Burlesque Bourbon Style!
The best thing about the Bourbon Street 500 club (other than their STUNNING PRODUCTION VALUES on display here ("Get on the divan, honey") was that Clarence "Frogman" Henry performed there. Jeez…I wouldn't sit on that couch unless someone wiped it off with a towel like the slant board at my gym!
Seriously one…one of the premiere joints in the country, and the dancer had less than 6 feet to twirl in. The 500 club was a dump from the "glory days" of burlesque. They actually thought this shot was classy enough for their promotional postcards! Here's another with Linda given a little more room...but not much.
One of the Prima brothers ran it at one time, but there was, of course, skullduggery in the books.
By 1971, 42 inch bust Sandra Sexton was stripping there for half-filled seats and the glamor which was never really there there ended for good. Just ten years before that, the joint was hot enough for the morals squad to raid the place…but the gate dropped like a loose pastie once real smut became available in the movies. By the 1970s no one cared enough to lift a finger, much less their head.
The stripper is the postcard above is Linda Brigette AKA Georgia Lambert. Her manager gave her the name Brigette hoping Bourbon Street drunks would mistake her name on the marquee as Brigitte Bardot. Bardot she, um… weren't. She wasn't a blonde either…fake. As for the rest of her? I'll leave that up to you. (Actually, I'll figure it out for you…rock hard early implants.) Bourbon Street boulders. Sometimes Linda danced with a monkey, and I don't mean her husband. A REAL monkey.
Linda replaced Lilly "The Cat Girl" Christine when LIlly she died of peritonitis. Brigette clearly was no Lilly Christine either.
You can read all about Linda HERE on a tribute page.
