Stuff You Should Know - How Burlesque Works

Episode Date: April 17, 2014

What's old is new again as far as burlesque is concerned. Come explore what was an old-timey outlet for empowering women that later gave rise to the striptease once men started running the show. Now, women have reclaimed the art and it is benefiting. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and with me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant.

Yeah, woo! And over there's Jerry. Ah, yeah. And uh, this is stuff you should know. Ba-ba-boom, ba-ba-boom. You know there's a name for that song. For the Burlesque Strip Tease? Yeah.

Is it called Ba-ba-ba-boom? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. That's called The Stripper by David Rose, who also did the Little House and the Prairie thing. Oh, really? That was all about keeping your clothes on. He's actually like one of my favorite dudes. Yeah?

Instrumental, easy listening stuff. Oh, that's right. And he does like soft rock versions of, like, no. He does instrumental, easy listening versions of soft rock songs. So he makes soft rock softer? Yeah. Wow.

Like you can't even, it'd slip through your fingers. Right. You know? But yeah, The Stripper is what it's called. And I'm sure you've probably heard it at Burlesque shows because we should come out and say, I've never been to one. Yeah. But you have.

Yeah, I went to one in New York City. Yeah? Kind of the home of Burlesque. Sure, it's one of the, certainly one of the capitals of Neo-Burlesque, New York in L.A., where it started in the mid-90s. And had a lot to do with where it started in the, you know, late 1800s and early 1900s.

You're right. That is absolutely true. Yeah, I went to one, you know, it's fun. I like throwback stuff. Yeah. And I just, I appreciate people trying to bring stuff back, you know, especially like really old school stuff, not like 80s, like clothing.

Are you referring my swatch? No. And what about my ocean Pacific windbreaker? Wow. Didn't notice. No, I love 80s clothing. I'm just saying, when I talk about bringing it back, I mean like, you know, the pantaloons and that whole Burlesque

thing. No, they definitely, they have totally like gone all in. And as a result, it's been successful. It's been a very successful Burlesque revival. Yeah, it's like a movement. Yeah, you can throw a stone in America and you're going to hit a Burlesque troop. Yeah.

Just throw it, close your eyes and throw it. You don't even have to throw it well. It'll hit a Burlesque trooper. And that's a pretty recent phenomenon, but it's kind of taken off like a rocket. But you're saying it's true to form, true to the original. Yeah, the one I saw was very much so. It was, you know, sort of body and had some humor and, of course,

striptease action, but not like, you know, the strip club type of thing. It's supposed to be like a kitschy, campy strip teases typically, right? Yeah, like titillating and body, but not... It's not just like a strip club strip. No, no, no, no. No, not at all.

It's like dancing and fun and, you know, it's a good time. People are laughing and having a good time. Yeah. Whereas strip clubs are kind of like a scaring to me, they are at least. Right. So, you know, stripping actually came out of Burlesque and then just kind of went off in its own direction.

Yeah. But it's still associated with Burlesque. We'll get into this. Well, now. OK. Let's talk about the history of this. I should say, Chuck, that if you look into Burlesque, especially Neo-Burlesque, there's a real discussion

about whether or not it's pro-feminist or counter-feminist, basically. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. If you speak to a Burlesque or a Neo-Burlesque or read their words or writing or whatever, you're going to find that they most likely identify as feminist, or at the very least with feminism. And that doesn't always jibe with how

feminists think of them, though. Yeah, and especially these days with the new stuff, these are productions by women, costuming by women, produced by women, performed by women, which follows women in the audience. Right, and so it's empowering for a lot of women. Like, that's part of the attraction of it, is women doing their own thing, and they're doing it.

And they're doing it. Well, you're right, though. There's a couple of schools of thought, period, about that. It's like, does a woman take her clothes off for money? Is that exploiting her? Or is that a woman who's very comfortable with her body and sexuality exploiting men for their dough? Right, but you just said the magic word to men.

Like, it seems to be like the baseline argument is whether or not Burlesque is for the male gaze or for a woman empowerment. Yeah, well, I think when we look at the history, we'll see that it was generally run by men back in the day, and now is more run by women. Right, but originally it wasn't run by men. It was originally, no, it was originally women producers

back in the 19th century, and that's where you get the association of women doing this stuff on their own. It's, that's a true throw back to the original founding of it. So let's go back in time then. Let's go to the history of Burlesque. Let's go over to Great Britain where it started. It's 1840, and here we are in England,

and ladies are very well covered up. Yeah, it's the Victorian era. Like neck to ankle, and skin is not in fashion, and so to see a woman show a little skin, even if it's an ankle is a very big deal. Right, so imagine that if you went to a performance of a show, and it was kind of this weird satirical spoof of maybe a Greek comedy, but it was lampooning

current cultural and political items. But it was an all-female troupe, and the producer's name was a woman's name, and the troupe was wearing tights. Their legs weren't covered. That's what you call a cultural explosion, and people went nuts for it. Yeah, they did, the word burlesque comes from

the Italian burlesco, or even further back, burla, which means to ridicule. And basically it's what these days we'd call satire. Yeah, they were spoof, they would spoof the upper class, and spoof operas, and plays, and Shakespeare, and all those snotty snotts that had hang-ups in the upper echelons of society, they would make fun of them.

