Wed 26 May 2010
Reviewed by William F. Deeck: GYPSY ROSE LEE – The G-String Murders.
Posted by Steve under Authors , Reviews[7] Comments
William F. Deeck
GYPSY ROSE LEE – The G-String Murder. Hardcover edition: Simon & Schuster, 1941. Also published as: Lady of Burlesque, Tower, hardcover, 1942. Ppaperback reprints include: Pocket #425, 1947; Pop. Library Eagle A3635, 1954; Avon T258, 1958. Penguin, 1984; The Feminist Press at CUNY, 2005. Possibly ghost-written by Craig Rice. Film: United Artists, 1943, as Lady of Burlesque, with Barbara Stanwyck as Dixie Daisy & Michael O’Shea as Biff Brannigan.
Burlesque impresario H. I. Moss brings Gypsy Rose Lee to the Old Opera Theater — “GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Laffs! Laffs! Laffs! Boxing Thursday Nights” — and Lee brings her old friend and fellow stripper Gee Gee Graham with her. Soon after their arrival, one of the strippers is strangled with her own G-string, and later another stripper is strangled with yet another G-string.
Biff Brannigan, the first comic and Lee’s boyfriend, is the unofficial detective in the novel. With his help the police unmask at least one murderer — or maybe a would-like-to-have-been murderer — meanwhile putting Lee’s life at risk.
Most of the novel deals with the rather unpleasant backstage life of the performers, who aren’t a very mixed crew. Except for the one with a lisp, the strippers are hard to tell apart; they all sound alike in their dialogue, which is mostly puerile and self-centered.
They aren’t even, if we can believe the rather cattish comments of their peers, attractive physically. Also, more should have been done with what occurred on the stage, certainly the most interesting aspect of burlesque from the customers’ viewpoint.
Of interest, I would say, only to readers who enjoy show-business-type mysteries, who must be abundant or else there are still many doddering Lee-as-stripper fans around. As evidence, the recent Penguin Books reprint went into a second printing. The earlier Simon and Schuster edition went into printings of double figures, but Lee was still stripping strongly at the time and was in the movies.
(It appears to be accepted in mystery circles that Craig Rice wrote The G-String Murders. J.R. Christopher’s article in The MYSTERY FANcier 8:3, “Who Really Wrote the G-String Murders?” raises a question about this acceptance.
In a postscript to the Simon and Schuster edition, Lee is given full credit for the novel. It is said that she did all three drafts by herself, although for the final draft she had the aid of a thesaurus.
In Erik Lee Preminger’s Gypsy & Me, he mentions The G-String Murders several times, with no indication that anyone other than his mother wrote the book. Responding to a letter I wrote him, he said:
“The question of Craig Rice’s contribution to The G-String Murders was settled shortly after the book was published. Success has many fathers… Mother’s friend George Davis also claimed credit for G-String.
“I wasn’t around when Mother wrote the book. Georgia Sothern swore Mother wrote every word, as did Mother. And I saw her write every word of Gypsy.”
I don’t know what Mr. Preminger meant by Rice’s contribution having been settled, but he is obviously convinced that his mother did indeed write The G-String Murders. My conclusion, for what it’s worth, is that the novel does not have the Rice flair and reads as if Lee were the author — that is, that it is an amateurish effort.)
Editorial Comment: My own review of this book immediately precedes this one; or in other words, right here.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Some of the things objected to here may well be a touch of realism. From everything I have read it was a hard business and the women in it often viciously competitive for men and the audience (and booze and drugs). As for their not being very attractive, based on filmed performances I’ve seen of famous strippers, and my only experience with the form in some clubs south of the Border that seems to be a more than accurate description.
Lee herself was no knockout but brought a freshness and class to her act that raised her above the fray with audiences and critics and made her one of a handful of names to break out into film and better venues. Her act was more tease than strip, and always informed with self parody and intelligence. She was famously not only the stripper who had written a book, but who had read one.
Burlesque comics like Abbot and Costello and Robert Alda seemed to find the trip easier than the women, but considering the films I’ve seen of pasty, unfit, talentless women marching around on stage and removing bits of clothing to loud tinny music until they were wearing nothing but pasties and a g-string, it is remarkable most of them could make a living, much less become headliners.
Of course there were exceptions — Lee, Lily St. Cyr, Tempest Storm, Candy Barr to name a few, but the majority of strippers appear to have been a hard looking lot whose greatest ‘talent’ was the willingness to remove most of their clothes on stage to bad music and do broad comedy schtik for largely inebriated audiences howling to see some skin.
My guess is Lee’s book is pretty realistic on that count.
The venue may be trashier today, but the level of talent and appearance in the better clubs seems to be a good deal higher than in the classic period. Today many places require at least some pretense of dancing ability or gymnastics — which certainly wasn’t true of the classic form.
