Le stelle hanno paura

Director William A. Wellman gives us Lady of Burlesque a boisterous whodunit played out in an old burlesque theatre. Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's novel The G-String Murders theres plenty of humor surrounding the murders with wisecracks left and right. Theres some bumps and grinds but no stripping due to the movie code at that time. Of course we have the wonderful Barbara Stanwyck here who dazzles us with some neat song and dance routines. Also a lovely bunch of beauties in scanty costumes including gum snapping Gee Gee (Iris Adrian), troubled Dolly (Gloria Dickson), gorgeous Alice (Marion Martin), Lolita (Victoria Faust) and Princess Nirvena (Stephanie Bachelor) both delightfully bitchy. Theres also Michael O' Shea and Pinky Lee involved in the mystery and humor at the old former opera house. So "Take It Off The E-String, Play It On The G-String" (song) and have a good time. Oscar nominee for Best Score.

Barbara Stanwyck got to really show her versatility in Lady of Burlesque doing a couple of numbers that did make me wonder why she didn't try to do a full blown musical. Of course she had the best of inspiration in a book that was partially written by the one and only Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy needed a ghostwriter, but she certainly knew the world of burlesque as none other. So with Craig Rice's ghostwriting they fashioned a murder mystery set in the burlesque world. Somebody is killing the strippers at a burlesque theater and Barbara isn't sitting around waiting to be the next victim. With the help of comic Michael O'Shea she's going to find the perpetrator before she gets done in with her G String.

A lovely group of movie queens help Barbara out in this film. Playing some of her peers are Iris Adrian, Gloria Dickson, Marion Martin, Janis Carter, Stephanie Bachelor, and Victoria Faust. Some of these don't make it to the end of the picture.

Playing another of the comics is Pinky Lee who I well remember because I used to watch his kid's television show back in my salad days. Pinky was as frantic as I remember him and he does a mean jitterbug with Stanwyck.

William Wellman as director keeps the pace of things going pretty nicely. And if you're a leg man, this picture will leave you nothing to complain about. As for the murderer, here's a hint, it's roughly the equivalent of the butler doing it.

That body - those legs - yes, it's Barbara Stanwyck, who is sensational in "Lady of Burlesque," a 1943 film based on Gypsy Rose Lee's novel "The G String Murders." The murder mystery aspect of this film (which is pretty lame) is just an excuse to give the audience a taste of life in a burlesque house - the crummy dressing rooms, the fights, the raids, the dumb on-stage humor, and underneath it all, a camaraderie and a closeness. The performances are all very chaste thanks to the censors. Stanwyck performs "Take It Off the E-String (Play It On the G-String)" and she's fantastic. It sounded like she was dubbed in the big parts of the song, but the lower register sounds a lot like her.

Stanwyck is Dixie Daisy, a newcomer to this burlesque house who's making a big splash with the customers and with one of the comics (Michael O'Shea). When one of the girls is murdered, and then another (strangled with a G string), it begins to look as if someone is trying to close the old opera house where the show plays.

Stanwyck is backed up by a lot of pros, including Iris Adrian, O'Shea, J. Edward Bromberg, and Pinky Lee. They're pros but she's a star - and it's her film from beginning to end. Somehow Stanwyck made it all look easy, slipping as easily into this role as she did into all the parts she played throughout her career. And it looks like she did her own dancing too.

"Lady of Burlesque" is a lot of fun, and Stanwyck - sexy, tough, and warm - is spectacular.

The most surprising thing about LADY OF BURLESQUE was that it got made at all. Burlesque was all but dead by 1942, shut out of most towns and cities by relentless moral crusaders, and Hollywood itself was mired in the infamous "production code," which put a heavy lid on what could and could not be shown on screen. But burlesque had spawned a number of stars who remained favorites with public, and in 1941 the legendary Gypsy Rose Lee penned a book called THE G-STRING MURDERS. It proved extremely popular, and a year later United Artists took a chance on the film project.

True enough, the movie couldn't show the strippers in action or play out the bawdy comic sketches so popular in burlesque, but writer James Gunn turned in a superior script, and director William Wellman and his cast gave the whole thing tremendous dash and style. The result was a movie that captured the seedy, underworld-edged world of burlesque without actually causing censors to yank it from distribution.

In theory, LADY OF BURLESQUE is a murder mystery, but mystery takes a back seat to the brawling backstage antics of crossed love affairs and star rivalry. Barbara Stanwyck endows star stripper "Dixie Daisy" with her own memorable brand of tough class--and although she can only be shown from the waist up when she bumps and grinds, she still manages to tear strips off her musical number "Play It On The G-String." The rest of the cast is equally memorable, many of them burlesque stars in their own right. Pinky Lee (Mandy) is memorably teamed with Marion Martin (Alice Angel) to delightful effect; Iris Adrian (Gee-Gee)is the gum smacking brash blonde to end all gum smacking brash blondes; and such memorable character actors as Michael O'Shea (Biff), Gloria Dickson (Dolly), and J. Edward Bromberg (Foss) round out the cast superbly.

Sad to say, LADY OF BURLESQUE has fallen into public domain, and it has not been well preserved. I have seen several releases of the film, and all of them are plagued with breaks in the film and the soundtrack. LADY OF BURLESQUE may never be regarded as a "great" film, but it is an extremely entertaining one, particularly for those who already know something about the now-lost world of burlesque. As one character says, "Makes me want to leave the wife!" Recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Barbara Stanwyck managed to elevate nearly every film and television show she ever did. The earliest film I saw her in was "The Miracle Woman" from 1931. I just saw "Baby Face" and I own copies of "The Thorn Birds", "Stella Dallas" and this film. "Lady of Burlesque" is a wonderful, atmospheric depiction of an bygone era, complete with Stanwyck doing some amazing dance moves. Some people have criticized the music score as being second-rate, but that is what it SUPPOSED to be. Burlesque wasn't Ziegfeld. Men went to see the girls in various stages of undress, not hear Cole Porter or Irving Berlin. The music and the corny jokes were incidental to the "action" on stage, and it was not for nothing that Arthur Lange's musical score was nominated for an Acadamy Award. The mystery story is well-told and the atmosphere is added to by an excellent supporting cast, with Iris Adrian being a standout. After seeing this wonderfully entertaining film you will feel like you have been whisked back in time to an era long-gone.