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

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT - RESCUING CHILDREN FROM PROSTITUTION, CHILD PORN, SEX SLAVERY and TRAFFICKING

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT  Over 40 years of rescuing children from the streets, from prostitution, child pornography, sex slavery, and sex trafficking. Please go to this official site to learn of the amazing accomplishments of this organization.

EXCERPT:  CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT is the ONLY place in America where a child can call from a seedy motel or truck stop ANYWHERE IN THE UNITED STATES, reach a skilled case worker 24/7 who knows how to rescue and relocate a child or young person from a dangerous condition without being arrested by the police and held in witness protection in solitary confinement until they testify against a pimp/trafficker. Our 24/7 nationwide toll free case management services are comprehensive and able to help anyone trapped on the streets of our nation.

800 551-1300 

"HOT GIRLS WANTED" FILM RAISED MY FEMINIST ANGER

Over the  New Years holidays I had some down time to do nothing but watch films and among the many I watched was HOT GIRLS WANTED, a documentary that came out a few years ago.  I was unprepared with how upset I would feel watching it, learning that there are more hits to pornography sites than all the hits to Google and several other major sites, and most of it is amateur (meaning unpaid) porn that young women, 18-21, have posted themselves, in an attempt to gain popularity, competitively for hits, and to try to launch themselves into the professional porn industry. Much of the porn is degradation and violence against women so the men who like this stuff are clearly too screwed up and should be avoided - if you learn the truth about them in time.  Apparently many men are investing in that. Obviously their hatred of women and sexual perversion (I know - an unpopular word these days) results in wanting to see pretty beautiful women being treated horribly.  

My feminist anger rose. 

I had no idea about some of it. And I thought about all the women friends I've had who started hating dating and hating sex and hating men because they were treated so badly, though not as badly as these women were. 

I reminded myself that MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT is a Woman's Studies site basically and how in college almost no men took a Woman's Studies class.

These turned-pro porn actresses knew in advance what they were going to do, yes. They were offered pay and were paid. Some got sick, tired, disillusioned.  One was lucky enough to end up with a boyfriend who loved her anyway.

There is money in it, but not necessarily money enough for saving for one's future, such as paying for an education to gain a career or to invest for one's old age. The average young woman answers an ad such as on Craig's List and takes a free flight to Florida. It's explained that while Los Angeles, perhaps more specifically The San Fernando Valley - Chatsworth, had been the porn capital, once the law changed and actors had to use protection, Florida has no such laws.  Hello VD, AIDS, unplanned pregnancy?

Parents usually find out in about a month. Neighbors are looking at these porn sites and recognize the woman they graduated high school or went to college with. The small town these women fled for this experience may never allow them to forget it. Is there life after porn?  Since this seems to be a Internet-generational experience, perhaps because it's so common, more yes than no?  Still, I feel sorry for young women who choose this experience which I feel is part of their youth and inexperience, their immaturity but I question, seriously, why anyone would want to trade their self respect and self esteem for money in such a blatant, harsh, and cruel way.  

Where is the love?

The young man who is something of a procurer/agent/middle man and who lets them live with him seems also to have no interest in life other than making money.  I wonder if it's world of sociopaths we're living in.  These "girls" are used up and spit out. 

And so I think love is in short supply. 

If you have it, cherish it. 

Missy

JOHN C. HOLMES and DAWN SCHILLER BECOME DRUG ADDICTS and HE TURNS HER INTO A PROSTITUTE

THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND - Surviving John Holmes
By DAWN SCHILLER, C  2010,  is published by Medallion Press

MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW and EXCERPTS

After we have come to understand the slow seduction that Dawn Schiller began to experience as an underage teen, and the way she, John C. Holmes, and Sharon, his wife, moved into living together, and we wonder how much Sharon did or didn't know, we next wonder how it is that the relationship between John and Dawn, which had it's romantic moments no doubt, turned very ugly.  The answer seems to be easy.  They smoked pot recreationally, but John started using cocaine and he knew that many a person had lost everything they had before he started using.  His drug addiction came rapidly upon him and with it he began to steal from his own household.  He sold the very rings that he had given Dawn as tokens of his love.  He stole from other people too.  He looked for cars that were unlocked and stole out of them. 
In her book Dawn says that Sharon doesn't know about the pot.  The problem I have reading that in the hear and now is that the pot was being smoked in the cottages in the court that the Holmes' managed, including, very much so, in the cottage that John's brother David and wife lived in down the way. Don't know about you, but medical marijuana is legal now where I live, and the smell of neighbors smoking it is very tell tale.

