Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

newfound stage presence, the Johnstons asked Lili to extend her stay.

      At the end of her extension a redheaded headliner by the name of Betty Rowland suggested Lili try the Follies in Los Angeles.

      Rowland was petite and buxom, a live-and-let-live type. She had been performing since she was a young girl along with her two sisters, Roz Elle and Dian. They started out tap-dancing in vaudeville. Eventually, like Lili and her sisters, all three became headliners.

       Lili at vanity

      LIKE MANY STRIPPERS BETTY HAD HER PARTICULAR WAY OF DRESSING. Two pieces. Skirt and tops. Slit up to the fastener. There was a vivaciousness about Betty that made her hugely popular. Her moniker was “the Ball of Fire” because of her fiery hair and hot strip.

      Either on her own or with Betty’s help, Lili secured a spot at the Follies where she met Lillian Hunt, who would become another mentor.

      Born Lily Izen, Lillian Hunt was a former tap dancer who ran away from home as a teen and married an actor in a show she was dancing in. They had a daughter before he deserted her and she moved into the chorus. There she met comedian Leon DeVoe whom she would marry and spend the rest of her life with, eventually moving to California to do choreography at the Follies, a burlesque house in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

      Hunt was redheaded, big-bosomed, and managed, directed, and produced the shows. She worked seven days a week marshalling a bevy of beauties across the stage, and up and down the many staircases backstage with her perennial bark rising from her “shabby office backstage.” In her suits and gloves she was very much the lady, something Lili could appreciate. Hunt would share with Lili a love of Daché hats. Lillian took dozens of girls under her wing over many decades, turning them into fine strippers. She insisted they conduct themselves as ladies, dressing properly outside the theatre. Hunt did not like vulgarity on or off the stage, telling one stripper when she performed, “You don’t have to be vulgar, keep your tongue in your mouth.”¹⁹⁹

       Sisters Dardy and Barbara

      Hunt too would help Lili perfect her act and hire her year after year.²⁰⁰

      The former Belasco Theatre, which had opened in 1904, was renamed the Follies, with generous seating for nine hundred that belied its modest exterior. Inside was a lovely, ornate theatre with balcony and box seats. The generous backstage could easily fit dressing rooms to accommodate eighty showgirls. A runway thrust into the audience, placing the girls within arm’s length. Yet the lobby was surprisingly small and dingy. Between shows Hunt played the Charlie Chan movies Lili loved.

      Sandwiched between a shoe store and a pawnshop, the Follies ran four shows a day, with a new show weekly. Strippers high and low graced the stage, from Rose la Rose to Patti Wagon. It would be the last burlesque house standing in Los Angeles, meeting the wrecking ball in 1974.²⁰¹

      Lili reunited with Dardy, now seventeen, who was sharing the stage with Barbara at Earl Carroll’s on Sunset Boulevard. Thin, tall, and brunette, Dardy was striking. Being on the road had matured her.

      THERE HAD BEEN A FAMILY UPSET RECENTLY. IAN HAD LEFT IDELLA. IT couldn’t have been much of a surprise after years of volatile fights.

      Ian, still handsome, now worked for or owned his own detective agency. Investigating Idella he found some disturbing news relating to Lili’s father. And it was a bombshell.

      To Ian (and possibly others) Idella had claimed her first husband had been killed in World War I. However, Ian found a letter from the very-much-alive Mr. Edward Van Schaack, who had written to Idella just the previous year. He was living in Spokane, Washington. It seemed Ian could find no record of Edward Van Schaack and Idella’s divorce, because there hadn’t been one, which meant Ian and Idella were never legally married.²⁰²

      What did Lili, who had never received any contact from her father, think? A father she was told was either dead or had abandoned her mother? Had he tried to make contact and Idella kept the two apart? He must have wanted some news about his daughter, or why would he have kept in touch with Idella?

      To add humiliation to Idella’s presumed embarrassment, Barbara and Dardy testified in court they wanted Ian to have custody of them.

      When contacted, Lili’s father clammed up. “I don’t want to talk about it.”²⁰³ To everyone’s relief the judge ruled the sisters legitimate.

      Did this mean that Idella’s marriage to Cornett was also invalid? No one seems to have brought it up.²⁰⁴

      It was another monumental secret to be kept.

      LILI’S SALARY HAD BEEN STEADILY RISING. BY 1943 SHE WAS MAKING $75 a week at the Sugar Hill nightclub in Hollywood. Mentioned in the paper as the tall, cool blonde with the name of Lili, she would vacillate between Lili Fehnova (or “Finova”), “Lili LaSeur,” and the unimaginable “Lili Wanamaker,” hoping the right one would stick. With still no word from Lou Walters, whom she hoped would rescue her from burlesque, Lili returned to the Florentine Gardens and billed herself as “Lili LaBang” and “Lili Le Bang.” (Lili always had a great sense of humor. She claimed she lived near Le Bang Place.²⁰⁵)

      She was popular enough that Variety mentioned when she missed work due to the flu.²⁰⁶

      Into the Florentine one night walked that old regular Rex St. Cyr with an heiress on one arm and a movie star on the other. People leaned together and whispered, as they always did when the mysterious millionaire appeared. Hollywood remained curious. “Who is he?” they wondered. He wasn’t handsome, but he was rich and he had European manners. Lili adored his last name.

      In writing, “St. Cyr” looked sexy and elegant. It was pronounced not saint cyr, but sin-cere. The double entendre wasn’t bad either. Lili decided to make it her own.

      Barbara and Dardy performed as Moffett (or Moffet or Moffatt). They were on the road with Earl Carroll earning $65 a week. All three sisters could consider themselves doing very well.

      On trains and in dressing rooms Dardy wrote letters to her father recording life on the road. She wrote how difficult train travel was becoming as all the good trains were used for soldiers. Very often they were late to engagements. The food was unmentionable.

      Dardy told one story involving the pettiness that often arose backstage among the showgirls. Mascara in those days came in cakes and girls had their own because they spit on them to moisten the makeup before applying it. It wasn’t something anyone wanted to share.

      Dardy caught one girl as she picked up Dardy’s tin and spit in it. Dardy was furious, especially as it happened more than once. “I didn’t have money to waste on extras,” not to mention she wasn’t interested in some stranger’s germs.

      Shortly thereafter a stagehand caught a mouse, typical theatre inhabitants. “Could I please have that?” Dardy asked the stagehand.

      The stagehand looked at her as if she was crazy but handed over the dead mouse by its ropey gray tail.

      Dardy carried it in a towel back to the empty dressing room. Carefully scooping out half the contents of the spit-swapping girl’s jar of Albolene makeup remover, she plopped the dead mouse in and covered it with cream.

      About a week later, the girl dashed into the theatre with an itchy red and swollen face. She was in tears.

      “Look at me!” the girl screamed. “What am I gonna do?” All the girls gathered around and exclaimed at her puffy cheeks. “I don’t know what the hell happened.”

      “I