 "Girl
Show"
by A.W. Stencell
ECW Press, 1999
"Girl Show--Into
the Canvas Worlds of Bump and Grind"
is not only a look into burlesque culture, but it's a melancholy reminiscence
of the by-gone era of the carnival sideshow. The author, A.W. Stencell,
was actually a circus man himself, having run a indoor show up until 1991.
He has a wealth of knowledge of carny lifestyle and an impressive collection
of girl show photos. The girl show, from its roots in the 1893 Chicago
World's Fair, was a staple of the carnival midway for almost 70 years.
Talkers would get carnival goers to pay tickets to go inside tents to see
pretty girls bump and grind. Some of these women would go on to be major
stars of burlesque (like Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally Rand). The appeal of
these shows was in seeing a glimpse of something you couldn't see at home.
The women in these tents were exotic, sensual, and, most importantly, scantly
clad. This was all well and good for the first part of the 20th century,
but as society's sexual values changed, so did the direction of the girl
show. Some shows were shut down by the sexual revolution, others had to
take a more hard-core direction (i.e., the strip clubs of modern times).
With the loss of these shows, the author feels that we, in a way, lost
our sense of localized glamour. Sure, we had the glamour of Hollywood,
but with these tent shows, you had a chance to see the embodiment of glamour
in your own home town.
See also:
"Glamour Girls--The
Illustrated Encyclopedia"by Steve Sullivan
"Bernard of Hollywood
Pin-Ups"
"Bombshells"
by Steve Sullivan
"The Bare Truth--Stars
of Burlesque" by Len Rothe
"Va Va Voom!"
by Steve Sullivan
"Grindhouse: The Forbidden
World of 'Adults Only' Cinema" by Eddie Muller and Daniel Faris
"Tent-Show Bride"
by Jack Hanley
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