You can pull all the stops out till they call the cops out.

Grind you're behind till your band.

But you gotta get a gimmick if you want to get a hand.

You can sacrifice your sacro, working in the back row, bump in a dump to you're dead.

Kid, you gotta get a gimmick if you want to get a head.

When the curtain rose at New York's Broadway theater on the night of May 21, 1959,

audiences were brought back into the world of burlesque, and specifically the life of one of the greatest striptees artists of all time, Gypsy Rose Lee.

Gypsy, based on Lee's own memoir, tells a backstage tale of just what it takes to make it in show business. And as our more seasoned strippers

tell Louise in this famous song from the original cast album, well, you gotta get a gimmick.

When Gypsy Rose Lee wrote her memoir and the subsequent musical opened on Broadway,

burlesque had passed its golden age, as many

define it during the first quarter of the 20th century. But the origins and development of

burlesque included far more than a glittering tease of sequins, a flash of flesh, and perhaps

a fan. In this show, returning guest,

an absolute listener favorite,

Don Spiro,

joins me for a look at the history of burlesque,

what it was and wasn't,

how it developed,

and what it has become today.

Music today.

Hello, this is Carl Raymond, the host of the Gilded Gentleman History podcast where every other week we journey into worlds light and dark of America's gilded age, France's Belle-Poc, and England's late Victorian and Edwardian erres. When one finds oneself in Las Vegas, aside from a possible roll of the dice,

...