Blaze Starr(1932-2015)

Legendary stripper and burlesque dancer Blaze Starr was born Fannie Belle Fleming in 1932 in Wilsondale, West Virginia. Her parents were Lora Evans and Goodlow Mullins. She had ten siblings. Blaze left home and moved to Washington, DC while only in her mid-teens. She was discovered by her first manager Red Snyder working as either a hat-check girl or at a donut shop. Starr got her stage name from Snyder, but, nonetheless, still left him after he attempted to rape her. With her fiery red hair, shapely and voluptuous 38D-24-37 figure, and sultry, energetic, and captivating stage presence (her stage routines included a comedic exploding coach gag and having a large trained black panther untie a ribbon on her costume, which made it fall to the floor), Blaze became a major headliner at the Two O'Clock Club in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned the nicknames "Miss Spontaneous Combustion" and "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque." Starr made $1,500 dollars per week at the peak of her stripping career. Among the men's magazines she appeared in at the height of her fame are "Sizzle," "Ace," "Scamp," "Sir!," "Best for Men," "Rogue," and "Modern Man." Moreover, Starr posed for pictures for noted fetish photographer Irving Klaw. Blaze achieved her greatest notoriety in the late 1950s as the paramour for Louisiana state governor Earl Kemp Long (Earl Long); this affair inspired the 1989 feature film Blaze (1989), which even has a cameo from Ms. Starr as a stripper. She portrayed herself in the immensely popular Doris Wishman nudie cutie romp Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962). In 1974, Starr wrote the autobiographical book "Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry." Blaze retired from stripping in 1983. In 1989, Starr had become a gemologist who spent several holiday seasons selling hand-crafted jewelry at the Carrolltowne Mall in Eldersburg, Maryland. Blaze also owned and operated the Two O'Clock Club in Baltimore, Maryland. Starr died at age 83 on June 15, 2015 at her home in Wilsondale, West Virginia.