One of the nicest things about Tee Tee Red is that she is still active, or at least she was in 2009 according to the bustoutburlesque site, and she is also listed as a current member of the Golden Days of Burlesque Historical Society. She is a joiner!
I hate to say it, this being a woman-friendly site for polite urbane folks, but one of the other nicest things about Tee Tee Red was her butt.
Plus it ain't just me. Sleaze columnist Herb Rau mentions her anatomy too, in a 1964 issue of The Miami News...with a photo which ran right next to white blues crooner Bing Crosby!
Tee Tee apparently caused a minor ruckus in Canada in 1962...and wouldn't you know it, Canadian sleaze columnist Jim Coleman mentioned her anatomy in his column too!
In the recent book The Blues Route by Hugh Merrill, Tee Tee's act is reported to have included...get this:
"...and a woman named Tee-Tee Red who balanced champagne glasses on her breasts, and then drank out of them without using her hands."
The Miami Herald reported Tee Tee still stripping at age 45 in 1983.
Tee Tee is Joy Murphy. Bunny Yeager photographed her, but the pictures in this Leonard Burtman digest are uncredited. "Tee Tee Red: America's Most Beautiful Redhead" was published in 1959 by Phoebe publishers but is identified on the inside back cover as a Burmel book. Number 24 in the series! The little doodles along the right are by Gene Bilbrew. The Phoebe digests were one of Burtman's "vanilla" creative outlets. No fetish, unless you count bottoms, red hair and opera gloves as a fetish...but the clear focus of Lenny's Phoebe books were boobs, not bondage. Consequently, they are mostly lost now...the fetish folks seem to have kept their books in better condition.
Burtman also seems to have sold original photograph glossies of Tee Tee which correspond to the photos inside. Two bucks for a set of eight 4" x 5" glossies out of a PO Box in Radio City Station. Order by Number. She also appears in other Burtman magazines like Striperama. She was included in Wolf-Bait issue number one, the little burlesque magazine attributed to Zee Zee Martine the same year. Do not get your Zee Zee confused with your Tee Tee, they were different burleskers.
The pictures here are black and white, unfortunately, as Tee Tee was known more for her red hair that that rear end. Tee Tee also had a role in the Jerry Lewis movie "The Bellboy" according to several sources, but I don't see her name on the IMDB. They take the time to credit "Autograph Seeker" and "Hotel Guest" but not Tee Tee? Since that movie was in black and white too, I didn't bother to find her.
Tee Tee Red: America's Most Beautiful Redhead 1959 Phoebe (Burmel) New York.
Collection Victor Minx
Dull Tool Dim Bulb Book and Ebook catalog is HERE
