It is inaccurate to call Anita Ventura a stripper. If anything she was a dancer, but even that was only meant to be the first of many titles. She harbored dreams loftier than disrobing on the rickety stages of smoky, seedy burlesque houses. Her ambitions were, and had always been, to cavort her way into Hollywood, or Broadway, or at least New York’s world-famous Latin Quarter nightclub. Dance should have been her ticket to the big time. It is with some irony that this ability of hers is the absolute last thing anyone remembers. Mostly they remember her beautiful body. If not that, they remember all the unsightly scandal. Scandals. Plural. from The Los Angeles Mirror, June 24, 1958 Anita’s public life began in the summer of 1958, at The Near ‘N’ Far on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, far from her hometown of Philadelphia. Her previous incarnation as a high school dropout, then as a typist at General Electric, had prove...
A blog devoted to the study and exploration of historical striptease artists, by cartoonist Mister V.