Yeah, like you wore a monocle, you were gonna get skewered in a burlesque show. Yeah. And the burlesque show itself was lots of song and dance, and musical numbers, but it was, there were two aspects of it from the beginning that survived even to today. There's humor to it, it's supposed to be funny,

and there was nudity of some form. Both of those were found in the first burlesque shows. Yeah, and depending on what nudity meant back then, today, nudity could be... Wearing tights. Yeah, exactly. Here's my knees. Right, like faint, prepare to faint.

Because yeah, this was the very buttoned up Victorian era. So it was a pretty big smash in Great Britain, and the earliest plays made enough money that they shipped over to America. And in America, the first one, technically, was called the Black Crook, and it was a very big success. Yeah, the Black Crook, like I said, it was Broadway,

it was the 1866 at this point, and they had pantaloons on, but the pantaloons only went down to their mid-thigh, which is a big deal. Yeah, they're wearing shorts in other words. Yeah, you know, the big puffy pantaloons. From the mid-thigh down, they had nothing, they had no sleeves, they had the bodices with no sleeves.

It was another huge deal. It sounds exactly like the French illustration of a can-can dancer. Yeah, pretty much. Except more skin, probably. Okay. And then the reviewers that went nuts for it, like some of them went nuts in a bad way

and called it like filth, but other ones said, you know, remarked about there were no clothes to speak of, but they'd never seen something like it so amazing in their life. Yeah, it was like just quite a spectacle. Yeah. And the reviewers that reviewed positively

felt the ire and pressure of the puritanical sect, which was pretty loud back then. Yeah. And they changed their tune. So then you had nothing but bad reviews of these things, but they were loud bad reviews and that just drew more audiences. Yeah, but there were like,

noteworthy people were going to these shows early on, which was a big deal. It wasn't just, it did go back underground, but at first like Mark Twain went to one called the Four British Blons, it was a troupe. And he said, the scenery and legs are everything. Girls, nothing but a wilderness of girls stacked up, pile on pile, away aloft to the dome of the theater,

dressed with a meagerness that would make a parasol blush. Yeah. He can turn a phrase. Sure. Yeah, Mark Twain, he was a great writer. But another show came along after that too, that was a really big deal, right? This is technically, I don't know,

I guess it was maybe the one that really, maybe the black crook proved that this thing could be lucrative, and then the one that followed, Ixion, was the first true burlesque show to arrive in the US. Yeah, I think black crook was a little, it was a Broadway show that just titillated, and so people said, who was the lady?

Her name is Lydia Thompson. She was a burlesque producer. I think she was like, Ixion. You guys want to be titillated? Yeah, check this out. Let's do it for real. And she dropped a burlesque show on them. Which now that we're talking about this,

I just realized I have been to a burlesque show in Vegas. Oh yeah? Yeah. It was at one of the older casinos. Circus Circus? No, no, no. Golden nugget? No, not that old.

I can't remember, but it was called Jubilee. It was boring. Oh yeah? Yeah. Well, the one I went to was in like a tiny little bar in New York. This wasn't Neo, this was like straight up, I think it'd been performed ever since the 60s or something.

Yeah. It was just, I kept waiting for them to stop in the middle and be like, we're just kidding, here's the real show. But they didn't. It was so strange. I think everyone should go see Jubilee and just, it's bizarre. Yeah.

It sounds like one of those old Vegas shows. Yeah. So OK, so Xeon comes along and it's one of those Greek comedies updated to the Lampoon Contemporary Society and Culture. Yeah. And people love it. And you said Mark Twain went to one of these things.

I bet he went to more than one. That's really saying something, because originally Berlesque in the 1840s was created for the lower classes and the middle classes to make fun of the upper classes. Yeah. When it comes to America, it's not just attracting the lower classes,

it's attracting the middle classes, it's attracting upper class society, possibly in part because it's still making fun of the British. Yeah. You know? I don't know if it would have been quite as well received by the upper classes in American society if they'd come to make fun of America.

But in very short order, within just a few years, Lydia Thompson's success with her production, which by the way netted six or gross $6.6 million in 2012 dollars. Wow. And it's one first season. That's awesome. There's like $370,000 in $1870. But based on her success, Americans

started making their own very quickly. Yeah. And it was in the 1880s, a short time later, that the male managers and producers kind of took over. Because of course, they were already doing, you know, producing things. But they saw that there was definitely money to be made. Right.

