Louise's singing and dancing talents were insufficient to sustain the act without June. Eventually, it became apparent that Louise could make money in
burlesque, which earned her legendary status as an elegant and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience's response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance. Her innovations were an almost casual stripping style compared to
bump & grind styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease"), and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her stripping style, and—changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee—she became one of the biggest stars of
Minsky's Burlesque, where she performed for four years. She was frequently arrested in raids on the Minsky brothers' shows. During the Great Depression, Lee spoke at various union meetings in support of New York laborers. According to activist Harry Fisher, her talks were among those that attracted the largest audiences. In 1937 and 1938, billed as Louise Hovick, she made five films in Hollywood. But her acting was generally panned, so she returned to New York City where she had an affair with film producer
Michael Todd and co-produced and appeared in his 1942 musical revue,
Star and Garter. Lee viewed herself as a "high-class" stripper, and she approved of
H. L. Mencken's term
"ecdysiast", which he coined as a more "dignified" way of referring to the profession. Her style of intellectual recitation while stripping was spoofed in the number "Zip!" in
Rodgers and
Hart's
Pal Joey, a musical in which
June Havoc had appeared on Broadway, opposite
Gene Kelly. Lee performed an abbreviated version of her act (intellectual recitation and all) in the 1943 film
Stage Door Canteen. In 1941, Lee wrote a mystery thriller called
The G-String Murders, which was made into the sanitized 1943 film,
Lady of Burlesque, starring
Barbara Stanwyck. While some assert this was in fact ghost-written by
Craig Rice, there are those who claim that there is more than sufficient written evidence in the form of manuscripts and Lee's own correspondence to prove that she wrote a large part of the novel herself under the guidance of Rice and others, including her editor
George Davis, a friend and mentor. Lee's second murder mystery,
Mother Finds a Body, was published in 1942. In December 1942, preliminary papers alleging breach of contract were filed in the Supreme Court against Lee by Dorothy Wheelock, associate editor of ''
Harper's Bazaar'' magazine, alleging that in August 1940 she and Lee entered into what Wheelock described as "an oral agreement to collaborate on a joint venture involving the conception, construction, development, writing and exploitation of a literary work with a burlesque background." Wheelock alleged that, though the agreement held that half of the income from the book would go to her and the other half to Lee, Lee cancelled the collaboration in November of 1940 (when Wheelock had already found a publisher for their project) and had the finished work published by
Simon & Schuster under her own name. Lee claimed, contrariwise, that a "sample book" that Wheelock had written based on Lee's notes was too dissimilar to the published book for her actions to have constituted a breach of contract. The case was settled out of court. ==Relationships==