Burlesque dancer Alexandra The Great 48 began her career after being noticed by Rose de la Rose, another popular burlesque dancer. Alexandra The Great 48 was purported to be so beautiful, so beguiling that she stopped traffic on the way to an event in Hawaii.
Much of this type of lore is chronicled in the documentary Behind the Burly Q. The documentary filmed in 2010 and written by Leslie Zemeckis came at a time when the art of burlesque was at the beginning of a renaissance. The film features candid interviews regarding the industry beginning sometime in the thirties. More importantly, it chronicles the lives of the dancers and other industry people during the art form’s heyday.
The compilation of interviews though reveals that many of the dancers-many who gained worldwide fame-came from humble roots. A common theme in the film is that many of them aspired to become movie stars as young girls, some young as 14. Even amid the glamour and fame, many of the women discuss the hardship of being overworked, and in many cases, being believed to be prostitutes, which dashes modern, romanticized notions of the industry.
