“Zemeckis (Goddess of Love Incarnate, 2015) is a tenacious historian of the lost days of burlesque.”—Booklist
Issue: September 15, 2018
Think today’s show business environment is a rough-and-tumble world? It’s a cakewalk compared to the unrelenting competitiveness, grueling physicality, and legal persecution that plagued showgirls of the 1930s. None were more revered or reviled than those who titillated their audiences by performing nude with the aid of strategically placed props. Personified by Sally Rand and Faith Bacon, fan dancers were the ultimate sybarites. Proud of their bodies, determined to find show business success, Rand and Bacon seesawed from abject poverty to untold riches. Rand may have been brash and bawdy, Bacon ethereal and elegant, but both were equally tough competitors, hardened by their feud to claim the title of fan dance originator and driven by an insatiable desire for accolades and respect. Zemeckis (Goddess of Love Incarnate, 2015) is a tenacious historian of the lost days of burlesque. While this narrative purports to chronicle the golden days of the fan dance, it more dramatically reveals the tarnish and disgrace suffered by two of its most notorious practitioners.— Carol Haggas