Thanks, Lydia. Oh, hey, women. You guys are living the dream. You're doing your own thing. You're being empowered. Now we're taking over. Yeah. But it was still too titillate and to spoof.

But there was definitely a little more attention paid to the striptease part of it. Well, right. I mean, the showing the leg, the costuming, the just kind of just shimmying around on stage definitely started to come more toward the fore. Yeah. But the striptease hadn't been introduced yet.

The first stripper was a woman named Little Egypt, who did the first public strip at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. Yeah. What was it called? The Hucci-Cucci. Hucci-Cucci. Seriously.

Yeah. And that caused quite a stir. It was still, you could find a striptease here there, but it was underground still. Yeah, like stag parties and stuff like that. Right. So Burlesque was still there. I mean, you went to a Burlesque show,

you're going to be titillated. But still, it was the lampooning, the hilariousness of it. There were stand-up comics. Yeah. Well, things really change when a producer named Michael. Michael, leave it. Love it. Love it?

Yeah. OK. When he started. He sounds like a modern producer. Michael, leave it. Yeah. You know? Well, he kind of was.

He claims he coined the term vaudeville, although if he claimed it, then it's probably not the case. Right. I made that up, see? Yeah. But when he started producing, he basically put it in a three-act format, like the three-act minstrel shows of days before, with Act 1 being just an ensemble,

entertainment, skits, gags, jokes, fully dressed in formal clothing, then Act 2, which was like a hodgepodge of comic skits and singing acts and things like that. Yeah. And then finally, Act 3, which was what they called a burletta, which was a full one-act musical burlesque that was that's when they would usually like spoof Shakespeare

or somebody. Right. So that format became the format for all burlesque shows to follow. What was that, the 1880s? Yeah. OK. And what he did was he took what was traditionally

the burlesque show, which was the spoofie play. And condensed it into one act, the third act, and then added this other stuff. Yeah, exactly. So vaudeville and burlesque are kind of co-evolving at the same time. Apparently, this man was patient zero. I hadn't heard that.

But the vaudeville, for some reason, had a little more of a better reputation than burlesque. Because they weren't taking their clothes off. I guess so. But you found a lot of the same elements, especially stand up comedy. And there were some really great legendary comics, like Jackie Gleason and.

A lot of hope. Yeah, Red Skelton, WC Fields, Fanny Bryce, Funny Girl, who started out in burlesque, graduated to vaudeville, and then went on to TV. Just basically followed the media as it went. But some of those people, vaudeville looked down on burlesque. But they still needed the money. Exactly.

When they needed money, they would adopt the pseudonym and then go do a little burlesque tour. Because burlesque was a lot steadier income. It was virtually guaranteed income. Vaudeville was a little more respected, but burlesque was guaranteed work. Yeah, and this writer named Herb Goldman wrote a book called Fanny Bryce, The Original Funny Girl,

where he pretty much came out and said, by the time you got to vaudeville, you were seasoned. Burlesque was the proving ground if you wanted to get into show business. For ladies and men. Men were the comics at the time. Typically. And we can thank burlesque also for the word top banana

and second banana. Yeah. That had to do with the comics and like a comedic group, the guy who was the straight man or whatever, like Moe, he would have been the top banana. And then Larry might have been second banana and Curly would have been third banana. I thought you were talking about The Simpsons for a second.

I know. It's like Moe would be the top banana. Yeah. Probably. I don't wonder who is the top banana in The Simpsons. I don't think they follow that schematic. No, not at all. God is.

So early 1900s, 1905, there began to be vaudeville style circuits going around, sort of like a traveling circus. And they played in rotation. So they became known as wheels. And they had the Columbia Wheel on the Eastern US, the Empire Wheel on the Western US, the Mutual Wheel, which I'm not sure where that was. Probably the Midwest.

Midwest, sure. And then there was a fourth wheel called the Independent that actually went bankrupt because they were too dirty. Oh, really? They refused to change. So they would get shut down so much they just couldn't hang. Yeah.

And that was the thing that would happen with the Burlesque House. And these wheels were basically just circuits that involved burlesque houses around a certain region. And they were so established. And these shows were so guaranteed to draw a crowd that these wheels, they would last for 40 weeks. So you get in a burlesque troop, and you had steady work

for 40 weeks out of the year. That's just, that's your life. That's your livelihood. And this went on for like 30 years like this. So I mean, think about it. In Showbiz, there was, for three decades, a place where you could go and get steady work and basically make your career for your life.

Yeah, especially as a woman at the time. Right, you know? Yeah. And well, we're in the 1900s. But from the 1880s forward, like you said, comedy was mainly working class. And it kind of occurred to me that that laid the groundwork for sitcoms.

Oh yeah, because like, you're all in the family, same for your son. Many, not most, but well, maybe most sitcoms are kind of aimed toward like working class regular people. Right, King of Queens. Not everything's the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, you know? Well, that's kind of follows in the Burlesque tradition, because they're making fun of the upper class.

