True Burlesque Boulders of Bourbon Street! Linda Brigette The Cupid Doll!
Linda Lambert Brigette, AKA The Cupid Doll was born the daughter of Needum Toxie Lambert and Edna Leola Wactor Lambert in 1939. I hope they lasted long enough to see her daughter perform nearly nude in an oversize champagne glass on Bourbon Street!
I am pretty sure they didn't make it to the first nude wedding, which was Linda's. Morganna, another surgically-enhanced stripper who liked to bounce onto baseball fields was her maid of honor.
Brigette would grind on stage on a couch…"suggestive moves" says the New Orleans Times- Picayune, and they are a good newspaper. A trashy one would have written "humped the divan" and, of course, I will. Linda Brigette humped a dirty couch onstage. It got her arrested for obscenity, but the Governor pardoned her after a mob associate asked him to. You know…please? "We miss her at the club" but they really missed the full house she brought in. She was so important to the club that they had red drawings of her on the glasses they sold watered down hooch in.
The Cupid Doll was five feet tall with a pair of early fake boobs. Whether they caused her health problems later in life is unknown. In the business they are called "boulders" and hers were. Hard as rocks and so high on her chest she risked harming them during her fire-eating act.
As is the case generally, "The Cupid Doll" was married at age 13 and had a baby at age 14. Our favorite stripper Candy Barr got her started in the business. or at least influenced her. They traveled in the same sleazy circles. Cupid Doll's act included live animals (a snake or a monkey depending on which was feeling frisky) and packed them in, but she died broke.
Linda Brigette worked for the 500 club. A club Jack Ruby telephoned 8 times in 1963, according to the Warren Report on who killed Kennedy. Ruby used to borrow strippers from the 500 club for his own dump. and he knew the mob-connected owner Frank Caracci had some talent.
See also Jim Linderman BOOKS The Birth of Rock and Roll and more.
500 club matchbook with the Cupid Doll Collection Jim Linderman
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.
Carlos Marcello associate Frank Caracci apparently ran the dump behind the scenes. You seldom see Frank's name without "reputed" or "alleged" written before it. Some folks have claimed they saw Jack Ruby there before popping Oswald. Nice. Classy. Let's DANCE.
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