#sexploitation film

“Liz Renay was my idea of total glamour.” John Waters 

Born on this day 96 years ago: the fabulous Liz Renay (néePearl Elizabeth Dobbins, 14 April 1926 - 22 January 2007) – b-movie actress / burlesque queen / convicted felon / naive outsider painter / gangster Mickey Cohen’s moll / “Streaking Grandmother” / authoress of multiple volumes of memoirs (including My Face for the World to SeeandHow to Attract Men) and all-round kitsch icon. For John Waters fans, Renay is adored for her performance as murderess Muffy St Jacques in punk masterpiece Desperate Living (1977) - especially for her acidic delivery of lines like, “I was having an erotic dream!” and “I sleep in the room next door - naked!”

“She Puts Everything in Writhing! Bouncy Blaze Starr Makes Every Curve a Wiggle When She Peels! Blaze Starr is tops in peelmanship! Every line and movement have a message all their own! This sultry stripper, headliner at Baltimore’s Two O’Clock Club, has the ringsiders shrieking when she puts on her take-it-off routine!” 

Born on this day 90 years ago: sin-sational exotic dancer Blaze Starr(née Fannie Belle Fleming, 10 April 1932 – 15 June 2015). Billed as “The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque” and "Miss Spontaneous Combustion”, the flame-haired and buxom sex goddess was one of the top striptease headliners of the post-war era. Starr’s affair with Louisiana’s married governor Earl Long sparked a national scandal in the fifties and was later dramatized in the 1989 film Blaze starring Paul Newman. Later in life Starr became a fixture in Baltimore’s seedy red light district The Block when she bought the Two O'Clock Club. That’s where cult director John Waters discovered her. “Just from a showbiz point of view, I respected her deeply,” Waters has said. "I still think she was the best tourist attraction that Baltimore ever had.” I particularly treasure Starr for her gloriously terrible performance in the 1962 Doris Wishman sexploitation flick Blaze Starr Goes Nudist.