COMING UP : WE REVISIT MY FIRST MONTHS OF BLOGGING

In August of 2022, I decided to take down my first few months of posting. I realized that this blog had come a long way since I timidly started it, a long way in blogging expertise as well as in my notions of how I wanted to design it. The first thing I noticed as I looked at those early months of posting was that I was a bit all over the place rather than focused.  But I actually posted on some of the same people who I devoted much more time to in what would be the future.  I was just finding my way.  It took a while for me to decide that I would devote a month to a Mistress of the Month, or a Special Subject.  It was a long way in my personal understanding of the Mistress Lifestyle. In recent times I've done a whole lot more research than I used to do in order to present my subject. Still, I think some the 2009 posts are worth re-posting. I'll add a little current this and that to this month's overall content. 

In those early months I posted on Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman and Eva Peron, and a contemporary mistress Sarah J, Symonds, who had retired from being a mistress by that time. There were posts touching on the economics and a Declaration for Mistresses (a series of affirmations I ran) that touched upon that too. I posted some music videos with lyrics that I thought were appropriate too.  

Those early months did have value.

Want to revisit 2009 with me?

Here we go!

Missy

DO YOU LIKE BAD BOYS? BAD GIRLS? MISSY ASKS YOU!

 Are you a person who finds yourself attracted to Bad Boys?  Bad Girls?

What makes that person Bad?

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Missy

OOH BABY BABY : SMOKEY ROBINSON and THE MIRACLES

ARE YOU MARRIED BY LOVE? MISSY ASKS YOU!

MARRIED BY LOVE.....

Heard this saying the other day...

Leave a Comment!

Missy

WHAT RUINED BURLESQUE? IS THERE NEW INTEREST? WHAT ABOUT DITA VON TEESE?

In the chapter entitled Bye Bye Burlesque towards the end of Leslie Zemeckis' book,  Beyond the Burly Q, the author reports what various strippers she included in that book had to say about the end of the profession that sometimes also meant the end of their personal careers. Some of them would've aged out by the early 1970's anyway but some simply had no idea what else they could do for a living besides burlesque. They were used to being independent women who earned their own money.

When burlesque first developed as an art form it occupied a gray area of entertainment but was close to a variety show like vaudeville. It was about comedy and included a straight man and other often actors on stage. It was not necessarily about taking it all off. Then over a few decades things changed and the art form was challenged.

The reasons include:  

A new morality in which various cities banned burlesque, which included arresting dancers which made it difficult for them. 

In the 1960's. Go Go dancers who were also often dancing near nude and pole dancing.

The woman's movement (feminism).  (I suppose that in the 1970's feminists thought of strippers as women who were repressed by men, but it was also a time when sexual liberation influenced ordinary women.)

Drag shows by transgender burlesque entertainers and "drag queen" types.

Nudie films that were also shown in the same theaters or between live entertainment.  Some of the dancers were paid a little money to allow filming, not porn, but substitutes for live performances that were then showed in theaters.

Pornography, especially so.

Excerpt page 297:  By the 1960's, a 'burlesque" show was stripped of chorus girls minus the production numbers divested of novelty acts, and missing live musicians.  The emcees were gone, song and dance acts were banished, and specialty dancers were dropped.  

Blaze Starr remembers, "You were on the stage during your act and it was a huge club.  And over all the way across the building on the wall was hardcore porn."

Excerpt page 302:  Once the strip clubs came in burlesque was out. 

My notes. The strippers and others who had worked those theaters felt their art had been degraded by pornography.  However some think that burlesque exists in contemporary  entertainment, citing Lady Gaga, Madonna, Bette M, and RuPaul. 

The argument for the current existence of burlesque is that it was once low culture but went mainstream. The height of burlesque happened in the World War II era when there was a surge in popularity.  (This figures in the story of Blaze Starr being prompted to please the army men in an audience by taking off her top.) In 1931 it went to Broadway and at the 1933 Chicago Worlds Fair Sally Rand and Faith Bacon appeared with fan dances.

However, I think the popularity and success of Dita Von Teese challenges the idea that burlesque is a lost art.  I've watched her performances on YouTube videos (as well as the performances of some of other contemporary dancers). I think Von Teese has created shows that are of the highest quality and that her performances take into consideration how every move will appear to the audience.

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BLAZE and A PANTHER AS A PROP?

