Hooo wee, here's a story I was NOT expecting to find in the pages of the relatively austere Los Angeles Times, circa 1961. But as we're learning when it comes to Lucius Beebe, "anything goes"!
This report comes from a travel series on Nevada by Gene Sherman for the LA Times in 1961. This one's an excerpt from the May 10, 1961 (which as I'm writing this, very coincidentally, is 61 years ago tomorrow) article.
Reporter Sherman flirts all around the "one sound state" of Nevada telling amusing anecdotes from its various cities and 'burbs. In one such anecdote, he stops for a spell in Reno and highlights a publicity stunt put on by the grand Mapes Casino featuring Lucius Beebe and Lili St. Cyr, the notable burlesque artist.
According to the piece, the Mapes had just opened a gourmet dining room and, as a publicity stunt, invited Lucius Beebe alone to receive the full luxury dining experience; a full course gourmet meal, fine vintage wines and a full, personal burlesque show from Lili St. Cyr.
Though the anecdote is intended to amuse and delight the reader, Lucius was clearly anything but amused and delighted by the, uh souvenir, he was offered. Take it away, Mr. Sherman:
It appears that Lili St. Cyr was a little too luscious for even Luscious Lucius!
It's an interesting reaction (assuming it's true and not a columnist's "poetic license") for a man who was good friends with Gypsy Rose Lee, another famed burlesque dancer.
To this department, learning that Lucius got his own panties in a twist over the stunt reads a little hypocritical: Lucius had been hurling contraband projectiles about respectable theaters when Lili St. Cyr was still in grade school*. Never mind all the "stunts" Beebe performed on William Randolph Hearst & J.P. Morgan involving relatively vulgar props like dinner scraps and toilet paper, respectively...but often times turnabout isn't seen as fair play.
After reading this account, the closing line of the song "Zip!" from the musical Pal Joey by Rodgers and Hart came to mind immediately. The tune's about Gypsy Rose Lee and even features a shout out to Lucius Beebe: ("I adore the great Confucius and the lines of Luscious Lucius!"). The whole number ends with, "Who the hell is Lili St. Cyr?!"
Beebe probably left this performance asking something slightly different.
For purely academic reasons, you can see this video of Lili St. Cyr performing on stage at the El Rancho in Las Vegas, Nevada circa 1954, to get a general idea of the type of show that reportedly left Lucius Beebe purple.
Zip!
* Lucius is well-known for having hurled liquor bottles from an opera box while impersonating the head of Yale Divinity School as an undergrad during prohibition. This stunt, in full or in part, led to Beebe's expulsion from Yale in the 1920s.
Comments