Within a few months, the weekend cocaine high turned into twice and then three times a week. Sharon may not have recognize the smell of pot wafting in the courts, but she did know that John was calling Dawn to meet him over at his brother's cottage a lot at this point.
(Page 239)

Soon John was dealing, mixing powdered baby laxative in with the cocaine powder and Dawn and his brother were helping him.  About the same time Sharon offers Dawn the job of managing the cottages full time so she can quit her nursing assistant job and be free to start taking classes.  (Pages 230 and 233)

The fun outings, camping and day trips end because they need to be home so they can use.  The other tenants notice the unusual behavior and are no longer trusting. They are watching their property and complaining to Sharon.  (Page 235)

John promises that he will quit the drug but can't. 

There's a difficult visit of John's mother at Christmas to deal with in which she senses something amiss and deliberately ignores Dawn and says that she feels she should have no place in the family.  John's mother even calls Dawn a "devil." Sharon tells her, "Dawn is in this family by choice - our decision."  (Page 244)

As John becomes holed up in the bathroom for hours doing the drug, he and Sharon stop communicating.  (Page 248) and then John accuses Dawn, whose been taking a typing class, of seeing a young stud at school. (Page 249)  Soon he is beating her, even cracking her jaw, jealous and threatening to kill her (nonexistent boyfriend.)  (Page 259)

He now takes her to sit in the car while he makes his deals on Wonderland at Eddie Nash's, and lets her know that he is engaging with very dangerous people.  (Page 265)  He becomes an angry man, tearing up a garden, scaring the other tenants, and, one day...

"Sharon sees me crumpled on the porch holding my gut and crying.  She steps back into the shadow of the house, emotionless."  (Page 266)

Sharon uses her nursing skills to patch Dawn up sometimes but when Dawn threatens suicide, Sharon writes her a letter and says that she has to change or will be kicked out.  (Page 277) 

This is when John and Dawn leave to live in seedy motels and in a van, basically homeless.  Before the day that Dawn makes her break from John, he will witness people being murdered at Nash's, be arrested, go on trial, be freed, and the couple will go on the run to Florida, where they feel safer and resume a more stable life - for a while. 

Missy here.  Cliffhanger!  I want to encourage you to get and read this devastating book.  (I hope you'll be inspired to read many of the books that I read first and use as research here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO.)

DAWN SCHILLER on HER EXPERIENCE OF BEING INVOLVED WITH A MARRIED COUPLE

"It's like living three different lives.  The one with John and me.  The one with Sharon and me.  And the one with John, Sharon, and me.  But I do questions every day whether or not Sharon knows about us.  Some days I have no doubt that she is well aware of our relationship and simply has no desire to discuss it.  But on other days I am completely baffled and afraid to think about it.  Even so, the three of us all seem content with what we have and unwilling to rock the boat."  (Page 215)


THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND - Surviving John Holmes
By DAWN SCHILLER, C  2010,  is published by Medallion Press

PORN ACTOR JOHN C. HOLMES and WIFE SHARON GEBENINI and MISTRESS DAWN SCHILLER LOVE TRIANGLE - PLAYED OUT THROUGH THE WONDERLAND MURDERS

UPDATE APRIL 2022 : Still a very popular post!  HERE IS A CURRENT LINK TO DAWN's WEBSITE:  She is highly involved in ending sex trafficking in Los Angeles County:

DAWN SCHILLER COM : BIO

UPDATE JULY 2018 :  This post has gotten a huge amount of hits lately and maybe that's just because the title has the word "porn" in it. I hope you'll be interested in linking to DAWN SCHILLER's non profit after you've read it and will donate.  And while you're here, I invite you to go through my Archives to learn about a great number of other Mistresses, for there are very many reasons why, including real love!  Also the GUIDE to ALL TOPICS by MONTH is in PAGES. Missy

Porn star John C. Holmes, his first, long term wife, Sharon Ann Gebenini, and his underage Mistress Dawn Schiller, make for a truly bizarre "Love Triangle."  No matter how philosophical you might try to be, their relationships were rife with abuse, especially because the violent drug addict this actor became got tied up in a murder of four people so brutal it was compared to the Manson Murders. Unlike the Manson Murders, also in a canyon in the Santa Monica mountains of Los Angeles, this case goes unresolved. But, before it was all over years ago, Holmes was one of the suspects tried and acquitted. Many people, especially those involved with drugs and dealing in the Los Angeles/Sunset Strip/Laurel Canyon area, were afraid for their lives.

