"Bubbles Darlene" was an exotic dancer, though she described herself once to Nashville police as a "strip teaser." Bubbles had the real name of Virginia Lachimia and was a busty platinum blond with considerable talents originally from Minneapolis. She studied as a ballet dancer, but found burlesque paid more. In 1955, while performing her act, someone broke into her hotel room and swiped her entire suitcase of risque photographs "including some nudes taken in Cuba" and she was forced to take out a classified ad in the local newspaper offering $500 for their safe return. (She was out of luck… they were never found.) Bubbles even claimed once to have danced with a 22 piece orchestra in Cuba, and who would doubt this woman? She was also arrested in Cuba for walking around Havana in a see-through raincoat.
Today, Bubbles is recognized as one of the classic burlesque dancers, and an often seen photograph of her posing in a hat made of ram's horns makes Lady Gaga look like a thrift store model.
The book here, a bogus "art study" the type of which is told in Proto Porn was confiscated from a bookstore owner in 1957 and while he was charged with other titles, the jury let him off for the Bubbles book.
IN response to one of those tired "best dressed women" puff pieces, Damon Runyun, Jr. once named her one of the "ten best undressed women of America" although she kept on a "fifty dollar g-string" covered in rhinestones. Her first professional name was Sheri Darlene, but it wasn't long before Harold Minskly dubbed her Bubbles. At some gigs in Miami, a bubble machine was put in front of the joint she was working to attract business.
