Sally Rand
- This article is about a deceased Burlesque performer
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Sally Rand (✦January 2, 1904 - †August 31, 1979) was born Harriet Helen Gould Beck in Hickory County, Missouri. She also performed under the name Billy Beck. She was an exotic dancer and actress.
1920s
Sally Rand, who said she was born in 1904, may have been an “overnight sensation" in Chicago, but had appeared in motion pictures and vaudeville from the 1920s.
During the 1920s, she acted on stage and appeared in silent films. Cecil B. DeMille gave her the name Sally Rand. She was selected as one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1927. After the introduction of sound film, she became a dancer, known for the fan dance, which she popularized starting at The Paramount Club at 16 E. Huron in Chicago. Her most famous appearance was at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair entitled Century of Progress. She had been arrested a few times due to indecent exposure while dancing, but the nudity was only an illusion.
She also conceived and developed the bubble dance, in part to cope with wind while performing outdoors.
1930s
She’d made her way through the Ringling Brothers Circus and William Seabury’s Repertory Theatre Company before landing in Hollywood. She acted in 20 silent movies, including The King of Kings, by Cecil B. DeMille, who is said to have anointed the girl born Harriet Helen Gould Beck with her stage name, Sally Rand.
Sally Rand came to prominence during the 1933-1934 Chicago Century of Progress World’s Fair that was to celebrate the progress of civilization during Chicago’s first century of existence.
The Chicago fair opened May 27, 1933, and drew 39,000,000 visitors. Like the Treasure Island fair, it was repeated a year later. The Century of Progress is, incidentally, one of the few world fairs that did not lose money.
Rand made her infamous and highly profitable fan dance at Chicago’s Paramount Club in 1933. She also performed at the World’s Fair there and was arrested on charges of lewd and lascivious acts, but Superior Court Judge Joseph B. David dismissed the case saying, "As far as I’m concerned all these charges are just a lot of old stuff to me."
Sally Rand, already famous throughout the country for her sexy and shocking strip teases involving giant 8-foot translucent balloons, ostrich feathers, and cowboy hats and holsters and not much else, had come from Ozark country in Missouri.
She performed the fan dance on film in 1934 film Bolero, released in 1934.
In 1936, she opened her nightclub, "The Music Box" at 859 O'Farrell St, in the Polk Gulch district of San Francisco. (The Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater is at 895 O'Farrell.) The building opened as Blanco's after the Great Earthquake, and is now the home of the "Great American Music Hall". The interior remains much as it did when Rand performed her famed fan dances there. The venue was again sold in 2000 to Palo Alto-based Riffage.com, a dot-com startup, that planned live Internet broadcasts of new music from the former Music Box. Riffage.com, unfortunately, ceased operations on Dec. 8, 2000. Its website said, “we cannot continue to service these fine [music] communities in the current economic marketplace." The Great American Music Hall was put up for sale by the company.
This was the fair that made Sally Rand famous. She had been a nightclub cigarette girl and dancer and joined a chorus line at the fair. She was arrested for an “obscene" performance and was catapulted to fame. It is said her act, in Chicago, grossed $6,000 per week during the depths of the Depression. After the Chicago fair closed she performed in vaudeville, motion pictures, expositions in Texas and San Diego, then came to San Francisco in anticipation of the 1939 Treasure Island World’s Fair.
Golden Gate International Exposition
With the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, a celebration was held in the form of a World's Fair. This event, the Golden Gate International Exposition, ran from 1939 to 1940. It was held on a man-made island built in San Francisco Bay -- Treasure Island. This event added a large amount of musical activity to the local scene, and the music of big bands was a large part of this activity. In the Treasure Island amusement zone known as "The Gayway" had a very popular act for adults. Sally Rand's Nude Ranch had pretty young women cavorting around a make-believe ranch playing ping-pong and volleyball. They were nude except for red bandanas to cover the vital locations, cowboy hats, gunbelts and boots, and little else. They were one of the highlights of the fair.
On the fairway, women wearing The fair’s Official Guide Book delicately described it as “Sally Rand Nude Ranch: A dude ranch a la 1939."
The Nude Ranch was just one of several “flesh" shows at the Treasure Island Fair. Others included Candid Camera, which featured live, nude, models, and Greenwich Village, described by the Official Guide Book as “Model artists’ colony and revue theatre."
The Gayway also featured the Mark Twain House, a replica of a newspaper office where the famed author worked, and Incubator Babies, Inc., with live infants in a modern hospital on display at the fair.
Unabashed stag shows at Treasure Island did cause some controversy. However, one San Francisco neighborhood newspaper, the Polk Progress, wrote:
- “One might gather from the snickering and naughty attitude toward the ‘flesh’ shows at the Exposition, that the success of the $50,000,000 enterprise hangs or fails upon the relative number of inches of epidermis displayed. Bringing stag shows out into the open in order that women may attend and feel devilish will pay good dividends, but the marvelous exhibitions of paintings and other displays will also attract a few."
1940s
Fresh from another controversial and lucrative venture at the 1939 World’s Fair on Treasure Island, Sally moved her operations to the thriving San Pablo Avenue scene. Sally Rand’s Hollywood Club was located at 204 San Pablo until it closed in 1946. The venue later became a jazz hangout named "Hambone Kelly's"
Sally would later be a part of the San Pablo Avenue scene.
Arrested by SFPD
In November 1946, while Sally Rand was appearing at the Club Savoy at 168 O'Farrell Street in San Francisco, six members of the SFPD watched her dance slowly and, apparently, naked up a dimly lit runway as she maneuvered a giant white fan in rhythm to Claude Debussy's romantic "Clair de Lune." Professing shock at what they viewed as an indecent performance, they arrested her.
Section 311 of the Penal Code, they said, barred "indecent exposure, corrupting the morals of an audience, and conducting an obscene show."
Sally employed Jake Ehrlich, a leading San Francisco attorney who was well-known as the defender of celebrities and criminals. He had successfully defended singer Billie Holiday and drummer Gene Krupa against drug charges.
Sally Rand's Death
She died of heart failure, August 31 1979 in Glendora, California at age 75.
1980s
She is portrayed by actress Peggy Davis in the 1983 film, The Right Stuff, fan-dancing for the first American astronauts and other dignitaries. That episode had also been discussed in the book, wherein author Tom Wolfe referred to the astronauts observing this sixtyish woman's "ancient flanks".
Filmography
Her screen credits include 1924s The Dressmaker from Paris, two Rod La Rocque 1926 films Bachelor Brides, and Gigolo; Getting Gertie’s Garter in 1927, as well as Cecil B. De Mille’s King of Kings. She was in the 1928 film The Fighting Eagle," and the 1934 musical Bolero, with George Raft. She also appeared in two “Soundies" features filmed in 1942 - The Fan Dancer and The Artist Model.
Gallery
Poster from 1934
The Sally Rand Nude Ranch at Treasure Island
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Sally_Rand_Shoulders
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"Sally Rand's Nude ranch"
| Sally Rand performing the Bubble Dance (circa 1934) | |
| Sally Rand performing the Fan Dance (circa 1934) |
See also [ Bubble dance ]
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External links
- The Sally Rand Museum
- Sally Rand at the Internet Movie Database
- Burlesque and pin-up forum
- "Sally Rands Nude Ranch" page
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