In Leslie Zemeckis's book Behind the Burly Q, a reference for this month's posts, we learn that Blaze Starr tried to include various animals from the feline - Big Cat family into her act, without success. As you may know most strippers have a gimmick, a brand, which helps them define how they are different from another dancer.

EXCERPT : Pages 196-197

Starting out, Blaze Starr admitted, "I first saw Gypsy and I thought, Well you gotta have a gimmick, something people remember ya by." Everything had been used. She thought "animals." She got an ocelot and dyed it black. "I didn't have sense enough to know; it got sick and died.  It wasn't big enough."

So next she bought a Samoa leopard. "Got it through an animal company in New York who found it from a zoo... (Again) I didn't have sense. You can't ever train a cat, couldn't travel with them. I wasn't scared of them. They were babies.  t swallowed a rubber ball and died. Then I got a puma - a mountain lion they're called. Big and dangerous. It had been declawed. Died during surgery."

Her bad luck with cats continued, but she hand't given up yet. "I paid $1,100 for a baby black panther. I'd get it raw steak, just warmed."

Blaze and her panther were in a hotel in New York and Blaze went out shopping, leaving the panther inside - something she was used to doing. Although she'd leave it in the cage when the maid came. "(The maid" didn't come in and clean. She'd give me clean sheets." While Blaze was shopping, "it got in the shower, turned on the hot water. I come back, the cops and firemen are there. It had flooded a wing of the hotel. No one cold go in the room, it was screaming, weighed one hundred pounds."  Blaze went into the room. "It jumped on my back and laid its head on my shoulder and scratched my brow. I thought it was going for my jugular vein. I knew then. This is ... scary.  I sold it back for five hundred dollars.

***

KITTIES

 

BLAZE (THE FILM) MISTRESS MANIFESTO FILM REVIEW

The film came out in 1989.  It does not feel dated.

Based on Blaze's autobiography, which she wrote with a co author, the film goes quickly through the stripper's life, beginning with her goodbye to her mother in rural West Virginia.  Her mother's advice was never trust a man who says "You can trust me." She says there are few men as good as her daddy.  She warns her daughter about boys.

Blaze's early dream is to be a country music singer. Far from home, she works at a donut shop until a customer grooms her to be a stripper. He is not honest, but convinces her that the audience is full of military men who may loose their lives in Korea. Can't she give them what they want - a strip - for America?  She defines herself as a dancer, not a stripper.

Blaze quickly becomes a star, traveling the circuit. Implied is that she has earned her independence. When Governor Earl Long of Louisiana shows up to see her perform in New Orleans, she asks him if she can trust him. He says "No you can't" and their romance is sparked. This is a man that Blaze can relate to.

Actor Paul Newman portrays the Governor as a wily older man who is sure he wants to keep his political office even if doing so requires unconventional ways. There's a bit of "only in Louisiana." Politically there's a situation in which the press and the voters want to know how he's going to deal with racism.  Black leaders say they need jobs, good jobs. He manages to do that by shaming an administrator at a segregated hospital.  Blaze retains her "down home" sensibilities.  Earl Long keeps his boots on - an old coot he is. There are some silly-funny sex scenes

When confronted by his political cronies about being involved with a stripper Long denies it, just as he does when confronted with IRS tax problems.  Blaze Starr is depicted stripping with one of Long's campaign buttons in her garter.  He wins the election but has had serious health problems for some time and dies, just after he lies and says she can trust him that he will marry her.

This film was based on the autobiography by Blaze Starr and co-author Huey Perry. 

Blaze was a production consultant and had a bit part in the film.

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  Film Review 

All Rights reserved including Internet and International Rights

BIRDS DO IT - BEES DO IT

 

STAGE DOOR JOHNNIES OF EVERY VARIETY

Missy here. Some of the mistresses profiled here at Mistress Manifesto started out in chorus lines or on stage in some way, such as Marion Davies and Gypsy Rose Lee. Men, called Stage Door Johnnies or Back Stage Johnnies, were like groupies in a way that they attempted to get into the personal life of a star. To get noticed they aimed to please and they used their money to do that. In the heterosexual world, they were men who waited to see a dancer come to the club, who wanted to adore them and gift them. Some of them were special fans or became fixated on a certain dancer and wished to make her life easier, Keep her, while others wanted to take her out of the life she was in and have her in theirs. Some of the dancers also also attracted a lesbian following although many of the clubs would not allow women in as audience.

