Vintage Black Burlesque!

1920's NYC Chorus Line source: LASCA SARTORIS blog

 As you may know I a have a love of burlesque. From the broader elements of vaudeville to the glamorous ensembles and clever routines, I am enchanted. In the last few years I have sought out vintage images of gorgeous pin ups and burlesque performers who looked more like me. I have to say, it's hard work finding the history of Black pin ups and burlesque performers! So I wanted to share some of the fab resources and pics I managed to find. 


You will find a fabulous collection of vintage images of women of color on LASCA SARTORIS, a tumblr blog. 

Ada Overton Walker

Josephine Baker Postcard

La “Revue Nègre” in Nelson-Theater,Berlin,1932 by Hans Robertson 

With burlesque once again becoming mainstream entertainment mainstream Black publications like Ebony are chronicling Black history in the genre: 


African-American women have been performing burlesque in its various incarnations since at least the late 19th century. Early performances could best be described as R-rated variety shows, blending satire and politically commentary (think Colbert Report-style humor) with musical numbers and a bit of raciness. In 1890,The Creole Show debuted featuring sisters draped in lavish costumes, showing off their legs, and even cross-dressing in skits that provided smart social commentary on American culture. Stars of the show included Ada Overton Walker, Stella Wiley, Dora Dean and Belle Davis, who would go on to star in Oriental America, a dazzling spectacle mocking the exotification of African-American and Asian women, illustrating the hypocrisy of America’s policies in the Far East, and the enforcement of Jim Crow laws stateside. And yes, they looked gorgeous while doing it. source: http://www.ebony.com/photos/entertainment-culture/vintage-black-burlesque 

40's Star Madeline "Sahji" Jackson. Watch Sahji perform here.

Lottie the Body

WierdWildRealm.com has a great succinct page on burlesque in harlem: 

Black Burlesque was never as much at the fringe of entertainment as it was for white burlesque. It held longer to the Vaudeville traditions with Harlem Renaissance associations. Burlesque showgirls were part of Cab Calloway's troupe & were featured regularly at the Cotton Club & the Savoy Ballroom & the Apollo Theater.

Famous burlesque producer Billy Minsky called what went on in Harlem "progressive burlesque," & it's what he tried to do when he had a star with the break-out potential of Gypsy Rose Lee.  

Jean Idell, specialized in the art of the fan dance 

Toni Elling

Lastly another great resource for researching specific people, topics and events or for just looking back in time is Jet Magazine which is online in its entirety thanks to Google Books. 

Jet issues from 1952 into the 70's make for a fascinating read in my opinion. Jet chronicles pop culture and topical news, events essentially modern history week by week, a fabulous resource. Many a shake dancer or exotic dancer was featured, reported on and/or a covergirl in Jet magazine.

Gloria Howard, aka La Bommie

To keeping these fabulous women and their craft alive and well for years to come. 

xo, 

Vanessa

Big Bold Burlesque!

The Ladies of Brown Girls Burlesque

The lovely Miss Dakota!

This year for me is about body positivity and as always, living my most glamorous life! So, I spent January 2012 celebrating the womanly art of Burlesque. I took a 4 week beginner's course with the Miss Dakota's Burlesque Academy taught by professional dancer Miss Dakota here in Los Angeles. And boy was it fun! What body image issues? Miss Dakota had us laughing while we strutted our individual stuff and found our own style in the fabulous basic moves she taught us. The first week we worked with boas, the second week she introduced gloves, the third week focused on some choreography and the final week we got to work with fans! I am definitely a fan girl. 

I also attended Victory Variety Hour the longest running burlesque show in L.A. VVH celebrated founder and Super Star Penny Star Jr.'s birthday and special guest Margaret Cho performed a FANtastic burlesque number too. You can check out some of the highlights here! If you are in town, VVH is a MUST SEE! 


While watching the fabulous vaudevillian comedy and striptease numbers at Victory Variety Hour I was once again amazed at how CRAZY creative and hilarious of a craft burlesque really is. Humor, costuming, choreography, story, Burlesque has it all! My creativity was sparking all over the place! I can't wait to get some inspired new goodies for you at SweetLeigh! 


Burlesque has not only become a fun stylish spectator sport but I would love to end my year of Body Positive journeying with a performance of my own!  Women of every ethnicity, sexuality, gender, shape and size are part of this empowering tribute to sensuality, fun and fantasy! 


Coming Soon, the women of Vintage Burlesque! For now, a very brief introduction to some of the fabulous modern women of the artform I have been inspired by:

New Orleans treasure, Perle Noire by Leland Bobbe

SF Legend Alotta Boutte, Founder of Harlem Shake Burlesque

Dirty Martini in "Coco A Gogo" editorial in V Magazine 2010

The Lady Ms. Vagina Jenkins photo:Mollie Montana

Brown Girls Burlesque, NYC. 

xo,


Vanessa Leigh

Costume Whore - Mark Bridges, The Artist

I just saw the film The Artist. If you haven't heard, (forgive the corny pun), The Artist is a modern day silent film that is set in the late 20's about (Jean Dujardin as)George Valentin silent film star, whose life is turned upside down by the advent of talkies. Opposite Dujardin is  Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller, the young ingenue who is taking Talking pictures by storm. 

Tears and laughter abound. Not only did I love every minute of the film but being addicted to all things of the art deco era, I could hardly stand the fabulous costuming. Spectacular. Mark Bridges, costume designer for There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, The Fighter, Fur and so many others took The Artist to task.

