Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

escape.

      Lili seemed to be making no more headway at the club than a secret romance with the headwaiter, a thirtysomething man named Dick Hubert of “Belgian descent.”¹²⁵ He was tall, charming, and dark haired with a sculpted physique. Dick was enchanted with Lili but it was forbidden for coworkers to date. They were “nuts about each other.”¹²⁶ The pair would bide their time.

      LILI WATCHED FROM BACKSTAGE AS A LITHE COUPLE SPUN AROUND the dance floor. The evening’s program announced the novelty dance act of Corinne and Tito Valdez, who danced to Chopin’s nocturens.

      Billboard applauded Corinne and Tito for titillating with their “cobra dance” and their “slinky castanet dance.” The audience went crazy for the “sexy, smart” lovely Corinne as she was scooped up in Tito’s strong arms.¹²⁷ They performed from coast to coast, often choreographing other acts. Their work was flashy and they sprinkled their show with a hint of the exotic.

      One of the “favorites” of the Florentine Gardens, they would travel the circuit as dancers and dance directors from Miami to New York in everything, including Mike Todd’s Peep Show starring Gypsy Rose Lee in 1950.¹²⁸

      Young, muscular, and dark-haired Tito wound his arm around the lithe Corinne, who was blonde with perfectly shaped ballerina legs. Lili admired not only their flawless figures but also their gorgeously choreographed dances. Both performed a “near nude, weaving, sexy dance in smart style.”¹²⁹

       Corinne and Tito helped propel Lili to the front of the line

      Corinne asked Lili to appear in a number with them. The trio performed a seminude number about Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Corrine, as the snake, stalked Adam, slithering suggestively, attempting to crush Tito/Adam. Finally Lili/Eve, wearing a knee-length blonde wig and G-string, appeared onstage, swaying between the pair, attempting to ward off the serpent, until she too fell under its spell. It was a smashing success, an imaginative and highly erotic dance.

      Lili had been knocked out by her participation in the number. It was energetic, sexy, and creative. It was also an opportunity to be noticed. “Taking off your clothes doesn’t take much nerve,”¹³⁰ Lili would always say. She was never shy or embarrassed with the human figure. As long as it wasn’t vulgar.

      If nudity—and it wasn’t yet technically stripping, that would come later—meant a higher salary and rising above the chorus, Lili was all for it. But she would be conflicted. Stripping was thought of as low-rent. She never liked the word “stripper.”

       At the Florentine Gardens

      After much searching and experimentation she would find a way to strip on her terms. Elegant and classy. “Always the lady,” they would say about Lili.¹³¹

      LIFE WAS GOOD FOR MARIE. AS MARIE, LILI WORKED HARD. SHE WAS ecstatic when Granny singled her out for any special bits. After shows she was regularly feted by customers eager to get to know her. She sipped champagne, never having too much, then moved on to the next admirer’s table. There was always someone who would buy a pretty girl dinner. Lili and Barbara often received invitations between the shows. When one sister received a dinner invitation she would convince the man to bring a buddy along for the other. It was one for all and all for one.

      Barbara had her share of romance, going on dates with many eligible men like actor Franchot Tone, recently divorced from Joan Crawford and not yet moved on to the disastrous Barbara Payton. Idella carefully monitored the level of the man’s fame to see if she approved of her daughter’s choices.

      Headliner Faith Bacon would make a huge impact on Lili when she joined the show. A dancer who garnered acclaim holding two giant ostrich feathers nearly the size of her petite figure, Faith claimed to be the “original” fan dancer, though both she and Sally Rand danced at the 1933 World’s Fair with their fans. By the 1939 New York World’s Fair in NTG’s “Congress of Beauties,” the popular Faith was making $450 a week.

      In May of 1940 Faith joined the cast at the Florentine for an “indefinite” stay.¹³² She would temporarily be sidelined in a Santa Monica hospital for an operation in July but was back onstage at the Paramount by August. The show had been preceded by a spectacular publicity stunt. Bacon as “Lady Godiva” led a parade on horseback through the streets of Los Angeles where curious onlookers were treated to the fan dancer in the near—if not total—nude followed by dozens of chorus girls. It is conceivable, as an expert horsewoman and Florentine regular, that Barbara was one of them. Variety reported the parade left the “yokels to gap in wonder.”

      As just one of the chorus, Lili would have had little contact with Faith. But one afternoon Lili slipped downtown to see Bacon perform. The show would have a seismic shift in how Lili went about trying to get noticed, turning what she did into an artistic performance.

      Lili would credit Bacon as changing her whole perception about a career stripping. Technically, Lili wasn’t yet a stripper. She did not remove clothes at the Florentine. She hadn’t performed a tease, which is the defining element of burlesque. Lili realized she needed something that would identify her, something that audiences would want to see because she—and no one else—performed it. Also, “If I was going to do nudes, I might as well get paid well for it.”¹³³

      “Faith Bacon was the greatest artist in the business,” Lili would declare.¹³⁴ She was thunderstruck by what the petite beauty who looked like a blonde Clara Bow, with thin, arched black eyebrows and big blue mischievous eyes did. She was an extraordinarily graceful dancer, performing sensuous ballet-like moves without shoes. Bacon held a pair of creamy ostrich feather fans that were quite heavy, requiring strength and skill to (mostly) cover her body. Faith twirled them with gusto and elegance. Though she made it look easy, it was not.

      LILI WAS INSPIRED BY FAITH’S DANCING, NOT ONLY BECAUSE OF THE movements—obviously more than parading, as Lili had been doing—but also by Bacon’s elaborate props and scenery. She worked to classical music that soared and mimicked her story. In one number Faith rapturously portrayed a bird, wearing gorgeous, vibrant colored feathers. At the end of the number she died, her chest penetrated by an arrow.¹³⁵

      Bacon did not just dance, she told a story. Bacon was using herself as art; her body was her tool. “This is the kind of thing to strive for,” Lili said, feeling as if she’d been struck by an arrow herself.¹³⁶ Lili watched Bacon create illusion on the stage: “The stage was haunted by the appearance of beauty.” ¹³⁷

      Faith defiantly reveled in her nudity. Lili thought she was beautiful and recognized her performance as a “big moment” in her life.¹³⁸ She would try to live up to her new idol’s artistry.

      Lili threw herself into work. She was determined more than ever to be a solo performer. She would be the creator of her destiny. She was through waiting for Granny or Corinne and Tito or anyone else to give her an act. She would design her own.

      Years later a starting-to-be-well-known Lili crossed paths backstage with a down-and-out Faith Bacon. Lili had been misquoted as saying that if Faith could dance, so could she, as if Faith’s talent was small and dismissive. At this point many had copied Faith’s act, Sally Rand being the biggest name who claimed she was the original fan dancer. Faith had turned bitter and “aggressive.”¹³⁹ Lili’s idol, hardened and aging, turned away from Lili backstage. Faith didn’t want anything to do with the young upstart criticizing her.

      Lili, shivering backstage (at the Follies in Los Angeles) tried to explain she hadn’t meant it like that, she admired Faith.