In Leslie Zemeckis book we learn that burlesque dancers were pragmatic. They wanted and liked their independence and were generally careful to prioritize their careers.  On the other hand, making good money for yourself did not mean you had to reject help, favors, or gifts.

Excerpt pages 207-208 :

I found among Sherry Britton's papers the following, which she might have written, "Did you know that the girls had them in categories?  There were the Drugstore Johnnies, those who could be counted on to buy a girl the cosmetics she needed.  There were Dinner Johnnies, Nightclub Johnnies, and even, honestly, G-String Johnnies. You see, G-Strings were all handmade, elaborately beaded, and cost a small fortune. Of course, for many girls, it was a game of "How much can I get from him before he gets too much from me?

Sherry had her share of gifts, including the use of a Cadillac from an admirer that she drove around New York at 4 in the morning looking for - and finding - men.

The women had wonderful adventures outside of work. "It was a great life."  And there was no shame in having the men court the girls, Alexandra the Great maintains. "I thought I was very professional.  I conducted myself that way. I was treated that way.  I think a lot of people have the wrong idea of what it was like.

***

PERFECT MANICURE

Perfect grooming was expected in order to maintain a

dancers reputation, not just for beauty but to show 

that one was rich and successful as a dancer.

YOU CAN'T CALL HER BLAZE IF THERE'S NO SMOKE OR FIRE - WHY MISS SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION?

Commentary by Missy:

Reading around the Internet about Blaze Starr, before I got the book by Leslie Zemeckis, I learned some interesting things about Blaze's performances. You can also check YouTube as there have been some videos of her performing, which because of my policy to comply with Google community standards and not provide what might be considered pornography here at Mistress Manifesto, I will not embed. In one of the videos I watched smoke appeared to blow out of her body. Of course this was akin to a magic trick. It also illustrates the humor that was the early tradition of Burlesque entertainment.

Blaze Starr figured out that burlesque was a good way to make good money early in her life and she had a widowed mother with another ten children to support to think of as well. She was not educated and had few career options, other than to perhaps marry and become a housewife and mother. She never became either. At the top of her career she was earning, according to Zemeckis, $2000 dollars a week.  (The year is not definite so I can't run that through an inflation calculator, but let's say it was 1950. In which case that would be about $25,000 a week.)

She knew she needed a gimmick, a brand, and she tied her stage name with smoke and fire. 

According to various sources, there were Burlesque dancers who moved slowly with grace and there were others who were in the "bump and grind" category like Blaze. Watching films of her dance, she was in no way as graceful and effortless as today's premier Burlesque Queen, Dita Von Teese. Sometimes Blaze appears awkward to me.

She was beautiful and had, from a young age, large breasts. She got known for bullet bras. She tried to have an animal companion on stage with her as a gimmick, as other dancers had. (One even danced with a large snake wrapped around her.) But soon Blaze decided her gimmick was to be smoke and fire. They called her Miss Spontaneous Combustion. One of her exotic dances was called The Fire Dance. She rigged up a couch with a burner so at the end, smoke blew from between her legs. Sometimes the peaches that were put into the burner to create the smoke actually went on fire and flames could be seen.

Blaze made all her own costumes by hand. Gowns were usually expensive and had to be made to last on long tours on the road. There were some companies that made gowns and other items just for the dancers, but not everyone could afford them. The dancer was also expected to have wardrobe changes, so her audience would not get bored, as well as robes for when she got off stage and to be groomed and dressed well in general. The dancers also perfumed themselves. Each stripper also forged her identity on and off stage by her wardrobe choices and had her ideas about how to play with her costumes to tease. They were also careful not to throw the items they removed in the dance. They employed or tipped people behind the curtains or off stage to carefully collect and hang the garments. Some of the dancers employed personal maids who took care of the costume wardrobes and traveled with them. 

***

According to author Leslie Zemeckis, Blaze Starr was arrested three times.The first time she thought it was her boyfriend, on the police force, that had set her up. It was  in Philadelphia and at a time when the city was restricting dancers to less suggestive movement and less revealing costumes. She and the other dancers got released.

She was also arrested at the Sho Bar in New Orleans and weeks later at the Black Cat but charges were thrown out.

Though Blaze had traveled the circuit for years and was extremely popular in New Orleans, it was in Baltimore that she settled and were she became a fixture and a local personality at the Two O'Clock Club where she had first begun performing at age sixteen.