Oh, that's true. By insinuating somebody from the lower, lower middle class into the upper class to point out all of the foibles of the rich. Yeah, I guess you're right. I never really thought, I was trying to wreck my brain for sitcoms based on rich people. And most of them, well, that's what I was just thinking.

But they kind of mocked them as well. I don't remember silver spoons being mocky. Yeah, I guess you're right. But think about it, like almost all sitcoms involve the working class. Mashed. Those were working class doctors. And you took something from the upper class

and put them in the battlefield. That's working class now. King of Queens, Archie Bunker, Jefferson's, they were all sort of middle class to working class. Because no one wants to sit around and watch funny rich people. Different strokes was rich people. But they pointed out the foibles a little bit too.

Two poor kids, though. Yeah. Yeah. Man, we are smart dudes. We just cracked the sitcom in Nigma. Yeah, everyone's like, we knew this. Right. So one of the big parts of the comedy bits in burlesque

was word play. And this is where Abbott and Costello, even though who's on first, wasn't invented in burlesque. It was definitely honed there. Oh, I thought it was invented there. No, that's where they really got their stuff down. But it was very often a lot of intricate word play, misunderstood words.

And I think we should do this bit, the Cohen and Cohen bit. Are you prepared to do that? I am. OK. I am. So I'll be, you be the caller. OK. And I will be the person who answers that.

All right, so I ring you up. Ring, ring, ring. Hello, Cohen, Cohen, Cohen and Cohen. Let me speak to Mr. Cohen. Oh, he's dead these six years. We keep his name on the door out of respect. Well, then let me speak to Mr. Cohen. Well, he's on vacation.

Well, then let me speak to Mr. Cohen. He's off to lunch. Let me speak to Mr. Cohen. Speaking. That don't. That was pretty good. That was real good. We didn't even practice that.

We should go on the road. Yeah. Let's do that. Yeah. Yeah, we should. What do you think about doing some sort of stuff you should know tour? I think we totally should.

I mean, we already have done variety shows. And all we need is a striptease act. And we're burlesque. Well, let's do a variety show or maybe a trivia tour or something like that. Let's hit the road, man. Did we just birth an idea? I think so.

All right. People can be like, come to Minneapolis. Come to Kansas City. Man, you better not be wearing monocles because you are going to feel the stink. I think if we do tour, though, we should go to, you know. Oh, all over. Yeah.

Not just like, ooh, New York in LA. No, no, we'll do like a little tour. Yeah, OK. But we'll do the mutual circuit or the mutual wheel. We'll do all three wheels. So burlesque developed to the point where they had their own language, basically. Yeah.

Like many industries in the entertainment business. I'll bet you can guess my favorite. A jerk. Yeah. A jerk was an audience member. Yeah. A yoke was a big belly laugh. Yeah, think about it, the yokes that came from that.

Of course. That makes sense. Yeah. If you make a funny face as a performer, that's a skull. A mountaineer was a brand new comic that apparently came from the Catskill circuit up in the mountains there. And then I thought this was interesting. The Boston version was a cleaned up version of the routine.

Yeah, because the sensibilities of Bostonites are famous, famously touchy. And then there's a whole list of vocabulary here, but we don't have to go through it all. Yeah. But I mean, some of the terms that we use, again, top banana, yokes, jerk, this came from burlesque. The way to go, burlesque.

So there's this heyday burlesque is enjoying its first wave in the United States. And then, all of a sudden, they have big competition. It's called movies. And then worse than movies, talkies. Yeah. And burlesque is like, what can we do that the movies can't do to get people in?

To take off even more clothing. Exactly. Strip, yeah. And that actually did it. Because not only did that save burlesque and make it competitive against the movies, it actually kicked off the heyday. Once the burlesque performers started

taking off their clothes and doing strip teases, like real strip teases, that's when burlesque saw its golden era. Yeah. But again, these are 1920s strip teases. So it's not like going to one of those filthy places these days. Like a strip club?

Yeah. We're talking Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand doing like the fan dance, where they're so good with that fan. You can never quite tell what's going on behind the fan. I know. Have you seen a fan dance? Oh, yeah. They're like very just keeping it placed and moving it

as you move around on stage to cover yourself. Is that's art. I mean, that takes work. No, of course it does. Because if you showed too much, you got busted. Right. You gave your reveal too soon. Yes.

And by busted, we mean like the cops would put you in jail. Oh, I see what you mean. And that was actually like pretty common, apparently. Like the burlesque houses would be shut down. The person headlining would be arrested for moral, for corrupting moral sensibilities. Yeah, there were these dudes, the Minsky brothers, Abe, Billy, Herb, and Morton.

And they were big time burlesque producers. And they were York. Yeah, they were rated a bunch. A raid in 1925 became famous because they wrote a book and made a movie about it. But it was a call. The night they raided Minsky's. A little on the nose, yeah.

