‘American Sex Symbol’ was at cutting edge of her craft
My father— maybe some of your fathers too— told me stories about the remarkable things he sawat A Century of Progress, the world’s fair held on Chicago’s lakefront in 1933 and 1934.
Of all the “wonders” on display there, the one that stayed longest in some mindswas that of “fan dancer” Sally Rand, who pops off the pages of the latest historical excursion byWilliamHazelgrove, a local author of boundless curiosity.
Thewoman whowould be Sally Randwas born Helen Beck in 1904 in a small Missouri town tucked in the Ozarks. Benefiting frommusic and dance lessons as a child, as a teenager she ran away and joined a carnival, graduated to a traveling circus and eventually made it to Hollywood.
Itwas there that film director Cecil B. DeMille changed her name to Sally Rand (inspired when he sawa copy of a RandMcNally atlas) and cast her in more than two dozen silent films. But the talkies came along and shewas gone because, as she told Studs Terkel in a radio interview decades later, my “voice belongs in the Eleanor Roosevelt category.”
She then came to Chicago to star in a play. It lasted only one month, but itwas here, “sleeping under cardboard in the alleys,” that she got the idea to buy some ostrich feathers, take off some of her clothes and get a job dancing at a place called the Paramount Club, a joint popular with the city’s gangster set.
A Century of Progress was scheduled to open within the year, andHazelgrove does an estimable and exciting job charting those heady times, fromthe inventiveway Sally Rand “crashed the fair” as Lady Godiva to her stunning success that manifested in massive fame, huge crowds and piles of money.
NowI knowwhat some of youmight be thinking: Whatwas, orwas not, under those feathers?
“The answers are as varied as her career,” Hazelgrove writes before providing some possible answers. “Sally Randwas at the cutting edge of the early twentieth-century sexual revolution because her livelihood depended on people thinking shewas naked behind the fans.”
Shewas arrested for indecency many times, once four times in one day. But itwasworth it.
During theWorld’s Fair, shewas also performing at the Chicago Theatre, giving as many as 16 performances a day. Her actwas but eight minutes long but compelled one critic to write: “Perfectly beautiful— as presented and lighted. Airy, exquisite, artistic! So adept is Miss Rand with her fans, so cunning the hand at the colored light switch, that you are good if you can tell where the body starts, and her fans stop.”
Hazelgrove is a sociable historian, writing in a style closer to breezy conversation than droning academia, and not at all reluctant to share his enthusiasm for his subjects. He has done this in previous books about such colorful characters as Teddy Roosevelt, Al Capone, EdithWilson and theWright Brothers
And so it is not surprising to find him at the beginning of “Sally Rand: American Sex Symbol” (Rowman & Littlefield) in the basement of the Chicago HistoryMuseum. He had by then spent very many hours upstairswith 61 boxes that comprise Sally Rand’s archives.
“Like a coal miner trying to find a diamond in the dark, I had become fa
tigued by the letters, the articles, the suits, the divorces, the detritus of any life that has been truly lived,” he writes.
Then, in the basement, he is shown the famous ostrich feathers (those “fans”) that Sally Rand used in her act: “I leaned over the seven-pound fans and took some photos withmy phone.”
He has wisely opted to use only the Rand materials that propel this compelling story “to focus on how(her life) played out in the cultural zeitgeist of America in the twentieth century. … (She) lived large … andwas one of the first to become famous for being famous.”
For all the flash and feathers and fleeting moments of happiness Rand
experienced, there is a palpable sadness shadowing her life. Therewas a series of lousy guys, bad business decisions, legal hassles. Therewas a nasty rivalry with Faith Bacon,
whichHazelgrove details, giving full credit to Leslie Zemeckis’ marvelous 2018 “Feuding FanDancers: Faith Bacon, Sally Rand, and the Golden Age of the Showgirl” (Counterpoint).
After herWorld’s Fair fame, Rand tried to cash in. But “the problem of being a cultural icon,” Hazelgrove writes, “is that it’s almost impossible to define and even harder to monetize.”
She hit the road, performing almost anyplace thatwould have her, trying to also support her mother and stepfather and falling for moochers. Shewent back toHollywood, but no sale.
There are many levels to this book. One is stardom, andHazelgrove neatly focuses on the contrast between Rand andmovie starMaeWest, writing that Rand “did not have the dramatic talent thatMae West used since shewas a little girl. Sally Randwas created by forces beyond her control. … One is a manufactured sex symbol, the other is the struggle under a carnival tent in sawdust and heat. It is fitting that Sally Rand finished out in gymnasiums and senior citizens homes whileMaeWest finished out on Dick Cavett.”
But therewould be some modest late-in-life celebrity. In 1957, Rand appeared on the TV game show“To Tell the Truth” and much later on “TheDating Game.” She talked to Terkel on the radio and any reporter willing and able to track her down.
A lasting bit of fame is in TomWolfe’s magnificent 1979 book, “The Right Stuff,” when he writes of theHouston parade and arena event introducing the first Apollo astronauts to theworld. Hazelgrove writes “around two on the afternoon as the lights dropped, a band picked up, and a spotlight centered on two giant ostrich feathers, and a sixty-year-old Sally Rand began to dance.”
He quotesWolfe, who writes: “She winked and minced about and took off a little here and covered a little there and shook her ancient haunches at the seven single-combatwarriors. Itwas electrifying. It was quite beyond sex, show business … the Venus de Houston shook her fanny in an utterly baffling blessing over it all.”
Her final performance came in 1977 at a pageant in the California town in which she had long lived, Glendora, which she had purchased when flush.
Shewould die there on Aug. 31, 1979. She died in a hospital where she had an outstanding bill for $10,000. Within days that billwas paid by Sammy Davis Jr.
WhenDaviswas a young performer on the road, Sally Rand had been kind to him. He remembered.