Lili St. Cyr
| Lili St. Cyr | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
Willis Marie Van Schaack June 3, 1918 Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA |
| Died | January 29, 1999 (aged 80) Los Angeles, California, USA |
| Years active | 1937-1965 |
| Spouse(s) | Richard Hubert (?–?) Cordy Milne (1936–?) Paul Valentine (1946–50) Armando Orsini (1950–53) Ted Jordan (1955–59) Joseph Albert Zomar (1959–64) |
Lili St. Cyr (June 3, 1918 – January 29, 1999), was a prominent American burlesque stripteaser.
Lili St. Cyr was born Willis Marie Van Schaack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 3, 1918. Her maternal half-sister, Rosemary Minsky (née Van Schaack; born 1924), was also a burlesque stripteaser; Minsky appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2004. The sisters, and Barbara Moffett, were raised by their grandparents, the Klarquists.
Having taken ballet lessons throughout her youth, she began to dance professionally as a chorus line girl in Hollywood. Unlike other women who have stroke-of-luck stories about being plucked from the chorus line and selected for a feature role, St. Cyr had to beg her manager at the club to let her do a solo act. From her self-choreographed act she eventually landed a bit part at a club called the Music Box in San Francisco, with the Duncan Sisters. It was here that she found a dancer's salary was only a small fraction of what the featured star's salary was. The difference was that the featured star was nude.
From the 1940s and most of the 1950s, St. Cyr with Gypsy Rose Lee and Ann Corio were the most recognized acts in striptease. St. Cyr's stage name is a patronymic of the French aristocracy, which she first used when booked as a nude performer in Las Vegas. Although more obscure toward the end of her life, her name popped-up regularly in 1950s tabloids: stories of her many husbands, brawls over her, and her attempted suicides.
St. Cyr was married six times. Her best-known husbands were the motorcycle speedway rider Cordy Milne, musical-comedy actor and former ballet dancer Paul Valentine, restaurateur Armando Orsini, and actor Ted Jordan.
St. Cyr's reputation in the burlesque and stripping world was that of a quality and high-class performer, unlike others such as Rosa La Rose, who flashed her pubic hair. St. Cyr started her professional career as a chorus line dancer at the Florentine Gardens, in Hollywood. Two years later, her stripping debut was at the Music Box, in an Ivan Fehnova production. The producer had not even seen her perform—her striking looks were what won him over. The act was a disaster. Instead of firing her, Fehnova reconsidered and put together a new act. At the end of the dance, a stagehand would pull a fishing rod attached to St. Cyr's G-string. It would fly into the balcony and the lights would go dim. This famous act was known as "The Flying G", and such creative shows would be St. Cyr's trademark. Over the ensuing years and in a variety of different venues, many of St. Cyr's acts were memorable, with names like "The Wolf Woman", "Afternoon of a Faun", "The Ballet Dancer", "In a Persian Harem", "The Chinese Virgin", as well as "Suicide" (where she tried to woo a straying lover by revealing her body), and "Jungle Goddess" (in which she appeared to make love to a parrot). Props were integral to many of the women's acts. Lili was known not only for her bathtub, but elaborate sets of vanities, mirrors, and hat racks. She variously performed as Cinderella, a matador, a Salome, a bride, a suicide, Cleopatra and Dorina Grey.
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