A life laid bare

Lili St. Cyr was the Kim Kardashian of her day — stripping away her clothes and her soul

ATa burlesque club called the Gayety in Montreal, the dancer took the stage to the sound of the jazz standard “Harlem Nocturne.”

With a packed crowd watching in rapt attention, she “entered as though returning from a date wearing beautiful jewels and a gorgeous white dress. Moving languidly to the sultry music, [her] entire body seemed encased in sorrow.”

She replaced the dress with black negligee, and “desperation clung to her like perfume” as she reached for “an ornate crystal bottle of pills and a waiting glass of champagne.” She stared at a framed photo of what appeared to be a lover — one who had scorned her, perhaps? — and “pretended to swallow a handful of pills.”

The astonished crowd then saw the dancer, wearing naught but a Gstring, collapse to the floor, then rise up as if a ghost, now “dreamily walking up stairs toward heaven as ethereal music played from the orchestra.”

The crowd broke into a impassioned standing ovation, not just for her grace and artistry, but for the autobiographical nature of the act. The dancer, Lili St. Cyr, had attempted suicide by overdose several times, and audiences knew she was acting out her darkest hours.

Lili St. Cyr was, in many ways, the Kim Kardashian of her day, a woman notorious for her handsome lovers, her personal drama — and, above all, for her entrancing sexuality.

FAMOUS PARAMOURS

In the middle of last century, St. Cyr, as we learn in Leslie Zemeckis’ new biography, “The Goddess of Love Incarnate,” spent decades as a massive star. For men, she represented the ultimate fantasy, and for women, a feminist ideal: At a time when women were still expected to be housewives and mothers only, St. Cyr earned her own money (and lots of it) and dictated the direction of her career.

She was also persecuted for her art, arrested several times for supposedly attacking the moral fiber of two nations.

Marie Frances Van Schaack at first wanted nothing more than a wealthy husband. But after a failed marriage followed by an engagement that came to naught, her life took a turn. At 23, she accompanied her two younger sisters to a showgirl audition in California, and her beauty left the auditioners mystified as to why she wasn’t on stage with them.

She was hired and worked her way up, taking her stage name from Rex St. Cyr, a mysterious wealthy man who threw some of the most extravagant parties in Hollywood — even though

no one re ally knew who he was or what he did. After a show in Hollywood, Orson Welles, fresh off his “War of the Worlds” triumph, asked to meet her and they briefly dated.

When she invited him to meet her family, Welles showed up “hat in hand, carrying a large wooden staff [and] even a hooded cloak dramatically thrown across his wide shoulders. [St. Cyr’s sisters] Dardy and Barbara couldn’t help but giggle.” Welles talked endlessly about a new film he was working on that “was going to change movies forever.”

“The family’s eyes started glazing over,” Zemeckis writes, “as Orson kept talking, not allowing anyone to get a word in.” Once Welles and St. Cyr left, “Dardy raced over to the chair Orson had sat in, intending to mimic the ‘great’ actor stooping down into his throne. ‘Stop,’ [her grandmother] shouted, raising up her hand. ‘Don’t sit in that chair. His royal ass sat there.’ Everyone burst out laughing.”

The film he was referring to, it turned out, was “Citizen Kane.”

She was also pursued, in a fashion, by Howard Hughes. While performing at the Follies in Los Angeles, St.

Cyr was approached by a man in his 50s named Walter Kane, who told her, “I work for Howard Hughes. We want to make a film for you.”

She had heard the film part many times before, but it turned out that “Kane was known to procure and proposition women for the reclusive Hughes,” as “Kane arranged Hughes’ myriad of starlets stashed round Hollywood.”

At Kane’s apartment, they enjoyed appetizers and gin martinis and talked about “how much Hughes wanted to employ the lovely Lili.” Kane then had his chauffeur drive her home.

“She was astounded he hadn’t tried to kiss her,” Zemeckis writes. “This behavior intrigued her.”

But as the routine repeated itself for six months and St. Cyr developed feelings for Kane, he juggled his responsibility to Hughes with, in time, his own relationship with St. Cyr.

