In the annals of ecdysiastical artistry it’s not difficult to spot a pretty face – and much more.  Though most of the stars of the field didn’t make it onto the big screen, at least not the screens that respectable folks might frequent, in the 1950s there was one lovely practitioner who did manage to get a few legitimate movie credits to her name, and strangely enough it took a 1951 Hollywood obscenity trial to bring her to the forefront.  We’re talking about Lili St. Cyr, one of the most famous strippers ever to tease an audience, and she was born on June 3, 1918.

Lili, real name Marie Van Schaak, was a Minneapolis-born beauty who moved to Southern California as a child.  After dropping out of high school she tried waiting tables, but with her looks and a booming burlesque business close at hand, Lili soon went from chorus girl to vaudeville stripper, and never looked back.  Lili soon began to specialize in her own unique strip act, consisting of artistic and imaginative tableaus with elaborate sets and themes  (Scheherazade or  Jungle Goddess, for instance), a far cry from the traditional bump and grind that was the territory of most of her other colleagues.  She became the darling of Montreal, Canada, appearing on stage there for many years and using the saucy French Canadian city as her home base while her reputation as one of the most beautiful, well-paid and classy strip performers continued to grow. 

Lili St. Cyr preferred to appear in high-class nightclubs in front of well-heeled customers, and so in the early 1950s she was booked into famous Ciro’s nightclub on the Sunset Strip, an entertainment hot spot where the stars mingled, mangled each other (fistfights between inebriated customers were commonplace), trysted, and came to watch top-notch performers like Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Martin and Lewis and the elegant ecdysiast Lili St. Cyr.  The centerpiece of her act was Lili preparing to take a bubble bath in a specially-designed crystal tub, which she would enter after teasing the audience with a slow undress and more implied than actual nudity.  On the Ciro’s marquee as the “Anatomic Bomb,” Lili was playing to packed and delighted houses until one outraged patron – and representative of the authorities –  was shocked by her performance and took her to court on charges of lewdness. 

Noted Hollywood defense attorney Jerry Geisler was brought in to handle Lili’s case.  Geisler had made his reputation getting some of the screen’s biggest names – Errol Flynn, Robert Mitchum, Busby Berkeley, among many others — out of legal jams, and he was in his element with the St. Cyr trial.  After first calling for a proper jury of her peers – he wanted twelve strippers to sit in judgment, a request which was denied – he proceeded to use the stylish Lili as his chief tactic, bringing her up to demonstrate precisely how she undulated her body while getting out of the tub,  She also took the courtroom spectators and jury through a tasteful explanation of the entire act, a performance obviously sufficiently convincing to earn St. Cyr an acquittal of all charges and a slew of valuable publicity.

Her new notoriety brought her to the attention of Hollywood, not that she had exactly been off their radar; some of her many boyfriends were reported to have been big movie names, but this time they wanted her to try her hand at acting.  Howard Hughes gave her a part in the corny Arabian Nights girl-fest Son of Sinbad (1955), and other roles, including a good one in The Naked and the Dead (1958), directed by Raoul Walsh, showed that she had some real promise as an actress, though her stripper credentials weren’t quite enough to put her into the mainstream.

After a long career doing what she did best, Lily St. Cyr eventually retired from active performing and opened up a famous lingerie shop in Los Angeles, keeping busy until her death in January of 1999.