New York World’s Fair in NTG’s “Congress of Beauties,” the popular Faith was making $450 a week.
In May of 1940 Faith joined the cast at the Florentine for an “indefinite” stay.132 She would temporarily be sidelined in a Santa Monica hospital for an operation in July but was back onstage at the Paramount by August. The show had been preceded by a spectacular publicity stunt. Bacon as “Lady Godiva” led a parade on horseback through the streets of Los Angeles where curious onlookers were treated to the fan dancer in the near—if not total—nude followed by dozens of chorus girls. It is conceivable, as an expert horsewoman and Florentine regular, that Barbara was one of them. Variety reported the parade left the “yokels to gap in wonder.”
As just one of the chorus, Lili would have had little contact with Faith. But one afternoon Lili slipped downtown to see Bacon perform. The show would have a seismic shift in how Lili went about trying to get noticed, turning what she did into an artistic performance.
Lili would credit Bacon as changing her whole perception about a career stripping. Technically, Lili wasn’t yet a stripper. She did not remove clothes at the Florentine. She hadn’t performed a tease, which is the defining element of burlesque. Lili realized she needed something that would identify her, something that audiences would want to see because she—and no one else—performed it. Also, “If I was going to do nudes, I might as well get paid well for it.”133
“Faith Bacon was the greatest artist in the business,” Lili would declare.134 She was thunderstruck by what the petite beauty who looked like a blonde Clara Bow, with thin, arched black eyebrows and big blue mischievous eyes did. She was an extraordinarily graceful dancer, performing sensuous ballet-like moves without shoes. Bacon held a pair of creamy ostrich feather fans that were quite heavy, requiring strength and skill to (mostly) cover her body. Faith twirled them with gusto and elegance. Though she made it look easy, it was not.
LILI WAS INSPIRED BY FAITH’S DANCING, NOT ONLY BECAUSE OF THE movements—obviously more than parading, as Lili had been doing—but also by Bacon’s elaborate props and scenery. She worked to classical music that soared and mimicked her story. In one number Faith rapturously portrayed a bird, wearing gorgeous, vibrant colored feathers. At the end of the number she died, her chest penetrated by an arrow.135
Bacon did not just dance, she told a story. Bacon was using herself as art; her body was her tool. “This is the kind of thing to strive for,” Lili said, feeling as if she’d been struck by an arrow herself.136 Lili watched Bacon create illusion on the stage: “The stage was haunted by the appearance of beauty.” 137
Faith defiantly reveled in her nudity. Lili thought she was beautiful and recognized her performance as a “big moment” in her life.138 She would try to live up to her new idol’s artistry.
Lili threw herself into work. She was determined more than ever to be a solo performer. She would be the creator of her destiny. She was through waiting for Granny or Corinne and Tito or anyone else to give her an act. She would design her own.
Years later a starting-to-be-well-known Lili crossed paths backstage with a down-and-out Faith Bacon. Lili had been misquoted as saying that if Faith could dance, so could she, as if Faith’s talent was small and dismissive. At this point many had copied Faith’s act, Sally Rand being the biggest name who claimed she was the original fan dancer. Faith had turned bitter and “aggressive.”139 Lili’s idol, hardened and aging, turned away from Lili backstage. Faith didn’t want anything to do with the young upstart criticizing her.
Lili, shivering backstage (at the Follies in Los Angeles) tried to explain she hadn’t meant it like that, she admired Faith.
Lili’s bird act
Faith, with her big blue eyes and white hair, still young but disillusioned, perhaps on drugs, having lived some desperately unproductive years, her salary slipping, injuries to her beautiful body tearing at her, snarled her lip and flounced away.
Later still, Lili made a special trip to Texas to see Faith perform. The aging stripper had a palpable smell of desperation about her by then. After a horrific accident onstage she had scars and pain in her legs. She was coming to the end of the road, unsure where her next $100 or her next job was coming from. She had lost the inner beauty that had driven her dance. She was just another down-and-out stripper.
Not long after, Faith would sail—possibly in a cloud of drugs—out her hotel window seeking relief from her life. Without work, without admirers, without money, the former “inventor of the fan dance” who was once billed as “the most beautiful woman in the world” had nothing left to keep her on the ground.140 It was a story that terrified Lili. She thought, “This is how we push great artists” to tragedy.141 Lili too would dance to the highest peak of a career that depended on her beauty. When her looks faded, what would become of her?
Faith’s death would not be an easy one. Her body wrecked and broken when retrieved from a second-story awning that broke her fall, she expired after a few agonizing hours. Faith’s lungs were punctured, her ribs broken, her face mangled. Lili couldn’t imagine it.
ANOTHER SEMINAL MOMENT IN LILI’S LIFE WAS ATTENDING A PERFORMANCE of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles. The Monte Carlo was a famous offshoot of the Ballets Russes, which had performed under the genius leadership of Sergei Diaghilev. After Diaghilev’s death in 1929 several companies formed, one being the Monte Carlo Ballet. The Monte Carlo toured mostly in the United States, debuting in Los Angeles in January of 1935.
In her Canadian biography Lili would claim she was seventeen and it was 1934 and Ian took her alone as a special treat. This was pure fiction. Maybe it was something the kindhearted Ian would have done. But the particular show she saw wasn’t until 1945 (dates would never be important to or remembered accurately by Lili). By then Lili was a twice-divorced woman, not a schoolgirl who needed an escort.
Lili thought the performance magnificent. The troupe danced to Debussy’s “Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faun.” (She would later create her own version of “Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun.”)
The choreographer and lead dancer that profoundly impressed her was twenty-four-year-old David Lichine, a handsome Russian “poet-choreographer.”
Performing at the Florentine Garden
He danced to Scheherazade (Lili too would include this in her repertoire), which incorporated a “protracted orgy” scene.142
Lili was mesmerized by the graceful ballerinas in “sensuously skimpy” costumes, with their elegant arm movements, their haughty manner as they danced as if there was no audience.143 The male dancers were strong and sensual. It was a thrilling, artistic experience that deeply moved her. The dance (though it did not include Nijinsky’s infamous and controversial masturbatory scene) opened Lili’s eyes to the possibility that dance could be not only erotic or lustful but also artistic, despite the half-nude costumes. And more importantly Lili had been dancing to and for the audience. She had been seeking their approval and their eyes. This would soon change. She noticed
