Leslie Zemeckis - Goddess of Love Incarnate: The Life of Stripteuse Lili St. Cyr.

goddess of love incarnate

Copyright 2015 Mistress, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Quotes from the Mike Wallace TV show Mike Wallace Collection, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin. A Photo Eleanor Roosevelt courtesy of UNLV Special Collections. A Photo Lili courtesy of PatrickMcGilligan, Robert Altman: Jumping off The Cliff, photographer Dan Fitgerald. (Ohio State University) From the Charles H. McCaghy Collection of Exotic Dance from Burlesque to Clubs, The Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, The Ohio State University. Honeymooners: Use of dialogue from THE HONEYMOONERS Courtesy of CBS Broadcasting Inc. Photos of Lilis Jerry Giesler trial: USC Courtesy of the University of Southern California, on behalf of USC Libraries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zemeckis, Leslie

Goddess of love incarnate: the life of stripteuse Lili St. Cyr / Leslie Zemeckis.

pages cm

1. St. Cyr, Lili, 1917-1999. 2. Stripteasers--United States--Biography. I. Title.

PN1949.S7Z46 2015

792.78092--dc23

2015023035

Cover design by Natalya Balnova

Interior design by Domini Dragoone

Counterpoint Press

2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

Berkeley, CA 94710

www.counterpointpress.com

Distributed by Publishers Group West

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

e-book ISBN 978-1-61902-656-8

To my daughter Zsa Zsa Rose, another incomparable beauty

For happiness I long have sought

And pleasure dearly I have bought

For happiness I long have sought

And pleasure dearly I have bought

I missed of all but now I see

Tis found in Christ the apple tree.

Im weary with my former toil

Here I will sit and rest a while

Im weary with my former toil

Here I will sit and rest a while

Under the shadow I will be

Of Jesus Christ the apple tree...

Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I t started with a dance.

Curtains part. Out unfolds a strong tan leg. A shapely calf begins to kick to the beat of the music. A woman emerges, a tall blonde goddess whose slender arms lift over a golden halo of curls. Tapered fingers pinch together, wrists softly begin to circle. Her slim hips undulate. She is small-waisted, not overly bosomy. From the sounds of the music and the look of her costume there is more than the hint of the Orient. She neither acknowledges the audience nor seeks their approval. She moves in a fantasy world of her own making, ebbing and flowing with the soar of violins. Her skin is flushed by a cool violet light that spills across her perfect skin, a lustrous pearl.

The corners of the sheer panel of her skirt are raised between her hands. She twirls. The music accelerates. She turns faster. She is utter perfection to look upon. She is the Unobtainable One. Her bra of gold rope shimmies back and forth, shoulders seesaw up and down as the music crashes. Enticing. One leg thrusts to the side, then the other. She rises on her toes. Her chest heaves. The flat of her stomach swells.

Her body is on display, her thoughts hidden under yards of cherry red chiffon. She covers herselfher real selfwith the illusions of the stage. She barely glances at the audience. She is so expert a performer that each man believes she dances solely for him.

The music rises. Her chest lifts, bangles shake, a slight sheen appears at her hairline, the only evidence she is working hard. The dance is not as effortless as it appears, as she makes it. Her act is art, finely crafted, labored over for hours. Her moves flow seamlessly. A stretch of the leg, a twist of the rib cage, the reach of an arm. Her neck is slim and long and delicate and often compared to a swans or a queens. She arches backward. The movement says take me, take me. Her mind moves with her body; she doesnt censor herself. Her whole body snaps forward, then back again in movements that echo the beast inside.

Sex. It is the writhing movement of copulation at its most powerful. Rising. Her body lifts. She is about to reel in the audience as the music dips quietly. A tease of a pause.

It started with a beautiful girl, long of leg, graceful and lithe with green cat eyes, a dimpled chin, soaring dark brows. She is six feet tall in her gold-sandaled heels. Firm, muscled legs, elegant fingers and feet. A cool gaze to melt the hearts of many.

It started with a dance.

Heat pours from her skin. Platinum curls swing. She arches, uninhibited, overtaken by the music of desire. She dives to the stage, floor leg outstretched while the other points above her head. She is triumphant. Longing and sexpure sexrises from her skin like perfume.

She reaches up, her arms moving through the air, hands grabbing, hips swinging. She is off the floor and revolving upstage, stretching toward the break in the curtains. A pause. A look. A finger to the red of her glossy, swollen red lips. Hesitation. Then, as if she had been a mirage, she vanishes.

It started with a dance.

It started with desire.

It started with a beautiful girl.

It started with the dance.

LILI ST. CYR WAS BORN WITH THE CONVENTIONAL AND SOMEWHAT uninspired name of Marie Frances Van Schaack. Eighty-one years later her death certificate would identify her as Willis Marie Van Schaack. No matter. The world knew her as Lili St. Cyr; the Blonde Venus, the Form Divine, La Belle Lili, the Anatomic Bomb, Goddess of Love Incarnate. Of course no one really knew Lili St. Cyr. Obsessively private, shy to the point of rudeness, she would seek confidence in romance, pills, and, later, memory-dulling drugs. A thoroughbred filly, high strung, unpredictable, and hypersensitive. Ulcers and stage fright would plague her. The discomfort of her physical ailments was nothing compared to overwhelming insecurity and foreboding, a dread of aging. Death would take her in obscurity, once she had become the thing she had most feared, irrelevant.

The face Lili St. Cyr presented to the world was that of a confident, aloof stripper. She was recognized for her tempestuous and numerous marriages, for rumor and innuendo, for headline-grabbing suicide attempts, for arrests, for wealth and a lifestyle of extravagance.

The private side of Lili was artist, dancer, and craftsman. She had been a savvy

She explained there was purposely a certain stand-offishness between myself and the audience. The further away and in awe I can keep them, the better.