Life

The Jewish Matriarchs of Striptease

By Elissa Strauss December 31, 2009

According to the recent obituaries of Alice Schiller, co-owner of Los Angeles’ legendary burlesque nightclub the Pink Pussycat, was a prudish Midwestern gal who cried when her husband told her he was turning his Hollywood club into a strip club.

The Orthodox Jewish-reared Schiller, the daughter of a deli manager, eventually came to terms with her husband’s vision, and was instrumental in turning the Pink Pussycat into most high-profile burlesque spots around. The club attracted such regulars as the Rat Pack and other members of Los Angeles glitterati. It was also the kind of spot where husbands where often joined by their wives — certainly not the norm for today’s strip clubs. Schiller, who had apparently never smoked, drank, or cursed, had a reputation for treating her workers with respect, and designed a show that was sexy and suggestive, rather than vulgar.

The club — now called Club 7969 — also gained notoriety for its College of Strip Tease, run by fellow Jewess Sally Marr (née Sadie Kitchenberg), mother of comic Lenny Bruce, who died in 1997. Marr taught classes such as “The Psychology of Inhibitions,” “The History and Theory of the Striptease,” and “Applied Sensual Communication.”

The legacy of these Jewish matriarchs of striptease certainly seems to live on in the playful attitudes of the modern burlesque movement (as written about by The New York Times here), which includes the evolution of the pop group Pussycat Dolls from a Los Angeles lounge of the same name, and even Jewish groups like the Schlep Sisters and Nice Jewish Girls Gone Bad (written about in the Forward here).

Elissa Strauss has written for the Forward over a number of years. She is a regular contributor to CNN, whose work has been published in a number of publications including The New York Times, Glamour, ELLE, and Longreads.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO