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Beauties, Babes, and BurlesquePost an Event »
Oddball Films and guest curator Christina Yglesias present Beauties, Babes, and Burlesque, a sampling of sexy short films. There will be bikini babes, pretty pin-ups, dancing ladies, and steamy stripteases, all from the 30's, 40's, and 50's. The night will progress from innocent to not-so-innocent as we take a look into the sexy (and by today's standards, sexist) world of films created to showcase beautiful women and titillate the midcentury man. The night will start off innocently enough with The Sofia Girls: Rhythmic Gymnastics in Sweden (1950's). The athletes of the all-female gymnastic team "express serenity, poise, beauty" as they vault, hike, ski, dance, and tumble through a day of training in the Swedish countryside. In Bikini Girls (1949), a snarky narrator guides us through three shorts featuring bikini babes; Beachcombing Belle, Ants in her Plants, and Goldilocks Goes Glamorous. To provide "re lief of marital boredom" for those poor "men who have submitted, suffered, and supported long enough", there is the silent, oddly surreal, pseudo-educational short How to Undress in Front of Your Husband starring Mrs. John Barrymore. Next, things will get racier with a series of nine Burlesque Screen Tests and dances. You'll see starlet Barbara Nichols doing the Latin Mambo, Bunny Spencer modeling "the stockings of tomorrow", two afro-cuban dance numbers, Million Dollar Legs, the creepy Caught in the Barbed Wire, and more. Then, eight more burlesque and musical numbers will continue the tease. Highlights include Beauty Bound (1930), which somehow succeeds in making a full-leg cast seem sexy, and Doll Dance with Arlene and Rene (1940s), a strange strip-tease collaboration between marionette and real-life burlesque performer. To end with a splash, we bring you Lili St. Cyr's Bubble Bath Dance (1951), the famous performance that brought her t o court for a "lewd and lascivious" charge. Come early and see a collection of retro commercials for bras, girdles, panties, soap, and other products marketed to increase sex appeal.