The quality of performers playing strippers in films was always higher than the actual thing. Those gorgeous strippers in paperback private eye novels and movies has about as much to do with burlesque as the fictional eyes did with real ones, and the lovingly described routines that would have played in a Zigfield production more to do with the writers imagination than anything seen of stage. From all accounts it looked more like amateur night at Kareoke than a Vegas show. Even some of the nicer clubs south of the Border that catered to a more ‘family’ audience were pretty cheesy.
May 27th, 2010 at 3:38 am
The original hardcover edition was one of the bestselling mystery novels in the United States up to that day, but I think we can agree that this was due to the notoriety of the author and her subject.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:23 am
If you want to see some talentless strppers find yourself a copy of ORGY OF THE DEAD with a script by Ed Wood and starring Criswell as the devil.
May 27th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
Ray
I think I’ll skip that one, but thanks for the suggestion, or a warning, if that is what it was.
To reply to David, I like posting two reviews of the same book back to back. It’s interesting to see what two different people find to talk about after reading the same mystery novel.
Although my review was rather short, I talked primarily about the puzzle part of the plot, while Bill had more to say about the setting and the unattractiveness of burlesque performers.
I did include a brief comment about the book being bawdy and racy, but I’d have to read the book again to say how bawdy and racy it was. It sounds as though Bill wanted more of what happened onstage, but if nothing else, I think Gypsy Rose Lee always did emphasize the “tease” over the “strip.”
— Steve
May 27th, 2010 at 2:20 pm
Steve
I have a friend whose favorite film is ORGY OF THE DEAD, though admittedly not because it is so good … You really do owe it to yourself to see it at least once if only for the ‘I can’t believe it!’ factor.
And if you do ever see it you will be in even greater shock to find it was novelized by writer Ed Wood (he didn’t direct this one). How he got a novel, even a short one, out of this is a shock in itself.
The plot for anyone lucky enough to miss it, involves a young couple who stumble on a cemetery where Criswell is presiding over the ‘orgy of the dead’ with a minor Elvira wanna-be, a werewolf, and a monster. In each case a woman from the past, who is condemned to eternal torment, relives her ‘crime’ in the form of a nude dance number.
But awful as the music and dancing are, the dancers (mostly the same one in different guises) are a thousand times better looking than most of the ‘artists’ you see in stripper videos, and at least ORGY is in nice color.
If you ever see any of these stripper videos you will shocked that burlesque survived as long as it did — and these were the superstars you are seeing.
Re the book, I suppose G-STRING was racy for the time, and certainly a little bawdy, though by the time I read it the whole thing was a bit tamer. I did find it surprisingly honest and straightforward about the backstage life at a burlesque theater.
You can’t say Lee glamorized it any which leads me to think she may well have done the majority of the writing herself. Her autobiography was famously written by her and not ghosted or ‘told,’ but I still say that doesn’t mean others didn’t have input.
Thomas Wolfe wrote his books too, but Maxwell Perkins put them into the form we read.
I can never think of the book without thinking of Fred Brown’s SCREAMING MIMI with it’s stripper heroine. Come to think of it the movie with Anita Ekberg as the title character also features Gypsy Rose Lee as the nails tough owner of the club where she performs.
May 27th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
Reading the above comments about strippers bought back some memories that I probably should not talk about. But back in 1967-1968 I was stationed in Fort Leonard Wood, Mo and used to spend times in St Louis on the weekends. My friends and I would hang out in bars and try to pick up women. Usually we were unsuccessful especially with the local college girls(Washington University? Didn’t Mike Nevins teach there?).
But I was witness to what was probably the last gasp of the famed Burlesque Circuit, which for decades had provided a living for girls willing to take off their clothes. Near the Greyhound bus station in St Louis was one of the burlesque theaters. We spent some time with the girls in this dump and it was a real nostalgia trip. Baggy pants comics telling old jokes with whiskers, girls who were no longer girls flashing the audience. I say “audience” but it really was a mixture of what looked like bums, drunks, soldiers from Ft Leonard Wood, and connoiseurs of the art of stripping. The place was enormous but the crowds had long disappeared over the years and by the end of the 1960’s it was obvious that the days of burlesque were almost over.
I bet one of reasons that the burlesque circuit died was the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Guys used to go to see girls take off their clothes but by the 60’s it was no longer a guilty pleasure. Now many women were eagerly embracing the new standards and it was no longer a big deal to see a girl without her dress. I think this new sexual freedom was one of the factors leading to the death of burlesque.
Why pay to see an aging stripper when younger girls had no problem with sex or taking off their clothes. And by the late 1970’s, it was possible to rent hardcore sex films on video tape. Goodbye to the glory days of burlesque.
May 28th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Aside from the easier access to porn it didn’t help that by the 70’s you could go in a club and see ‘go-go’ girls not wearing much more than strippers, and a lot better looking. Like Vaudeville before it all the factors combined to kill off burlesque.