|
The tendency is to smoke the gas pedal and blaze through the dust with both barrels firing.
But the seasoned Vegas goer knows better. Once sin city slithers into your line of sight, immediately reduce your speed and loosen the slack on your demeanor. Las Vegas is the very incarnation of over amplified. One cannot help but to slam head on into the approaching flame. Avoid this at all costs. Do not immediately aspire to getting drop-dead drunk and loudly interjecting yourself into the lion’s den of gaming tables. Slowly cruise the side streets and avoid the strip. Don’t come to Vegas ... let Vegas come to you.
It was Sunday morning and I was poolside at the Orleans wearing a burgundy dress shirt with sleeves
rolled, black tuxedo slacks with dirty white suspenders, and a dark brown Stetson fedora. Two of the young male life guards had their incredulous stares fixed in my general vicinity. In all likelihood
they assumed that nothing good could come from my presence and that at any given moment I could go mentally sideways and start shootin’ the joint up.
Why was I not wearing trunks and packing a beach towel? This undoubtedly weighed heavy upon their juvenile craniums.
It was overcast and cool yet the general masses insisted upon swimming and pretending to tan under the
stale, lifeless sky. I sipped a Moscow Mule (ginger beer with vodka), sucked at the wet filter of a nicotine stick, and sprawled hopelessly upon one of the yellow lounge chairs reading about Dixie Evans.
I was only hours away from a scheduled interview with the legendary exotic dancer that was once known
as “The Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque.”
Now 78 years of age, Dixie Evans presides over the infamous, largely obscure roadside attraction, Exotic World, a small historical society that celebrates the lost art and profession of Burlesque.
The museum itself was constructed inside a converted goat shed and celebrates the lives and times of
those shimmin’ and shakin’ ladies of easy leisure. I had a mere three hours to get from Las Vegas to Barstow where I would catch the old Route 66 to Helendale where Exotic World resides.
Plenty of time, I thought to myself, as I strolled half stiff over to the poolside bar to order another drink. I can prepare my questions on the road and not a soul will be the wiser. Cheers.
Barreling at a high rate of speed down the smooth asphalt of I-15 east, I was struck by
the savage and cruel realization that I had forgotten to bring the magazine’s business card. I didn’t even have a copy of The Sun Runner with me. Nothing at all to link me to the publication. Then there was the issue with the camera. I had forgotten that, too. The editor had specifically stressed the importance of getting some high resolution photographs we could run with the story. I remembered that I was, however, in the possession of a Polaroid instant photo jobber with two shots left. I wrestled with the idea of using it. Would such a ploy merely give me away as some rank amateur hack trying to bluff his way in for free?
I arrived in Helendale at 4:30 p.m. An hour and half late for my interview. I
was delayed 20 miles outside of Barstow, at the California Agricultural Check Point, where some poor sap with Nebraska plates was detained and violently ripped from his vehicle after having been found to be in possession of a trunk full of over-ripened honeydew melons. I turned right onto Wild Road and proceeded down to where the asphalt ends and the gravel begins and drove on through the wrought iron gate that stood open. Upon the top of the gate was large Christmas light lettering proclaiming “EXOTIC WORLD.” This must be the place. I stopped my car in a dirt, weed-saturated parking lot. A sign in front of me stated: Museum — Honk Horn Three Times Thank You.
Not one to dispense with the formalities, I leaned on the horn and abruptly got out of my car and
headed in the direction the sign pointed. The place was structured like an odd cultesque compound ... trailers scattered about, three separate buildings constituting the main makeup of the property.
I walked up to what appeared to be a patio area where two brusque and unshaven men sat around a plastic patio table with a nine-year-old girl. Flies swarmed overhead.
“Are ya’ hare for da’ tour?”
“Spoke with Dixie on Wednesday. Scheduled an interview for today at three. Running a
trifle bit late. With The Sun Runner magazine. No need to check my credentials gentlemen, my word is as good as the day is long.”
“Well ... Dixie is inside a cookin’.
I’d be given you’s the nickel tour maself but if Dixie done give it, well ya know it’s more like, huh ... twenty dollars.”
“Supposin’ I’ll be a waitin’ for Dixie then ...”, I vociferated. “You gotta toilet in the area, parde?”
“Just yonder...” the hand pointed behind me.
When I got out of the crapper there stood Dixie Evans. Owing to the obvious toll age extracts from all
of us, not nearly the image she cut on stage 50-plus years ago.
Yet, you could sense the spark was there. The alluring glint still shone bewitchingly from her gorgeous eyes. Dixie had been running Exotic World since 1990, when the museum’s original founder, Jenny Lee, “The Bazoom Girl” (who acquired the property when it was nothing but a couple of water pipes sticking out of the ground and a goat shed), was taken by cancer. She had been curator ever since, and one got the distinct feeling that she was in charge here ... and you best not give her any lip, daddy.
The first stop on my personal tour with Dixie found me in the newly redecorated and fully air
conditioned Entertainment Room featuring hundreds of photographs of strippers of the more recent day. A perfect spot for the swinging seminar, off-the-wall sales meeting, or rompus birthday bash.
Housing a stage fully loaded with sound system and lightning, this would also be the room where this
year’s Miss Exotic World Contest displays some of the voluptuous stars from Burlesques glory years. As Dixie put it, “We have to keep the older dames in the A/C.”
From there it was across the yard to the main attraction. Exotic World’s very own Burlesque
Nostalgia Museum. Five rooms of photos and memorabilia.
