Lady of Burlesque

William Wellman, the man who brought you NOTHING SACRED, BEAU GESTE, ROXIE HART, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, A STAR IS BORN, and WINGS, brings you this neglected gem starring the one and only Barbara Stanwyck. Available for some reason in a thousand cheapie video bins for under five bucks, this 91 minute classic B-movie puts the B in sublime. An A-list group decided to adapt Gypsy Rose Lee's exploitation sex - murder - laughs novel for the silver screen, and the sheer joy brought to the tawdry enterprise somehow transmutes the base material - the murder plot was creaky for 1943 - into show-biz gold. When you think of old-fashioned entertainment, you are picturing LADY OF BURLESQUE, in which a maniac is killing the show-girls in a run-down burlesque theater, and a baggy-pants comic steadfastly pursues Barbara Stanwyck with wisecracks and dutch-treat dates. The real stars are the burlesque performers, lovable freaks from the Hollywood gutter spouting a hard-bitten patter with the nano-second timing of people who'd been doing this since their parents dragged them onto the vaudeville stage when they were three. Stanwyck was the only major screen queen from the thirties and forties who specialized in hopelessly vulgar heroines (see STELLA DALLAS and BABY FACE), but here she's the class act because she's the only one not trying to be classy. Her love interest is the wonderful Michael O'Shea, who plays the false nose comedian who falls for Stanwyck. Stanwyck puts a spin on the word "comic" that makes it sound like a four letter word. One scene above all others stakes this movie's claim to greatness - while in the middle of a hoary old comedy sketch, Stanwyck and O'Shea are interrupted by the off-stage wailings of a stripper being beaten up by her thug boyfriend. No one backstage will stop the brutality because they're all scared of the thug, so the onstage performers strike up the band and try to drown out the screams with an up-tempo musical number and improvised jitterbugging. Note, too, the big built blonde with the lisp who declares of the most recent murder "How gruethome!"

The most surprising thing about LADY OF BURLESQUE was that it got made at all. Burlesque was all but dead by 1942, shut out of most towns and cities by relentless moral crusaders, and Hollywood itself was mired in the infamous "production code," which put a heavy lid on what could and could not be shown on screen. But burlesque had spawned a number of stars who remained favorites with public, and in 1941 the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee penned a book called THE G-STRING MURDERS. It proved extremely popular, and a year later United Artists took a chance on the film project.

True enough, the movie couldn't show the strippers in action or play out the bawdy comic sketches so popular in burlesque, but writer James Gunn turned in a superior script, and director William Wellman and his cast gave the whole thing tremendous dash and style. The result was a movie that captured the seedy, underworld-edged world of burlesque without actually causing censors to yank it from distribution.

In theory, LADY OF BURLESQUE is a murder mystery, but mystery takes a back seat to the brawling backstage antics of crossed love affairs and star rivalry. Barbara Stanwyck endows star stripper "Dixie Daisy" with her own memorable brand of tough class--and although she can only be shown from the waist up when she bumps and grinds, she still manages to tear strips off her musical number "Play It On The G-String." The rest of the cast is equally memorable, many of them burlesque stars in their own right. Pinky Lee (Mandy) is memorably teamed with Marion Martin (Alice Angel) to delightful effect; Iris Adrian (Gee-Gee)is the gum smacking brash blonde to end all gum smacking brash blondes; and such memorable character actors as Michael O'Shea (Biff), Gloria Dickson (Dolly), and J. Edward Bromberg (Foss) round out the cast superbly.

Sad to say, LADY OF BURLESQUE has fallen into public domain, and it has not been well preserved. I have seen several releases of the film, and all of them are plagued with breaks in the film and the soundtrack. LADY OF BURLESQUE may never be regarded as a "great" film, but it is an extremely entertaining one, particularly for those who already know something about the now-lost world of burlesque. As one character says, "Makes me want to leave the wife!" Recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Nothing deep here, but that's good. A light-hearted comedy in the guise of a mystery. Don't expect to be mystified, the "mystery" only serves as a vehicle for the comedy and a rather believable romance. Barbara Stanwyck, though 36 years old, looks much younger. Her part was rather vivacious, risque, and revealing for a 1943 movie. The lady could act!

The image on the DVD is generally very good, but there are several places where a few "frames" are missing, causing disquieting "jumps", but still, a good investment of time, if only to enjoy watching Miss Stanwyck smile and wiggle.

Director William A. Wellman gives us Lady of Burlesque a boisterous whodunit played out in an old burlesque theatre. Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's novel The G-String Murders theres plenty of humor surrounding the murders with wisecracks left and right. Theres some bumps and grinds but no stripping due to the movie code at that time. Of course we have the wonderful Barbara Stanwyck here who dazzles us with some neat song and dance routines. Also a lovely bunch of beauties in scanty costumes including gum snapping Gee Gee (Iris Adrian), troubled Dolly (Gloria Dickson), gorgeous Alice (Marion Martin), Lolita (Victoria Faust) and Princess Nirvena (Stephanie Bachelor) both delightfully bitchy. Theres also Michael O' Shea and Pinky Lee involved in the mystery and humor at the old former opera house. So "Take It Off The E-String, Play It On The G-String" (song) and have a good time. Oscar nominee for Best Score.

Did the movies ever produce a trouper more versatile than Barbara Stanwyck, a seasoned pro who not only could do anything handed to her but did them all superlatively well? Her long career encompasses melodramas, weepers, screwball comedy, noir, even Westerns. In Lady of Burlesque she sings, breaks into a variety of dance steps, and even turns a cartwheel (and if a stunt double did it for her, the editing is virtuoso). She's far and away the best thing in the movie, which is saying a lot: Lady of Burlesque is a breakneck carnival ride of a movie.

It's based on The G-String Murders, a light mystery penned by society stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (her own story became legend in Gypsy, and her sister. Baby June, became actress June Havoc). But the mystery emerges late and, like the obligatory love angle, doesn't unduly detract from the movie's main business, which is a salty and affectionate reminiscence of the autumn of vaudeville's ne'er-do-well stepsister, burlesque, set, like all the best show-biz stories, backstage.

William Wellman gets things popping right off the bat, in a Ziegfeld-Follies like number in which one of the prancing chorines keeps trying to blow her Veronica-Lake locks out of her face. Then there's a fast seque into Stanwyck's `Take It Off The E-String (Play It On The G-String),' then upstairs to the horror of a dressing room where the big, pale girls gussy themselves up and rip one another up one side and down the other. Their smart, snapping mouths recall the bitchiest exchanges in Stage Door, another racy peek into stage life after the curtain's rung down (among the grind-house queens are Iris Adrian, Victoria Faust, Janis Carter and Stephanie Bachelor). Another dressing room houses the men – the comics with their wide pants and tiny hats (Pinky Lee among them); Wellman even throws in some of their hoary routines but counterpoints them against offstage action to offset their stale-popcorn fustiness.

Police raids and gangster boyfriends, professional jealousies and box-office worries play as much a role in the movie as a series of ecdysiasts strangled with their own beadwork. With Wellman at the helm and an enviable if not, apart from Stanwyck, especially starry cast, Lady of Burlesque delivers lots more than it promises.