This inaugural volume in the Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre series sets Lydia Thompson, queen of burlesque, under the spotlight. The series will attempt to resurrect theatre performers and writers who were famous in their era, yet who have since inexplicably faded from popular memory. Outlandish tales of Lydia's touring burlesque company, the British Blondes, and such lurid episodes as her horsewhipping of a Chicago editor, a romance with a Russian Grand Duke and a lesbian attacker have left her with a reputation as a bawdy burlesquer, but Kurt Gänzl argues she was nothing of the kind. Through this biography, the reader will learn the whole and hitherto untold story of this fascinating, multi-dimensional musical-theatre star.

Robert Allen's compelling book examines burlesque not only as popular entertainment but also as a complex and transforming cultural phenomenon. When Lydia Thompson and her controversial female troupe of "British Blondes" brought modern burlesque to the United States in 1868, the result was electric. Their impertinent humor, streetwise manner, and provocative parodies of masculinity brought them enormous popular success--and the condemnation of critics, cultural commentators, and even women's rights campaigners. Burlesque was a cultural threat, Allen argues, because it inverted the "normal" world of middle-class social relations and transgressed norms of "proper" feminine behavior and appearance. Initially playing to respectable middle-class audiences, burlesque was quickly relegated to the shadow-world of working-class male leisure. In this process the burlesque performer "lost" her voice, as burlesque increasingly revolved around the display of her body. Locating burlesque within the context of both the social transformation of American theater and its patterns of gender representation, Allen concludes that burlesque represents a fascinating example of the potential transgressiveness of popular entertainment forms, as well as the strategies by which they have been contained and their threats defused.

50 Headline-grabbing murders from around the world.

Publisher Description

First full-scale revision since 1987.

It is also the story of Albert and Uranus Crosby, who migrated from Cape Cod to Chicago where, as successful entrepreneurs, they made their fortunes and later sacrificed it all in their efforts to bring a new musical and artistic enlightenment to their adpoted city.