A veritable smorgasbord of strip and stage. As Dixie put it, “a road back to yesterday.” And just as if I was the wayward hitchhiker picked up, late at night on that lonely, tenebrous two lane highway, I was more then willing to take that ride.
We entered through a scuffed sliding glass door and my own private tour began. When the intro music
failed on the CD player, Dixie launched directly into her steamy, scantily spoken monologue about the meaning of the term “Burlesque.”
“You see, Burlesque is comedy.
Mimicking the real and exaggerating something. If you’re an urchin in the street you have nothing. What’s funny to you? Nothing. But if a coach pulls up with gold wheels and the people are dressed so totally eloquent, and they step out of this elaborate vehicle and fall into a mud hole ... that’s funny to a person standing out there who has no hopes of ever having anything. That’s the core of Burlesque and the core of comedy ... exaggerating.”
Not to mention the power of a showing a little leg.
From there we began with Salome and her seven veils, from the Bible (possibly the first exotic dancer),
and we move on down the walls and through the rooms where hundreds of photos hang immortalizing such famous names as Josephine Baker, Sally Rand (who saved Chicago from financial disaster with two fans—you get to
see the fan dancers’ actual feathers at the tour’s conclusion), Gypsy Rose Lee, Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm (an American icon, she has her own wall dedicated to her and is currently “living on the property in a
trailer in back with gold water faucets and crystal chandlers”), Kitty West, and Cherry Knight. Then there were the lesser known names like Cup Cakes O’Mason, Kitty Kar, ‘The Texas Twister’ Gail Winds, Harlow Angel,
Tabby Cat, and Hope Diamond.
Thrown in the mix with the vintage handmade dresses, extravagant head wear, pasties,
g-strings, boas, cable net brassieres, and can-can garter belts were other oddities such as Jan Mansfield’s ottomon and a tribute wall to Shirley Temple. In 1933, and only three years of age, young miss Temple
made a film called Baby Burlesque and subsequently starred in two others of similar nature. One room of the museum is devoted resolutely to the
comedians. Everyone from Scurvy Miller to Lenny Bruce gets a nod here.
Burlesque encompassed much more then peep show-style stripping. Its popularity in the United States
began in the 1930s, and with the onset of the nation’s Great Depression, the need for affordable entertainment for working class people arose. Not only would you get the ladies, but live music with eight or
nine players in the orchestra pit, and of course the comedy acts, which were a crucial ingredient to the success of the overall show. As Dixie said, “They could laugh, and believe me, during the Thirties there was
nothing to laugh about.”
Dixie confided in me that she had just gotten out of major surgery a couple months ago. While
convalescing in the hospital, some of the girls erected Dixie Evans’ own wall.
Dedicated entirely to her legendary career. Among her photos and personal effects were three framed letters from Marilyn Monroe, and Monroe’s attorney, threatening to sue the stripper for impersonation. Dixie did not start out being billed as the “Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque.” She was originally known as the Southern Comfort girl and strolled around on stage with a “long cigarette holder and dark glasses.” She was given the Monroe tag by a promoter, owing to her strikingly similar looks and the fact that they were both the same age and from Hollywood. One of Dixie’s hand bills, framed on the wall, proclaimed, “She’s the Sensation of the Nation! Hotter Than the Hydrogen Bomb!”
The dignity of Burlesque lies within the essence of the dance.
The fine art of the slow seduction. Sudden titillation in the glimpses. The sheer erotica of the unknown assumption. Its strength stands upon the foundations of theatre, of humor, of storytelling—the fine art of exaggeration. The majority of the striptease performances were accompanied by elaborate stage props and utilized simple story lines to draw the viewer into the sexy arena of one’s own imagination.
As Dixie said, “ ... at midnight the club would go black and mist would fill the stage. Then a voice
would say, ‘In the swamps of Louisiana at midnight the big oyster shell opens up ...’ and out would pop Kitty West! That’s the extent they went to in order to put on an act to entertain you.”
With a smile sharp enough to slit open my heart, Evans told me, “I always thought you’d have to have a
reason to take your clothes off instead of just running up and down the stage naked.” Flashing back to all the strip clubs I’ve crawled in and out of over the last decade—Cheetah’s, Temptations, Cherry’s, The Lusty
Lady, Crazy Horse, and all those all nude, bring-your-own-beer dives on the outskirts of Houston, Texas —one finds little, if any, humor.
It’s insanely loud music, overpriced drinks, a quick bump and grind on the pole, and then they try to shove it all in your face as fast as they possibly can fling off their G-string. For an extra 60 bucks maybe a lap dance. But entertainment? Hardly.
Burlesque dancers were not just strippers but international stars. They toured all over the states and
abroad entertaining everyone from the downtrodden to the troops of WWII.
As my tour of Exotic World wrapped up, Dixie tapped a black & white framed photograph of one of the
girls with her finger. “Behind each picture is not just a stripper. But a lost young girl standing on a lonely platform waiting for the train or on the side of the road waiting for the milk truck to give her a lift
to the next town. Hoping to make enough money to wire back home, ‘cause her mom was a drunk or something. Looking to become a star.”
There’s something that echoes profoundly within the collective unconscious of all our souls in regards
to inspired dreamers and bankrupt underdogs rising up against all odds. Burlesque is a slice of that dream, of that immutable echo, served up from the mythological pie of the greatest of
American centuries.
|
