Big hats: soup de jour!
(Don’t think “mutant bunny rabbit”! Oh, you just did.)
Lady of Burlesque (1943) is a surprisingly interesting whodunit mystery set at a burlesque house. The players are all in play: striptease ladies, comics, backstage crew, even the mobster who’s a little free with his fists. Adding to the interest is the fact that this movie derives from a novel written by famous strip tease queen Gypsy Rose Lee, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s truly reflective of backstage life as a member of a burlesque company.
Dixie Daisy is a new but leading member of the burlesque troop of the gentleman S. B. Foss, a woman ambitious for the next step up the ladder, and she works hard for her troupe. But when an injured diva returns, Dixie is sidelined.
And then the diva is murdered. Add in the diva’s abusive mobster boyfriend, and things get ugly, and just to sprinkle pepper on everything, one of the comics of the troupe is infatuated with Dixie – much to her aggravation.
A second body, though, really amps up the worries, and the troupe, wondering who has a hatchet to sharpen among them, has to decide if the show goes on or not, which leads to a finale that couldn’t be foreseen – but was some fun reaching.
The print we saw was a bit muddy, but not awful. The acting and staging was excellent, and if the pacing sometimes seemed a little off, it wasn’t terribly off-putting. We enjoyed that hour and a half more than we anticipated, and you might, too.
