Hall of Fame move from Helendale, California, in 2006?

Las Vegas became home to the Burlesque Hall of Fame in 2006; the museum grew out of the costumes and keepsakes that dancer Jennie Lee had gathered from her fellow performers.

Which retired dancer turned the Exotic World farm into a burlesque museum after 1990?

Dixie Evans, famous for her Marilyn Monroe parody act, took over Exotic World when her friend Jennie Lee died in 1990 and started the Miss Exotic World pageant there.

What is Dita Von Teese's birth name?

Born Heather Renée Sweet in Rochester, Michigan, she took 'Dita' from the film actress Dita Parlo; by her account the surname was 'Von Treese', picked from a phone book, until Playboy misspelled it.

Dita Von Teese is best known for an act in which she bathes on stage in a giant what?

A martini glass big enough to splash about in is the centrepiece of her best-known routine, and the prop is so tied to her name that it was put on show at the Burlesque Hall of Fame.

Which musician did Dita Von Teese marry in 2005?

Marilyn Manson and Dita married in late 2005, with the surrealist film director Alejandro Jodorowsky conducting the ceremony; she filed for divorce barely a year later.

Which pop group began as burlesque dancers?

The Pussycat Dolls began in 1995 as choreographer Robin Antin's Los Angeles dance troupe; a record deal later recast it as a pop group, with Nicole Scherzinger brought in to sing lead.

Which Oscar-winning screenwriter did an uncredited rewrite of Burlesque (2010)?

Diablo Cody won her Oscar for Juno; before she revised Steven Antin's script she had worked as a stripper herself and turned that year into a memoir, Candy Girl.

In Burlesque (2010), Christina Aguilera's Ali leaves a waitressing job in which state for Los Angeles?

Iowa is where Ali walks out of a diner after her boss refuses to pay her, taking what he owes from the till; in Los Angeles she gets a foot in the club's door by picking up a tray and waiting tables.

Who plays Tess, the owner of the struggling lounge, in the 2010 film Burlesque?

Cher plays Tess, the club's owner and star turn, in what was her first screen musical since Good Times in 1967, some 43 years earlier.

Who wrote 'You Haven't Seen the Last of Me', the Golden Globe-winning song from the 2010 film Burlesque?

Diane Warren wrote the power ballad, which beat 'Bound to You', a second song from the same film, to the 2011 Golden Globe for Best Original Song and went on to a Grammy nomination.

Which star of The Devil Wears Prada plays Sean in Burlesque (2010)?

Stanley Tucci plays Sean, the stage manager who ushers Ali out when she first asks for an audition; in the Prada film he had played another loyal lieutenant, Nigel.

The club's exterior in Burlesque (2010) is a Hollywood theatre named for which actor?

Ricardo Montalbán, the Fantasy Island star, gave it his name in 2004 after his foundation bought the old Vine Street playhouse to stage Latino theatre; its exterior stands in for the lounge.

Which actress plays Nikki, the hard-drinking lead dancer, in the 2010 film Burlesque?

Kristen Bell plays Nikki, who tries to sabotage Ali by cutting the music the dancers mime to; Ali sings live instead and takes her place as the star of the show.

Charlie Chaplin starred in a 1915 film parody of which opera?

Carmen was the target, by way of Cecil B. DeMille's film of that year; after Chaplin left Essanay, the studio padded his two-reeler to four reels with extra footage, and he sued but could not stop its release.

Which stage director, later of Broadway's first Porgy and Bess, made his film debut with Applause (1929), about a fading burlesque queen?

Rouben Mamoulian was hired from Broadway by Paramount and shot Applause at its Astoria studio in New York rather than in Hollywood; he later went back to stage the original Oklahoma! and Carousel.

Which actor played Louisiana governor Earl Long, lover of stripper Blaze Starr, in the 1989 film Blaze?

Paul Newman played the governor opposite Lolita Davidovich; the film follows Blaze Starr's own memoir of the affair, and the real Starr turns up in it in a cameo.

Michael B. Leavitt paved the way for American burlesque in 1870 with an all-female version of which popular entertainment?

The minstrel troupe was his model: Leavitt's Madame Rentz's Female Minstrels put women in every part, and American burlesque went on to copy the minstrel show's three-part running order.

Which star of the 1943 film Lady of Burlesque also played nightclub singer Sugarpuss O'Shea in Ball of Fire?

Barbara Stanwyck knew that world: she had been a teenage chorus girl in the Ziegfeld Follies, and the stage hit that brought her film offers was a 1927 play called Burlesque.

Dita Von Teese has several times been a guest star at which Paris cabaret, opened by Alain Bernardin in 1951?

Crazy Horse changed hands in 2005, and its new owners began inviting famous guests to perform; Dita Von Teese appeared the following year and has returned several times.

Which Los Angeles troupe founded by Michelle Carr helped pioneer the 1990s neo-burlesque revival?

The Velvet Hammer revived classic striptease in Los Angeles at the same time as, and independently of, Billie Madley's revues in New York and the Shim-Shamettes in New Orleans.

Neo-burlesque shows featuring male performers have been given what name?

Boylesque got a crown of its own in 2006, when the Burlesque Hall of Fame's pageant, created to pick a Miss Exotic World, added a Best Boylesque title; New York's Tigger! was its first winner.

In neo-burlesque, what are the helpers who tidy up between acts called?

Stage kittens do their tidying in full view: they cross the stage between acts to scoop up whatever was shed, and at the Burlesque Hall of Fame's annual weekender volunteers take on the job.

Sally Rand's famous fans were made from the feathers of which bird?

Ostrich plumes made up the pair of huge fans, which she fashioned herself when, out of work in the Depression, she improvised the dance to earn a living.

Stravinsky called which 1911 ballet about a fairground puppet a 'burlesque in four scenes'?

Petrushka ends with its hero cut down by his rival, the Moor; the showman insists he was only straw and cloth, until his ghost appears above the booth and thumbs its nose.

Which symphony contains a third movement titled 'Rondo-Burleske'?

Mahler's Ninth puts its 'Rondo-Burleske' third, a defiant movement that parodies learned old-style counterpoint; Mahler died in 1911 without ever hearing the symphony played.

George L. Cobb's 1918 ragtime parody Russian Rag is based on a prelude by which composer?

Rachmaninoff's Prelude in C-sharp minor supplied the brooding opening chords; the rag was such a hit that Cobb wrote a sequel, The New Russian Rag, five years later.