Stripteasers of 1937
Collector Cards
A celebration of over 150 performers who took it off in 1937, together in one deck of tarot-sized cards
In 1937, the word “burlesque” was banned from New York City. A confederacy of prudes conspired to expel ecdysiasts* from New York City. A reform-minded mayor and his hand-picked license commissioner, cheered on by religious leaders and the vigilant voyeurs of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, battled burlesque with every tool at their disposal. This deck of 160 collector cards celebrates the performers on the front lines of this battle against burlesque, from legendary superstars to forgotten headliners to mostly unknowns, who risked arrest to entertain audiences during this fateful year.
* At the request of Georgia Sothern (card #58), H.L. Mencken coined “ecdysiast” as a substitute for the banned words.
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Estimated Delivery:
October 2026
The Substack
"Thoughts on stuff and also Burlesque, especially in 1937, the Year They Killed It."
The spot for deeper dives (and longer articles). Most ecdysiastical investigations start and finish here.
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Talks & Readings
The First Stripteaser
a trip back in time to uncover the dastardly disrober who brought strip to burly-q
A Historical Whodunnit
Dateline: 1937! Striptease brought burlesque down, or so they say, but who brought striptease to burlesque? Which devilish disrober introduced undressing to that stage? 12 stripping suspects stand accused, over three decades, of the crime that would lay burlesque low.
It's the greatest mystery of burlesque: who brought striptease to the stage? Burlesque investigator Jonny Porkpie delves deep into decades of newspaper archives, trade publications, burlesque memorabilia, vintage ads and promo materials, memoirs, films, police reports, court records, and obituaries from the Jazz Age to the Gilded Age to uncover the culprit in this revealing and entertaining talk.
Prince Pig vs. the Totally Naked Rotten Girls
His complaint to the mayor about burlesque rang bitter, so I dug deeper
FROM THE FILES OF THE NYC MUNICIPAL ARCHIVES
An investigation into the morals of a man who wrote to the mayor of New York to complain about the morals of burlesque.
12 Min
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