Hinda Wausau

She claimed, and has been credited with, inadvertently inventing the striptease around 1928 at either the Haymarket or State-Congress Theater in Chicago when her costume started coming off during a shimmy dance.

Wausau's costume, a flesh-colored bathing suit, had been approved by censors earlier; it was her suggestive gyrations that led to the arrest.

Premiering in late July 1932, Wausau was described by Rose as "the best cooch dancer since Gilda Gray first startled the public.

"[7] In the early 1930s Wausau appeared in Minsky's burlesque shows, the Chicago World's Fair, and nightclubs, including Billy Rose's Casino de Paree and Leon & Eddie's.

Ahead of a 1939 appearance at the Gayety, the Washington D.C. Evening Star gushed, "All is happy and gay upon Ninth Street, for Hinda Wassau has come to town again.

At the finish of her act she'd give the boys a quick flash – that ultimate revelation of the bosom in an instant which leaves the audience wondering if it was a dream.

"[1] Wausau's act was recalled by essayist James M. Merritt in a 1994 piece for the Baltimore Sun: "However, one of the ecdysiasts approached her work differently.

From these descriptions, it should be clear that I approached these exhibitions with the objective attitude of an art critic called to judge a recently discovered cache of nudes by Rubens.

[11] Wausau was considered for the role of Sadie Thompson in a revival of Rain at a Rochester, New York stock theater in June 1940.

Corio, who had moved from burlesque to vaudeville and was heading a troupe at Fay's Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, fired Bernstein.