Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis
directly and indirectly in many burlesque clubs. They watched the customers, made sure the girls stayed in line, and themselves were often loyal customers. At the Florentine Gardens, if they didn’t actually run the club, many Mafioso certainly attended. Bugsy Siegel was a regular. Lili would, as would Dardy and Barbara, make friends with many over the years. They “loved gangsters.”188
Lili arranged through her friend Jack Dragna, the “Capone of Los Angeles,” for Alice to have enough ration coupons.189 Dragna was the boss of the LA crime family from 1931 until his death from a heart attack in 1956. Lili probably met him in one of the clubs after a show and was familiar enough to telephone him for a favor.
Lili packed emergency luggage for Alice, who was living in Long Beach before boarding a train to Nevada for the January 1942 debut.
The River House was located five minutes outside of Reno in Lawton’s Hot Springs. The casino and restaurant boasted a large outdoor pool conveniently located on Highway 40, the main route from Sacramento to Salt Lake City.
Nearby was a granite outcropping where warm mineral water sprang and the tourists soaked, hoping to cure everything from serious diseases to natural ailments caused by aging.
Sam Lawton had built his railway station and home for himself next to the spring in the late 1800s. Eventually the station was enlarged and an inn added. In early 1930 a bar faced the river with a large sitting area, fireplace, and dining room for weary travelers who either stopped to bathe and imbibe or settled in for the six-week divorces available in Nevada. Because of the latter the River House was always packed.
Lili, ripe for romance, fell in love with another tall, dark, and handsome man, the bartender, Eddie.
Lili before her dramatic transformation
To Lili, Eddie appeared sophisticated with a seemingly endless array of Cadillacs at the snap of his fingers. He spent money freely and lavishly. She didn’t think to question where his free-flowing income stemmed from.
Lili found the desert’s remoteness charming. The sunsets in particular were spectacular. It was a cool time of year and the weather was bracing in the late-night hours.
Lili once again wowed the audiences with her “Girl of the Hour” number, though attendance was poor.
After about a month in the desert her romance looked to be going well. She was happy and tranquil, confident in herself.
Cuddling with Eddie, who was rubbing her shoulders late one night after her last show, she rested her head on his chest. She wondered if tonight was the night he was going to propose. She had decided she was going to ask him if he didn’t bring it up. At this stage of her life marriage still meant she was wanted.
Quietly Eddie suggested Lili could make a lot of money for the both of them. If she joined his stable of call girls. Lili was shocked. Devastated.
“How dare you?” she squeaked.
“I’ve had offers for you. You can start tonight. Now.”190
She left him and his offer and cried for hours in her room.
In her Canadian biography she would admit she knew what prostitutes were but before Eddie’s offer she had never thought about the “reality” of them. Forty years later she would still feel the sting of humiliation.
She went to Vivian and quit that night. Vivian admitted she knew about Eddie but couldn’t tell Lili.
Lili left for Los Angeles, running again. Perhaps in her mind she was determined to create someone—an image—no one would ever again mistake for a prostitute. She was determined to outclass them all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
With still no word from the Latin Quarter, it was probably Miles Ingalls that came to her rescue and quickly booked Lili another job. From Los Angeles Lili hopped a train to San Diego. She would appear at the only burlesque theatre in the beautiful city on the water. For $35 a week she was going to start over. Again.191
The Duncan Sisters weren’t as lucky. They would close their show in early August of 1942, leaving behind “local creditors” filing suit for unpaid bills.192
The Hollywood Theatre was located in sunny downtown San Diego on F Street between Fourth and Fifth, operated by Robert “Bob” Johnston, a Belfast-born family man whose wife, Fanny, a former showgirl, choreographed the shows. Johnston, an ex-vaudeville performer, candy butcher, and singer, had taken over the Liberty Theatre in the 1920s and renamed it the Hollywood. The theatre was doing poor business despite the fact that famed stripper Sally Rand had performed there. Her dance of “Leda and the Swan” had been a big hit. The Hollywood sat five hundred, but audiences had dropped since the crowded days of World War I. Johnston held on. When World War II broke out “you couldn’t get a seat weekends,” recalled DeeAnn, Bob and Fanny’s daughter.193 The servicemen “gave it life.”194
Lili found Bob Johnston friendly and fatherly. She liked the family atmosphere, similar to what the Duncan Sisters had created. She started out billing herself as Marie Fehnova. There were six shows on Saturday, five on Sunday.
Still reeling from her rejection from Eddie, depressed and insecure, Lili’s dancing suffered. The Johnstons considered letting her go, but based on her extraordinary looks she was instead given a solo strip number. Fanny judged her performance poor. An older stripper named Irish told Fanny it didn’t matter what Lili did on the stage; she was so beautiful the men would go crazy. Fanny agreed and put off firing the young girl. Even a dejected and unsure Lili clearly had something.
Lili hated life backstage crammed in with people she didn’t care for. Many of the women were older relics grinding out a living week after week for drunks and gamblers and hustlers at the noonday shows. She wrote Miles Ingalls to complain. “Get me out,” she pled.195
He told her it was “experience.”196
Both Irish and Fanny saved Lili from despair by taking her under their wing. Irish in particular became close with Lili, refocusing her maternal instincts on the now twenty-five-year-old. Irish, born Janne Cafara, would claim to be the one who taught Lili how to strip. She signed a picture to Lili, “your strip teacher.”197
The thirty-three-year-old Irish seemed much more than eight years older than Lili. Her son had been killed by a drunk driver and grief paralyzed her. She immersed herself in the Hollywood Theatre where she would remain for eighteen years headlining and doing bits with the comics. She would marry the house singer, content to stay in San Diego.
The days were hard for Lili. She was living in a tiny room in a crappy hotel where she strung a rope over her bed to dry her clothes. There was no place to hang her costumes except for the walls of the room. But she would make due while she waited for her chance.
Fanny pulled Lili aside and told her that although she was beautiful she didn’t “have a sense of spectacle.” She didn’t have what another stripper, a tassel twirler, had.
Lili was disgusted. Twirling tassels was vulgar. She didn’t want to be the “best stripper.” She wanted to be the best “specialty” dancer. When Fanny referred to her as “stripper” she demurred; she would rather be called “exotic dancer.” Lili would always distinguish herself as a dancer who wanted to “amuse” and “attract” an audience.198
At the Hollywood Theater Lili took the stage with what would become a fixture for her onstage: a vanity.
IT IS QUITE POSSIBLY THE FIRST MINI SCENARIO SHE EVER PERFORMED. It was a defining step in the future success of Lili St. Cyr.
Many performers attest to the use of props and furniture as having a grounding effect. It can help steady nerves to have something literally to hold on to. Lili would need