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| Damsels of Duality, Judy O'Day (L) and Dorian Dennis (R). |
It’s generally safe to say that most children do not aspire in their adulthood to become strippers. To earn a living in by disrobing to the lustful wails of both band and audience, titillating the basest desires of the basest of men, is widely believed to bring great shame upon both the stripper and their immediate family. However, against the cultural backdrop of 1950s America, a fresh faced, ambitious young lady might discover her professional options were limited to a socially-accepted handful: nurse, teacher, librarian, secretary, waitress, or perhaps most likely, housewife. But should that gal be willing, attractive, and daring enough, a way around this glass ceiling could be obtained through the ancient art of the striptease. A career on the burlesque circuit offered an exciting career alternative, as well as an unexpected perk to those who excelled: personal and professional freedom. Two such women who dared to cast aside both clothing and conventional norms were figure model Judy O’Day and burlesque performer Dorian Dennis. Both possessed a variety of exceptional talents that might have taken them anywhere in contemporary times. Both also found that when their lofty aspirations proved hopelessly out of reach, fame and fortune were still available upon more controversial avenues.
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| Judy, Judy, Judy!!! ca. 1956 |
Born in Reno, Pennsylvania in 1932, of three children the only daughter to Mr. and Mrs. Frank O’Day, Judy seemed destined for the spotlight. At only four she was performing tap dance routines in neighboring Oil City with celebrated Vaudeville dancer Florence “Flo” McFadden, wife to Jack Haley, who is fondly remembered today as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
Judy’s pursuits were vast and varied throughout her youth. Her action-packed grade school years saw her in many roles: a habitual honor-roll achiever, the librarian for the Rocky Grove High School Girls’ Chorus, the junior game leader for the Reno 4-H Club, a junior-high champion seller of magazine subscriptions, recipient of the award for “Best Groomed Pet” at the Recreation Park Pet Show, and a member of the Junior Prom committee.
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| Judy O'Day with the high school cast of Old Doc, from The News Herald, November 11, 1949. |
Music and dance piqued Judy’s interest more than anything though. She developed and focused her talents through melody and movement. There was a song in her heart, one she freely shared with her classmates as a member of the Senior High Girls’ Ensemble, and as a featured actor in the Senior Class performance of the comedy-drama Old Doc. She also knew her way around a piano, and played trumpet for the Rocky Grove Volunteer Fire Department band. Judy’s enthusiasm for extracurricular activities followed her to Allegheny College in Meadville (Go Gators!) In addition to her studies in French and German, O’Day became an active member of the Alpha Gamma Delta Sorority, the Chapel Choir, and the Orchisis Dance Club.
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There can be only one! The Miss Northwestern Pennsylvania Pageant, as seen in The News Herald, July 1952. |
These many activities served her well in July of 1952, when Judy became one of nine young women competing in the Miss Northwestern Pennsylvania Beauty Pageant. The contest, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club and held at the Kayton Theatre in Franklin, helped select the state’s entrant for the 1952 Miss America Pageant. Local news described the three-hour procession as “grueling” for its contestants, with multiple costume changes, talent exhibits, and a Q&A in which contestants described how best to convince a stranger to visit the Keystone state, how a gal might balance a career with marriage, and what qualities would be possessed by their “ideal” mate. Judy was at the delicate age of 20 years, dimpled, energetic, effervescent, standing 5’7”and 129lbs, with flowing chestnut brown hair, sparkling eyes, and a dynamically proportioned figure. Though this particular evening victory and a $100 scholarship prize fell out of Judy’s grasp, it was noted that her rendition of “a clever French song” drew heavy audience applause and advanced her into the semifinals of the contest. It seemed the start of a dazzling career, and Judy had just the right combination of looks, talent, and ambition to ensure this first taste of true fame would hardly be her last.
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| Dorian Dennis, ca. 1953. |
Dorian Dennis seemed the polar opposite of her East Coast contemporary. Where O’Day’s life was dance and song, Dennis’ was test tubes and Bunsen burners. Born in the Brownsville section of Brookylyn, NY in 1923, Dorian, real name Renee, was the only child of Jacob and Sophie Eisenstadt, Jewish refugees from the recently formed USSR. The two were both pharmacists, and both were keen to see their sole progeny follow in their footsteps, if not exceed them. This path was not of Dorian’s choosing, but she was more than up to the task, blessed with intelligence as undeniable as her blossoming beauty.
