I am spending a good Saturday afternoon listening to 105.7 FM "The Fan" the last inning of the Orioles - Blue Jays game waiting for the O's to get the tie breaking run before extra innings. But, as a true member of the Generation Y I must have at least one other form of entertainment going at the same time. It is no other than the sensual and excessively wiggly striptease of the Baltimore Beauty Blaze Starr. I forgot that I had ordered this exploitation film "Blaze Star Goes Nudist" shot in 1960 "revealed in Beautiful Eastman Color."
While I am waiting for the end of the game to truly indulge in such a film my mind was already turning with the visions of the premier in some scratch house on The Block. I see Starr proudly introducing it and the packed house smelling of cigarettes and bum sweat erupting in applause and cat calls begging her to take off her clothes. I have certainly taken this research to a nostalgic peak with my fantasy because there is no evidence it appeared anywhere on Baltimore Street. However, you can bet that my next adventure is to find out where one could have seen the stunning red head in all her curvaceous glory nude and wriggling through a forest on the big screen.
This DVD is such a great relief to me after watching the movie "Blaze," released in 1989 and based on Starr's memoir. The movie left me reeling with so many questions as to how much of the putrid romance and cheesy dialogue was truly exchanged between Starr and Earl Long. I just couldn't believe that Starr was giving him political advice and running his broken career from behind the scenes to help him create a successful bid for Congressman. While, I don't want to downplay Starr's intellect because of her Burlesque career I'm sure that she was a very savvy business woman. Yet, after researching the whole two official biographies of Earl Long I found that she did not show up as anything more than an affair that damaged Long's career and represented his very possible manic spree through the cat houses of Bourbon Street. I have yet to fully go through Starr's memoir to see how she represented the affair, but she had a cameo in the movie and it was based on her memories so I am hypothesizing that she viewed the love as something very different than Long biographers. The only facts that stick is the statement that "Long was completely in love." His biographers and Starr seem to concur. The mysteries surrounding Blaze Starr and her life both on and off The Block are very important to my study of The Block because they are just further proof to me that those who have taken time to record and recognize the importance of The Block and its influence in history have built misty and love lit mythologies. Blaze Starr is considered the most important Burlesque figure on The Block and essential to the history of Burlesque. So, if that story is misrepresented to those who search for the truth in The Block then I can only assume that misinformation is rampant in our memories.
Blaze Starr as a nudist is such a wonderful break from the mystery. She is on film portraying her true profession. If one were to be given one piece of information regarding her role on The Block I would hand them this DVD. The special features are some of her famous strip teases complete with legendary smoking couch routine. Her beautiful body is put on display for money and her feisty and sexy routine is the entire point of the experience. Maybe I will never get to the bottom of her gubernatorial affair in Louisiana, but as far as her role in Baltimore is concerned one may need go no farther than her stripteases. She was a good ol' fashioned entertainer who in her words, "used the strengths that God gave her." Ahhhh...real simplicity.
Orioles baseball, and I'm even used to the fact that they lost in the bottom of the 9th to the Jays, and Burlesk, as the Bawlmorians spell it, is the perfect combination on a beautiful Saturday.
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