But they said it just became popular because of the attention. Like it was basically a cycle of covering up too much, audience dwindles, revealing too much, audience booms, you get raided. So you start covering up again. Oh, I see. And it just kind of kept going like that. There was a law in New York that you could be topless

at that point, as long as you didn't move. Supposedly that law is still in effect. As long as you don't move? I don't know about the as long as you don't move part, but you can legally walk around New York topless, man or woman, and not be breaking the law. Really? Yeah.

So Splash was actually factually incorrect. The movie Splash? Yeah, although I think Darahana was like all the way naked when she comes out of the water the first time, remember? Yeah. They arrested her? Yeah, I love that movie when I was a kid. It was a good one.

I thought it was pretty great. So the Minsky brothers are pretty infamous, so much so that Mary LaGuardia at the time, who was a moral reformer. He was the early Giuliani. Right, yeah. It's exactly right. Like let's clean this down up.

He made a law where you couldn't publicly advertise using the word burlesque or the word minsky. Yeah. So like they were pretty infamous. They made the mayor of New York mad. Well, they, I think, were the first ones to apparently, the first raid in 1917, there was a performer named Mae Dix who, as she was leaving stage,

was accidentally, absentmindedly, removing her clothing for the next act and just did it before she was off stage. And the dudes went nuts. So she turned around and went back out. And one of the, I think it was Billy Minsky, was like, hey, let's see if we can make that accident happen every night. Oh yeah, that was the beginning of the whole thing?

The beginning of the full nudity. And that's what led to that first raid. So let's go back to the strip teasers themselves. Like you mentioned Gypsy, Rosely, and Sally Rand, whose names are still pretty well known in the popular culture. And the reason why is because these ladies were superstars. Like they catapulted from their burlesque routines into, you know, starring roles in movies and culture

and society they were written about. They were lauded. They were just, they were big deals. Like they came about at a time, and burlesque strip teasers came about at a time when a significant portion of society was ready to love it. Yeah, and Gypsy Rosely too, she was a smart lady and she didn't mind being smart on stage.

She would perform these monologues that were very high brow with a British accent and, or not a British accent, but like a, you know, upper class accent. Like a finishing school accent is how Julia Layton puts it. Yeah, and she would tell jokes, like really intellectual smart jokes and super witty and she would do her strip teas. It was the first time that the strip teas and comedy

were married. Right. And one, and you know, at the same time. Like she would just kind of go around the stage and she'd come out in like all of these layers, pity coats and all that stuff. And then she would just kind of tell jokes or make witty observations as she was slowly revealing

these things and then by the end of her act she had basically pasties on. And it just wowed the crowd. And she, I wanna see Gypsy, have you ever seen that movie? No, it was I think a Broadway show too, wasn't it? Right, I think it was her memoir as a book and then they made it into a Broadway show and then they made it into a movie.

And I think it was Natalie Wood who played her in the movie. I wanna see it, cause she sounds like a pretty interesting person. Yeah, I haven't seen it either. And then one of her probably the next biggest superstar of her exact era, which was the 30s, was Sally Rand. And you can thank Sally Rand for inventing the fan dance and the bubble dance.

Those were her two big ones. She had a bunch of acts, but her two big acts where the fan dance was just two huge ostrich feathers that she used to cover up and just maneuver around. And then the bubble dance was like a five foot balloon that she just kind of rolled around. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah, and dudes were like,

what's behind the balloon? Pop. Yeah, so we'll continue on in the 1920s right after this message. I'm Mangesh Chitikler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

You might not smoke, but you're gonna get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast.

Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are gonna change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns

with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's gonna be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee.

I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward, and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're gonna wanna find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this. And I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day.

Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I wanna say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we're kind of back to the 20s. I thought we were in the 30s. We're jumping around a little bit.

A very cool thing happened in the 1920s with Burlesque, which was, it was no longer all white. It wasn't integrated, of course, at the time, but there started to be all black Burlesque clubs, all Latin clubs, all Chinese clubs, and really kind of spread, like I said though, they weren't sharing the stage, but at least they were representing their cultures.

By taking their clothes off for money. Well, you said something a little while ago before the break that the men were like, what's, they wanted the balloon to pop. Yeah. With the advent of the striptease coming front and center in a Burlesque show, the male audience increased tremendously.

The ratio of men to women in an audience really skewed toward men. Yeah, it became more about the striptease and less about the comedy, I think. Exactly, and so the audience became increasingly men and Randy men. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why Burlesque still today

has this kind of body implication to it. Yeah, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because at that point it kind of shifted some. It became a little less intelligent, a little less comedic, and then the strippers themselves were funny. They were trying to get yucks and stuff themselves,

but you'd also, you know, you'd have like a stand-up comedian and then a striptease, and that was what the Burlesque show kind of evolved to during its heyday. And that was sort of the beginning of the end because a lot of the comics moved on to, like you said, TV and film, and took those acts with them.

