Le Striptease

Envious Americans have long considered the French their unchallenged masters in the art of theatrical nudity, and many a Minsky patron has dreamed of the unlikely day when he might graduate to an evening of the famed Folies-Bergere. But the fact is that the Minsky form of perambulant, progressive nudity known as the striptease is an American art form.

One day some five years ago (reportedly after a conversation with Bing Crosby), a Parisian antique dealer named Alain Bernardin got to ruminating over the difference between U.S. art forms and those of his own country. "There is nothing," he concluded, "as horrible as a naked woman standing stock still on a stage with an idiotic look on her face." Crazy. With this thought to goad him, and a stock of U.S. period pieces to lend atmosphere, Bernardin opened a night club in the style of the wild and woolly West, complete with waiters in candy-striped shirtsleeves, banjo players and a suitably active, shapely and deciduous stripper named Miss Fortunia. Fortunia's act at the Crazy Horse Saloon caught on like a prairie fire. By last week Le Striptease was sweeping Paris from Montparnasse to Montmartre, and even seeping out of the city to enliven the sleepy provinces. "It's bigger than the cancan," exulted one nightclub owner.

Last week in more than 50 Parisian nightclubs, strippers with such names as Rita Cadillac and Kira Tekitoff were joyously peeling. Le cache-sexe, the French word for the irreducible garment -- the G-string -- was officially listed in the latest edition of the dictionary Larousse, and most importantly, scores of shopgirls and typists were powdering their delicate epidermises to take part in the first qualifying heat of the 1956 International Amateur Striptease Contest.

Cerebral. In crossing the wide Atlantic, the Minsky strip-act has undergone a subtle sea change. There are few, if any, bumps and grinds in the French version, and no unseemly cries of "Take it off!" from rows of bald heads. "The French," explains the Crazy Horse's Scottish dance director, "are cerebral. They have to have something to think about." Some of the thinking variations now going on in Paris : a drunken bride takes off her clothing in desultory fashion as she awaits her new husband; a strip-quiz in which each correct answer gives the audience participant a right to take off one garment from the girl in the spotlight. One nightclub promised a strip to the accompaniment of suitable verses from Baudelaire, an other to the music of Thais.

Whatever the gimmick, Frenchmen of all walks of life were enthusiastic about the strip. "I support the striptease out of admiration for female loveliness and respect for human dignity," boomed 73-year-old Professor Edmond Heuze of the Beaux Arts Academy. "It's better," said Amateur Champion Yvette Masson, a typist, "than being cooped up in an office."

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