Lili St. Cyr (June 3, 1918 – January 29, 1999), was a prominent
American burlesque stripper
Early years
She was born as
Willis Marie Van Schaack in
Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1918. She had a sister, Rosemary Van Schaack Minsky. Her grandparents, the Klarquists, reared her and her two show business sisters, Dardy Orlando and Barbara Moffett.
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 an act called 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.
Career
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).
Montreal
Lili St. Cyr received the title of the most famous woman in
Montreal throughout the late 1940s into the 1950s.
However, Quebec's Catholic clergy condemned her act, declaring that
whenever she dances "the theater is made to stink with the foul odor of
sexual frenzy."
The clergy's outcry was echoed by the Public Morality Committee. St.
Cyr was arrested and charged with behavior that was "immoral, obscene
and indecent." She was acquitted but the public authorities eventually
closed down the Gayety Theatre where she performed.
In the 1980s, St. Cyr wrote a French autobiography, "Ma Vie de
Stripteaseuse." In the book, she declared her appreciation for the
Gayety Theatre and her love for the city of
Montreal.
Hollywood: nightclubs, films and photographs
While performing at Ciro's in Hollywood (billed as the "Anatomic
Bomb"), St. Cyr was taken to court by a customer who considered her act
lewd and lascivious. In court, St. Cyr insisted to the jury that her act was refined and
elegant. As St. Cyr pointed out, what she did was slip off her dress,
try on a hat, slip off her brassiere (there was another underneath),
slip into a négligée. Then, undressing discreetly behind her maid, she
stepped into a bubble bath, splashed around, and emerged, more or less
dressed. After her appearance as a witness, as a newspaper account of
the time put it, "The defense rested, as did everyone else." St. Cyr was acquitted.
While St. Cyr starred in several movies, an acting career never really materialized. In 1955, with the help of
Howard Hughes, St. Cyr landed her first acting job in a major motion picture in the
Son of Sinbad. The film, described by one critic as "a voyeur's delight",
has St. Cyr as a principal member of a Baghdad harem populated with dozens of nubile starlets. The film was condemned by the
Catholic Legion of Decency. St. Cyr also had a role in the movie version of
Norman Mailer's
The Naked and the Dead in 1958.
In this film, St. Cyr plays 'Jersey Lili', a stripper in a Honolulu
night-club and girlfriend of a soldier who boasts to his pals that he
has her picture painted inside his
groundsheet.
Regrettably, heavy edits of St. Cyr's night-club routine by censors
result in some choppy editing in an otherwise finely crafted film. But
St. Cyr's movie career was short lived, and typically she settled for
playing a secondary role as a stripper, or playing herself. Her dancing
is featured prominently in two
Irving Klaw films,
Varietease and
Teaserama.
St. Cyr was also known for her pin-up photography, especially for photos taken by
Bruno Bernard,
known professionally as "Bernard of Hollywood", a premier glamor
photographer of Hollywood's Golden Era. Bernard said that she was his
favorite model and referred to her as his muse.
Retirement
When St. Cyr retired from the stage she began a lingerie business in
which she would retain an interest until her death. Similar to
Frederick's of Hollywood,
the "Undie World of Lili St. Cyr" designs offered costuming for
strippers, and excitement for ordinary women. Her catalogs featured
photos or drawings of her modeling each article, lavishly detailed
descriptions, and hand-selected fabrics. Her marketing for
"Scantie-Panties" advertised them as "perfect for street wear, stage or
photography."
St. Cyr spent her final years in obscurity and in seclusion, tending to her cats.
Death
She died January 29, 1999 in
Los Angeles under her birth name, "Willis Marie VanSchaack". She had borne no children in any of her marriages.
Legacy
After St. Cyr's death, with a renewed interest in burlesque, and especially in
Bettie Page, legions of new fans began rediscovering some of the dancers in
Irving Klaw's photos and movies. During this time,
A&E devoted a special to burlesque in 2001 which included a piece on St. Cyr.
Influences and cultural references
St. Cyr is famously referenced in two different songs that were both
stage and movie musicals. In the song "Zip" from the 1940 musical
Pal Joey by
Richard Rodgers and
Lorenz Hart,
the singer (reporter/would-be stripper Melba Snyder) rhetorically asks
at the climax of the song "Who the hell is Lili St. Cyr?" [I.e., what
has she got that I don't have?]. Meanwhile, in the 1975 musical
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the final line of the song "Don't Dream It" (sung by the character Janet Weiss, as played by
Susan Sarandon) is "God bless Lili St. Cyr!"
In 1981, actress
Cassandra Peterson became famous for her character Elvira, who achieved her trademark cleavage wearing a Lili St. Cyr deep plunge bra.
In 1989, one of St. Cyr's husbands, Ted Jordan, wrote a biography of
Marilyn Monroe entitled
Norma Jean: My Secret Life with Marilyn Monroe (New York:
William Morrow and Company, 1989), in which Jordan claims that St. Cyr and Monroe had a lesbian affair.
The claim is widely disparaged by Monroe biographers. Liza Dawson,
editor for William Morrow, publisher of the Jordan book, makes a more
credible claim in an interview with
Newsday
in 1989. Dawson stated that "Marilyn very much patterned herself on
Lili St. Cyr—her way of dressing, of talking, her whole persona. Norma
Jean was a mousy, brown-haired girl with a high squeaky voice, and it
was from Lili St. Cyr that she learned how to become a sex goddess."
The song, "Lily Sincere" on the 2009
Kristeen Young album,
Music for Strippers, Hookers, and the Odd On-Looker is an homage to Lili St. Cyr.
In 2010,
Elvis Costello's title track of his album
National Ransom mentions "And Millicent St. Cyr" in its introduction.
Filmography
Love Moods (1952)
Bedroom Fantasy (1953)
Striporama (1953)
Varietease (1954)
Teaserama (1955)
Son of Sinbad (1955)
Buxom Beautease (1956)
The Naked and the Dead (1958)
I, Mobster (1958)
Runaway Girl (1962)
