The"Anatomic Bomb"
St. Cyr, Lili (3 June 1918-29 Jan. 1999), striptease dancer, was born Marie Frances (sometimes reported by her as Willis Marie) Van Schaack in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the daughter of Edward Van Schaack, who was drafted into military service almost immediately after his daughter's birth and remained absent from most of her life, and Idella Marian Peeso, whose mother, Alice, and stepfather, Ben Klarquist, a carpenter, raised Marie and her two sisters. The family moved to Pasadena, California, when she was seven years old, and she attended school there until dropping out after finishing the ninth grade.
She worked as a waitress in Hollywood in her teens and became a chorus girl at the Florentine Gardens there at about the age of seventeen. That year she married Dick Hubert, the headwaiter at the restaurant, but the marriage ended within months. She was to marry five more times, in 1936, 1946, 1950, 1955, and 1959. All her marriages ended in divorce within a few years, and none produced children.
Marie danced in chorus lines in several cabarets, beginning to find a distinct theatrical identity in San Francisco, where she appeared at the Music Box. Recognizing that her name was neither glamorous nor readily pronounceable, she experimented with various new ones. Inspired by such independent and sexually liberated stage beauties as Lillie Langtry and Lillian Russell, she changed her first name to Lili and initially took the surname of the choreographer at the Music Box in San Francisco, her first mentor, Ivan Fehnova. Later she danced as Lili LaRue and Lili LaBang. Around 1940, seeking an identification with the aristocratic French military academy, she finally hit on Lili St. Cyr, the name with which she became permanently identified.
A graceful, willowy blonde, five feet nine inches tall, Lili St. Cyr was moderately successful in California when she was invited to perform at the Gayety Theatre burlesque house in Montreal, Canada, in 1944. It was there that she developed her signature stage identity, creating what she called "miniature pieces of theater," wordless skits of historical or mythical vamps such as Salome, Carmen, and Cleopatra, as well as such characters as a geisha and a cowgirl. Her combination of dignity and salacity commanded a devoted audience, and for seven years she reigned as one of the city's major celebrities. Her biographer defined her unique stage presence by noting that "Lili learned to package titillation for sophisticated tastes.
Whereas burlesque was rough and lusty, unbridled and raw, Lili St. Cyr was glamorous and sensual, refined and elegant. She presented imagined romance and the intoxicating suggestion of sex, all while pirouetting along the subtle line of desire and lust, good taste and vulgarity".
St. Cyr extended her reputation with performances on both coasts of the United States during her run in Montreal. She was arrested in 1947 at the Follies Theater in Los Angeles for appearing nude and sentenced to pay a $350 fine despite her defense of her performance as art. In 1951 she was arrested again at the same nightclub but, with the help of a high-powered show-business lawyer, acquitted. The publicity the sensational six-day trial generated established St. Cyr as a national celebrity. That year she performed at Ciro's, one of New York's most elegant nightclubs, and expanded a routine that was to become her signature piece. Slipping out of a robe and into a solid silver bathtub, she caressed herself in a bubble bath, emerged sinuously, and danced what she called "Interlude before Evening." Enthusiastic fans included such celebrities as Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan.
