Let ’em entertain you: Faith Bacon and Sally Rand are the subjects of ‘Feuding Fan Dancers’
Performer Faith Bacon from the book “Feuding Fan Dancers: Faith Bacon, Sally Rand, and the Golden Age of the Showgirl” (Counterpoint Press photo)
The latest movie from acclaimed director Robert Zemeckis is “Welcome to Marwen” and it stars Steve Carell. It opens in theaters on Dec. 21, with Carell playing the victim of a violent assault who builds a miniature World War II village to help in his recovery. It is already generating Oscar buzz.
Playing the role of Suzette, one of the residents of the tiny village, is Leslie Zemeckis, Bob’s wife since 2001. A native of San Diego, she has been acting since the early 1990s and has a number of TV and film credits. But in recent years she has begun to distinguish herself as a documentary filmmaker and author, her intellectual and creative focus on “women considered outsiders and underdogs.”
Her latest subjects come vividly alive in her new book, “Feuding Fan Dancers: Faith Bacon, Sally Rand, and the Golden Age of the Showgirl” (Counterpoint).
As she writes, “Both enjoyed the dance. Perhaps they had no talent for anything else. Perhaps they didn’t need to. Both were showgirls who emerged from the chorus line to demand the audience look at them, to confront a woman’s sexuality owned wholly by that woman. Both Faith and Sally sought sensationalism. They lived unconventional lives for the most part and without the influence of a man or the acceptance of society.”
I first encountered Leslie with the 2013 release of her first book, “Behind the Burly Q: The Story of Burlesque in America.” It was the natural extension of her first documentary film in 2010, which bore the same name, and featured intimate interviews with such former burlesque stars — creatively named — as Tempest Storm, Candy Cotton, Blaze Starr, Candy Barr, Val Valentine, Tee Tee Red … the list goes on. The film and book were poignant, amusing and enlightening.
Even while raising three little children, she kept producing movies and books at a steady pace.
There was 2014’s compelling and sad documentary “Bound by Flesh,” the story of Daisy and Violet Hilton, twin sisters conjoined at birth and forced to live as “cash cows” for a series of people eager to exploit them. In this paper, I called it a film “likely to stay with you forever.”
Then came 2015’s book, “Goddess of Love Incarnate: The Life of Stripteuse Lili St. Cyr.”
“Mabel, Mabel, Tiger Trainer” was a 2018 documentary of Mabel Stark, the first female tiger trainer who, of course, had to tame the cats before they could share the spotlight with her. She operated boldly, saying, “I like to do something that no other person can do. They say a woman didn’t have brains enough to do that, and they dared me, so here I am.”
These are the sort of people who appeal to Zemeckis, who says, “I can’t stand to see their stories get lost.”
She has grown tremendously as a writer and the proof is in this new book’s first chapter, which concludes in this gripping fashion:
Neither light nor optimism could penetrate the broken souls in the cheap hotel. A last stop, a temporary asylum for dashed dreams and delusional schemes.
Impulsively — or had she been think of it all day — the blonde raced towards the window. Her roommate yelled after her. A low-heeled foot clung to the rim of the ledge.
There was no time to turn back. Her roommate grabbed at her skirt, feeling the assurance of fabric in her rough hand. Then horrifyingly she felt it give — too fast — and the material slid through her hand.
“No!” she screamed as her troubled friend vanished from sight.
It was not an easy end to a life that had not been lived easily.
Ironically, 1956 was a leap year.
That’s just a portion of this detailed, deeply researched and compelling book. You might know of Rand, for she was an astute and tireless self-promoter who became famous for decades for her abilities to dance naked, important body parts “hidden” behind huge ostrich fans. Bacon is lesser known, another dancer with fans who was known (and photos make a good case) as “the world’s most beautiful woman.”
Performer Faith Bacon from the book “Feuding Fan Dancers: Faith Bacon, Sally Rand, and the Golden Age of the Showgirl” (Counterpoint Press photo)
I had not met Leslie face to face until last month, though she is frequently in Chicago. Her husband — Oscar-winning director of such films as “Back to the Future,” “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Forrest Gump” — was born and raised in the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side and still has friends and relatives here. He and Leslie and their family — daughter ZsaZsa and sons Zane and Rhys, all school age; he has an older son, Alexander, by a previous marriage — live most of the year in Santa Barbara, Calif., but for more than a decade have owned a home here.
It is a short walk from that home to the Chicago History Museum, a place Leslie calls “essential to my research, a real treasure trove. I don’t know what I would do without it.”
The CHM was especially helpful with this latest book, for our 1933-34 Century of Progress world’s fair and other places around town are essential to the story and the rivalry:
“Sally was packing them in at the Italian Village, alternating her balloon and fan dance.
“Faith was in a vaudeville program at the State-Lake Theatre for several weeks, zipping between the fair and theater.”
The fair made Rand’s career: “In two short years she had created a name that would last forever. … She had profoundly and forever changed popular entertainment. By promoting Sally Rand the ‘fan dancer’ she flourished, becoming ‘the spirit’ of the ‘changing notions of women and sexuality.’”
Rand would perform with regularity into her 70s, saying, “God knows, I like doing this. It’s better than doing needlepoint on the patio.”
Bacon, however, did not fare as well, her life ending here.
“These women were hugely famous in their day,” says Zemeckis. “It did not feel at all right to tell one’s story without the other’s.”
She has done so with great style and enthusiasm, giving both of the fan dancers the justice they deserve, these women who for a wild time “were independent birds exploring new heights.”