MGM Records Presents "THE BEST OF BURLESQUE." Narrated by: Sherry Britton. Top Banana: Tom Poston.
I think this record is probably my favorite out of all of my burlesque records. I wanted to save it for later, but "Burlesque With The Nuts Inside" was skipping, so lucky you, I decided to go ahead and start with this one. The embittered essay from the sleeve, posted below, refers to the 1942 ban on burlesque in New York City, advocated by the Society for the Suppression of Vice and Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
Sherry Britton was a very beautiful and famous stripper, and her intelligence and sense of humor shine through her narration on this record. I have about three or four more installments I will be posting. Be patient - keep reading my blog, suckers!
From the record sleeve:
"The album you are now holding represents all that remains of an art form that was invented in America for Americans. On that bleak day in 1942 when a rumpled New York City politician with a penchant for chasing fire-trucks signed a ukase banning Burlesque, an era of unique entertainment ended. With the banishment of Burlesque from Broadway, this medium was stigmatized in the minds of the masses and, when transplanted across the Hudson River, the dry rot of vulgarity and synthetic sex completed the conspiracy. The new overlords of the runway forgot that the word "Burlesque" means parody or travesty, that originally the burlesque show had satirized and lampooned the topics of the times and contemporary musical theatre, and that Freudian and Kinseyesque overtones had no place in its initial concept. Thus it was that real Burlesque, along with the whooping crane and the passenger pigeon, passed into extinction.
What you are about to hear is a reconstruction of a burly show of the late 'Thirties. You have passed into the purlieus of roccoco architectural indescretion known as "Renaissance RKO" or "Early DeMille." Seated in the orchestra, you are overpowered by a miasma of cigar smoke thick as a prarie fire. Through it, dimly, you see the runway, a bridge of thighs cherished by devotees of dimpled derrieres, for it permitted propinquity to the "ponies" and the seats adjacent to it were tabbed the "bald-headed row." A cross-section of the male species, with a sprinkling of females, surround you. Stevedores, store-clerks, bookkeepers and home-wreckers, all they have in common is a limited entertainment budget and a thirst for adventure. An expectancy falls over the audience as the orchestra, toupees askew, files into the pit. The newspapers, racing-forms, tout-sheets and tattered copies of "Captain Billy's Whiz-Bang" are put down, fresh Bayuk Phillies are ignited, and all settle back in anticipation of an hour's escape from the reality of dull days and empty nights; maybe Burly was banal and tawdry, maybe it was sleazy and tarnished, but to many millions it was the only theatre they could truly call theirs. Sic transit gloria Minsky!" - Jack Vaughan
(1) PROLOGUE: Emmett Rose(2) NARRATOR: Sherry Britton(3) OVERTURE: The BandOPENING:
(4) "Hello, Everybody" and (5) "Autumn Salutation" Nelle's Belles
Labels: burlesque, comedy, glamorous
