An obituary for a Starr barely remembered

The death of Fannie Belle Fleming at the age of 83 was prominently reported on the obituary pages of this Wednesday’s New York Times. But even though a Hollywood movie was made about her life and she was linked romantically to the governor of Louisiana, few readers had ever heard that name.

Many men of a certain age, however, would recognize her stage name: Blaze Starr. In a time when virtually every large and medium-sized city in America had at least one burlesque house, Blaze Starr was the self-proclaimed “Queen of Burlesque.” She performed for more than 30 years until, as she explained, burlesque had become “too raunchy.”

But for teenage boys in the 1950s, a trip to a burlesque house was the ultimate rite of passage. Names like Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm and Lili St. Cyr were every bit as familiar to us as Mickey Mantle, Rocky Colavito and Willie Mays. So somewhere around the age when my voice was changing, a buddy and I made our requisite pilgrimage to the Roxy Theater in downtown Cleveland.

“How old are you boys?” the guy in the ticket booth demanded.

“Twenty-one, sir,” I squeaked.

“OK, that’ll be two bucks each.”

I have no idea who the performers were that day, although I do recall being vaguely disappointed that they barely resembled the centerspreads in the Playboys stashed under my mattress. And that I bought a gadget from a candy barker that, he promised, would show us all sorts of delightful images, but turned out to be a total rip-off.

In a roundabout way, though, it was a burlesque house that led to my career as a columnist.

Because nearly two decades later my editors inexplicably drafted me out of the sports department and assigned me to cover the opening of a burlesque house in Dayton called the Todd Art Theatre. I don’t remember the names of those women, either, although I do remember that the show included a guy who called himself “Jack the Stripper.”

When I got back to the office, I started my story by describing one of the women as being “barefoot all over.” The lead apparently impressed the editors and led to me being given the position of general columnist.

The Roxy Theater was razed in 1977 to make way for a 35story skyscraper. The Todd Art Theatre was torn down in 1984. And now Blaze Starr lives only in the memories of teenage boys who grew up in a time in which, as she put it:

“If there is such a thing as getting nude with class, then I did it.”