Impertinent Women and Powerful Men: A Long View of Burlesque

Abstract

HORRIBLE PRETTINESS BEGINS WITH THE ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK IN i868 OF Lydia Thompson and her company British blondes. women were of the purest type, saucy, blue-eyed, golden-haired girls in breeches roles and pink tights (14). They brought from the London Music Hall a scripted satire called Ixion about divorce among the British upper class, and they added mix flimflam, songs, cheeky jokes, the Parisian can can, a fashion called the grecian bend, and enough tongue-in-cheek double entendres to entertain war-weary audiences. On opening night, all 2,265 seats in Wood's theater sold out. blondes performed in Sinbad the Sailor, The Ungenial Genii, The Cabin Boy, and Dion Boucicault's The Octaroon, in which Lydia Thompson herself delivered a speech about the new woman. company brought in $372,500 in New York, and then Thompson took the show on national tour where the spectacle naked legs brought thundering encores and huge box office receipts. Nude drama sorts had been introduced to the New York stage at least twenty-five years earlier in tableaux vivant, what audiences called living statues. Adah Isaacs Menken electrified audiences in 1863 with a version