At the end of writing a book, there are always some bits and pieces left on the cutting-room floor. The following is from the notes for A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars.

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Diane Raye came to Britain in 1937, invited to appear in Jack Hylton’s musical show Swing Is in the Air at the London Palladium. It was the first appearance in Britain of an American striptease act, and the papers felt obliged to explain how these things worked:

‘Their performance consists of singing a hot-rhythm song while they gradually disrobe. They have lately been the object of considerable criticism from American women’s organisations, but promoters of shows in which they appear claim that undressing “artistically, and not vulgarly,” is essentially an art.’

This was the new world of burlesque that had virtually driven vaudeville out of business in the States. Burlesque featured comedians – ‘crudely direct and unsurpassably coarse’ – but mostly it meant striptease. The Daily Mirror described a typical audience: ‘Tense, pop-eyed, hungry, guilty faces. Glued to the stage. Rows and rows of them. Herded close. Elbow overlapping elbow. Air cuttable with smoke from fiercely puffed cigarettes.’ It all sounded terrifically racy, and a bit overheated for the resolutely respectable Palladium.

So it proved. George Black, manager of the Palladium, saw a rehearsal and, declaring that Raye’s act was ‘unsuitable for English audiences’, paid up her fee and expenses and cancelled her contract. She was booked instead to appear at the San Marco in Mayfair – ‘London’s loveliest restaurant,’ as it billed itself. (Sensing an opportunity, an unemployed man in Elephant and Castle wrote to the restaurant, offering his services as a male striptease act; he enclosed photographs and a simple message: ‘If you want me, now is your chance.’)

She also appeared at the Victoria Palace in a show hastily titled Strip-Teasing You! with comedians Vic Oliver and Robb Wilton, conjuror Cardini and various others. The media coverage and the controversy ensured there was a sell-out crowd of 1,500 (two-thirds of them men), some having queued since 10 a.m. the previous day, with thousands more turned away at the doors. But, said the press, it turned out to be ‘a laughable anti-climax’.

The promoter, Kurt Robitschek, had promised that it would be ‘devoid of all possible offence,’ to which the Stage retorted that it was also ‘devoid of interest’. ‘Diane Raye merely walked for two minutes around a stage almost completely dark, wearing a brassiere and tights – much more than is worn by scores of chorus girls in revues,’ said the Daily Herald. ‘When it was over, the curtain fell to a dead silence.’ Alternatively, ‘there were roars of laughter’ from the audience, according to the Sheffield Independent, or ‘a mild accompaniment of hissing,’ if one read the News Chronicle. In any event, concluded the Tatler, the much heralded act turned out ‘to be nothing so very dreadful after all’.

On her return home to America in 1938, Raye was advertised in Billboard as ‘The biggest sensation London ever experienced’, which was overstating the case a little. There were some who had got very exercised over very little. Harry Day, Labour MP for Southwark (and sometime manager of escapologist Harry Houdini), even asked the home secretary to consider banning striptease altogether. But outside Parliament, out in the real world, there were those with longer memories who couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. ‘I remember the Naughty Nineties,’ said a Piccadilly flower-seller, a mother of ten; ‘you can take it from me that this Diana Raye has nothing on the girls of those days.’

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Meanwhile, even as Diana Raye was disappointing in Victoria, the Windmill Theatre in Soho was heralding its new attraction, eighteen-year-old Marie Van Damm, in the Dance of the Seven Veils, by the end of which she was naked on stage, with the lights on full. ‘I don’t mind in the least appearing in the nude,’ Marie told the press. ‘There is no comparison with striptease. This is a real art.’

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