Strawberry Blond
Blackie had had some good luck at the Howdy. Her childhood friend Venera Catherine Magazzu shares that Blackie met her life-long partner Catherine J. Amm (1909-1984) there, a lovely young woman who was called Rusty by her wealthy family “because her hair was a natural strawberry blond.” How Rusty found her way from Jamaica Estates in Queens to an off-beat Village nightclub seems remarkable. But Venera’s report that Rusty’s father, a downtown businessman and investor, was also there and had introduced his daughter to Blackie further stretches the imagination. Or perhaps it just gives a peek into how acceptable and popular cross-dressing entertainment had become in the age of burlesque.[1]
Blackie and Rusty were together from those days in the late 1930s until Rusty’s death in 1984. They shared a Village apartment on Perry Street, later moved uptown to a more elegant setting on Fieldston Road in the Bronx, and then migrated to Florida, to Hollywood in Broward County, near the habitual site of the Ha Ha Club and Revue, where Blackie was a top star for the tourist season audience. Blackie’s family accepted Rusty with open arms, doubtless influenced by the many benefits that wealth bestows.
But there had been at least one shaky cog in the wheel of their romance. As Blackie’s career at the Howdy flourished, a youthful customer appeared, pursuing a chemistry degree at nearby New York University, but destined for a stardom that no one could have imagined. Originally tagged as Rene Eisenstadt (1923-70), a native of East New York in Brooklyn, her intellectual gifts had already won her early graduation (reportedly at age fifteen) from Thomas Jefferson High School, where she was valedictorian of her class, and soon a bachelor of science degree from New York University. But lab jobs after graduation, even with the Army Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey, taught Rene that this was not her niche and that her beauty and charm could buy her more. Stripping was in vogue, especially with a 39-inch bust, and it can be no accident that she chose the stage name “Dorian Dennis,” whether Blackie approved or not.
“It’s the Money, Honey,” she explained to the press about her choice of stripping over science. She happily played Lou Walter’s old Latin Quarter, Place Pigalle on 52nd Street, and the Village Nut Club, and also traveled around the country (to Las Vegas, St. Louis, New Jersey, and Miami, of course) and overseas as “Miss French Riviera of 1954.” The Gaiety Club on Biscayne Boulevard billed her that way, sharing the spotlight with “Gia-Mo the China Dyna-Mo.” Back in New York, Dorothy Kilgallen reported that Dorian Dennis was described at the Continental on 52nd Street as “The Striperoo from NYU.” Dorian, for her part, complained that vandals had defaced her pictures on 52nd St. “They put clothes on me,” she said.[2]
In fact, it is fairly remarkable that the name of Dorian Dennis is not cited more frequently in histories of burlesque. Certainly during its entertainment heyday, her name appeared side-by-side with those of famous performers like Tempest Storm, Lili St. Cyr, and Blaze Starr. On one occasion she was presented as one of the stars of the feature film Buxom Beautease (1956), directed by distinguished photographer of sex and beauty—the “Pin-Up King” he called himself—Irving Klaw. That film played in mid-town at the Squire Theater, 44th St. and 8th Ave., in the heart of New York’s burlesque world. Frequently cited among the nation’s top fifteen strip-tease artistes, Dorian also joined Tempest Storm, Lili St. Cyr, and Klaw’s favorite Betty/Bettie Page in Strippers Parade, a film that played in Florida to reveal the “art of striptease.”[3]
Several factors, however, have probably kept Dennis off the historical playbill where Gypsy Rose Lee and the aforementioned performers generally appear. At the time of her notoriety, her college degree in chemistry was always in the headlines—something you did not need “for a successful career as a strip-tease artiste, but it helps.”[4] Perhaps her financial success and universal bookings—even if she said she wanted to get out of the business and try legitimate theatre—drew some envious glances from colleagues. But did they know, even if she was drop-dead gorgeous, that she was a lesbian?
What we know from various sources is that the strip-tease business was not quite what it used to be. The old girlfriend of drag king Rusty Brown, according to an interview from the 1980s, started out as a very high-class stripper when stripping really was an art. But by the time they met, in the mid-1950s, “it was beginning to get to a point where they wanted you to do things that she just refused to do.” Management depended on the girls to “mingle with the customers, sit on their lap, get them to buy drinks, and let them maul you.” The girlfriend, named “Terry” at one point, had to take what Rusty called a small job, working on Coney Island with Madam Tirza, who distinguished herself by taking a bath on stage in wine. Soon after, around 1953, Terry quit show business altogether. Dorian would not last much longer. Stories told to us by Ronald Lombino of her costumes being stolen in London and being threatened with kidnapping in France substantiate claims that stripping had lost some of its glamour.[5]
Blackie Dennis, in contrast, only traveled from New York clubs in the Village to Babe Baker’s Ha Ha Club in Hollywood, Florida, for the winter season. Thanks to her lifelong partner Rusty, Blackie didn’t really need money. In fact, contemporaries who did depend on the money they could make in salary and tips from Village nightlife always spoke about Blackie’s good fortune with a touch of envy. A very wealthy woman, they explained some years later, had left her fortune to Blackie, who also had another wealthy girlfriend named Rene (aka Dorian), who went to all the best schools but ended up working at the 181 Club.[6]
Notes
[1] Young and Gay at 90, 32.
[2] “Stripper Dorian Dennis Was Class Valedictorian at Jefferson HS,” New York Daily News, October 11, 1957, 76; Cynthia Lowry, Associated Press, “It’s the Money, Honey, Says Chemistry Major,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 29, 1958; Gaiety Club, “Regular All Girlie Show,” advertisement, Miami Herald, February 17, 1958, 35; Miami News, February 28, 1958, 18; Dorothy Kilgallen, “Voice of Broadway,” Star-Gazette (Elmira, NY), October 7, 1957, 14; Earl Wilson, “We’re Thinking,” Miami News, October 25, 1957, 21.
[3] Squire, “Buxom Beautease,” advertisement, New York Daily News, December 10, 1955, 161; Capital Theater, “Art of Striptease Revealed,” advertisement, Tampa Bay Times, August 22, 1963, 27.
[4] “Stripper Dorian Dennis Was Class Valedictorian at Jefferson HS,” New York Daily News, October 11, 1957, 76.
[5] Rusty Brown, interview by Len Evans, July 7, 1983, transcript, Oral History Collection, GLBT Historical Society, San Francisco, CA, https://docs.glbthistory.org/oh/Brown_Rusty1983July07.pdf.
[6] Buddy Kent, interview by Joan Nestle, January 27, 1983, Lesbian Herstory Archives, Brooklyn, NY; Gail Crumpton, aka Gail Williams, interview with author, November 25, 1988.