Finally, she retreated to West Virginia and family where she lived into her 80's, unmarried and childless herself.

***

Excerpt page 281:

Blaze apparently gave them something to scream about. One news article claimed she dropped her sequin G string down to her knees and was hauled into court and fined fifty dollars.

She worked hard to be at the top of her profession."She didn't like sharing with me.  She wanted to be the one and only Blaze", April March said.

Not only did Blaze make most of her gowns, handily with a needle and threat, she was a girl who knew her tools. During her act, she "used candles on a little table. I lit them as soon as I started taking my clothes off. I would blow it out with my mouth, but it looked like my boob was doing it.  I thought  This is good I need some fire. 

She got her own tools and cut a foot out of the back of the couch. She wanted it to appear as if her dancing made the couch catch on fire. With the help of some stage hands, she got an empty can of peaches, got a heating thing from an electrical place and rigged it with some safety pins to her couch she said.  She would plug it in and during her act, smoke would come up. Soon as I smelled it, I'd have to turn the thing off or we would have a real fire. This is great, everyone's going wild, because it's unexpected.  I'd done all I could do up there, wiggling around.

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

TOP HAT and CANE

 

BEHIND THE BURLY Q by LESLIE ZEMECKIS : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

Leslie Zemeckis, the author of this book, really did her research. The book includes a long list of "characters", many of the performers who she interviewed in their old age. Blaze Starr, whom we are focusing on this month here at Mistress Manifesto, is just one of them. The book also includes strippers such as Gypsy Rose Lee, who was featured here at Mistress Manifesto in the past, and Sally Rand, known for her elaborate feather fan dances and Lili St. Cyr who was known for her Dance of the Seven Veils. You'll also note some familiar men in this book such as Jack Ruby, who assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President JFK, and Mike Todd, a husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor. JFK also makes an appearance and Blaze claims a few dates with him.

So let me start with admitting that I personally don't understand the appeal of burlesque and am too modest to have ever considered becoming a stripper myself.  Still, I want to be fair to those who have found their calling - their life's work - as women who have found this profession such as Blaze, who had to find her way out of the poverty of West Virginia coal mining country.

As Zemechis' profiles reveal, back in the day women who had to find some way to earn income as young as fourteen, many who were born into severe poverty, did find their way into burlesque or were solicited to dance. They were young, vital, and bodacious, and becoming what today we call "exotic dancers" was an opportunity.  Some made their fortune, some stayed in the profession for a long while even as they aged, and others became infamous.  

Burlesque evolved into an American art form, with roots in European theater, that intended to be comedic and mocking of legitimate theater and the upper classes.  The intention originally was to find humor in sex and what people were willing to do to have it. (I.e. akin to the French Farce.) So, though today's performances are generally distanced from what might even be thought of as a kind of protest, favoring titillation, the women who entered into burlesque when the average starlet wasn't taking it all off, created acts in which being funny was all part of being successful. (Blaze Starr having smoke seemingly emitting from her nether regions is funny.)

So, beginning in what is the history of burlesque was a popular art form that many people you might not imagine as enjoying it, did go off to fine theaters, where hundreds of people, including single woman and couples, were the audience and sometimes full orchestras played and a variety of entertainers acted. However as the decades went on, as the shows became more focused on the women who stripped, the musicians and comedians who had been part of the show were dispensed, and by the 1960's it was becoming all about porn.

This book focuses on what happened to the starts of burlesque, most who could not then move on into other aspects of entertainment. Some of them started out as chorus girls, some became prostitutes, some retired well regarded. No apologies.

The book is fascinating.  If this month's posts about Blaze Starr stroke your interest, you'll want to read this book!  (And remember that the books are often better than the films made of them!)

Missy

ABOUT GOVERNER EARL KEMP LONG A FAN OF BURLESQUE : BEING WITH BLAZE HURT HIS MARRIAGE BUT NOT THEIR CAREERS

Excerpts page 210 on  Stage Door Johnnies and Governor Earl Kemp Long....

Tee Tee Red, another dancer, about him:

One of the more flamboyant of the Johnnies was Louisiana's Governor Earl Long.

Like Blaze, Tee Tee Red met Governor Earl Long when she was working New Orleans. 'Blaze and I were in competition with him.  They called him the crazy governor,' she said  He would drive down the street in his limousine, throwing hundred dollar bills out the window.  He also regularly passed out food to the poor. "He didn't care what people said.  He was a lot of fun. He'd throw his money around. He could do whatever he wanted. He would buy the club out if he wanted to.  He'd order champagne for everybody," Tee Tee said.