Inspired by Clara Bow and Joan Crawford Bridges documents the road to success in Bejo's wardrobe. Peppy goes from wearing classic simple drop waist dresses to beaded and chiffon gowns. An insane monkey fur jacket is one of the highlights! Vintage of couse! Working in black and white meant working in contrasts, textures primarily. 

Bridges had to recreate most of the 20's garments to create a wardrobe, as the delicate fabrics and details would hardly hold up to filming. And as we vintage lovers know hard to find. Creating his own patterns from authentic period pieces he made many of the dresses in contemporary fabrics. 

He also reconstructed styled a few modern beaded pieces since the 20's (as always in my opinion) are in vogue. According to The Hollywood Reporter the costume's are in Ms. Bejo's closet at her home in Paris, but will travel to Los Angeles for display at FIDM during award's season! 

If you have not seen it yet, do!

xo, 

Vanessa

P.S. Check out this fabulous blog post on Mark Bridges Costume design for There Will Be Blood by Stitched and Stitched. http://www.stitchedandstitched.com/?p=300

Great Intentions

Come New Year's Day, who doesn't think, New Year, New Me!? I do. Who has made dozens of resolutions and not been able to make it work! I have. But then when it comes down to it, Is it really a new you that you seek or a more fully realized you. I'm finding that that little shift in perspective is motivating me big time! 

As of late I have heard from many different folks online and in life, that resolutions are for the birds. I think it's all about semantics.

The word resolution is a bit of a stressor for me personally, bringing "will power", gym memberships and magazine shaming to mind. My lack of success in acquiring all or any of my resolutions has been indeed not making a plan, not creating a support system and/or going it alone in the journey. 


This year I am setting my intentions for my year, including you and my friends in them and making my plans to see them through. It will be the first year I have made a plan to see my intentions through. "I intend" feels pretty powerful and in making my intentions I am finding that I am already much more thoughtful as to how this year's goals will fit into my life goals and what I will need to do daily to make them happen.


One Intention I have for 2012 encapsulates both the personal and the professional: to celebrate Body Positivity. Which is about feeling good in the body you have. An important aspect in self love and acceptance, and ultimately in celebrating ourselves!

The Plan on doing that professionally is to launch SweetLeigh ecofriendly clothing in the shop this year, available but not limited to "plus" sizes. The plan personally is to be more  mindful, caring and loving towards my own body whose size and shape has changed a lot in the last year. And finally to strengthen my body so that I can physically do anything and everything I want to do. Being Body Positive is the plan for 2012.

Dancers doing the Lindy Hop

              

There are more intentions I have for the New Year, but that one is a pretty big plan to tackle. 


What are your intentions for 2012? Do tell! 


xo,


V

Icon: Goodbye Tura Satana

Saying goodbye to 2011 I thought I'd feature a lesser known Icon that we lost this year, Tura Satana. Every good girl wants to be bad. And Tura Satana represented the best of Bad Girls. 

Born,  Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi on July 10, 1938 in Hokkaido, Japan to a silent movie actor and a circus contortionist. She is perhaps most famous for her 1965 role as Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 

Tura's family moved from Japan to the west side of Chicago after World War II in a very unwelcoming time for someone of Japanese decent. A child of mixed race, her father was Japanese and Filipino, her mother Scottish/Irish and Cheyenne, she was raised in internment camps. She was harrassed for her nationality as well as for being very developed at an extremely early age.

Tura was raped at 9 and as a result her father taught her karate.Sent to reform school after no justice was given to her attackers, she joined a gang and started wearing leather. She said of her rapists, “I made a vow to myself that I would someday, somehow get even with all of them." She did, "they never knew who I was until I told them.” 

At 13 she married a boy in the Navy of 17. The marriage lasted nine months. The same year she traveled to Los Angeles to do modeling. Returning home to Chicago after suffering from makeup poisoning, Tura began dancing in a nightclub in Calumet City, IL as a "Spanish dancer" and not long afterward started her career in burlesque. 

 

 

An accomplished martial artist Tura used acrobatics in her burlesque routines, elaborate asian costumes and a Buddha she gained a lot of attention.  Tura's burlesque aka was Miss Japan Beautiful. She was also known for squabbles among other dancers and ill behaved patrons.

 On April 18, the day the above ad was published, the Toronto Star
reported the “statuesque Eurasian” was set to retire in two weeks.  

Satana as Suzette Wong in Irma Le Duce starting Shirley Maclaine

She was romantically linked to Billy Wilder while filming Irma La Duce in her first American film role in 1963, Joe DiMaggio and Rod Taylor. Before that she had turned down the marriage proposal of Elvis Presley.

When it came to making Faster Pussycat, Tura was as instrumental to the film as her character Varla. Having come up with many of the most famous lines from the film, director Russ Meyer credits Tura referencing that "she and i made the movie." Not only did she do all of her own fighting, but she created much of the visual design, her own makeup, and costuming. And she was also responsible for the iconic image of spinning tires used to kill the main male character in the film.

Something of a visionary, Satana could not have predicted how her extaordinary life would change the face of women in film. The 1973 film Doll Squad starring Satana would inspire Charlies Angels. And evidently Satana's real life inspired Tarantino's Kill Bill, three decades later.

After completing the grindhouse film Doll Squad the tough-as-nails Satana survived a gunshot wound to the stomach by an ex lover. She also survived a broken back after being hit by a speeding car in 1981. Hospitalized and several surgeries later she worked as a nurse and for the police department as well as devoting time to her family before she returned to entertainment in 2002. 

At 72, on February 4th 2011, Tura Satana passed away of heart failure in Reno Nevada. An amazing woman who lived an amazing life, kicking ass and taking names.