Fantasy in the
1920s…vice squad…gorgeous girls…fabulous legs and delighted audience…
Photos from L to R: 1- Dorothy Knapp, another star of the Earl Carroll’s show “ Vanities” whom Carroll had billed as "the most beautiful girl in the world" and whose costume supplies a useful definition of what Page meant by the "minimum" worn by "the rest of the comely cast.” 2-Scene from Earl Carroll’s “Vanities”, then…the most scandalous show in the country, starring Peggy Hopkins Joyce, then, the most notorious woman in America. Sophie Tucker, the "last of the red-hot Mommas," sang in the show. The show did not have household names, and no celebrated singers and performers. Without name recognition, Carroll had to feature nudity on a grand scale to sell tickets. Voila!
Earl Carroll's 1924 “Vanities” starring Peggy Hopkins Joyce, then the most notorious woman in America opened on September 10th and ran for 440 performances. It was the most scandalous show in the country, because nudity was a common element in “Vanities.” The show catered to the so-called “busy and tired businessmen” by displaying “gorgeous legs”, bared breasts, and parading 108 beautiful showgirls as peacocks at the sensual tempo of Ravel’s “Bolero.” Earl Carroll explained: “The aesthetic art of the number demands that the girls be in the absolute buff this time, not even G-strings.” Leon Whipple in The Survey Magazine, March issue, 1926, described the show, its artists and performers, and the public reaction as follows: “For a not excessive price, men, women, and adolescents can go into a lovely New York theatre on Broadway and see naked bodies, generally of women, under full lights with nothing on save what antique writers call a "zone" [belt or girdle]. The rest of the body is completely and absolutely nude, with scarce alleviation of a coat powder. The bodies are exposed as statues, figurines, and symbolic persons, with recurrent veilings and for brief flashes. The showmanship is deft and even discreet though the shadowy lighting of yesteryear has given way to the full flood. The exposure of the body lasts probably not five minutes out of the three hours, though there is a constant and cloying stream of lesser bareness — legs, backs, torsos, and anatomical odds and ends. To these latter we have already been acclimated for the unveiling has been going on in New York for several years, almost by fractions of inches as the producers tried out the public taste. Indeed, the student might find a thesis in social science in the scrutiny of this process of breaking down a convention by annual innovation. — Not Art and Not Model.” Continues Next