Mary Elizabeth Dawson, née Elizabeth Buzby and better known as Mademoiselle Fifi (February 7, 1890 – July 21, 1982), was a dancer whose onstage performance at

Winter Garden Theatre The Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway theatre at 1634 Broadway in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It opened in 1911 under designs by architect William Albert Swasey. The Winter Garden's current design dates to 1922, when ...

on the night of April 20, 1925 was memorialized in

The Night They Raided Minsky's ''The Night They Raided Minsky's'' is a 1968 American musical comedy film directed by William Friedkin and produced by Norman Lear. Based on the 1960 novel by Rowland Barber, it is a fictional account of the invention of the striptease at Minsky ...

.''Striptease: the untold history of the girlie show'', Rachel Shteir,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

, 2004, pg. 363.

Early life

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

native, her given name was Mary Dawson. Her mother was a devout

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and her father was a

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

who worked as a policeman.

Performances

On the evening of April 20, Mademoiselle Fifi wore a skintight black net from her toe tips to her bra. As the orchestra played a medley of

Puccini Giacomo Puccini (Lucca, 22 December 1858Bruxelles, 29 November 1924) was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long lin ...

ragtime music Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott ...

, and Gaite' Parisienne by Offenbach, she pulled one of her straps from her shoulder and then removed her bra. Mademoiselle Fifi concluded her strip act that evening bare chested. She was later arrested by John Sumner, the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice under the action of public obscenity. Fond of classic subjects, Mademoiselle Fifi performed ''The Dance of the September Morn''. She is also known for performing an oriental shimmy with a live

garter snake Garter snake is a common name for generally harmless, small to medium-sized snakes belonging to the genus ''Thamnophis'' in the family Colubridae. Native to North and Central America, species in the genus ''Thamnophis'' can be found from the sub ...

.''The Sudden Raid That Ruined Real Burlesque'',

Life Magazine ''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...

, May 2, 1960, pg. 123.

References

Artists from Philadelphia American burlesque performers American female dancers 1890 births 1982 deaths 20th-century American dancers 20th-century American women {{US-entertainer-stub