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| Spot the smarty pants! From the Thomas Jefferson High School Yearbook, June 1938. |
Dorian's first foray into fame came at the age of ten, when she was among 200 school children awarded a medal by New York Mayor John P. O’Brien in a “Preventing Fires in the Home” essay contest. A mere blink of an eye later, a fourteen-year-old Dorian was the Valedictorian of her graduating class at Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn, as well as a member of the NYC Public School’s honor society, the Service Council, and the Publicity Director for the school’s newspaper The Liberty Bell. Her classmates, perhaps jealous of her accomplishments, referred to Dorian as “Lady Cadaver,” an unflattering nickname alluding to her intended future profession as a physician. In her senior yearbook, the quote that accompanied Dorian’s picture read “Many an audience she has charmed.” Surely Dorian had no idea how prophetic this quotation would become.
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| Young "Lady Cadaver," from the Thomas Jefferson High School Yearbook, June 1938. |
Though she earned honors in her biology program and membership with The Aeschepiad, a women’s honorary premed society, “Lady Cadaver’s” education prematurely concluded with a Bachelors of Science in Chemistry from New York University. Following the untimely death of her father in August of 1939, and then of her mother in 1951, Dorian’s finances forced her to abandon her doctoral aspirations. She had become an orphan in New York City, alone in a dangerous, indifferent environment that could not have cared less about her intelligence or potential. Having few options, Dorian took her hard-earned degree into the workforce, where her education earned her a position analyzing the decomposition rate of sewer water at the Tallman Island Wastewater Treatment Plant. Citing not the nature of the work but the unsatisfactory wage of $30 a week, Dorian transitioned to the Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey, where she checked wire and cable filaments for compliance with government specifications.
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| Smells like monotony! The Tallman Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, The Daily News, July 1946. |
This position seemed a cruel fate for one with so much promise, especially considering that Dorian’s fate had originally been guided by her parents and their desires to see her succeed within their own narrow definitions. Conversely, it may have been fate that placed Dorian into this dull vocation, for therein, among the stripped wires and endless tedium of her thankless labors, she met a fellow employee whose primary vocation lied in a less scientific field. This friend, who is never named by Dorian, was a showgirl moonlighting during the burlesque off-season, and was cited by Dorian as the primary catalyst for her change in profession.
“You should get a job as a night club showgirl,” this friend suggested to Dorian. “That’s what I am. You’ve got the looks and it pays a lot better than this.”
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| My how she's grown! Dorian Dennis, ca. 1953. |
Perhaps the idea of earning a living through means other than her intellect had never occurred to Dorian, but she was no longer a bookish youngster. Rather, the former “Lady Cadaver” had developed into a stunning young woman, her 5’7” and 127lbs build sculpted into a phenomenal 39-24-37 physique, with playful dark hair cascading around her face, framing her porcelain skin, dazzling smile, and sparkling (albeit slightly askew) green eyes. Dorian had little to lose. She knew she had worked too hard to live on the meager wages of a public servant. Surely destiny had designs for this beauty that did not include languishing in a laboratory.
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| Where it all began! An image of Toots Shor's from their menu, ca. 1953. |
Dorian followed her friend’s advice and cautiously waded into the unfamiliar world of burlesque. She quickly found herself employed as a hat check girl at Toots Shor’s, a lounge and restaurant on West 51st St. in Manhattan. Before long she accepted a position as a showgirl at The Havana-Madrid, a popular spot for Latin music and dancing, “where the Rhumba is King.” Though Dorian was still very much a novice performer, she had already double her weekly salary from Fort Monmoth.