I mean, if you look at the comedy at the time, and still today there are elements of Burlesque all over the place. Oh, for sure. But I mean, again, we're talking like Burlesque had a heyday, like even more than its first wave from about the 20s to the 60s. And what's interesting is that the women involved,

like Gypsy had a movie made about her, another one who came a little later in the 50s, she was huge, her name was Blaise Star. Yeah. Two Rs, like Brenda Star. Yeah. And Blaise Star, have you ever seen that movie Blaise with Paul Newman and Lolita Dvidovic?

Yeah, was that? That was about her. Okay, I thought so. And she did this really well-known striptease where there'd be like a settee, and she would just kind of maneuver around it and everything and do her striptease and end up on it. And then smoke would come out,

and streamers would come down. Smoke would come out from between her legs. The one I saw, it didn't. Oh, okay. But it was for TV, so she may have altered it some. Gotcha. It looked like it was for TV. Right.

But it was, I mean, pretty good stuff. Yeah, May West, famous screen star. She started off in Burlesque, and she's one of the early ladies who embraced her sexuality and say, hey, man, look at me. Right, I'm a sexy lady. So it's extremely popular.

It's about as mainstream as it can be. And then it's also kind of maybe hastening the sexual revolution along a little bit. Yeah. And then it basically is killed, it's eaten by its own offspring. Yeah. So the reason Burlesque went away in the 60s

was because access and availability of pornography became much more widespread around that time, and guys didn't need to go to Burlesque shows any longer. Yeah, I guess you could call it the natural progression of things that continues to this day. But yeah, hardcore porn was available. And it really died out pretty quickly after that for a while.

Right. Like for a solid 40 years. Yeah, and there was the one noteworthy throwback or revival of it, I guess. It was a 1979 Broadway show that was pretty successful. It had more than 1200 performances. It was called Sugar Babies, starring Mr. Mickey Rooney and Ms. Ann Miller.

Yeah, classic. And it was a period piece, a backstage period piece set in the 1930s during the heyday of Burlesque shows. And then it was about a Burlesque troupe in its performance. Yeah, that was the, you know, things come back around and people become fascinated with the old stuff. That was like the late 70s was the perfect time to revive a 1930s style thing, I think.

Sure. It was a really big hit. Well, yeah, and they were into the 50s then too. Remember the greaser thing with grease? Oh, yeah, yeah. Shana now. Yeah. Performing at Woodstock.

Did they? Yeah, they did, didn't they? Yeah, it always baffled me until I sort of realized that no, like 10 or 15 years after something's popular, people are into it again. Like happy days and shana now, that wasn't. Happy days. That wasn't in the 50s.

Yeah. Good stuff. So Chuck wrote about here seems like another, a good time for a break because we're about to go into the Neo-Burlesque revival. Agreed. I'm Mangesh Atikala, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology.

But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back, the man who hosted

some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new Tell All podcast. The most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all.

And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me. What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this and I have a lot of thoughts.

I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we're back. So we say sometimes that something didn't really go away.

It just went underground. I don't think it's necessarily the case with Burlesque. I think it went away. I think you would have been hard pressed to find a Burlesque show in the United States. In 1984. Yeah. But in the mid-90s, two different groups

independently revived it. And there were two people who were basically at the heart of it. Billy Madly in New York and Michelle Carr in Los Angeles at about the same time in the 90s revived Burlesque. Yeah. And it certainly didn't hurt that people like Dita Vontis were marrying Marilyn Manson and becoming internet famous

for their throwback 1930s style. But now you add tattoos to that equation. Yeah. Seems to be a lot of that. Tattoos? Yeah, with the Burlesque scene now, the Neo-Burlesque scene. Yeah. So let's talk about the Neo-Burlesque scene.

You've got to keep in mind that Burlesque already had this, like I said, it's kind of a body reputation. Yeah. Because the striptease was introduced in pushed front and center. And so there's certainly an element to that. Like the striptease is definitely still part of the Neo-Burlesque scene.

Oh, yeah. But there's also, as Julie Layton points out, it's more, you could call a lot of it, more performance art. Or there's certainly elements of performance art in the modern Neo-Burlesque act. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and they're also, with Neo-Burlesque, they are shining the light on people who may have not

been on stage before, like plus size women. Or they would play with gender. There's a performer called World Famous. I want to say B-O-B, or is it just Bob? I think B-O-B. Whenever you spell your name with an asterisk, capital B-O-B and an asterisk, you're kind of calling attention to it.

Yeah, and B-O-B was a former drag queen, even though she was a woman. So she called herself a female female impersonator. Yeah, so just basically messing with these conventions. There was a male performer named Tigger with an exclamation point. Yeah, he's still around. Is he?

