TRUE BURLESQUE

A free year at the Burlesque Show! True Burlesque Season Pass from 1937

True Burlesque Season Pass from 1937...Good for and entire year, but you have to go back in time.

Collection True Burlesque the Blog / Jim Linderman

Jayne Mansfield on the cover of Cabaret Magzine 1956 and the New Documentary

Here's Jayne Mansfield on the cover of the burlesque "house organ" Cabaret Magazine in 1956. Ms. Mansfield wasn't really a burlesquer, but she sure was something. The new streaming documentary "My Mom Jayne" is real good...a complicated woman for sure! Must see: Copy link for documentary trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZM6m_GJhr8

True Burlesque Tempest Storm and Walter Hale the Huckster

Walter Hale. A carnival barker of a publisher. A legendary huckster and promoter. Hale produced a string of vintage vehicles which ran on dames, most of them burlesque dancers. He distributed his magazines in an unusual manner…by giving them away at carnivals and strip shows he promoted. Hale Published Tom Cat, Girls, Scandoll, Hollywood Confidential and Play Girl (for which he was sued by no less than Hugh Hefner.

The best part of Walter Hale product (other than the publicity photos of strippers from the golden age of stripping) is his alliteration. Never has a publisher run together so many words which start with the same letter. That is Hale taking his "step right up" slogans to the smut market.

Here, he places a wonderful picture of Tempest Storm and counts her among his Diverting Damsels Daringly Delineated.

Original Bettie Page Jungle Girl Photograph by Bunny Yeager Contact Sheet Never Published Collection Jim Linderman

Bettie Page wasn't much of a dancer, but she looked great climbing a tree in a jungle suit! While not a Burlesque performer per se, she did appear in the Varietease and the Striporama films in the early 1950s.

This is a unique, one of a kind, previously unpublished photograph taken by Bunny Yeager but rejected for publication (as the editing pen in orange indicates) It is a contact print of the famous "Jungle Girl" photo session which took place in 1954 at the Africa USA wildlife Park in Boca Raton Florida. Previously unseen picture of Bettie Page don't turn up much anymore...this small image is nice to see.

Original Bettie Page Contact print by Bunny Yeager, signed by the photographer on reverse. 1954.

Collection Jim Linderman

True Burlesque Where is Patti Waggin ?

Patti Waggin is everywhere!

Group of Patti "The Girl with the Educated Torso" clippings, circa 1953 Collection Jim Linderman

True Burlesque Brown Skin Exotics! Black Burlesque Queens

Black and Brown Burlesque Brown Skin Exotics and the Tinted Double Cover of Calvacade of Burlesque 1954

Actually, I have no idea if THIS Mary Mack was a woman of color, though she is exotic, the buzz word for anyone back then peeling it off who wasn't of European extraction. There WAS a brown skin Mary Mack working in a "colored review" around 1920, but this isn't her. Maybe this Mary named herself after the original Mary Mack?

The Savannah Club was operated by Joe Schiavone and located in Greenwich Village. 68 West Third Street. A block from Washington Square Park, just off Laguardia Place. It is currently an Indonesian Coffee Shop named Kopi-Kopi and it features a COFFEE AVOCADO MILKSHAKE, so they are still "mixing" things well.

Because no libraries had this magazine, it has never been indexed and there may be some relatives who would like to see these images of their beautiful ground-breaking ancestors, the names are added here.

Sandra
Stephanie
Venus La Doll
Betty Brisbane
La Bomme
Mary Alexander
China Doll
Mary Smith (Not Illustrated)

Enjoy this historical article on the Savannah Club. Calvacade of Burlesque September 1954.

BOOKS AND AFFORDABLE E-BOOKS AVAILABLE HERE

True Burlesque The Original Garter Girl Lynne O'Neil poses

True Burlesque The Original Garter Girl Lynne O'Neil poses. Original photograph No date, circa 1950 Collection Jim Linderman

"…disclosing an underground history of American popular culture one oddball tale at a time." NEW YORK TIMES

"We’ve all got a sleazy side, haven’t we?"
Design Blog It's Nice That.

