Madeline “Sahji” Jackson

Gorgeous exotic dancer Sahji was one of the top exotic dancers in the 1940s. Sahji was as sexy as a dancer could be but she added class, glamour, and real dancing ability to her performances besides just wiggling and swinging hips. She was thin but used every inch of her body in dance. Her dancing was often described as poetry in motion, she told a story with her dancing. In the musical "Jivin’ In Bebop" Sahji is one of the featured performers.

Other than the fact that she appeared in the 1947 movie Jivin’ in Bebop with Dizzy Gillespie, not much else is known about the beautiful exotic dancer known as Sahji.  That film, no more than a string of musical performances, presents Sahji in all of her "exotic" otherness doing a dance that reminds me very much of what "praise dancers" now do in church.   Hmm … are they the original exotic dancers.

Sahji was also known as Madeleine Jackson, and is known to have been married to musician Leroy Harris, a saxophonist with the Earl Hines Orchestra.

This collection of photos originally belonged to a Cotton Club chorus girl, reportedly a headline dancer by the name of Margot, who appeared at the club between 1933-39.    

The inscription on the photo above reads "To Margot, You are tops as a dancer.  And as a lady, you are even higher.  Best wishes for your present & future happiness.  Sincerely, Madeline Sahji Jackson." Under that it says "Sahji" Cousin Madeleine.

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Carrie Finnell

Carrie Finnell is all but forgotten now, but a million exotic dancers have her to thank for their incomes. For many years, known as "The Strangest Act in Show Business" Ms. Finnell SHOULD be an inspiration to every dame (of either gender) who ever hit the stage, but I haven’t seen any retrospectives on PBS, no presidential awards, no Vegas tributes. Let’s set the record straight as a stripper’s pole!

First of all, Carrie Finnell passed away only days before JFK, so It was her dumb luck to go during a busy news cycle. Variety Magazine printed her obit November 20, 1963. I don’t think she worked at the Carousel Club for Jack Ruby, but probably played every other place in the country a gal could tease an audience.

Before going any further, I should point out Ms. Finnell’s particular talents. She was possessed Educated Breasts. A Mammary Manipulator. Carrie could move them in time to the music, and it was her muscular control which made her career. She might look like Sophie Tucker on a bad day, but then these pictures capture her closer to the end of her 45 year career.

One reviewer wrote that Carrie "uses her advantages like a metronome, directing them without moving her body, from left to right, up and down and in time with the music." Cabaret Magazine, in 1957, reported her saying "We’ve all got ’em, but I make mine work for me. What do you do with yours?"

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Sally Rand

Sally Rand (April 3, 1904 – August 31, 1979) was a burlesque dancer and actress, most noted for her ostrich feather fan dance and balloon bubble dance. She also performed under the name Billie Beck.

Early life and career
Helen Harriet Beck was born in Hickory County, Missouri. During the 1920s, she acted on stage and appeared in silent films. Cecil B. DeMille gave her the name Sally Rand, inspired by a Rand McNally atlas. 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. Her most famous appearance was at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair entitled Century of Progress. She had been arrested four times in a single day during the fair due to perceived indecent exposure while riding a white horse down the streets of Chicago, but the nudity was only an illusion. She also conceived and developed the bubble dance, in part to cope with wind while performing outdoors. She performed the fan dance on film in Bolero, released in 1934.

In 1936, she purchased The Music Box burlesque hall in San Francisco, which would later become the Great American Music Hall. She starred in "Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch" at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1939 and 1940.

She appeared on television in 1957, on an episode of To Tell the Truth with host Bud Collyer and panelists Polly Bergen, Ralph Bellamy, Kitty Carlisle, and Carl Reiner. She did not "stump the panel" but was correctly identified by all four panelists. She continued to appear on stage doing her fan dance into the 1970s. Rand once replaced Ann Corio in the stage show, This Was Burlesque, appeared at the Mitchell Brothers club in San Francisco in the early 1970s and toured as one of the stars of the 1972 nostalgia revue "Big Show of 1928," which played major concert venues including New York’s Madison Square Garden. Later, she appeared with Tempest Storm and Blaze Starr.

She had premiered her larger act at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair (for which she was supposedly arrested multiple times even though she was wearing a full body suit, only giving the illusion of nudity). In ’36 she opened "The Music Box" burlesque hall in San Francisco in what is now the Great American Music Hall.

The most amazing part of her story can bee seen in this photo of nudist protestors in Balboa Park, San Diego demonstrating against her for, I guess, making bad press for them. Indeed, she was quoted in Liberty Magazine in 1975 as saying, "I have no use for nudism. I don’t believe in cults of any kind."
Text from Wikipedia & Spots Unknown – Images from Spots Unknown & Stomp-off

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