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BEHIND THE BURLY Q Send This Review to a Friend
Burlesque, which had a long tradition in show business, is explored in an informative and nostalgia-laden documentary, “Behind the Burly Q,” written, produced and directed by Leslie Zemeckis. Many top comedians, such as Red Buttons, got their start on the burlesque circuits, and for women who starred, it was a chance to earn some big bucks practicing the art of the striptease in all its variations. The burlesque houses in New York City were closed in 1937 by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, but they still flourished for a while in neighboring Newark and Union City, N.J.
One of the more interesting of the many interviews crowded into this film, which could use some trimming, is with Alan Alda, the actor whose father, Robert Alda, was in burlesque as a singer who performed while the chorines shed their bras. Such crooners were colorfully known as “tit singers.” Alan Alda tells of how he was carted around as a youngster in those days in what he says was probably a form of child abuse.
(The film doesn’t include it, but good authority has it that it was announced from the stage of the old Gaiety Theater in New York that Robert Alda was about to go to Hollywood. The audience may have been skeptical, but the sendoff was real and he got to star as George Gershwin on screen.)
Especially interesting are the interviews with burlesque queens of yore, in some cases with clips of their dancing that contrasted with how they look as older women. There are Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm and Sherry Britton, for example. One gets a survey of what it was like, and also a sense of how the depression inspired some to go into the business. Anecdote after anecdote illuminates the years when burlesque abounded.
Stripping eventually descended into the time of pole dancing and lap dancing in so-called gentleman’s clubs and sleazy joints. But this film is rooted in the era when theaters, such as the Empire in Newark, the Old Howard in Boston and the Minskys circuit had a legitimacy tied to tradition. “Behind the Burly Q” takes a well-researched, nostalgic trip into this bygone era. A First Run Features release.
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