Pole Positions: Stripper Detectives!

Gypsy Rose Lee
Created by Gypsy Rose Lee
(pseudonym of Rose Louise Hovick; 1914-1970)

And of course, the most famous stripper detective of all has to be Gypsy Rose Lee. Yep, Gypsy Rose Lee, "America's most famous take-it-off artist," wrote a mystery novel, The G-String Murders, in which she herself (who else?) played detective.

Or, at least, she claimed to have written it.

It's pretty widely assumed that Craig Rice, the creator of sleuthin', drinkin' attorney John J. Malone, actually wrote the book.

Regardless of who wrote it, the public seemed to enjoy it enough that there was soon a sequel, Mother Finds a Body (also allegedly ghost-penned by Rice), and a movie adaptation of the first book under the title Lady of Burlesque, starring a singin', dancin' Barbara Stanwyck, although in the film her character's name was changed to Dixie Daisy. Amazingly, given her hunger for self-promotion, Gypsy rose didn't play herself.

Still, the film did well, even garnering an Oscar nomination in 1944 for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. Maybe it was Stanwyck singing that rousing little musical ditty "Take It Off the E-String, Put It On the G-String" that got the Academy all ga-ga.

Gypsy Rose Lee was, of course, one of the most famous strippers of all time, right up there with Lili St. Cyr., and was once proclaimed to be"the most publicized women in the world." She was certainly knew how to get free press. She seemed to be always in the news. She started out as a child, performing with her sister June in a small time act called "Dainty June and Her Newsboy Songsters" and worked her way up to her own act, "Rose Louise and Her Hollywood Blondes" (her real name was Louise Hovic). Eventually she was spotted by H.K. Minsky, who featured her in his infamous New York club. She parlayed that into an uptown gig as a Ziegfeld girl in "Hot Cha," and from there to theatre, 12 films and eventually her own television show, "The Gypsy Rose Lee Show" in 1958. Besides the two mystery novels, she "wrote" her autobiography, which was a bestseller.

FROM THE DUSTJACKET:

• "Here is the living portrait of burlesque with assorted deaths thrown in. Here, in The G-String Murders, is a new, brisk literary style, written in her native mascara language by Gypsy Rose Lee - in person. As a writer she is a new original on the American scene- the first important brunette since Gentlement Preferred Blondes. She did not write this book once. "I wrote it three times," Gypsy says, "with a Thesaurus."

UNDER OATH

• "Legendary stripper Gypsy Rose Lee penned one work of fiction (if you don't count her autobiography), a mystery entitled The G-String Murders, the book that would be adapted to the screen with the misleading moniker Lady of Burlesque. The result is a snappy little mystery with yet another spunky performance by Barbara Stanwyck...
  .
  Stanwyck stars as burlesque queen Dixie Daisy, who is a cut above the usual gum-twanging, smart-talking showgirl we've come to know and love: she has an edge of sophistication (the attribute that made Gypsy Rose Lee a star), and a great deal of smarts. When one of the other girls is murdered, strangled with her own g-string, and a hard-headed police sergeant makes all the wrong moves so typical to police in 40s mysteries, Dixie takes it upon herself to investigate.
  Mystery takes a back seat to brash babes and snappy dialogue, with enough humor to satisfy fans of the genre and enough girl-fights to feed the libidos of a roomful of heterosexual males. And while Stanwyck looks a bit uncomfortable in her musical numbers, she does a creditable job in them none-the-less."
  -- mystery writer Fred Hunter on his Classics on DVD web site

NOVELS

• The G-String Murders 1941; aka "The Strip-Tease Murders" and "Lady of Burlesque")
• Mother Finds a Body (1942)

FILMS

• LADY OF BURLESQUE...Buy this DVD...Buy this video
  (1943, United Artists)
  91 minutes
  Black & white
  Based on the novel written by Gypsy Rose Lee (actually ghostwritten by Craig Rice)
  Screenplay by James Gunn
  Directed by William A. Wellman
  Original music by Harry Akst, Sammy Cahn and Arthur Lange
  Produced by Hunt Stromberg
  Starring Barbara Stanwyck as DIXIE DAISY
  Also starring Michael O'Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, Charles Dingle, Iris Adrian, Charles Dingle, Frank Conroy, Gloria Dickson, Marion Martin, Iris Adrian, Victoria Faust, Pinky Lee, Gerald Mohr

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.