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. 

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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.

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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.

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