Burlesque Bits

New piece is up on Burlesque Bits' substack.

Maybe you've heard the story... Maybe you haven't.

Story goes, in 1902, a performer named Dollie Earle died in a dressing room at the The Trocadero five minutes before curtain.

For 120 years she's supposedly been haunting the place ever since. I accidentally stumbled across what I think is her story.

She asked to be cremated. Her family buried her anyway.

THAT RUMOR AT 10TH AND ARCH (PHILLY)

Nobody took Something Weird Video seriously. The brash covers, the lurid catalog descriptions, the psychedelic logo from a 1967 L*D film. But Mike Vraney saved thousands of performances that "respectable" archives ignored, and built one of the most important collections in the field.

SOMETHING WEIRD SAVED BURLESQUE HISTORY (And Nobody Took It Seriously) How Mike Vraney's garish VHS catalog became the archive that respectable institutions ignored... and burlesque enthusiasts couldn't live without

When Diane Kaye stepped onto the London stage, she didn’t just undress, she dismantled. In a city where stage nudity was only permitted if the performer remained absolutely motionless, a bizarre rule often summed up as, “If you move, it’s rude,” Kaye was a seismic event. She didn’t pose like a statue; she like a dancer. And for a brief, blinding moment, she became the most talked-about Bronxite woman in England.

Diane Kaye and the Strip That Shook Parliament (1938) In 1938, American performer Diane Kaye broke London’s “no-movement” rule for n**e theatre, turning a st******se into a Parliamentary debate.