I promised my readers long ago that this blog would be "no porn," and so I'll keep to the relationship of these three people who took, in my opinion, their mutual relationship into a truly mentally, psychologically, and physically punishing zone. 

I had no pre-knowledge of any of the players in this romance and tragedy. I've seen about one minute of film porn in my lifetime and didn't like it.  But one night I brought home a few films on DVD to watch, one called WONDERLAND, because Val Kilmer, an actor I like, stars as John C. Holmes. 

JOHN C. HOLMES  "WADD" DVD cover

Google Images

When the film proved too violent for me, I decided not to watch any more of it and I tried the companion disk called "WADD, The Life and Times of John C. Holmes", a documentary. There were Sharon and Dawn, testifying to their experiences, sitting in the dark, hiding their faces, while many other people associated with John C. Holmes; producers, directors, fellow actors in that business, as well as his second wife Laurie Holmes, spoke openly in the light. Dawn said she had been moved into their spare bedroom to be "the Mistress," her term, while John and Sharon continued to share a bed in their room.

John Holmes was known for his unusually large manhood, about twice the size of an average man, which was all it took to get his start in this industry when he was in his early twenties, back when vice squads chased people involved in "smut" around town to arrest them.  (The San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles is said to be a porn capital of the United States today.)  Holmes wasn't one to do the strutting stud routine.  He was a tall, lanky, every-man, a man other men could relate to as they watched the films and fantasized that they too could get the girl.  He was thought of as a gentle giant for a long time.

Holmes had left a crazy-filled childhood home, escaped into the military underage but with the signed permission of his mother, and got out an uneducated and average young man with no clear idea about what it was he could do for a living or with his life. He was clean living, willing to work, willing to try whatever employment he could get.  When he was driving an ambulance he met an educated pediatric nurse, Sharon Gebenini, whom he married in the summer of 1965. Sharon suffered three miscarriages.  What is unstated is that maybe her acceptance of Dawn into her marital home with John was satisfying her nurturing self. 

When John decided to get into pornography as an actor, he did so proudly, not even working under a fake name to start. (He did make some films under theatrical names, including Johnny Wadd, during his career. As a result no one is sure exactly how many he did make and estimates go into the thousands.)

Sharon didn't put up any strong objections to her husbands new found career. She would stick with him as his wife for years, their divorce not final until 1983, even as his sex career killed their relationship and they shared that marital bed as - you guess - friends?

In those days most women expected the man to be the breadwinner, especially if they wanted to have a family and stay at home and raise their children. Sharon was reportedly a devoted and excellent nurse then and for many years on, yet it's clear to me that she failed to protect herself from torment. 

Maybe she just didn't believe in divorce. She would never remarry or have children.

Sharon testifies in the film that she has never in her life seen a porn film, but it's difficult for me to imagine that she was so compartmentalized that she could shield herself from the realities of her husband's fame. John Holmes did so very many films, most one day shoots that were out for sale within a week or two, his picture on the packaging.  He earned top pay, starting at $75 a day, and eventually possibly earning up to $3000 for a film before his druggie lifestyle started to effect his employment, not only because he wasn't always showing up but because he couldn't reliably perform. He did interviews and said that he believed that watching porn helped couples sexually. (Ironic!)  As time went by he also had affairs and relationships, started drinking, smoking grass, and then using cocaine, and was missing from home a whole lot.

Holmes took up with Dawn Shiller, then fifteen years old in 1976, about ten years after marrying Sharon. Dawn testifies that he began a slow seduction after they met that lead to sex in a van parked at the beach, romantic and loving, but still she was a teenager to his thirty-something years. (Her testimony in her own book is at odds with what is said in the documentary.  In her book the sex caused her pain and a bladder infection and she was barely able to walk.) As their use of cocaine broke him financially, Holmes and Dawn went homeless, living in a car and motel rooms, and when John's thieving didn't provide enough, he expected her to prostitute. In 1981 after the murders, they fled together to Florida to escape the law. Before she made her escape from him she would be beaten repeatedly and pimped out by him.