The forty-fifth Governor of Louisiana was colorful, charismatic, and a compelling speaker. Because of his erratic behavior - he blatantly flaunted his many dalliances with strippers - his wife Blanche had him committed to a state hospital.  (Hell hath no fury like a wife publicly humiliated.) However, there was no law that said he couldn't run the state from a mental hospital suffering from dementia. He endured strokes and heart attacks that contributed to his declining mental health. He was iracible and unkempt, erratic in speech. In 1959 he famously said on the floor of the State Legislature: "I'm not nuts.  If I'm nuts, I've been nuts all my life.  Thank ya, and God bless ya."

Page 210

Governor Long was a regular at the Sho Bar.  He would see Blaze until he died in 1960 of a heart attack. Blaze refused money he had left for her in his will...

Also from the film, based on Blaze Starr's memoir:

Blaze was shown going in front of the voters as Earl went for reelection.

The governor was almost abducted to be taken to Mandeville State Hospital. the state mental hospital. She loyally went there to see him.  When accused of letting his involvement with Blaze hurt his career, he said no, it was his progressive ideas.

The couple are shown living together. Though married, he asked Blaze to marry him.  However, he died soon after he had won the election.

CELEBRATE

 

"THE HOTTEST BLAZE IN BURLESQUE" BLAZE STARR and THE CONTROVERSIAL LOUISIANA GOVERNOR EARL K. LONG : A ONE YEAR AFFAIR MADE INTERNATIONAL NEWS

BLAZE STARR

publicity photo Image downloaded from New York Public Library digital collection

Fannie Bell Fleming

1932 –  2015

I've long wanted to elect Blaze Starr to my pantheon of Mistresses, not because she was a Burlesque Queen in the 1950's, but because of her unlikely and very public affair with married politician Louisiana Governor Earl Kemp Long in 1959-1960.  Their relationship ignited such controversy, not just because he was married; it was the combination of these two personalities that turned their one year affair into international news. Their relationship ended right after he was re-elected because he died.

Born in 1932, just a few years before Marilyn Monroe, whom Fannie Bell watched, the girl who would become a famous star on the burlesque circuit was West Virginia poor and would die there at her home at the age of eighty-three. (Her beloved dog died a couple hours later!) The oldest of eleven children, her coal miner father died of Black Lung, leaving her mother with all those children to raise. Fannie Bell left home to make it in the world and never did forget her family in the process. She needed to send money home and did. What was humble and West Virginia in her served her well. She brought comedy to her act, was famous for her inventive use of props that included smoke and fire, kept things decent by today's standards- no hard core porn, and connected with her audiences. Fannie Bell's humanity shone through. She was genuine, a real person, although some reviewers of her memoir felt she had held back some.  

For years she traveled the Burlesque Circuit, appearing at various clubs for a week or two, then moving on. Burlesque audiences were only satisfied by seeing new women, new acts. In the 1950's through the 1970's Blaze was at the Two-O'Clock Club in Baltimore. It was a club she may have owned. (Some say she did, others that she bought half interest in it for an ex boyfriend.) Upon her death in 2015 the Baltimore Sun Newspaper obituary said she had once been the most famous person in Baltimore. 

In 1989 she served as a consultant and acted in a cameo role in a film made about her life called 'Blaze' that starred Lolita Davidovich as Blaze with Paul Newman acting as Governor Long. The film was based on her memoir.  

Unfortunately, Blaze's motivation for leaving rural West Virginia may not just have been the need for money, for she was not yet sixteen years old. She may have been gang raped at fourteen or fifteen. She had physically matured early with breasts that filled a DD cup. Being molested or raped as a teen is sadly the story of too many of the women I've posted about here on this blog. What a horrendous way to be introduced to sexuality, to be robbed of choice and authority over one's own body, mind, and spirit.

As for Governor Earl K. Long, there are far more books and articles written about him than there ever were about Blaze. He was a character, even thought of as possibly mentally ill, in his way outrageous, yet he had been serving the people of Louisiana for a very long time. His wife decided he was mentally insane and had him committed, but he sprung himself and got re-elected anyway.

