SCRIPT

Kenneth Macleod: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder so they say. What they don't say is 'So is nudity'. Ever since Eve getting the proverbial 'eye-full' has been a hobby of the male sex. The dictionary describes the female as a Lass, a Wench, Blonde, Moll, among many other definitions but whichever way you look at it, perhaps I should rephrase that. 'There's nothing like a dame'

Toulouse Lautrec's posters can-can dancers in the 1880's were considered the height or depth of erotic depravity. One hundred years ago in New York a thinly veiled nude became a subject for opera glasses in what they once called 'The City of the Quivering Thigh'

And why go to Paris indeed when you could see anything that tickled your fancy right here at home. Nothing but nothing seems to hold man's attention like the feminine form; everything from calendars to languid ladies draped over sparkling new cars at motor shows is adorned with sex right out of the girlie magazines.

In the 1950s, movie-land started to play the skin game. What they did then appears to have been a very tame game. Striptease on celluloid gave way to explosive erotica. People started to enjoy the bare facts of life and flocked to the movie houses in their millions which proves what you loose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts but better than that what you lose on the sins you gain on the randy bits.

The theatre wasn't very far behind either. Anything considered controversial was staged and made money. Even housewives had no choice. And after taking in this show you can go straight into this.

[Title Credit Sequence]

Hugh Scully: That's all very interesting Ken, but I like to get on with the job. Tell me, if you saw these girls, Linda and Anne in the street, could you guess what they do for a living?

Kenneth Macleod: No not really, shop assistants, typist's maybe?

Hugh Scully: Well, watch and see where the go. Shop assistants? Typists? No, they are Strip Tease artists.

Kenneth Macleod: You could have fooled me.

Hugh Scully: In 1925 the Daily Chronicle tells how this club was the most elegant dinner and dance place in London. Little did they know that decades later G-strings would replace the minks,

Kenneth Macleod: and that they see the truth, whole truth and nothing but the naked truth, right?

Hugh Scully: Right.

Kenneth Macleod: This little lady was the first one to take it off ere on opening night. The beginnings of strip tease are vague. The ancient Egyptians could have started it all with their belly dancers,

Hugh Scully: The Americans say it started much later - 'The Night They Raided Minskys', the dancers cloths were accidentally removed and everyone liked it.

Kenneth Macleod: Did you know in the old days Can-Can dancers didn't wear panties.

Hugh Scully: That's the whole reason for the high kicks.

Kenneth Macleod: Exactly. It's all a case of keeping in a fever of anticipation. Everyone knows all her clothes will come off. Her job is to keep them hoping it will be sooner than they think.

Kenneth Macleod: It does make you impatient though.

Hugh Scully: It depends on how you look at it.

Kenneth Macleod: What does that mean?

Hugh Scully: She calls herself Corsetta.

Kenneth Macleod: Meet Anna - She appeals to those who have started to prefer two at eighteen rather than one at thirty-six.

Hugh Scully: It's all worked out psychologically and the girls have it down to a fine art. Did you see what eye saw.

Kenneth Macleod: See what?

Hugh Scully: Never mind.

Kenneth Macleod: Strippers have their own language. There's a movement called 'The Coffee Grinder'. You write the letter O with your axel, know what I mean?, whilst in the bump the hips spring forward, sometimes called bump and grind. There's the 'The Trailer' which is the strut before the strip, that's what we've been looking at up to now; we've seen three examples of it; then there's the quiver and the shimmer and the we're going to see the lot.

Hugh Scully: I trust you Ken, I really do trust you. Wouldn't mind changing places with him What kind of people watch this, I mean apart from you and me?

Kenneth Macleod: I've absolutely nothing to say.

Hugh Scully: Neither have I.

Kenneth Macleod: Some pictures in the book are hilarious but in those days there were the erotic end; look at this, a nineteenth century tights dancer called Hero.

Hugh Scully: I'll bet she was.

Kenneth Macleod: "Juevoy" and "Meaty Fleurol" in the year 1900

Hugh Scully: This lot came from the United States and were called 'Billy Watson's Meat Trust'

Kenneth Macleod: You're joking

Hugh Scully: This is how strip always was; the tease with a fan.

Kenneth Macleod: Too many flies can make it hard for the spider; a picture from Las Vegas

Hugh Scully: Bet he enjoys every minute of it What's her name?

Kenneth Macleod: You better believe it, it's Chastity

Hugh Scully: They don't believe in giving it to them all at once or too quickly;
Strippers have motto's like:
'Make 'em wait and
'Don't be too eager'
'Give Hell'
'Make them go dry at the mouth'
'Freeze to marble in their seats'
'Give them a create of blink in case they miss something'
'Make them beg with their eyes and howl like wolves under a full moon'
After all, they have come here to have a good time. The tease is the thing; Men in a hurry shouldn't go to strip clubs. For every customer who loses his cool and shouts 'Get It Off!' the stripper is ready with the answer "Can't You See Anything Yet?'

Kenneth Macleod: Another one away for Chastity. She's beginning to feel the heat.

Hugh Scully: Maybe she keeps the mask on so she won't be recognised.

Kenneth Macleod: Wrong. It's kinky.

