No. 1 Stripper

Few of the rosy romantics who read Austin Dobson, collect bisque statuets of Pierrot & Columbine and attend lectures on the 17th Century harlequinade like to remember that there exists in the U. S. today a vivid healthy parallel of the true commedia dell' arte. Like the commedia, the Burlesque Show is extemporaneous, its libretto an assembly of long-remembered "bits" that have never been formally written down. Like the commedia, Burlesque has developed a cast of traditional characters with formalized costumes. The tramp, the Jew, the policeman, the soubrette and the straight man are as persistently unvarying as Harlequin, Pierrot, Columbine and the Captain were 250 years ago. Like the commedia, Burlesque is a theatre of and for the people, cheap, artless and dirty. But, unlike the vanished commedia, Burlesque has continued its raffish existence against the competition of cinema and radio through the ministrations of a new character, possibly the U. S.'s only original contribution to the drama: the strip woman.

Strip women (or strip teasers, as they are called in the trade) do not dance, and the ability to sing is by no means an essential. They stalk about the stage, exercising blandishments and removing as many clothes as local authorities will permit. They are largely responsible for the fact that, with eight empty first class theatres in Manhattan, three burlesque houses on 42nd Street alone are jampacked nightly.

Last week Variety, famed theatrical weekly which long frowned upon this type of quasi-naked performance, took cognizance of the importance of the burlesque stripper by sending Cecelia Ager, its star woman reporter, to interview the highest paid, best-known stripper in Burlesque. The navel of svelte Italianate Anne Corio is as well known to a large section of the public as the nose of Jimmy Durante.

Newshawk Ager met Miss Corio, who in private life is the respected wife of Producer Emmett Callahan, in the wings after her act, followed her to her dressing room, watched her put on dark stockings, white net panties, a peach satin garter belt embroidered ANNE, a robin's egg blue chemise, a pink silk slip, a long-sleeved, high-necked black dress, a black hat and long kid gloves. "Thus," wrote Reporter Ager, "does a strip artist in her private life get even."

Stripper Corio explained her principles: "I don't like to be called a Stripper. In fact it absolutely galls me. But as long as they give me the money, that's all I look forward to. ... Why should I give up my percentage of the gross for $100 a week and glory? * . . . Where are all the Broadway beauties now? When I finish I'll have a bankroll. . .

"Make yourself as feminine looking as you can. Go in for a lot of frills, furs, ruffles, and parasols. Always put everything you have into your work to put it over. . . . Don't take off your panties; it makes a girl's figure look prettier to have those little gadgets on.

"I love the road. They don't expect so much from you on the road. New York audiences just want to see how much you'll take off. ... I love New England best of all. It's so easy to please. You don't have to do much in New England because they haven't had it.

"I love the two-a-day houses best, where the audience is such a different class. In the four-a-day lots of the customers sit through two shows, and by the time the second show rolls around they're exhausted. That doesn't inspire a girl to do her best work. . . . They're too tired to care what you're hiding."

* On the road Stripper Corio receives 15% to 25% of the box office gross, gets $750 a week in New York.

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