Clearly both women were accommodating this man and unwilling or unable to leave their relationship with him, at least not for some time. 

Where were Dawn's parents or family? 

Why was Sharon complicit in allowing her husband to have sex with an underage woman and in their own home?  Did she not know better?

Here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO we're most familiar with the wife who allows her husband a Mistress so long as she is kept separate from their home, family life, and friends, so that she is never embarrassed.  Or, we are familiar with everyone participating in a triad or love triangle of adult age and maturity and mutually in the know. 

Sharon says she didn't know the entirety of the relationship between her husband and Dawn and is credited with treating her as a daughter and taking her "under wing." 

Why didn't she get a divorce and try having the family she wanted with another man?

Thinking this through, I realize that forever marriage has meant that many a wife gets used to having a criminal husband, and that being with a criminal may mean also being afraid: Mafia wives, for instance. 

Still, it's a mind-bender for me, how Sharon, a smart woman, with possibly an IQ of 160, could be in such denial and not know that her 30 something husband was actually a criminal, especially with Dawn.  I think mainly she did not want to know.  When he ran to their home to tell her he had just witnessed four people being murdered in July of 1981, she gave him money to run without wanting to know any details she'd have to reveal to the police. When he ran he took Dawn with him. To me Sharon was an enabler.

Holmes became the worst of addicts, without Sharon's participation.  On drugs and desperate for them, he was out of control and angry, and he got closer to the big dealers, and a criminal named Eddie Nash, a man who may have owned more nightclubs than anyone else in town and clearly was a source of supply. Nash was also known to the police as a person behind arsons.  Nash had a house on Wonderland in the Hollywood Hills where the murders took place.

Holmes was beaten by Nash's thugs, a beating Scott Thorson**, witnessed, and was there again when the bloodbath took place.  Eventually, Holmes was tried for murder and acquitted. Then he tried to get back into the porn acting business and there was (still) interest!  He told Sharon he wanted to make their marriage work and would find some other work, which she says she refused.

John is credited in the porn industry with promoting HIV testing all those years ago.  First he tested negative but then, six months later, he tested positive.  Even so, he went to Italy and made the last of his porn films without informing anyone of his illness, instead wasting away while he claimed to have colon cancer. Instead of cleaning up his life so that he could live for years, he increased all his health defying activities and ended up dead.  By then he had a second wife, Laurie Holmes, who he'd married in 1987, to leave as a widow, one who refused Sharon and Dawn to come to his death bed.

In a few days, I'll be excerpting from the book Dawn Shiller wrote called THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND that came out in 2010 to detail the slow seduction and the fact that MANY adults suspected or knew that an disadvantaged and underage young woman was sexually involved with a porn star in his 30's. In media interviews separate of this documentary Dawn says that she did not get into how it was that she and Sharon made their peace and became life long friends in the book as the manuscript was already so long.

THE ROAD THROUGH WONDERLAND - Surviving John Holmes

by DAWN SHILLER

But maybe what's most important in the end is what these two women made of their own relationship, and it may stun you.

Sharon Ann Gebinini, born in June 1943, died in Oregon in October 2012, where she'd retired after years of remaining working as a nurse in Glendale, Southern California, past the Wonderland Murders, the trial of John C. Holmes, and his death.  Her obituary uses her maiden name and there is no mention whatsoever that she had ever been married to John C. Holmes.  However, what is mentioned is that she had two life long friends, and one of them was Dawn Schiller!

Out of this sordid story, Dawn Schiller is the survivor.  She used alcoholism to deal with the emotional pain of the life she lead with John Holmes but she got sober and achieved clarity. Then she got busy advocating for women who have been abused. She serves on the board of a woman's shelter and she started her own non-profit called E.S.T.E.A.M.  Sharon's obituary mentions that in her honor donations could be made to it.

A BEAUTIFUL INTELLIGENT SURVIVOR,  DAWN SCHILLER

from publicity photos found on Google Images.  Later we'll link to her nonprofit.

We know she had it tough but we want to yell Hurray Dawn!

C 2016  MistressManifesto.BlogSpot.Com  / MIssy Rapport  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

** Scott Thorson, Mantress of the Month in October 2012 due to his relationship with Liberace was a witness to the beating of John Holmes at Eddie Nash's. Thorson went into a Witness Protection program for a time and this is why he changed his name.