The Beacon Journal sends a reporter and photographer to Canton to spend the day with Busty and other performers. The State is the only burlesque theater in the five-county Akron area by 1969. As a feature performer, she’s guaranteed $550 a week, serious money for the time. “And the State Theatre proudly presents the Dairy Queen of 1969…Miss Busty Russell.”Ĭanton’s State Theatre Burlesk on the corner of Tuscarawas Street and Rex Avenue SE is a frequent stop on Busty’s circuit. “In my opinion, it was no exaggeration,” a disapproving policewoman remarks in 1962. “I’ll send you her picture.”Įven cops agree she merits the name Busty. “The number she remembers is 50, and that’s authentic,” Cohn says. When the New York Daily News writes about feuding burlesque performers in 1966, Busty’s manager, Dave Cohn, declares she gets furious when anyone claims to have a bigger bust. Another promoter calls her a “natural oddity.” In Honolulu, a club promoter promises $1,000 to any woman who can out busty Busty. “Actually, I’m only a 50.”īut there’s a schoolboy fascination, a fixation, with her so-called “Fabulous 50s.”Īfter Busty lands in a Toronto jail, the Canadian Press wire service sends a reporter to confirm her measurements. “They keep building me up,” she admits to an interviewer. You need a good name when you share stages with “Sally the Shape,” “The Tennessee Tantalizer,” “Ineeda Mann” and “Justa Dream.”Ĭlubs bill Busty as “The Chest Appeal Girl,” “Miss 50,” sometimes “Miss 56.” “Heck, I make good money and I send it home.”īusty Russell is a persona, an advertising slogan, an anatomical caricature.
#Busty rusty free#
“He doesn’t mind me being a dancer,” Sondra tells the Detroit Free Press in 1971. She’s a “regular, old housewife” when she’s home with Robert. Sondra gardens, rides her motorcycle and plays bingo. Baltimore, Philly, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Canton, Detroit. Sondra is Busty Russell.īusty - and her little dog, Tico - are on the road for most of the year. Robert is eleven years her senior and drives a bakery truck. The case is news from Vancouver to Saskatoon to the small towns along the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. When she can’t pay, the magistrate sentences her to three months in jail, but an anonymous benefactor covers her fine. The year prior, the Victory’s owners were fined $100 for one of Busty’s shows. “Theater managers must learn that if they are going to hire strippers they must be more artistic,” a Toronto magistrate declares in case. Every town has moral crusaders and palms that must be greased for the show to go on. Every city has its own codes and ordinances. It won’t be the last time she gets in trouble for going too far. Sondra pleads guilty to giving an indecent and immoral performance. “All she was wearing was a flesh-colored G-string and two sequined butterflies,” detective Fred Maxwell testifies. They haul her off to jail three days before Halloween. She pulls down $350 a week, almost $3,000 in today’s currency.īut the cops don’t like Busty’s show. As if her real measurements aren’t big enough, up north she’s “the woman with a 60-inch bosom.” Canadian exchange rate. “They made me a star.”īusty performs at the Victory Theatre. “I just wanted to dance … I was bashful,” Sondra says years later.
#Busty rusty movie#
Some of her earliest shows are in Cincinnati, where she takes the stage in 1961 as “Ravishing Redhead Busty Russell.” The name evokes sexy movie star Jane Russell. Who knows when or where someone first pays her to take off her clothes? “I was raised a Mennonite, but once I left home they considered me a dead person,” she tells a reporter years later. She’s 19 when she starts doing burlesque. Sondra leaves Hagerstown with a carnival.
When she’s 18, her teenage uncle accuses her of cutting him with a butcher knife during an argument, but a court can’t figure out what happened. Not much is known about her early years, except that she lives for a time with her grandparents. Sondra is born in 1941 and grows up in this small city just below Maryland’s border with Pennsylvania. No one calls her “The Wow Girl.” Busty Russell doesn’t exist yet.
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