Stripping & Unstripping

Because to the British mind a nude woman is not unseemly so long as she is disguised as a lifeless ornament in a fishpond or a Grecian statuet, Britons who want to see a comely naked woman can do so by visiting the "nonstop reviews" at London's Windmill Theatre which for five years have included undressed tableaux.

Few weeks ago, however, the British Theatre was shaken by news that Strip-Tease Dancer Diane Raye had arrived from Manhattan to do her act at the London Palladium. Though the average Briton did not know what "striptease" meant, he knew it was a Broadway specialty, suspected that therefore it was probably indecent. So much hubbub foamed up in London's press that the staid Palladium canceled the act and the more racy Victoria Palace grabbed it.

Last week British journalists described Victoria Palace audiences as "bewildered" by what they saw. Through the gloomiest of blue lights on a Stygian-dark stage, behind a gauze curtain, Diane appeared and rolled her hips. The audience sat still as mutton. Diane, accustomed to Broadway's anticipatory outburst of clapping, was nonplussed but stuck to her strip-tease routine. The next move, she thought, would get them. Sinuously she let fall from her creamy shoulders a vast chiffon cape, then, striding rapidly to the wings, unsnapped her split skirt, showed a shapely thigh just before she disappeared. In vain Stripper Raye waited for the accustomed wild uproar indicating that the audience wanted to see more of her.

There was no visible or audible audience reaction because, according to London journalists, Britishers "assume that when a performer leaves the stage the act is over." They were genuinely surprised when Miss Raye reappeared long enough to shed her dress completely, revealing her torso heavily enmeshed in spangled net. London's press reported next day that "after a long silence 'some few people clapped miserably'," but meanwhile the hardboiled, factual London scout of Broadway's stage sheet Variety cabled:

"House was a complete sell-out for both shows . . . gross hitting approximately $2,750 ... an all-time high. Audience included the Secretary of the Public Morality Council and members of the London County Council [aldermen] with the stripper proving the most-dressed representative of her clan ever seen. . . . "C. B. Cochrane opened his new Trocadero cabaret revue the same night. Entitled 'Eve in the Park,' show features a nude girl enclosed in a huge glass shower-bath, stepping out and dressing from skin to outer garments. Artistic and alluring, the twist went over nicely."

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