Showgirl Explained

See also: Vedette (cabaret) and Chorus line.

A showgirl is a female performer in a theatrical revue who wears an exotic and revealing costume and in some shows may appear topless. Showgirls are usually dancers, sometimes performing as chorus girls, burlesque dancers or fan dancers,[1] and many are classically trained with skills in ballet. The term showgirl is also sometimes used by strippers and some strip clubs use it as part of their business name.[2]

History

In eighteenth century England the term showgirl meant a young woman who acted in a showy way to attract male attention, but by the mid-nineteenth century the term had come to mean a singer and dancer in music hall acts.[1] Showgirls as we now understand them date from the late 1800s in Parisian music halls and cabarets such as the Moulin Rouge, Le Lido, and the Folies Bergère which first featured a nude showgirl in 1918. A popular showgirl dance was the can-can.[2] The trafficking of showgirls for the purposes of prostitution was the subject of a salacious novel by the nineteenth-century French author Ludovic Halévy.[3] The Ziegfeld Follies revue on Broadway introduced showgirls to the United States in 1907, and Busby Berkeley included them in his Hollywood films in the 1930s. The Bluebell Girls, a dance troupe created by the Irish dancer Margaret Kelly in 1932, performed at the Folies Bergère and Le Lido. By the 1950s there were permanent troupes of Bluebell Girls in Paris and Las Vegas and touring troupes that travelled around the world.[2] The first casino on the Las Vegas Strip to employ dancing girls as a diversion between acts was the El Rancho Vegas in 1941.[4] Showgirls with expensive costumes were presented in Las Vegas in 1952 at the Sands Casino for a show with Danny Thomas.[5] Initially opening and closing for headline acts, sometimes dancing around the headliner, showgirls later moved on to being the main attraction and stars of the show. During the 1950s and 1960s showgirls performed in every hotel and casino on the Las Vegas strip. Competition between casinos led to increasingly lavish shows and costumes.[2] Major shows of the late 1950s included Donn Arden's Lido de Paris show at the Stardust, Jack Entratter’s Copa Girls at the Sands Hotel, and Harold Minsky’s Follies at the Desert Inn. Minsky introduced topless showgirls and these were then incorporated into The Lido de Paris, a show that ran for 31 years.[6] The popularity of showgirl shows in Las Vegas slowly declined after the 1960s, with all of the major shows closing by the early 21st century.[2]

Revues with showgirls

Showgirls in popular culture

See also

Notes and References

  1. Book: Merrill, Jane. The Showgirl Costume: An Illustrated History. McFarland. 2018. 9781476634333. 4.
  2. Web site: History of Showgirls. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20120105083325/http://oklahomashowgirls.com/historyofshowgirls.aspx. 5 January 2012. Oklahoma Showgirls.
  3. Book: McClary, Susan. Georges Bizet: Carmen. Cambridge University Press. 1992. 9780521398978. Cambridge Opera Handbooks. 38.
  4. Book: Gioia-Acres, Lisa. Showgirls of Las Vegas. Arcadia Publishing. 2013. 9780738596532. 8.
  5. News: Las Vegas Showgirls: Show and (a lot to) tell . Mary Manning . . 15 May 2008 . 22 April 2012.
  6. Web site: Las Vegas: An Unconventional History . . 23 April 2012.
  7. News: Celebrating the Las Vegas showgirl: An icon lives on in one group's evolving passion project. J.D. Morris. 13 June 2016. Las Vegas Sun.
  8. Book: Shteir, Rachel. Striptease: The Untold History of the Girlie Show. registration. Oxford University Press. 2004. 9780195300765. 153.

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