Gypsy rose lee biography pictures

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At first, she was just another stripper in bump-and-grind venues where the customers masturbated beneath newspapers in their laps. She was the first performer to blend sex and comedy, to put on more than she took off, to use burlesque to tell stories about herself and the world around her, to understand that no one would laugh at a strip teaser if she first laughed at herself.

While other headliners stripped off every stitch of clothing (and, in some cases, their dignity as well), Gypsy backed up against the velvet curtain, standing tall and regal and unobtainable; the audience always begged for more and was secretly pleased when she refused.

Neither girl got any further schooling.

Dainty June and the Newsboy Songsters

June was now the star of the vaudeville act, "Madam Rose presents Dainty June and her Newsboy Songsters." The newsboy songsters consisted of a revolving cast of male street urchins whose parents were glad to turn them over to someone who would feed them.

A furious Rose jammed a gun into Bobby's chest and pulled the trigger but the safety catch was on.

Getting Their Act Together

With Dainty June's departure, the act was over. But let me tell you, back in the day. Rose reported that the birth was horrific and the baby was washed outside in the snow.

A second child was born in Vancouver, B.C.

two years later, and named June. Lee was not, however, a reliable narrator. She’s the ideal lens with which to examine burlesque—an art form as uniquely American as baseball or Jazz, and one she infused with her singular philosophy and style. At 19, she gave birth to the 12-pound Rose Louise on January 9, 1911, at 4314 Frontenac Street in West Seattle.

Louise made babyish costumes for them, and they hit the road as Madam Rose's Dancing Daughters, an act in which they held dolls. She changed some unpleasant facts, dramatized, and put an amusing spin on the horrors of life on the road with Madam Rose. When the dust settled, Americans were primed for a star who could distract them from the grim new reality and excite them in different, unexpected ways.

By this time the Hovick marriage was in trouble, but it limped along a little longer. The reason Lee’s influence endures can be attributed to two central elements of her remarkable, all-American life story: first, her 1957 memoir, Gypsy, which formed the basis for what more than a few critics laud as the greatest of all American musicals, the 1959 Styne-Sondheim-Laurents masterpiece, Gypsy; and second, her career in burlesque, when she became the most famous and perhaps the most singularly likable stripper in the world.

Madam Rose taught the girls to lie about their ages to truant officers and railway train conductors, steal blankets and sheets from hotels, and sneak out without paying.

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Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle in 1911) was and remains a force in American popular culture not because she acted in films (although she did act in films) or because she wrote successful mystery novels (although she did write successful mystery novels). Erik learned of his true parentage in his late teens.

Madam Rose's Last Act

Madam Rose died in 1954.

During negotiations she was known to rely on pie charts rather than figures.

The production was jeopardized by objections from June, who at one point hired a lawyer. But she soon managed to pull away from the pack with humor.

Gypsy Rose Lee

By 1931, she was in New York, and playing Minsky's. She, her little sister June, and her monstrous stage mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, passed into show biz legend when her bestselling 1957 memoir, Gypsy, became a Broadway smash.

Stars in Her Mother's Eyes

The mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, was a teenage bride fresh from a convent school when was married to Jack Olaf Hovick.

(Modern “neo-burlesque” performers, like Dita Von Teese, Angie Pontani and others, cite Gypsy in near-reverent terms as a pioneer and inspiration.)

Here, LIFE.com celebrates Gypsy Rose Lee’s life and her career with a selection of pictures by George Skadding, a LIFE staffer far better known for photographing presidents (he was long an officer of the White House News Photographers Association) than burlesque stars.

The girls were practiced shoplifters.