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| What's that name again? An advertisement for Latin Quarter, ca. 1955. |
Dorian’s ascent continued when she was promoted from the chorus line to a featured dancer at the extremely popular Latin Quarter nightclub in midtown Manhattan. Her place was at center stage, hidden behind two heavy white fans, flanked on either side by a line of sparkling chorus girls. At the conclusion of this act, as the band hit its crescendo, Dorian would burst out from behind the two fans, revealing her curvaceous body clothed in only pasties and a g-string. The fans closed as quickly as they were opened, blink and you missed her, but that split second glance of her otherworldly curves was enough to catch the eye of a manager with the Ed Kaplin Talent Agency. Dorian was signed to a contract with them quicker than glimpse of her near-nude body in the act in which she performed, with the intent of transforming an inexperienced chorus girl into a headlining exotic.
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| Classified ad for The Hudson Theater, The Jersey Journal, 1953. |
Ever the eager student, Dorian dove into studies of the striptease to prepare for her marquee debut. Describing herself as “an elephant learning to go through a hoop,” she took dancing, stripping, and even walking lessons. With the help of a choreographer she constructed a 3-part act, which she meticulously rehearsed until committed to memory. Of course all the study and preparation were small comfort when the former med student took to the stage for the first time as a headliner at the Hudson Theater in Union City, New Jersey. Though she wanted run off the stage mid-strip, she was able to rationalize her circumstances by declaring, “Dorie, darling, this is a fashion show but your clothes haven’t arrived yet!” Her act was a smashing success, one that was now earning her eight times her wage with the US government. Suddenly, unexpectedly, as if guided by the hand of the divine, Dorian was on her way to the big leagues as a marquee stripteaser.
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| Judy O'Day by Herb Flatow, ca. 1956. |
With few exceptions, beauty queens and figure models are mutually exclusive. Beauty queens are meant to be too pure to debase themselves as figure models, just as figure models are too soiled to win beauty pageants. Yet somehow, from 1956 through 1957, Judy O’Day managed to become a noteworthy exception to this rule. Just months prior to these banner years, in October of 1955, The Oil City News-Herald reported that Reno’s favorite daughter had relocated and was making waves in New York City, sights set on become a jazz singer. Gone were her previously reported brown locks, replaced by a fiery red mane perhaps meant to exaggerate an ethnic Irish heritage. Primarily focused on honing her vocal skills, and having lost a receptionist day job due to habitual tardiness, she was paying her way in the Big Apple by gigging as a model.
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| Love that shine! ca. 1956. |
Though modeling wasn’t Judy’s career of choice, she nonetheless worked her butt off. She appeared on the Dave Garroway’s television show Today to promote the hit play The Matchmaker. She sweetly cooed as the centerpiece of a Microsheen shoe polish print advertisement.
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| From NYC's Most Perfect Model competition, The Daily News, Sept. 1956. |
She competed in multiple beauty pageants, like NYC’s Most Perfect Model competition and Miss New York State.
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| from The Daily News, Jan. 1957. |
She posed for publicity photos at the 47th annual National Motor Boat Show, while demonstrating cutting-edge developments in radio direction-finders. She was named the queen of the Variety Artists Annual Ball.
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| from The Atlanta Journal, July 1957. |
While sporting a futuristic cotton jumpsuit and a deadly ray gun, she was crowned Miss Interplanetary Space Queen for the far distant year of 1997. Without a doubt though, Judy’s most noteworthy accomplishment during this flurry of activity was being named Miss Tulip Queen by the National Tulip Society in September, 1956.
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| from The Daily News, 1956. |
As Tulip Queen, Judy was to generate positive press for the arrival of The Noordam, a single class cargo vessel from The Netherlands which had carried a precious cargo of 16 million tulip bulbs to the United States. 50,000 of these bulbs were to be gifted to the state of Virginia for the 350th anniversary celebration of the founding of Jamestown, the first successful English settlement in the Americas.
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| Judy O'Day with Virginia Governor Thomas B. Stanley, The Daily Press, 1956. |
This once-in-a-lifetime jubilation not only involved multiple news organizations and government officials from the states of New York, New Jersey, Virginia and Tennessee, but also European government representatives, including the Lord Mayor of London. An aspiring musician/model of lesser stuff might have withered under the hot lights of such publicity, but Judy rose to the task, fulfilling her royal obligations with immaculate beauty and enthusiasm.
