[9] She first moved to Logan, West Virginia, working as a carhop, and then from there to Washington D.C., where, according to her autobiography, she was discovered by a promoter while she was employed in a doughnut shop.

She recalled:I was 15 and working as a waitress at the Mayflower Donut Shop in Washington, D.C., when a man named Red Snyder told me I was pretty and ought to be in show business.

[5] She rose to national renown after she was profiled in a February 1954 Esquire magazine article, "B-Belles of Burlesque: You Get Strip Tease With Your Beer in Baltimore".

As she explained in 1989, "I had finally got my gimmick, a comedy thing where I'm supposed to be getting so worked up that I stretch out on the couch, and — when I push a secret button — smoke starts coming out from like between my legs.

Then a fan and a floodlight come on, and you see all these red silk streamers blowing, shaped just like flames, so it looked like the couch had just burst into fire.

In the late 1950s, while briefly working at the Sho-Bar on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Starr began a long-term affair with then-governor Earl Long.

[13] Starr was in the process of divorcing her husband, club owner Carroll Glorioso, and Long was married to the state's first lady, known colloquially as "Miz Blanche".

Two of Starr's performances, including the combustible sofa, are among the burlesque routines featured in the 1956 compilation film Buxom Beautease, produced and directed by Irving Klaw.

[2] Some of Starr's costumes and other memorabilia have been displayed at the Museum of Sex in New York City[17] and the Burlesque Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

[18] Journalist Frank Lovece wrote in 1989 that "Starr ... gave up stripping six years ago to become a gemologist and make and sell jewelry.

Each holiday season, at the Carrolltowne Mall here in the Baltimore suburbs, she is a local celebrity selling earrings, bracelets and necklaces fashioned from the gemstones and crystals she collects the rest of the year.