Blaze was married one time to a nightclub owner, Carroll Glorioso, which ended in divorce.  She said she knew that men, being men, cheated, and it didn't mean a thing but after he confessed he had cheated, a divorce followed.

Blaze, like many women who succeeded in Burlesque were wary of being supported by men, though they also allowed themselves the benefit of Stage Door Johnnies.

Here is what Leslie Zemekis, author of Behind the Burly Q, a primary reference for this month's posts, wrote:

Excerpt page 280 quoting Blaze Starr :

"In West Virginia there is a lot of spousal abuse. We'd walk through the hills two miles to get to school and kids would have their tales "Daddy beat mommy and he blacked both eyes, broke her ribs." The men would get drunk, then cry and ask for forgiveness." It taught her a valuable lesson. "I would never want to be in position to have someone support me.  I would make my own way," she said.

She explained, "Everyone was poor in those years.  It was luxury to own a cow.  There were no doctors in the area. People rode horses and wagons."  

Her mother was a schoolteacher in a one-room school and "Every 18 months a baby would come." Blaze had eleven siblings, one died at six months. She helped raise the others.

***

Fannie Bell was close with her mother who told her whatever she did, do it the best. In the film she comes home to tell her mother that the money she's earning isn't from singing or acting and her mother shows her that she already knows, she's kept the news clippings.  Her mother is without negative judgement.

Her only marriage, to nightclub owner Carroll Glorioso, ended in divorce.

Blaze, in her own book, recounted her story about meeting and later having a few dates with the man who would become President of the United States, John F. Kennedy.  She said that she and other dancers had met him previously.  However it's this passage from Leslie Zemeckis' book that is telling because when the met more officially, Kennedy acted as if it was the first he had ever met her.

Excerpt Page 208 quoting Blaze

"I'd met Governor Earl Long, working the Sho Bar. (New Orleans)  Earl was there that night, he had a table.  A big club, with a big balcony - everything filled up.  People standing at the door.  JFK and Jackie came in. I thought.  This can't be.  Now this cannot be. By then I was a Jackie fan. I come out - they were at Earl's tale.  ... Earl told me to be nice to him, 'He's gonna be your next president.' JFK shook my hand as if I'd never seen him before. He said,' Ms. Starr, you were very good tonight. " She replied, "I've been told I'm the very best."

(Jackie was also complimentary)

Twenty minutes later, Jackie left her husband at the clu b "I ain't telling you about the rest of the night, " Blaze said.

***

Blaze was discovered to have what she called a "small heart problem." She retired after having five bypass surgeries, not wanting to die naked on stage. When told her recovery would take a few years she did an enterprising thing.  She went rock hunting in North Carolina for rubies and emeralds and learned to cut them. Then she created and sold jewelry.

In 1975 she sold the Two O'Clock Club in Baltimore. Blaze, in her sixties, went back to West Virginia and family. She had made some wise investments and the cost of living there was low.

This month I will post on Blaze Starr, as Mistress of the Month, based on a variety of sources including a book about Burlesgue called Behind the Burly Q by Leslie Zemeckis. I hope you, my reader, will stick with me as we explore the life of this vivacious performer and the Governor, here at Mistress Manifesto.

Missy

C 2023 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot  All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

*** I kept checking YouTube videos for quality and an absence of commercials. (There were some but in keeping with the Google policy for public bloggers I can't post what might be considered offensive or X-rated.  I kept checking libraries for a copy of the book Blaze Starr!: My Life as Told to Huey Perry ( published in 1974).  I found one library that had a copy hidden away in reference: my special requests to borrow it rather than travel several hours a day to read it was not granted. On the Internet  a bottom price for a beat up copy was about $70. One source wanted near $200 for it. ming. I did find reviews and excerpts. No wonder the library had the book locked up! I want to do my best for Fannie Bell Fleming. This would not be the first month since beginning Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot that I would have to synthesize my posts from a variety of sources, some repetitive, and make some judgement calls too. 

You may also be interested in these archived posts:

November 2016

ELIZABETH L. RAY : Mistress of Representative Wayne L. Hays. She said, “I Can’t Type, I Can’t File, I Can’t Even Answer The Phone.”

September 2018

GYPSY ROSE LEE - Stripper Mistress in New York of Waxy Gordon

May 2021

JEWELL DIANNE "LADY" WALKER - A Mistress of Billionaire J. Howard Marshall : She went Christian and Died of a Face Lift.