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| from The Nashville Tennessean, 1956. |
In a heavily attended formal ceremony on the docks of Hoboken, Judy appeared before the press in virtuous Dutch-inspired garb: a flowing blue skirt, a delicate white top slipping ever so slightly off her milky white shoulders, and a petite lace bonnet atop her alluring red hair. With a jubilant smile she presented Virginia Governor Thomas B. Stanley with a symbolic gift of bulbs. She graciously posed for promotional pictures that would be printed in papers across the country. The cameras frantically flashed as she playfully popped out of a ship’s porthole, ringed herself with a life preserver on the ship’s deck, and submerged herself in tulip bulbs, reclined on bags of them, covered her clothes in them, filled her delicate hands with their flowery potential. Among the millions of tubers her radiant joy beamed out to the viewers, both those in person and those in print. She was angelic in her over enjoyment.
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| Good time girl Judy O'Day, ca. 1956. |
What seems to have gone unnoticed by the mainstream at this time was that while Judy was basking in orthodox modeling success, she was simultaneously enjoying equal notoriety in the taboo world of figure modeling. Her image in various states of undress had adorned the covers of multiple men’s interest magazines like Rugged, Tempo, Jem, Pix, and Chicks and Chuckles.
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| Cover girl Judy O'Day, ca. 1956. |
She had modeled for dystopian photojournalist and sometimes pornographer Ascher “Weegee” Fellig. She posed in both lingerie and bondage photos for Irving Klaw, the infamous distributor of mail-order fetish photography.
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| Paddle Master Judy O'Day (R) with unk. model, via Irving Klaw Studios, ca. 1955. |
Her radiant smile and bare breasts graced the cover of an album by “dirty” musical comedians Crandall and Charles, entitled Pussy Galore.
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| Pussy Galore by Crandall & Charles, featuring Judy O'Day. |
Reams of low-budget pamphlets devoted to her naked form were printed and disseminated across the country. In 1956, the same year she formally celebrated the sesquarcentennial of Jamestown, Judy appeared sans clothes alongside Bettie Page in an issue of Meet the Girls.
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| Figure Model Judy O'Day, ca. 1955-1957. |
Mere months after that she was featured as the horned, cigarette smoking, pitchfork wielding centerfold of Satan Magazine. As described therein, she looks every bit the devil’s darling.
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| Satan's Plaything Judy O'Day, Satan Magazine #1, February 1957. |
How Judy was able to exist simultaneously as both a beauty queen and a figure model is unknown. What is known is at this point is Judy’s career had never been more successful, and that success was poised to very quickly evaporate.
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| More show than Monroe! from The Buffalo Courier Express, September 1953. |
By the mid 1950s, Dorian was stripping all along the East Coast, from the seediest burlesque houses to the swankiest dinner clubs, booked as “Miss French Riviera.” Some in the press were quick to point out there was no evidence that the bosomy Brooklyn native had ever left the continental United States, but this divergence from fact failed to hamper Dorian’s career trajectory. Audiences were too distracted by Dorian’s “lovely face, wild shape, and sensuous dancing” to be concerned over trivial matters like accuracy in beauty queen titles.
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| In her prime! Dorian Dennis via Irving Klaw Studios, ca. 1956. |
Dorian’s fame grew with each passing year. In 1956, she appeared alongside other big-name strippers like Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm, and Blaze Starr in Buxom Beautease, a burlesque film produced by the mail-order fetish king Irving Klaw. She was commanding $750 a week for her performances, twenty-five times more than her previous career in the public service sector. But the more fame she garnered, the more she feared of the public discovering her humble, brainy beginnings. She kept her noteworthy education hidden from her fans and contemporaries, worried that people might treat her poorly should they learn of her brilliant mind. This fear seems to have abetted by 1957, perhaps soothed by her runaway success. By then, when news of her degree in chemistry finally leaked to the public, Dorian opted to embrace the story.
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| Publicity photo released along with news of Dorian's academic excellence, ca. 1957. |
Granting rare interviews, Dorian revealed for the first time that while she pursued stripping as a living, it was by no means her life’s passion.
“I’m a serious science student whose heart belongs to a chemical laboratory and not the burlesque stage. My real ambition is to become a sort of Mme. Curie, not a Lili St Cyr. And while I’m no Quiz Kid, the intellect means more to me than the body.”