Hugh Scully: Bet that's not just for decoration.

Kenneth Macleod: There's foxy business afoot it's getting better all the time as the girls get nuder.

Hugh Scully: and as I get more excited. Really she'll have to get that lot off very soon. Really, what would you say tricky footwork had to do with stripping off?

Kenneth Macleod: Nothing.

Hugh Scully: Wrong again. I find it provocative.

Kenneth Macleod: Well, we're all different.

Hugh Scully & Kenneth Macleod together: I've got nothing to say about these two at all. That's just what I was going to say.

Kenneth Macleod: Ah now there's a name to conjure with,

Hugh Scully: So are names like Nellie Hunnicut and Titi Melinda,

Kenneth Macleod: Billy Watson's Meat Trust

Kenneth Macleod: Anyone who has organised a stag night knows that the executives dream playmate advances in filmy black underwear, bra, garter belt, g-string, silk stockings and in either French divided or transparent knickers, shiny boots, eyelids half closed, mouth half open. The strippers have to be sexologists and know the male mind in their inventive world of snakes, whips, rubber suits, cat suits, and baby doll outfits together with feathers, beads, bracelets, necklaces, chains and parasols.

Hugh Scully: Listening to all that stuff has made me go dry at the mouth. What about a drink?

Kenneth Macleod: I could use one.

Hugh Scully: OK, What'll it be?

Kenneth Macleod: Now that's a hell of a question to ask me at this point, isn't it?

Kenneth Macleod: What she gets up to with he fox is nobody's business

Hugh Scully: Except those watching it.

Kenneth Macleod: I enjoy a puppet act.

Hugh Scully Me too. Particularly this kind. She has a new flame at every performance - burns arms legs everything indeed, but keeps well away from the wick. So this is what they mean by bare-back riding?

Kenneth Macleod: 1917 film star Freda Bower covered her nipples with asps. 1928 they covered them with butterflies. The law said nipples were negative and mustn't be seen except by the owner. 1940 they were covered with spangles- or fasters as they were called. In the '70s the cover them with balloons, but not for long.

Hugh Scully: I wonder who blows them up and whether before or after she has fixed them on herself? Anyway, as all the girls are just about as naked as nature intended, let's take in the show.

Hugh Scully: The choreographer is the man upon whom everything rests, well, almost everything; he has to train he recruits to the strip brigade, and it's not easy; awkwardness is the most difficult thing to iron out. Hands on thighs not on hips;

Kenneth Macleod: Not like that, like this. Move it round this way, nice and easy.

Hugh Scully: He moves his better than she moves hers don't you think?

Kenneth Macleod: I don't think she's got the idea at all. But practise should make perfect as there's much more to strip as we've already seen than....

Hugh Scully: ...than just standing on a stage a taking everything off.

Kenneth Macleod: Thank you.

Hugh Scully: You're welcome.

Kenneth Macleod: He has to teach her how to look, and be sexy, to tantalise and tease and tell tales with her body, every movement must mean something; it takes time and effort and above all patience and practise. That's the fastest piece of strip I the entire film. Almost down to the skin the lesson proceeds. Posing in the nude is almost as difficult to achieve as is movement. Everything a girl takes off should be taken off well. You can take a bra off like an elephant, or as if it means something. Undo the back. Slip it off the shoulder. Make them wait. This is called presenting.

Hugh Scully: Presenting what?

Kenneth Macleod: Where are you looking?

Hugh Scully: At the choreographer.

Kenneth Macleod: Liar.

Hugh Scully: Do they honestly call this presenting?

Kenneth Macleod: Yes they do and it's very important. Now don't laugh, you try it sometime. She certainly has her hands full, what with one thing and another.

Kenneth Macleod: Let's get back and see what the girls are doing.

Hugh Scully: I hope they know what they are doing to me. O boy. I don't believe it. I won't believe it.

Kenneth Macleod: She's quite a swinger.

Hugh Scully: - with a figure like hers no wonder.

Kenneth Macleod: They go up to the stage dressed to kill and having killed they come down naked. It's time to relax before the next call and like every artist are either depressed or elated by the audience reaction, so seriously do they take it - off. This is the young lady who adorned our titles at the start of the film; her name, Miss Cher. In French means expensive. Baring that in mind, let's watch.

Hugh Scully: How about that!

Kenneth Macleod: How about it.

Hugh Scully: Again, from our picture book, a poster from the Bar Tabarin, Paris, from about 1930.

Kenneth Macleod: From the reign of England's Edward's VIII, everyone had the same one track mind like today.

Kenneth Macleod: This is Carol Doda and them.

Hugh Scully: What do you mean, them?

Kenneth Macleod: Forty-four inches. Champion tassel twirler from 1972; bet that's fun Because men haven't yet been liberated they have to resort to streaking. It's time we had equality. As you see he's not allowed to take it off.

Hugh Scully: The audience keep their eye on the ball though.

Kenneth Macleod: So, we've just about covered or uncovered the great world of strip tease from glove to G-string. I think I need that drink now, Hugh.

Hugh Scully: Me too Ken

[End title]

The End

Produced in England
© Harold Baim Presentations, London, England