Brandy Martin - Socialite Stripper

This Philadelphia story has a happy ending but it was not that story at the start. The girl who now bumps and grinds out a living confesses she never felt quite relaxed about making a social stir with that silver spoon which had been born in her mouth. Not unlike Grace Kelly’s father Jack, who’d started life as a laborer and had worked for his millions, Brandy’s father had been poor and had made a fortune within a little more than a year by parlaying some borrowed money into a stock and bond empire. The Martins (as Brandy asks us to call them here) had as much or more money than their Pennsylvania neighbors, but they were not fully brought into the blue book category until Brandy’s industrious mother took over and vowed that her daughter was not going to be snubbed by the other families of wealth simply because Papa, like Jack Kelly, had not inherited his aristocracy.

Aristocratic carriage is maintained by Brandy, even when wearing flimsy lingerie. She is a well proportioned 37-23-35

Determined that Brandy would enter the debutante world, Mrs. Martin saw to it that her beautiful youngster was given just about every private lesson a girl could have and still have time to sleep and catch an occasional meal. She was taught ballet, acrobatics, piano, violin, singing, tap dancing, elocution and, of paramount importance to Mrs. Martin, poise, posture, and the social graces.

Relaxing between shows, Brandy displays charm that has made her Harold Minsky’s choice as one of the top strippers .

With a complete "set of instructions memoorized, Brandy obediently found herself in the whirlpool of debuiantery by the time she was 17. Her awkward skinniness had given way to the svelte lilies she has today, six years later. She remarks now, "Mother had her heart set on my getting into the Four Hundred and somehow it didn’t seem sane to tell her I’d have been just as satisfied working to make enough to pay for a room of my Own in New York, just as long as I could be near show business. Daddy sort of understood that I was never very happy in this social climbing stuff. but he didn’t do milch about it. He was away from home on business a great deal of the time any way."

Playing the social register role consisted chiefly of attending and giving parties for the children of the rich, of dancing, riding, sailing, and keeping company with boys who had what Brandy benignly called wooden personalities. She finally decided enough was enough on the evening she was told, second hand, that she was engaged to be married.

"That was pretty close to the last straw," she says. "It was something smack out of the dark ages, where marriages were arranged without the girl’s even knowing about it. I came back to Philadelphia after a weekend in Manhattan where I’d been dating a boy who was just starting out in television, and I was given to understand that a party was to he held in a week. to honor the engagement of myself and a fellow I’d seen, usually in a crowd, about ten times. His parents were high in Pennsylvania society. They were awfully well to do, and they and my mother put their heads to gether and decided it would he a happy match," "That did it. I packed only a few things and ran to New York." Dressed in a lavish gown, brandy starts her act with a sedate walk around the stage to soft usic. She often works in Miami.

There was a period of tension after Brandy arrived in Cotham, Stubborn, desperate to be independent, she had few friends in the city, fewer contacts, she reviewed the mostly useless lessons she’d been taught by the endless stream of tutors and agreed with one friend that she did, in fact, have what it might take to be an acrobatic dancer. Still with no clear image of where she was headed, she went after bookings and found work. From acrobatics she moved on to chorus line after chorus line and toured Europe, Mexico, Canada, Panama and the west Indies, slowly but carefully building her name. Not once did she fall back on her family for money or encouragement.

Dropping sophistication, Brandy also drops her gown and beoes an unhibited stripper who bumps rate with the best.

It was when she was persuaded that stripping for a living would get her the indeendence she’d always sought that she began to feel surer of herself. "I’d never seen a strip tease before!" she remembers, "or even known milch about it. But I made a point of watching some of the top names, decided I had the shape and stage presence, and that was it. The embarrassment of taking my clothes off foragents didn’t last long at all." Nor did her amateur standing. Following her very first appearance in her new career, Walter Winchell wrote, "Brandy Martin will give Lilly St. Cyr competition as a stripper." That cinched it, for she was besieged with offers within in the next week and discovered she could choose the creamiest ones from the top.

Since then, the busty blue-eyed beauty has been rocketing nearer and nearer to the top. In her first season at Minsky’s she earned marquee billing and has already appeared at every important strippery in the country. She’s a quiet, serious girl who neither hides nor flaunts her family background. She has definite likes and dislikes. She dates as often as time allows, but the suave lady killer is in for a huge letdown. She likes a good conversationalist who knows books and paintings, but the man bathed in ego will get the instant gate. She’s a summer outdoor enthusiast who loves boating, her own inboard cruiser bears her name. Between grind and bump engagements you’ll see her aquaplaning or water skiing along Long Island Sound. She devours historical novels at an amazing speed. Currenlly her before hours passion is photography and she’s strong for the Available Light technique with her Lcica M3. Today Brandy is riding the crest. There was a point of time in which her parents, particularly her mother, were convinced that having a stripper as a daughter was akin in having a werewolf in the family, but they have since contented themselves with accepting her wishes, maybe because for the first time in her life Brandy is doing exactlywhat she want to do.

"lt’s funny," Brandy says, "to remember how mother concentrated so hard on having me learn how to use my body gracefully, if she’d only known I’d be taking that education in time and become a disrober wilh it, I’m pretty sure she would’ve hired a tutor to teach me bricklaying instead."