When asked about performing, she admitted, “Let’s be realistic: it’s a job, same as any other, and doesn’t hurt the essential me. It’s all very impersonal. Two or three times every night for about 15 minutes I do my act, and then leave my job and go home. If the customers want to whistle, that’s their privilege. But I’ve never dated any of them. My private life is my own.”
When asked if her background in science helped in her current field, Dorian joked, “My college education is very helpful, especially all those psychology courses I took. Sometimes a girl needs to use a lot of psychology to get through to her audience.”
This interview, which found print throughout the United States, earned Dorian a new nickname, one more fitting than allusions to corpses or the Mediterranean coastline: “The Stripperoo from NYU.”
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| Modern Man Magazine, Sept. 1957. |
While Dorian was ascending to unimaginable levels of fame, Judy O’Day was trending in the same direction. Appearing in a three-page spread in the September 1957 issue of Modern Man Magazine, the article A Day in the Life of a Pinup Queen examined Judy’s bustling vocation as a “top model” in midtown Manhattan. The report summarized her past accomplishments and teased future television and theatrical appearances by “Manhattan’s long-stemmed, wild Irish rose,” while also promising a full-length Jazz album from Judy in the immediate future. While this article was accompanied by several pictures of Judy topless (and one nude), she seemed poised to abandon the more duplicitous aspects of her career and crossover into legitimate showbiz. Her future held much promise of success.
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| "Terrific torso, talented tonsils," Judy O'Day from Modern Man Magazine, Sept. 1957. |
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| Man's Illustrated, April 1958. |
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| Scowls for smut in Texas, from The El Paso Herald Post, Jan. 1958. |
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| Too hot for Texas! Judy O'Day prepares for her Man's Illustrated photo shoot, ca. 1958. |
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| from The Toronto Star, December 1960. |
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| Judy O'Day, we hardly knew ye, ca. 1956. |
Some sixteen years after her unceremonious withdrawal from modeling, on May 2, 1976, Judy O’Day died suddenly of a heart attack in New York, aged only forty-four years. She was survived by the entirety of her family, including her parents. It was a tragically early passing for one with so much talent and beauty, who approached life with the full force of her skill and ambition. Though she may not have realized her musical aspirations, and though many precious details of her life seem lost to time, the breathtaking images Judy left behind memorialize the duplicitous legacy of her life. How strange though that what remains are static images. How tragic that the modern world has never seen Judy dance, nor heard her sing.
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| Dorian Dennis sittin' pretty, ca. 1957. |
Throughout her lengthy career in burlesque, Dorian Dennis perpetually flirted with the idea of pursuing other passions. She stated as early as 1957, “Back home I still have my own laboratory where I keep experimenting. Right now I am working on improving cosmetics, and if you saw me bending over a Bunsen burner or test tubes, you wouldn’t recognize me.” One year later, she told the Daytona Beach Morning Journal, “I’d like to get into the legitimate theatre and maybe do some motion picture work… I’m going to study dramatics.” Aside from her 1956 appearance in Buxom Beautease and a brief cameo a decade later in the b-movie Judy’s Little No-No, it seems this latter ambition was otherwise unrealized, while the former yielded even less.
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| Dorian at The Follies, The San Francisco Chronicle, June 1961. |
Not to say that Dorian didn’t savor her success as a stripper. Year after year she toured the burlesque circuit from coast to coast, appearing at The Silver Slipper and The Show Boat in Las Vegas, The Follies in Los Angeles, The Roxy in Cleveland, The Globe Theatre in Atlantic City, The Gypsy Room in Atlanta, the Café Paree in Washington D.C., and the Gaiety in Detroit, Baltimore, and Miami, respectively. She briefly performed in Ann Corio’s off-Broadway revue This Was Burlesque, and even toured Europe, during which time in Manchester the entirety of her costume wardrobe was stolen from her dressing room.
Dorian’s success in stripping afforded her freedoms rarely imagined by most women from her era. In 1959, citing union rules from the American Guild of Variety Artists Union that made it difficult to simultaneously live and work in New York City, she relocated to Florida and bought a beautiful home in Miami Beach, complete with a swimming pool, around which she worked on her tan at her leisure (and reportedly sans bathing suit.) She also became part owner of a Miami nightclub with Kathryn Boyd, better known as fellow stripper Zorita.
