Blaze Starr
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Blaze Starr bids farewell to Baltimore and the famous Two O'Clock Club |
Blaze Starr (born
1932) was an American
stripper and
burlesque star. Her vivacious presence and inventive use of stage
props earned her the nicknames "Miss
Spontaneous Combustion" and "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque". She was also notorious for her affair with
Louisiana governor Earl Long.
She was born
Fannie Belle Fleming in
1932 in rural
Wilsondale,
Wayne County,
West Virginia. Fleming left home and moved to
Washington, DC when she was sixteen, where Red Snyder discovered her either working in a
doughnut shop (according to her
autobiography) or as a hat-check girl (according to other sources).
Snyder became Fleming's first manager, encouraged her to start stripping, and gave her the
stage name Blaze Starr. After he attempted to
rape her, however, Starr left Snyder.
Starr moved to
Baltimore, Maryland, eventually becoming a headliner at the Two O'Clock Club
nightclub. Starr rose to national renown after she was profiled in a February
1954 Esquire Magazine article, "B-Belles of Burlesque: You Get Strip Tease With Your Beer in Baltimore." The Two O'Clock Club remained her home base, but she started to travel and perform in clubs throughout the country.
Starr's striking
red hair, voluptuous figure and on-stage enthusiasm were a large part of her appeal. The theatrical flourishes and unique gimmicks she used in her stage show went beyond established burlesque routines like the
fan dance and balloon dance.
For example, Starr trained a
panther to remove her clothes onstage. After it died unexpectedly, she decided to imitate a panther onstage instead, snarling at her audience while writhing on all fours. This performance, which she made a regular part of her act, eventually got her arrested for
obscenity in
Philadelphia.
Perhaps her most famous prop was a
couch that she rigged to smolder and then appear to burst into
flame as she sat on it and undressed.
In the late 1950s, while working in at the Sho-Bar on
Bourbon Street in
New Orleans, Louisiana, Starr began a long-term
affair with then-governor Earl Long. Starr was in the process of divorcing her husband, club owner Carroll Glorioso, and Long was married to the state's first lady, known colloquially as Miz Blanche. Starr and Long's relationship, invoked as one reason for Long being involuntarily committed to a mental hospital, lasted until his death in
1960. Long left her $50,000 in his will, which she refused to accept.
The
1989 movie Blaze recounts the story of their relationship. It was directed by
Ron Shelton, adapted by him from Starr's
1974 memoir Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry.
Lolita Davidovich portrays Starr in the movie, and
Paul Newman plays Long. Starr herself appears in a cameo.
Two of Starr's performances, including the combustible sofa, are among the burlesque routines featured in the
1956 compilation film
Buxom Beautease, produced and directed by
Irving Klaw.
Director
Doris Wishman's
1960 film
Blaze Starr Goes Wild, a
nudie-
sexploitation film, features Starr's one lead movie role. As the title suggests, she plays herself. The film is also known as
Back to Nature,
Blaze Starr Goes Back to Nature,
Blaze Starr Goes Nudist,
Blaze Starr the Original,
Busting Out and
Nature Girl.
Diane Arbus photographed Starr in
1964. The photo "Blaze Starr at home" was included in the book and traveling exhibit
Diane Arbus: Family Albums.
Blaze Starr's house along the
Gwynn's Falls river in the
Villanova neighborhood of
Baltimore County, Maryland was flooded but not destroyed by
Hurricane Agnes in
1972.
Starr eventually bought the
Two O'Clock Club, which she still owns and manages. Some of her costumes and other memorabilia have been displayed at the
Museum of Sex in
New York City and the
Exotic World Burlesque Museum in Helendale, California. She retired from stripping in 1983, per a
Los Angeles Times interview she gave when her movie autobiography came out in 1989, and became a
gemologist who spent several holiday seasons selling hand-crafted
jewelry at the Carrolltowne Mall in Eldersburg, Md., near Baltimore.
*
IMDB record of Blaze Starr*
Los Angeles Times: "Starr Power: The Life and Times of a Striptease Queen" by Frank Lovece
