Charles Rammelkamp’s The Trapeze of Your Flesh, Reviewed in Pedestal Magazine
An excerpt from Pedestal magazine:
Charles Rammelkamp has lived in Baltimore long enough to know all about “The Block,” that regal, or infamous, stretch of real estate that was once home to some of the best-known burlesque houses and strip tease artists who ever strutted their less than fully-clad glory for the delight and titillation of rowdy college kids, randy out-of-town businessmen with cheating and cheap thrills on their mind, and lonely guys nursing a beer or a cheap bottle of something called Champagne by the establishment while fantasizing about being wafted to paradise by the lovelies on stage.
But now, Rammelkamp has given us something better than a parade of strip-teasing ladies performing in dimly lit, sweaty rooms. In The Trapeze of Your Flesh, he’s presented us, in their own words, with a history of that noble art from its early days in the 19th Century, when in the wake of the Civil War, Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes launched “The Original British Invasion.” They toured America, starting in New York City which as Ms. Thompson tells it, they “took by storm” with their “risqué jokes and saucy costumes.” From that opening act, which lasted for over a decade in various venues in the States, Rammelkamp traces the history of burlesque from the first American born artiste, Mabel Santley (nee Lida Gardner), who appeared on stages following the end of the Civil War. Back then, burlesque was far more sedate than the raunchy brand of our era. To hear Mabel tell it:
They thronged to see me at the Casino Theater,
in New York; we also toured the country—
a chance for me to wear elegant outfits,
show a little bit of skin.
And finally, the ultimate acclaim for Ms. Santley: her face on a trading card! Just like the Say Hey Kid and the Mick. It doesn’t get much more famous than that in the U.S.!
Read the whole review here:
Charles Rammelkamp’s The Trapeze of Your Flesh, Reviewed by Robert Cooperman
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