Celebrating Sideshow Sketch with a history of Burlesque and Sideshow!

Hello Paper Dolls!

In celebration of the amazing Sideshow Sketch event we are blogging about the history of burlesque and sideshow. Sideshow Sketch will return to Brickhouse Brewery on March 4th and April 15th. Keep checking our Facebook page for updates! The drawings made during these events will be in our May art show so please be sure to make it out for that the first Friday of May!

Burlesque

American burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860's and evolved to feature ribald comedy

(lewd jokes) and female striptease. By the early 20th century, burlesque in America was presented as a populist blend of satire, performance art, music hall and adult entertainment, featuring striptease and broad comedy acts.

Today, Neo-Burlesque has taken many forms, but all have the common trait of honoring one or more of burlesque's previous incarnations, with acts including striptease, expensive costumes, bawdy humor, cabaret, and comedy/variety acts.There are modern burlesque performers and shows all over the world, and annual conventions such as the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival, the New York Burlesque Festival created by burlesque star Angie Pontani and Jen Gapay, and the Miss Exotic World Pageant are held. In 2008, The New York Times noted that burlesque had made a comeback in the city's art performance scene.

1868—Lydia Thompson and her British Blondes come to the United States. The group’s sexy variety show is believed to be the first American stage performance in which both featured performers as well as chorus girls appear in “nude” tights. The combination of underdressed females and satirical comedy makes for a hit. Thompson's first New York season grosses more than $370,000.

1898—Gold is discovered in the Yukon and Alaska. Burlesque dancers make their way to Dawson to work in the saloons. Performers like Diamond Lil, Nellie the Pig, Diamond-Tooth Gertie and Big Annie become legendary saloon girls.

1907—Florenz Ziegfeld, who just happened to be managing a strongman at the 1893 World's Fair, opens

Ziegfeld’s Follies in New York. The revue’s bevy of elaborately yet scantily clad showgirls ensures that the show runs until 1931.

1925—Under New York law, it is permissible for girls in shows staged by Ziegfeld, the Minsky brothers, George White and Earl Carroll to appear topless as long as they remain immobile. In a Minsky show at the National Winter Garden, Madamoiselle Fifi (née Mary Dawson from Pennsylvania) strips to the waist and then moves. The subsequent police raid inspires the book and film The Night They Raided Minsky’s.

1932—Thanks to the rise in “talkie” films, the historic Palace Theater in New York converts to a full-time movie house in November, marking for many the official death of the vaudeville circuit. Its raunchier cousin burlesque lives on—thanks in no small part to its endless parade of risqué striptease dancers.

1935—Fourteen major Broadway theaters are now burlesque houses.

1941—America's entry into World War II sparks another growth in burlesque popularity. Lonely soldiers energize the pinup industry and popularize overseas burlesque houses like London’s storied Windmill Theatre.

1955—Jennie Lee (“The Bazoom Girl”) and eight other dancers form the League of Exotic Dancers in Los

Angeles. According to a Los Angeles Times article, the girls “mildly threatened” to strike over the low minimum pay that striptease dancers received in the L.A. area. The dancers claimed L.A. was the chintziest of all the large cities at $85 a week; whereas other large cities paid a minimum of $125 a week. The nine dancers present at the initial meeting include: Jennie Lee, “Novita,” Betty Rowland, Rusty Lane, Virginia Valentine, Daurene Dare, Denise Dunbar, Peggy Stuart and “Champagne.”

1972—Fueled by the growth in all-nude strip clubs and the sudden mainstream popularity of X-rated films (Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door), burlesque goes into a prolonged hybernation.

1995—Ami Goodheart's “Dutch Weismann’s Follies” in New York and Michelle Carr’s Velvet Hammer Burlesque troupe in Los Angeles spur a revival called “Neo-Burlesque”—combining classic “pasties and a G-string” burly-q,

swing music, rockabilly, punk rock, tattoos, grrl power, lingerie, fetishism and a healthy dose of humor.

Alongside hundreds of other events and shows, this all brings us up to this year. Midnite Martini was crowned Miss Exotic World 2014. Dita Von Teese has also announced her semi-retirement. Now, the next generation are taking to the stage and teasing patrons, particularly across the US.

The Sideshow
1837: Waring, Raymond and Co. becomes the first circus to also advertise as a menagerie and museum of freaks.

1841: P. T. Barnum becomes the proprietor of the American Museum in New York City, at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street. He purchases and exhibits his first attraction: Joice Heth, the suposidly 161-year-old nurse of George Washington. The museum brings the “freak show” to prominence in the American popular amusement industry.

1880: Coney Island starts its own freak show. As of 2013, the act is still ongoing.

1903: Letter of complaint published by the New York World signed by representatives of the Barnum and Bailey Sideshow, addressed to James A. Bailey. It protested the use of the word “Freak” used in the advertisements of the slideshow hall.

1908: “Circus and Museum Freaks, Curiosities of Pathology,” the first scientific publication to condemn freak shows, appears in the journal,Scientific American.

1931 (September 18): Michigan bans the exhibition of “deformed human beings” in the act: 750.347 Deformed human beings; exhibition. Michigan is only one of a small handful of states that have outright banned freak shows, most states in the US still permit them.

1932: Tod Browning’s film Freaks was released. Using real-life “freaks” as many of its principle actors, this film was notable for presenting them in a sympathetic light. Though it failed at the box office and received many vehemently negative reviews, its revival in 1962 has since turned it into a cult classic.

Freak shows were popular attractions during the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries until changes in societal attitudes towards handicapped persons and tightening of local laws prohibiting “exhibition of deformed human beings” led to the decline of the freak show as a form of entertainment. Featuring attractions such as deformed humans and animals, unusual physical performers, “pickled punks” (abnormal fetuses preserved in glass jars), and occasional hoaxes (e.g. “bouncers” – fake pickled punks made from rubber), the freak show has captivated audiences since as early as the 16th century.