Behind the Burly Q

Behind the Burly Q reveals the true story of burlesque by telling the intimate and surprising stories from its golden age through the women (and men!) who lived it. Featuring dozens of interviews with performers, musicians and authors including actor Alan Alda, whose father Robert Alda was a handsome "tit singer" and a straight man; Nat Bodian, journalist who wrote and saw burlesque at the Empire in Newark in the 1930's; Lorraine Lee, who used to dance for Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd and "earned a quarter"; Tempest Storm, who still performs today and claims to have been lovers with Elvis and JFK; the notorious Blaze Starr, who escaped a life of poverty to rise to the heights of fame, and became involved with Governor Long; Kitty West, aka Evangelina the Oyster Girl, the Bourbon Street star, who entertained busloads of tourists as she "came out of her oyster"; Taffy O'Neill, who performed at night, and spent the days taking her young son, stricken with polio to treatment; Mike Iannucci, star stripper Ann Corio's husband and producer of "This Was Burlesque"; Rachel Schteir who wrote the book Striptease, a comprehensive history of the art of striptease; and Janet Davis, author of the extensively researched book on Tiny Kline, who Walt Disney himself discovered and made her the first Tinker Bell when she was in her 60s.