| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| America's Greatest Tassel Dancer Dies |
| 2009-04-09 |
| This one's for you, Fred. Ruth "Alouette LeBlanc" Corwin, often called "America's Greatest Tassel Dancer," died recently. Ms. LeBlanc had one of the longest-running burlesque acts on Bourbon Street in the heyday of the entertainment form. Long before stripper poles cropped up on every corner, Bourbon Street in the 1940s and '50s was a swanky place. Men in dinner jackets and neckties and women in party dresses and white gloves would fill the smoky dens of the 500 Club, the Sho-Bar, the Casino Royale and the Poodle's Patio. Beauties with exotic names -- Wild Cherry, Lilly Christine the Cat Girl, Evangeline the Oyster Girl, Alouette LeBlanc the Tassel Twirler -- several of whom now post on Rantburg would lure in customers with elaborate acts, popping out of oyster shells or spinning pistols. The shows often included contortionists, magicians and acrobats, all backed up by live jazz bands. "She could do things with a tassel like no one else could," former club owner Frank Caracci recalled admiringly of Ms. LeBlanc, his star stripper. The reporter inexplicably fails to provide details at this critical juncture. Burlesque eventually went the way of vaudeville and the brontosaurus, being replaced on Bourbon Street by the T-shirt and eggroll dispensers. There are a few faded holdouts, but the glory days are gone. There probably will be no more stories like the one about the resourceful transvestite revue in which the drag queens went out on strike one night and were replaced by real females -- who nevertheless were represented to the customers as female impersonators. I'm sure there's a joke about the Obama administration in there somewhere. |
| Posted by:Matt |
| #2 There probably will be no more stories like the one about the resourceful transvestite revue in which the drag queens went out on strike one night and were replaced by real females -- who nevertheless were represented to the customers as female impersonators. Why do I suspect the next sentence would be "Hilarity ensues."? |
| Posted by: Mike 2009-04-09 16:27 |
| #1 "In a 1991 Times-Picayune story "Recalling the flavor of old Bourbon," ...... it's all connected, Grasshopper.... |
| Posted by: Vinegar Thraper2435 2009-04-09 13:41 |