That's what I figured. And he had a very famous striptease routine where he would be a priest, according to an altar boy. So they're definitely pushing the boundaries still. Oh yeah, and that was definitely the heart of Burlesque as it was originally created. I mean, it's satirical, it's biting, it criticizes the powers that be.

And there's one out there now. There's a lady named Honey Wilde who does a Margaret Thatcher routine. I've heard of her. And at one point, there's a man bent over, and Anna's bottom is the word labor, of course with the U, like the labor party, and Margaret Thatcher spanking it with a riding crop.

So this is like, it's Burlesque as it was originally conceived by the women in the 19th century who produced the earliest shows. But it's melded with the heyday from the 20s to the 60s where there's striptease, and there's different acts. There's comedy elements to stand up comedy as well. But it's also contemporized. So like you've got Margaret Thatcher.

Sure, well, fairly contemporized. Right, it's more contemporized than, say, Greek comedies. And then I saw one by the Devil's Playground Troop. They do a Star Wars Burlesque. Oh, nice. Complete with Slave Leia. Of course. Jabba the Hutt makes an appearance.

Really? Very disturbingly. There's like Storm Troopers. It's like, I'm sure, Nerd Heaven. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're marrying several different things there. Yeah, and you mentioned it when you kind of see a lot of tattoo culture involved in this.

It does seem like the Neo-Burlesque movement pulls in from a lot of different fields, like tattoo culture, feminist porn, the original Burlesque stuff. Performance of drag queens. All these different cultures kind of come together and are created, put into acts now, Neo-Burlesque acts. Yeah, it's a cultural movement, even more so than just a performance.

It's bigger than that now. And Chuck, I said this Neo-Burlesque kind of incorporates drag queen aspects to the show. Like there are fluid gender. It makes an appearance a lot. And that's kind of appropriate because drag clubs and drag queens and just drag acts definitely grew out of Burlesque either as a parody of Burlesque or just from it as its own

thing. Yeah, yeah, totally. So it's had a huge cultural impact. Yeah, the drag shows I've been to definitely just smacked of true Burlesque. Right, a camp out the yin yang. So it's kind of neat that Neo-Burlesque takes all of the things that Burlesque spawned and just kind of brings it back

together. Yeah, I think Burlesque is about acceptance. They're not a very exclusionary group. That is neat, a neat way to put it. You just summed it up. So anytime you have a cultural movement, Chuck, that means that you are going to have cultural critics about it. You have some.

Well, no, I mean, we talked about it running a file of feminism. Sure. And I mean, that's certainly I don't necessarily have a lot to speak to on that because I don't really know what the answer there is. Right. I've just seen from what I've seen, it seems like the

Burlesque performers are like, you're not getting this. This is not about titillating men. If that's really what you think it is, go to more Burlesque shows and you will see. Right. And feminist critics of Burlesque say, it doesn't matter how you dress it up. You're still stripping and there's still men who are just

objectifying you. Yeah, in the audience. Yeah, but who wants to hear what two stupid middle-aged dudes have to say about it? I feel like we shouldn't even have an opinion. Well, there you go. I think that's what I was trying to say. I think you were.

I mean, this is more just bringing up like there's a discussion going on. And from that viewpoint, it doesn't seem like it could be rectified. It's more just like enjoy it or don't, you know? Yeah, I agree. Ah, that's an opinion. Well, I've already said I agree because I've gone to a

show or two and it's fun. Yeah, well, there you go. The other thing that happens when there's a cultural movement going on is you learn it. You can make a little dough off of it because it's gone mainstream to a certain degree. And if you live in a major city or maybe even a minor city, you likely have some sort of burlesque class or

school situation going on there. Right. Atlanta's got a burlesque school. They're all over the place. And basically, just encouraging ladies to get out there and have a little fun. There's one teacher named Vivian Vivum that says she teaches a room full of librarians to bump and grind.

And I bet it's a blast. And that's another, those are two more words that we can thank for burlesque for. Bump and grind. Yep. Those were original terms for part of the act, right? Right. Grind is making a circle with your hips.

I wish people could see you. And bump is moving your pelvis back and forth. Bump and grind came from burlesque. This were just a video podcast. There's a burlesque performer named Michelle Lamore whose work is cited in the introduction of this article. She does something called Buttovins Fifth Symphony. I watched it.

Yeah, it's pretty impressive. Where she comes out in like a coat and tails and pretty much, yeah, and sits in front of a sheet music stand on like a nice piano bench. Yeah, with her butt facing the audience. Right. And then twerks to Beethoven's Fifth. And she actually has an instructional DVD called

Booty Camp, I believe. What twerk? Is that a new word for an old thing? The DVD is called Booty Lab. Booty Lab? No, it's a new thing. I don't think it's an old thing. No, people have been twerking forever.

