Blaze Starr, pinup paramour, dead at 83

The AP article....

Blaze Starr – burlesque dancer, pinup
queen, alleged JFK mistress – dead at 83

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Filmmaker John Waters, a Baltimore native who celebrated the city's weirdness in movies such as "Pink Flamingos" and "Pecker," said he watched Starr's shows as a teenager, though he never met her. He said her wardrobe was a major influence on Divine, the cross-dressing actor who starred in several of Waters' movies.

"Other boys my age were at football games and the Orioles and the Colts, but I was thinking about Blaze Starr, and not in an erotic way, either," Waters told The Associated Press on Monday. "Just from a showbiz point of view, I respected her deeply."

Waters said Starr was an important figure in the history of postwar Baltimore.

"She was a stripper on The Block, which for a long time was Baltimore's only tourist attraction, really, from the Second World War and after, that was why people went to Baltimore," he said. "I still think she was the best tourist attraction that Baltimore ever had."

He said she was "never tawdry" and was able to build a diverse fan base.

"She had a sense of humor, and she turned what was once thought of as a negative career, being a stripper, into a class act in a weird way," Waters said. "No one looked down on Blaze Starr."
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and the Daily Mail....

Famed burlesque dancer Blaze Starr who said she
slept with JFK and whose affair with a Governor was
turned into a film starring Paul Newman dies aged 83

Telegraph:

Obituary: Blaze Starr, burlesque performer

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Her star turn, however, was the Exploding Couch. “I had finally got my gimmick,” she wrote in her memoirs, “a comedy thing where I’m supposed to be getting so worked up that I stretch out on the couch, and — when I push a secret button — smoke starts coming out from like between my legs. Then a fan and a floodlight come on, and you see all these red silk streamers blowing, shaped just like flames, so it looked like the couch had just burst into fire.”
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Blaze was keen to point out that the burlesque scene of the 1950s and 1960s was relatively innocent and couple-friendly. “Striptease was an art,” she observed, adding that she disapproved of today’s clubs. “Where’s the strip? Where’s the tease?”
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NYT:

Blaze Starr, a Burlesque Queen Who Was Linked to a Governor, Dies at 83

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With thickly luxurious, fiery red hair, an ample bosom and a penchant for playful humor, Ms. Starr stoked the imaginations of legions of admirers from the runways of clubs across the country for more than 30 years, seducing many men along the way.

Her most famous affair, with Gov. Earl K. Long of Louisiana, who was married, caused a scandal.
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She recalled their affair in her memoir, and also claimed to have had an affair with President John F. Kennedy after he attended one of her shows. Ms. Starr performed for more than 30 years, sometimes in the Times Square theater district, before hanging up her G-string and pasties in the 1980s.
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Burlesque dancer Blaze Starr dies at 83 (Baltimore Sun)

One of her G-strings was enshrined at the Exotic World ranch and museum in Helendale, Calif.

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And then there's an interesting Baltimore Sun overview of the life:

MICA exhibit explores the history and revival of Baltimore burlesque
'Workin' the Tease' exhibit offers a look back at The Block's golden age,
as well as a performance by the city's current crop of burlesque queens and kings

All the above makes for great reading about what might be called the cheerful gutter pleasures of life.