"...one of the blog writers to watch for"
ARTSlant

"...collected over the years by Jim Linderman, a character who seems the perfect subject for a Harvey Pekar comic. Linderman treats collecting like a calling, and his finds have a resulting air of authority, stunning in their capture of bygone picturesque moments."
Derek Taylor Dusted

"...Jim Linderman’s blog Vintage Sleaze – a treasure chest (sorry) of adult gags, disreputable imagery and sordid stories featuring some of America’s best-loved sexy artists. Vintage Sleaze is “the true and untold history of smut in America,” Linderman reveals in the site’s opening statement – now if that’s a line that doesn’t tickle your fancy, I don’t know what will."
Alex Moshakis It's Nice That

"Linderman acknowledges the obscure at the same time that he elevates it.... His collections tell vast stories in sotto voce, allowing curios and objects shadowed by mainstream culture and ideology to converse and be heard. What we hear is an enormous American sub-culture speaking in forbidden, marginalized languages: stuff discovered boxed in the attic out of embarrassment or zealotry, smutty ash trays crowing next to religious pamphlets, each claiming a part of the complex, sometimes contradictory, always conflicted American imagination, a chaos of memories that will one day vanish."
Joe Bonomo Author of Conversations With Greil Marcus, Jerry Lewis Lost and Found and No Such Thing As Was

"The pictures, discarded artifacts of ecstatic Americana, come from the stash of Jim Linderman, who in his introduction recalls advice he’s plainly taken to heart: “Collect the heck” out of whatever you find interesting."
Drew Jubera Paste Magazine

"His interest in art is rivaled only by his interest in music, and one expression informs the other. He pursues objects with thoroughness and an innate sense of curiosity..."
Tanya Heinrich Folk Art Magazine

"Documenting--one clipping at a time--the scrapbook of a leg and garter aficionado that was dumpster-dived in Virginia in the 60s" "...an outstanding image-archaeologist who has compiled a shelf-ful of worthy and unique photographic histories."
William Smith Hang Fire Books

"Linderman has a knack for discovering untold stories and introducing them to a wider audience"
Joey Lin Anonymous Works

"Jim Linderman...makes us all look a little puny"
Could it be Madness-this?

"...insatiable collector of ephemera and ringleader behind an incredible circus of blogs — including the treasure trove dull tool dim bulb"
The Cynephile

"Yo no sé ustedes pero creo que es uno de los mejores sitios que he visitado en mucho tiemp"
Color Me in Blog

"...there's something beyond the endless photos and postcards and weird propaganda from another time that he lovingly documents - I think it's the collection as a whole, the portrait of a person fascinated with culture and communication. I have met people like this before, and in reading Dull Tool Dim Bulb I feel I have been lucky enough to meet one more. This site is a goldmine in terms of links..."
The Hyggelic Life October 2009

"Linderman is always on the lookout for the new and exciting"
Chuck and Jan Rosenak Contemporary American Folk Art

"...an amazing collection..."
Revel in New York October 2009

"Jim Linderman has a nice little colllection of interesting books and blogs...But every so often he just loses it."
American Digest March 2010

"Perpetually ahead of the collecting curve...a one man Taschen. An authentically curious individual...diligently archiving the forgotten curiosities of American History"

Emma Higgins in Art Hack May 2012

"FOR MOST OF HIS LIFE, COLLECTOR JIM LINDERMAN has searched high and low for authentic things--unique and special objects that define the artistic culture of the American experience. From folk art to popular culture, from pulp fiction to Delta Blues-- Jim is a walking authority on so many things American they are too numerous to mention. One thing is certain-- his collecting interests are for things that have fallen through the cracks, those things lost and forgotten--the box of material under the table at the flea market booth. If it wasn't for dedicated collectors like Jim Linderman-- so many important objects about our culture would have surely been lost to time and indifference."

"Jim Linderman maintains a most interesting blog about the most amazing things from his collection—a site he calls “Dull Tool Dim Bulb,” the only curse words his father ever uttered. I love it, and read it everyday."
"...an excellent writer and I devour your blog daily. I am impressed at your deep knowledge of things within your niche..."
John Foster Accidental Mysteries

"I am grateful to Jim Linderman for first alerting me to the existence of the 1930s Spiritualist hymn "Jesus is My Air-o-plane."
William Fagaly New Orleans Museum of Art, Author Tools of her Ministry: The art of Sister Gertrude Morgan

"Linderman describes a long gone world...(he) claims not to be a writer but he is most certainly an excellent researcher..."
BOOKSTEVE

"Jim Linderman, King of the Internet Ephemeral Arts"
Spaniel Rage

"Jim is a fantastic historian...show him some love"
Astrid Daley Fringe Pop / Sin-A-Rama

"Almost an experimental narrative"
Idiopath