Lili St. Cyr

St. Cyr was born Marie Frances Van Schaack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 3, 1917, the daughter of Idella Marian Van Shaack (née Peeza) and Edward Van Shaack, Idella's first husband. She had two half-siblings, a sister and a brother, from her mother's second marriage, and two half-sisters, Idella Ruth and Rosemary, from the third, to John Blackadder. Idella Ruth, born in 1924, had some minor roles in films under the name Barbara Moffett before marrying Louis Marx, a millionaire toy manufacturer. Rosemary, born in 1925 and also a burlesque dancer and stripper (under the stage name Dardy Orlando), married Harold Minsky. In 2004, Rosemary appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Having taken ballet lessons throughout her youth, she began to dance professionally as a chorus line member at the Florentine Gardens in Hollywood. It was here that she found a dancer's salary was only a small fraction of the featured star's salary: the difference was that the featured star was nude. == Burlesque career ==

In the 1940s and most of the 1950s, St. Cyr, Gypsy Rose Lee and Ann Corio were the most recognized acts in striptease. St. Cyr's stage name is a patronymic of the child-saint Saint Quiricus (Cyriacus), which she first used when booked as a nude performer in Las Vegas. St. Cyr's reputation in the burlesque and stripping world was that of a quality and high-class performer, unlike others such as Rose La Rose, who flashed her pubic hair. Two years after she started her career as a chorus line dancer, her stripping debut was at the Music Box, in an Ivan Fehnova production. The producer had not even seen her perform—her striking looks won him over. The act was a disaster, but instead of firing her, Fehnova put together a new act. At the end of the dance, a stagehand pulled a fishing line attached to St. Cyr's G-string which flew into the balcony as the lights went dim. This act was known as The Flying G, and such creative shows became St. Cyr's trademark. 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. Hollywood: nightclubs, films and photographs While performing in 1947 (1951? Represented by the infamous Hollywood attorney Jerry Giesler and the movie version of Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead. 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. Heavy editing of St. Cyr's night-club routine by censors resulted in choppy editing, compromising the film's quality. 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 starred in Runaway Girl (1965). 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 St. Cyr depleted the wealth she accumulated during her heyday. While interviewing her for his 1957 program, Mike Wallace stated she earned over $100,000 annually. St. Cyr retired from the stage in the 1970s. In the early 1960's, she had begun a mail-order lingerie business that she retained an interest in until her death. Similar to Frederick's of Hollywood, The Undie World of Lili St. Cyr designs offered costuming for strippers in addition to lingerie for personal use. 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." ==Personal life==

Though less prominent toward the end of her life, her name came 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. == Death ==

St. Cyr died in Los Angeles, California, on January 29, 1999, aged 81. She never had children, and told Mike Wallace in an October 5, 1957, interview that had she wanted them she would have adopted. == Legacy and cultural references ==

Following her death and a renewed interest in burlesque, especially in Bettie Page, legions of new fans rediscovered some of the dancers in Irving Klaw's photos and movies. In 2001, A&E produced a special on burlesque that included a segment on St. Cyr. St. Cyr is referenced in two 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?" 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 claimed that St. Cyr and Monroe had an affair. The claim is both widely disparaged by Monroe's biographers and widely upheld by St. Cyr's. Liza Dawson, editor for William Morrow, publisher of the Jordan book, makes a related 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." == 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 (1962/1965) ==References==