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It wasn't until 1940 that most curious Americans could see alluring Austrian Hedy Lamarr in Ecstasy. Sam Cummins, a veteran producer/distributor, had imported the picture in 1934 and spent years battling various states and cities over the public's right to see the controversial film. By 1940, however, Americans were more concerned with another Austrian: Adolf Hitler, who went by the stage name "Der Fuhrer."

The war years proved to be a boom time for movies. Gas rationing cut into entertainment revenues, and people stayed close to home. Movie exhibition didn't require steel, oil or rubber-all vital to the war effort. Business waned for the Forty Thieves, however. Many makers of adults-only films went to work for the studios, replacing conscripted professionals as if they were minor league ballplayers filling in for drafted major leaguers.

The core audience for adults-only pictures-young, red-blooded American men-was shipped to very different theaters to learn real lessons of the world, both on the battlefield and off. To men facing down true evil, the taverns and brothels of Europe provided welcome respite rather than shameful degradation. Vice-racket pictures wouldn't have the same sting after the war.

Things changed on the homefront, too. The virtuous apron-clad mom and spangled party girl had to make room for a new image of American womanhood-Rosie the Riveter. Many returning GIs would find strong, self-reliant women in place of the girls they left behind.

Roadshows continued, with recycled product from the thirties, but censorship was stricter than ever. Moral purity was an essential ingredient in the war effort. All of this didn't put an end to adults-only fare, but it did bring about some changes.

When the ships of the Pacific Fleet anchored off Southern California, the first stop for many sailors was an amusement park in Long Beach known as "The Pike." Swabs lined up to drop a coin in an arcade machine and view short film loops of women in swimming suits, negligees and, sometimes, nothing at all.

To our previously mentioned list of commodities vital to the war effort, add one more: cheesecake. From pin-up queens Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth, to the glamour girls painted on the noses of fighter planes, to nude photos passed around the barracks, female pulchritude was considered downright patriotic. Keep the boys' morale high, give 'em something to fight for and protect.

A direct outgrowth of WWII cheesecake imagery was the burlesque film. Producers in Los Angeles who'd seen the huge business for arcade "peep shows" during the war decided to go the theatrical route. Quality Studios, founded by Merle Connell-a jack of all cinema trades from rural Yakima, Washington-started producing burlesque shorts in 1947, using dancers from LA houses, and music from such name acts as Billy Rose and His Orchestra.

When the Red Cars were still running in Los Angeles, you could grab a car headed downtown and take it to Fifth and Main, where the "Bur-Le-Qs" thrived and bump-and-grind queens like Aleene, Lotus Wing, Evelyn West, Lili St. Cyr and Tempest Storm held sway. Connell was among the first to realize the economic benefits of filming these shows-shipping film around the country was far easier and more lucrative than doing the shows live. For a relatively small fee up front, the gals would do an extra performance, just for the camera.

In the period just after the war, the filming of burlesque routines was seen as something of a novelty-far from the grand vaudeville tradition that produced striptease. The "golden age" of burlesque was the mid-twenties to mid-thirties, when ecdysiastical luminaries such as Gypsy Rose Lee, Georgia Southern and Ann Corio strutted their stuff in the popular vaudeville venues of Manhattan's Times Square. The Minsky Brothers were the reigning kings of sexy live shows, interspersed with comedy acts such as the young Abbott and Costello, but NY major Fiorello LaGuardia had made a sweet deal with midtown theater chains who wanted the real estate.

In any case, burlesque languished until the immediate post-war period, when it returned with renewed vigor. Action heated up in theatres around the country. The ranks of dancers swelled into thousands on the two "wheels"-Mutual and Columbia-that composed the striptease circuit. These were, by and large, professional, unionized operations. If you performed on the Mutual Wheel, you didn't work the Columbia circuit, and vice versa.

While the wheels rolled through the big city, burlesque films often played small towns that didn't that didn't have a grind emporium. And the movies allowed new producers to crack the entrenched burlesque establishment. Veteran impresarios like the Minskys missed the boat entirely, figuring film could never duplicate the thrill of a live show.

One who did make the transaction was San Francisco's Harry Farros, who owned a chain of burlesque houses on the West Coast. Candy was his ticket to the show; his family was one of the first indoor concessionaries in the movie business. Farros formed Broadway Roadshow Productions, and cranked out a slew of revealing reels in the late forties and early fifties.

Some charter members of the Forty Thieves, such as the Sonney family and Willis Kent, produced numerous feature length films: Midnight Frolics, Hollywood Revels, A Night at the Follies and Striptease Girl were but a few of the titles.

The big attraction for the Sonneys, notorious penny-pinchers, was that it didn't cost much to make a burlesque film. One camera set-up, third-row center, some old painted vaudeville flats as a backdrop, a record player instead of a live band, and ten minutes later you had a short film. These films were extremely versatile, had a long life, and were a surefire investment. A print could circulate for years, and since it was typically constructed of separate segments it could be cut up and re-edited with newer footage in endless combinations. Individual acts could be cut out and turned into "loops," from which prints were struck for the arcade machines in the adults-only sections of amusement parks. Later still, the clips could be distilled down into 8mm mail-order films, of the type popular with Elks, Moose and Rotarian lodges the world over.

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