Columnist Susan Snyder: Burlesque’s golden days revisited

Sunday, June 11, 2000 | 9:46 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Mone Vaughn is pushing 91 but she remembers being a burlesque dancer as if it was yesterday.

"I was young and beautiful, and they loved me," said Vaughn, a Chicago resident who attended last week's Golden Days of Burlesque Society reunion at the Gold Coast hotel-casino.

The two-day event brought together about 80 women who at one time or another made their livings dancing to the bump and grind of jazz bands, showing a little leg -- maybe a little more -- and throwing straight lines to the male comedians who traveled the show circuits with them.

These were the days when burlesque was dancing, and many of the "girls" started out as teenagers in chorus lines.

"They didn't take it all off. They didn't dance around a pole," Briggeman said.

Briggeman is a printer, not a stripper. She got involved with the Golden Days Society about five years ago while helping the friend of a friend find old burlesque cronies. She publishes the monthly newsletter and arranges the annual reunion.

"I'm the only person in the room everybody knows," Briggeman said as she bustled from table to table.

Tunes from the 1930s and '40s blared from a boom box behind the registration table. Cameras flashed and squeals of delight erupted as each new arrival walked into the arms of awaiting hugs.

Gone were youth's 18-inch waists and peaches-and-cream complexions. But they carried themselves like the starlets they once were.

Sunny Lee, Dyne van Dine, Lee Angel, Gina BonBon. Their name tags bore decades-old stage sobriquets. Few were known by their given names anyway. Real names often weren't flashy enough for the marquees and raised eyebrows of the folks back home.

"It was in case there was a raid. You didn't want your name in the newspaper," said Evelyn "Sunny Lee" Kusiolek, of Modesto, Calif. "My parents knew I did burlesque, but my grandparents didn't know."

Kusiolek, 62, only danced burlesque for six weeks in Kansas City. The rest of the time she worked as a chorus girl and Vaughn's protege. She fondly recalled the elaborate sequined dresses and towering feathered headdresses she wore.

Clothes made the woman in those days, even if she was a stripper.

"That was the thing -- teasing with your beautiful wardrobe. That's what it was for me," Kusiolek said.

They passed around scrapbooks, reminisced about who worked with whom and where. They spoke of sharing agents, stages and heartbreaks.

"It was fun," said Dyne van Dine, a Summerlin resident who started dancing professionally when she was 8. Her husband, Ben Moschetti, accompanied her to the reunion. He recalled waiting in the wings the first 13 weeks of their marriage so she could finish her circuit.

"That was our honeymoon," he said.

The dancers said their burlesque was far different from the stripping of today. They took off fewer clothes and left more to the imagination.

"You were not allowed to touch your body. We were never allowed to curse. Everyone worked very hard, and their goal in life was to get better," Vaughn said. "I'm very proud of what I've done."