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.