Burlesque queen Gypsy Rose Lee’s striptease act was so wholesome that kids were invited to take a peek.
No, seriously. The Palace Theater advertised children’s tickets for 15 cents to see the legendary stripper during her four-day Akron engagement in October 1941.
Who knows how many boys told their parents that they were going to the Saturday matinee that weekend?
It was a more innocent time in America — only two months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor — and Lee’s act was pretty tame by today’s standards. Spectators probably saw more flesh at Summit Beach’s Crystal Pool that summer than they did onstage during 18 performances Oct. 3-6.
The 30-year-old brunette smoothed out the rough edges of a bump and grind, and her burlesque performances involved more teasing than stripping. She professed that silk stockings were more alluring to audiences than bare skin, and she knew how to work the crowd.
“I never try to stir up the animal in ’em,” Lee once told a reporter. “Did you ever hold a piece of candy or a toy in front of a baby — just out of reach? Notice how he laughs. That’s your strip audience.”
A native of Seattle, the former Louise Hovick had been performing since childhood. She and her sister, Ellen Hovick, who grew up to be actress June Havoc, played the vaudeville circuit as kids under the stern tutelage of their stage mother, Rose.
Gypsy Rose Lee’s stage show 75 years ago at the Akron Palace boasted five performances on Saturday and Sunday, and featured dancer Hal LeRoy and Mitchell Ayres and His Orchestra, plus the comic-strip comedy film Tillie the Toiler starring Kay Harris. All of that — and it only cost 35 cents for adults.
Under the spotlight, Lee took the stage in colorful, sparking gowns with long-sleeved gloves, and casually revealed herself in a rhyming, comedic monologue with a sing-song voice.
“Now the things that go on in a fan dancer’s mind would give you no end of surprise,” she told the audience. “But if you’re psychologically inclined, there’s more to see than meets the eye.
“For an example, when I lower my gown a fraction and expose a patch of shoulder, I’m not interested in your reaction. ... I’m thinking of some painting by Van Gogh or by Cezanne. Or the charm I found in greeting Lady Windermere’s Fan.”
She pulled off a glove, untied a ribbon, doffed a hat. Hiking up a gown to reveal stockinged legs, Lee continued: “And when I raise my skirt with slyness and dexterity, I’m mentally computing just how much I’ll give to charity.”
A Beacon Journal review called Lee “a sprightly entertainer who knows just how to present a laugh so that nobody will miss it … and likewise how to avoid being offensive in the simple and obvious act of removing, with measured hesitation, the major portion of her clothing.”
The newspaper noted that the act included “several carefully planned interruptions” that made it seem entirely natural for a woman to bare herself before strangers without revealing too much.
“In brief — she demonstrates that she’s got something — something more than meets the eye, of which there is plenty,” the Beacon Journal reported.
Besides her striptease act, Lee was in Akron to promote her budding career as an author.
She visited the book department at Polsky’s in downtown Akron to sign copies of her new detective novel, The G-String Murders, a murder tale set in the burlesque world. Two years later, the book would be adapted into the 1943 movie Lady of Burlesque starring Barbara Stanwyck.
Shoppers gawked as Lee arrived in a fur coat, black dress with puffed sleeves, long black gloves and a black hat. She carried her pet Chihuahua named Candy in a black purse.
After the signing, Lee dined in Polsky’s Tea Room with Akron author Ione Sandberg Shriber, a housewife, mother and prolific mystery novelist. Lee complained about her Simon & Schuster publishers, saying they wrote her letters every day.
“They want to know every day … who’s the murderer now?” Lee said. “Well, how could I tell them I was on Page 114 and I didn’t even have a motive yet?”
An Akron reporter asked the striptease artist if she ever would give up the stage.
“Let’s face it,” Lee said. “One of these days, it’s going to give me up.”
After the final show on Monday night, Lee packed up her Chihuahua and sashayed out of Akron.
Lee needn’t have worried about the stage giving up on her.
Her 1957 autobiography, Gypsy: A Memoir, inspired the smash 1959 Broadway musical Gypsy, which starred Ethel Merman as stage mother Rose and Sandra Church as young Louise, and featured such memorable Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne songs as Everything’s Coming Up Roses, Let Me Entertain You and Together, Wherever We Go.
That led to the 1962 hit movie starring Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood in the mother-and-daughter roles.
Although Gypsy Rose Lee died of lung cancer in 1970 at age 59, the musical based on her life continues to entertain audiences with its burlesque spirit.
Gloves are pulled off. Ribbons are untied. Hats are doffed. Stockings are revealed.
In theaters around the world, everything’s coming up roses.
Beacon Journal copy editor Mark J. Price is the author of the book Lost Akron from The History Press. He can be reached at 330-996-3850 or mjprice@thebeaconjournal.com.