Then Kane disappeared from her life with no explanation, and she took a bottle of pills in despair, leaving her unconscious for two days. Even though she did later appear in one of Hughes’ films — at which point she and Kane enjoyed a friendly reunion — it’s likely that she and Hughes never even met.

HER OWN WOMAN

During the making of that film, “Son of Sinbad,” St. Cyr struck an inadvertent blow for feminism in Hollywood. Her costar, Dale Robertson, fumed when he learned that “his monthly contract with RKO was a fraction of her daily rate.”

By 1947, St. Cyr was a hit in Canada and here. While the median annual income in the US was around $3,000 per family, St. Cyr made $1,500 a week. By the early 1950s, offers had risen to $10,000 a week, and her audiences were filled with celebrities such as Judy Garland, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan.

Her growing popularity made St. Cyr an influence on many. “Bette Davis immediately went out and got a new ‘poodle haircut,’ ” writes Zemeckis, “after catching Lili sporting her new short hairdo.” Marilyn Monroe was long entranced by St. Cyr, having “made columnist Walter Winchell take her to see Lili perform. Many remarked that Marilyn’s voice changed, growing softer and whispery like Lili’s.”

St. Cyr was rarely naked in her early acts, preferring to tease her audiences. She was brutal to the famous pinup of her day, Bettie Page, saying, “She made everything cheap. What she did was pornography. I did art.” The morality police, however, rarely agreed.

In Montreal, a priest named MarieJoseph D’Anjou, with the city’s Public Morality Committee on his side, led a public campaign against her in 1951, writing in French that when she gyrates, “the theatre is made to stink with the foul odor of sexual frenzy.”

She was arrested for “behavior that was ‘immoral, obscene or indecent.’ ” The charges were eventually dropped, but St. Cyr was petrified she’d wind up in jail and had to perform with police watching her every move, hoping for some sexual screwup. The incident affected her harshly, as she “took pills to calm down, pills to sleep and drank a little more.”

A similar arrest in LA sometime later, for “an indecent performance and lewdly exposing her person,” resulted in a bizarre trial in which St. Cyr recreated her bathtub routine — while clothed — in court, complete with tub, and with her lawyer playing the part of her onstage maid. It took the jury 78 minutes to reach their notguilty verdict.

One of her worst ambushes came not from the police, but from a familiar member of the media.

In 1957, future “60 Minutes” correspondent Mike Wallace interviewed her for his television show. As Zemeckis recounts it, Wallace treated her like a war criminal.

He asked if “she [was] afraid to old and ugly,” and “if she had an in her spiritual bank to rely on she lost her beauty.” After she sa didn’t want children, he asked, “kind of a world do you think would be if everyone were you?” He even suggested, incredibly, that “she might want to go to a psychoanalyst.”

LOSING IT ALL

St. Cyr worked into her 50s, her figure almost as shapely as it had been 30 years prior. But as burlesque theaters closed and younger dancers became more risqué, St. Cyr realized her time had passed.

She retired in 1970, at 53, around the same time she met the final man in her life. Donald Markick was “devastatingly handsome,” and 17 years St. Cyr’s junior.

According to Zemeckis, it be apparent to those around them that Markick was most likely a drug dealer. St. Cyr’s sister Dardy told her, about Markick “Didn’t like him. He’s the one that got her using terrible, terrible drugs. I could never forgive him that.”

In the ensuing years, the dancer’s property, belongings and fortune would all disappear because of heroin. The oncegorgeous Lili St. Cyr was a toothless recluse living in a cramped, dingy apartment, magazine pages taped to her windows. Shediedin 1999, at 81.

Until her tragic end, St. Cyr was proud of her life. She rejoiced freedom to perform as she pl and was never ashamed of the sure she brought to millions

“If I do demoralize an audien some people say, then I’m gla it,” she once said. “Too many [A icans] put on a front of shocked at certain kinds of beh . . . If one has morals, then they be taken away by me or anyone else.”