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| Zorita aka Dorian's business partner, ca. 1960. |
Throughout her career, while other performers pushed the legal and ethical limits as to what or how much a stripper could reveal on stage, Dorian took great pride in “working clean,” meaning she did not perform topless or nude. She had little sympathy for those fined, jailed on indecency charges, or otherwise exploited, telling The Daily News in summer of 1962, “If a girl conducts herself properly, no one will abuse her. If she’s not treated with courtesy and respect, she shouldn’t stay on the job. If she’s going to be a B-girl, she knows what she’s in for.” Dorian practiced what she preached. Of the handful of photos of her that exist today, there is not one in which she appears in a complete state of undress. She remained a throwback to a bygone era of public peeling, where moral decency was strictly enforced by law, when being a stripper and being naked were anything but synonymous.
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| Squint and you can almost see a nipple! Dorian's most naked picture, ca. 1960-1965. |
However, it seems Dorian’s profession took just as much as it gave. Though initially she couldn’t imagine being a stripper, and later that stripping was only a means of supporting herself, in the end there was little room for anything else. The Daytona Beach Morning Journal summarized it best when they said, “Surprisingly, the life of a well employed stripper is lonely. Dorian does most of her traveling by plane and when she’s working there are three shows a day. She usually gets to bed around dawn, sleeps late into the day, and has few friends along the route.”
She had no familial relations, and a brief marriage in 1960 to one Joel Berger in Queens, New York, produced no children. She seemed wary of romantic relationships, and in general, men.
“Many audiences and some bosses think that you should be a playgirl and available at their command,” she told The Asbury Park Press in 1964. “They are disappointed if you are working so hard that you haven’t got the time, let alone the inclination.”
She complained that often while walking to gigs from her hotel room, arms full of clunky costumes and cumbersome make-up kits, men would whistle as she walked past but never offered to help carry her heavy load. “That’s just the way men are,” Dorian lamented.
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| Dorian Dennis heads off to work, from The Daily News, Aug. 1965. |
As her work consumed her life, her main pastime became constructing, maintaining, and repairing her elaborate costumes, some of which reportedly contained up to a pound of rhinestones.
“You can’t get just anyone to clean these clothes, you know. They’d ruin them. I have to send them to a special cleaner. And some of these you can’t clean at all!” she told the Daily New in 1965. “Now you see these fuchsia beads on this pink dress, you may not be able to tell it, but that fuchsia is put on with water colors and if you clean it, the fuchsia will run right into the pink!” Many of her costumes, once they became too soiled, were simply thrown out.
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| As brilliant as she was beautiful, ca. 1960. |
All in all, Dorian didn’t seem bothered by her solitude. The life she had built for herself may have seemed reclusive, but this very likely could have been done by design. Much like Judy O’Day though, Dorian’s life was also cut unexpectedly short. In 1969, after undergoing surgery for an undisclosed reason, it was discovered that Dorian had cancer. She would die a year later, at only forty-seven years old, at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, and would be survived by absolutely no one. A notice from the law firm Paoli & Paoli ran in Florida newspapers shortly before the end of 1970, inviting creditors to submit within six months to their offices any claims of outstanding debt owed by Dorian. This unceremonious legal advertisement would be the final time Dorian’s name was mentioned in print before she forever faded into burlesque history.
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| Dorian Dennis (L) and Judy O'Day (R) |
Are the lives of these two strippers tragic or inspiring? Is the rise and fall of such talented, beautiful, ambitious women support for “Follow Your Dreams,” or “Be Careful What You Wish For?” The answer is not either/or, but both. It can be easily said that Judy and Dorian sought superficial success over established societal norms, the punishment for which was a tragic, early, painful, and justly earned demise. It could just as easily be said that these women longed for more from life than what was offered in the confines of 1950s American society, and they braved the unknown in pursuit of a more meaningful existence. Great misfortune can befall those who aspire to stardom, as well as to those who deny it. What seems to matter is that failure visits everyone, but is within those failures that destiny is realized and legacies are forged. Judging the quality of those legacies is the burden of those who wish to learn from them. They are of no concern to those who have left them behind.
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