melting black makeup from a round metal tube in a spoon and then carefully glopping little balls onto the end of each eyelash with an orange stick. There is a famous photo by Man Ray, a close-up of a woman’s eyes with both rows of lashes holding tear-like dots on the end of the lashes. The effect is, though dated today, stunning. “It made the eye pop,” Dardy explained. The showgirls wore thick red lipstick. They attached falls to their hair for volume and length. The girls wore platform shoes. Dardy viewed them as exotic creatures and she couldn’t wait to become one.
Barbara at the Florentine Gardens
Barbara and Lili (on the right) as bookends
Lili, who still pined for her traveling days, declared working in the club to be the next best thing. She was becoming entranced by this show business life. Yet the girl who wore black on her wedding day to be “different” still searched for an opportunity to stand out. She wasn’t meant to be one of a dozen. She felt stymied in her personal and professional life. She studied lighting and dressing. She looked for an opportunity.
IAN CONTINUED TO ARRIVE PROMPTLY AFTER THE LAST SHOW TO escort the girls home. They would bundle up against the cold night and ride home drained, though excited, usually falling asleep before they reached Eagle Rock.
In the beginning Grandma and Idella stayed up wanting to hear all the details of the night. Barbara and Lili relayed stories about the other showgirls and the famous faces in the audience, singer Rudy Vallee, restauranter Steve Crane, producer Pat de Cicco. Errol Flynn would stagger in with an even more inebriated John Barrymore.
“Queen of the Orient”
The two sisters spent the better part of the next eight or nine months performing nightly. They were eager to do anything Granny asked of them. One night Lili was a “Southern Peach,” another a “Chinese queen” held aloft by a flank of girls. Her high moment came crashing to the floor as she was accidently tipped over. Another night Lili wore a green wig, which she occasionally wore out “as long as her dates didn’t protest.”122
BARBARA STARRED IN THE ANNUAL COLORADO RODEO, WINNING THE title of California’s Loveliest Cowgirl and in 1941 she would have several pictures published in Life magazine. Barbara, who others called “buoyant,” seemed to be the sister with the most promising future, much to Idella’s delight.123 Barbara was more nervous than her sisters. Barbara had a fragile personality. A brilliant girl who took her varied interests to extremes. Barbara was sensitive and delicate, easily hurt and easily influenced by others. In 1942 Billboard would call her a “rodeo performer of note.”124 Riding was and would remain an important means of escape.
Lili seemed to be making no more headway at the club than a secret romance with the headwaiter, a thirtysomething man named Dick Hubert of “Belgian descent.”125 He was tall, charming, and dark haired with a sculpted physique. Dick was enchanted with Lili but it was forbidden for coworkers to date. They were “nuts about each other.”126 The pair would bide their time.
LILI WATCHED FROM BACKSTAGE AS A LITHE COUPLE SPUN AROUND the dance floor. The evening’s program announced the novelty dance act of Corinne and Tito Valdez, who danced to Chopin’s nocturens.
Billboard applauded Corinne and Tito for titillating with their “cobra dance” and their “slinky castanet dance.” The audience went crazy for the “sexy, smart” lovely Corinne as she was scooped up in Tito’s strong arms.127 They performed from coast to coast, often choreographing other acts. Their work was flashy and they sprinkled their show with a hint of the exotic.
One of the “favorites” of the Florentine Gardens, they would travel the circuit as dancers and dance directors from Miami to New York in everything, including Mike Todd’s Peep Show starring Gypsy Rose Lee in 1950.128
Young, muscular, and dark-haired Tito wound his arm around the lithe Corinne, who was blonde with perfectly shaped ballerina legs. Lili admired not only their flawless figures but also their gorgeously choreographed dances. Both performed a “near nude, weaving, sexy dance in smart style.”129
Corinne and Tito helped propel Lili to the front of the line
Corinne asked Lili to appear in a number with them. The trio performed a seminude number about Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Corrine, as the snake, stalked Adam, slithering suggestively, attempting to crush Tito/Adam. Finally Lili/Eve, wearing a knee-length blonde wig and G-string, appeared onstage, swaying between the pair, attempting to ward off the serpent, until she too fell under its spell. It was a smashing success, an imaginative and highly erotic dance.
Lili had been knocked out by her participation in the number. It was energetic, sexy, and creative. It was also an opportunity to be noticed. “Taking off your clothes doesn’t take much nerve,”130 Lili would always say. She was never shy or embarrassed with the human figure. As long as it wasn’t vulgar.
If nudity—and it wasn’t yet technically stripping, that would come later—meant a higher salary and rising above the chorus, Lili was all for it. But she would be conflicted. Stripping was thought of as low-rent. She never liked the word “stripper.”
At the Florentine Gardens
After much searching and experimentation she would find a way to strip on her terms. Elegant and classy. “Always the lady,” they would say about Lili.131
LIFE WAS GOOD FOR MARIE. AS MARIE, LILI WORKED HARD. SHE WAS ecstatic when Granny singled her out for any special bits. After shows she was regularly feted by customers eager to get to know her. She sipped champagne, never having too much, then moved on to the next admirer’s table. There was always someone who would buy a pretty girl dinner. Lili and Barbara often received invitations between the shows. When one sister received a dinner invitation she would convince the man to bring a buddy along for the other. It was one for all and all for one.
Barbara had her share of romance, going on dates with many eligible men like actor Franchot Tone, recently divorced from Joan Crawford and not yet moved on to the disastrous Barbara Payton. Idella carefully monitored the level of the man’s fame to see if she approved of her daughter’s choices.
Headliner Faith Bacon would make a huge impact on Lili when she joined the show. A dancer who garnered acclaim holding two giant ostrich feathers nearly the size of her petite figure,
