Film Noir Striptease

Lenny (1974) is not only a Bio Noir but you can equally call it a Show Biz Noir. It's an insightful, informed depiction by Fosse of the show biz of small clubs, bars and lounges, with house jazz bands, and traveling comics and strippers that replaced traditional Burlesque and flourished in the late 40s through the early 60s. Lenny contains up front one of the most Noir-ish and beautifully choreographed stripping routine performed by Valerie Perrine.

There's only a small string of films that I can rattle off, Gilda (1946), Armored Car Robbery (1950), The Glass Wall (1953), Girl On The Run (1953), The City That Never Sleeps (1953), The Man With Golden Arm (1955), The Big Combo (1955), Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (1956), Screaming Mimi (1958), Two Men in Manhattan (1959), Satan In High Heels (1962), Angels Flight (1964) and Marlowe (1969). All Noir/Neo Noirs that either under the Hayes Code, hinted at stripping Rita Hayworth's routine in Gilda, had supporting characters in the biz, Adele Jergens in Armored Car Robbery, Robin Raymond in The Glass Wall, Mala Powers in The City That Never Sleeps, Helene Stanton in The Big Combo, Kim Novak in The Man With The Golden Arm, Barbara Nichols in Beyond A Reasonable Doubt, Michèle Bailly in Two Men In Manhattan, and Rita Moreno in Marlowe) or were actually about strippers/burlesque, Rosemary Pettit and Rene De Milo (an actual stripper) in Girl On The Run, Anita Ekberg in Screaming Mimi, Meg Myles in Satan In High Heels, and Indus Arthur in Angels Flight. These last three mentioned actually doing routines at small clubs very similar to those that Lenny Bruce and Honey Harlow actually performed in.

There is another, Hell Bound (1957) I've been informed, but never seen as of yet, maybe others.

The best of them actually featured complete or large parts of routines, and as we got further away from the 1940's and with the crumbling of the Hayes Code the more realistic they got. The top three are Rene De Milo's suggestive performance during the production code in Girl On The Run, and I'll give a tie to Rita Moreno glamour strip performance in Marlowe with Valerie Perrine's noir strip in Lenny. Perrine's routine being probably the best benchmark for what a Classic Film Noir striptease might have looked like if we had never had the Hayes Code.

Bob Fosse and Bruce Surtees do for a striptease what Robert Wise and Milton R. Krasner did for the boxing prizefight in The Setup (1949). The juxtapose the action with the crowd reactions.

NSFW Screencaps with full review of Lenny here: http://noirsville.blogspot.com/2016/10/lenny-1974-bio-noir.html