to go home in the Wizard of Oz, Gypsy wanted to tell Americans that she had only ever intended to use
“Oz” to get back to Broadway. She introduced comic roles that inverted the usual Hollywood stories—such as the business-95
To Hollywood and Back
woman “making advances at a timid male seeking a film test.”
Despite mediocre reviews, Gypsy’s fans thronged to see her.
Small Town Farm Girl or Siren of the Burlesque Stage?
Back in New York in 1939, Gypsy needed more than the slip of a strap or a leap through a screen to reclaim her status as Queen of Striptease. Obsessed by the events in Europe, Americans had turned away from the arts in general and burlesque in particular.
While Gypsy dallied in Hollywood, Mayor La Guardia closed all the burlesque theaters in New York and banned the word striptease from the marquees. The strippers who had plied their trade in burlesque in the mid-1930s had migrated to nightclubs. The acts had become more theatrical and more demure. Strippers performed gimmicks that would have been unheard of two years earlier, such as taking it off behind doves, balloons, snakes, or parakeets. But higher production values among strippers was not the only challenge that Gypsy faced: by this time, thanks to the talkies’ growing popularity, the American theater had lost its place as the nation’s primary form of entertainment.
Still, Gypsy put striptease to a good cause: helping the Spanish Loyalists, she joined artists and writers including Paul Robeson, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Capa to raise money for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the mostly Communist American
volunteer army fighting against Franco and Mussolini, and for Spanish refugees. At one benefit Gypsy told the crowd: “I have 96
To Hollywood and Back
not come to lift my skirts, but to lift the embargo on Spain.”
When Gypsy headed a clothes drive at the Greenwich Village theater, the accompanying ad showed a photo of the half-naked stripper. The copy read: “Clothes? Any new clothes? Old clothes?
Gypsy Rose Lee appeals for clothing for Spanish refugees . . .
and she’s not teasing. The artist who has given her all on stage and screen now asks you to give.” Gypsy went on to describe barefoot, shirtless children.
What Gypsy saw as a gesture for a good cause, others re-
garded as a genius for the avant-garde. Barney Josephson told the New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett that Gypsy had inspired Café Society, the soigné nightclub he would found the following year: “I’d seen Gypsy Rose Lee doing a political striptease at fundraising affairs in New York for the Lincoln Brigade. I con-ceived of the idea of presenting some sort of satire and alternat-ing it with jazz music.”
Intimates of the Striptease-Queen-turned-leftist-activist-muse were less impressed. Mizzy’s mother scolded her daughter-in-law that she had “promised” to give up stripping, not to mention stripping for Communists. But La Gyp had no intention of giving up anything besides her marriage. She and Mizzy separated, and documents from 1938 (as well as press clippings) cite “extreme cruelty” as the reason.
Like many other left-leaning intellectuals and artists who helped the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Gypsy attracted the atten-97
To Hollywood and Back
tion of the Dies Committee, which had convened that year to ferret out Communists, especially those associated with the theater. But when the committee sought to question Gypsy, she wielded puns about her profession the way a lion tamer uses a chair. “I’ll bare all if they come to Columbus,” she told the press.
The committee dropped its investigation, and at least one newspaper ran a story claiming that, by targeting Gypsy, committee co-chair Martin Dies revealed his own hunger for publicity. Perhaps he wanted to make it in Hollywood too.
Gypsy’s reinvention during the war has sartorial and social roots. Thanks to the zipper’s advent, getting out of one’s clothes was more
“Oz” to get back to Broadway. She introduced comic roles that inverted the usual Hollywood stories—such as the business-95
To Hollywood and Back
woman “making advances at a timid male seeking a film test.”
Despite mediocre reviews, Gypsy’s fans thronged to see her.
Small Town Farm Girl or Siren of the Burlesque Stage?
Back in New York in 1939, Gypsy needed more than the slip of a strap or a leap through a screen to reclaim her status as Queen of Striptease. Obsessed by the events in Europe, Americans had turned away from the arts in general and burlesque in particular.
While Gypsy dallied in Hollywood, Mayor La Guardia closed all the burlesque theaters in New York and banned the word striptease from the marquees. The strippers who had plied their trade in burlesque in the mid-1930s had migrated to nightclubs. The acts had become more theatrical and more demure. Strippers performed gimmicks that would have been unheard of two years earlier, such as taking it off behind doves, balloons, snakes, or parakeets. But higher production values among strippers was not the only challenge that Gypsy faced: by this time, thanks to the talkies’ growing popularity, the American theater had lost its place as the nation’s primary form of entertainment.
Still, Gypsy put striptease to a good cause: helping the Spanish Loyalists, she joined artists and writers including Paul Robeson, Ernest Hemingway, and Robert Capa to raise money for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, the mostly Communist American
volunteer army fighting against Franco and Mussolini, and for Spanish refugees. At one benefit Gypsy told the crowd: “I have 96
To Hollywood and Back
not come to lift my skirts, but to lift the embargo on Spain.”
When Gypsy headed a clothes drive at the Greenwich Village theater, the accompanying ad showed a photo of the half-naked stripper. The copy read: “Clothes? Any new clothes? Old clothes?
Gypsy Rose Lee appeals for clothing for Spanish refugees . . .
and she’s not teasing. The artist who has given her all on stage and screen now asks you to give.” Gypsy went on to describe barefoot, shirtless children.
What Gypsy saw as a gesture for a good cause, others re-
garded as a genius for the avant-garde. Barney Josephson told the New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett that Gypsy had inspired Café Society, the soigné nightclub he would found the following year: “I’d seen Gypsy Rose Lee doing a political striptease at fundraising affairs in New York for the Lincoln Brigade. I con-ceived of the idea of presenting some sort of satire and alternat-ing it with jazz music.”
Intimates of the Striptease-Queen-turned-leftist-activist-muse were less impressed. Mizzy’s mother scolded her daughter-in-law that she had “promised” to give up stripping, not to mention stripping for Communists. But La Gyp had no intention of giving up anything besides her marriage. She and Mizzy separated, and documents from 1938 (as well as press clippings) cite “extreme cruelty” as the reason.
Like many other left-leaning intellectuals and artists who helped the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Gypsy attracted the atten-97
To Hollywood and Back
tion of the Dies Committee, which had convened that year to ferret out Communists, especially those associated with the theater. But when the committee sought to question Gypsy, she wielded puns about her profession the way a lion tamer uses a chair. “I’ll bare all if they come to Columbus,” she told the press.
The committee dropped its investigation, and at least one newspaper ran a story claiming that, by targeting Gypsy, committee co-chair Martin Dies revealed his own hunger for publicity. Perhaps he wanted to make it in Hollywood too.
Gypsy’s reinvention during the war has sartorial and social roots. Thanks to the zipper’s advent, getting out of one’s clothes was more
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