They used to call it like backing that thing up or whatever, like twerking is not a new thing. Are you sure? Because twerking is like doing individual cheeks. Yeah, I'm positive. Cheeks is another word that came out of burlesque as a euphemism for bottoms. Yeah, cheeks.

No, it is definitely not new. Since there have been cheeks, cheeks have been manipulated for entertainment. OK, well then, yes, it's a new word for it. And there's some people who excel at it on the internet, like Carmel Kitten. Look her up. She is hilarious.

I guess in a way she, oh, it's like superhuman. She has preternatural control over her bottom muscles, her butt muscles. I keep saying bottom. Like there's two-year-olds that look at your podcast. I feel like I have no control. Well, you can work at it. I can do it.

Yeah. I can wiggle my ears, too, as you know, from the National Selection Podcast. No, but check out Carmel Kitten. She's hilarious. She twerks in random places. And then she'll say the place that she's twerking at as she's twerking.

So she'll be like, twerking in the library, twerking in the library. And when she does the twerking in the library, she looks at the camera and goes, she puts her finger up to her mouth while she's twerking. She could probably make some money if she was like. I think she's made a lot of money. Twerking at Subway, twerking at McDonald's.

Oh, yeah. I think she's making it through YouTube ads. But yeah, she probably could. She could replace Jared on Subway. Boy, someone I used to. Why, what's wrong with Jared? Well, that whole thing came out last week when he was defending them for putting.

Oh, that stuff in the bread? Toxins in their bread. But I mean, he kind of has to. He's a very rich man because of them. And a very fit man. It's lean. Good for him. He's still a nerd.

Well, sure, but he knows he is. He's Jared. I'm not a fan. Of Jared. Nope. How do you dislike Jared? I don't know. Disliking a friendly horse or something.

You know, like, what the heck did the horse ever do to you? That just debugs me. Jared? Yeah. You are the first person I've ever met that didn't like Jared, although I don't really talk about him a lot now that I think of it. Yeah.

If I saw Jared on the street, I would punch him in the face. And I'm a nonviolent person. Well, Jared, steer clear of Chuck because you do something to him that he don't like. Actually, I'd meet him and I'd go, oh, dude, can I get my picture made? Oh, yeah. Put it on Facebook.

You do a selfie with Jared. He's like, I heard what you said about me. I doubt that. So I guess that's Berlesque. If you want to know more about it, again, throw a rock. Go talk to the person that it hit because it's probably a Berlesque trooper. Apologize.

And say, hey, where are you guys performing? Yeah. And go see a show. Support Neo Berlesque unless you are critical of it. And in this case, don't. Yeah, don't go. Yeah. And if you want to know more about Berlesque,

you can type that word into the search bar at HouseToVerse.com. And I have one more point. I was wondering, what's the difference between Cabaret and Berlesque? I don't know. They're virtually one in the same. Capwell, which was first, Berlesque?

I think they co-evolved. But I think Berlesque was, yes. I think Berlesque was technically first. Maybe Cabaret was the French version. No, it's not. I think the big difference is the Cabaret is a little more focused on singing and dancing and the band.

Gotcha. But it's almost the exact same thing. Berlesque was more about comedy and skits and pasties. Yeah. All right. OK. So I did say search bar a little while back, which means it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this Inquisition Statements. Sexy. No, not sexy at all. Hey, guys, recently listened to the Inquisition Show, and I had a story. I'm a reformed Jew, and in my high school, my rabbi told me a story about visiting Spain. She was there on a scholarly trip of some kind

and befriended a local Catholic woman. My rabbi eventually talked about Shabbat and the lighting of the candles and the prayers. The woman said she had a similar family tradition and invited my rabbi and her peers to dinner on Friday. Before dinner, she and her family went into the basement of the house and basically performed a Shabbat service.

The prayers were Jewish prayers, though the woman performing the service didn't know that. All she knew was that on Friday, the family went to a hidden place that was sort of secret. After looking into it, they found research saying Spanish and Mexican crypto-Jews aren't uncommon. People who had converted during one of the Inquisitions but kept their traditions secretly, which we talked about.

This woman had no idea why she was doing what she did, but she continued to do it. And that is from Brittany. And she says, P.S., while I do love your show, everyone else in my life hates that I listen. That's like word gerry to those people. I recently visited the UK and went to Warwick Castle with my boyfriend.

Oh, yeah, we're despised at Warwick Castle. They keep vultures there. And I would not shut up about defensive vomiting, sky burials in old world and new world vultures. I'm surprised my boyfriend didn't lock me in the dungeon. So that is from Brittany. Brittany, keep on keeping on, yo. Yep.

You just keep on citing stuff you should know. Eventually, all these haters will fall away and cycle out of your life. And you'll get a good boyfriend. Exactly. If you want to tell us why your boyfriend or girlfriend stinks, you can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know.

You can join us on our YouTube channel. Just search Josh and Chuck. Send us an email to stuffpodcastthediscovery.com and, as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses

and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.