Mary Elizabeth Dawson, née Elizabeth Buzby and better known as Mademoiselle Fifi (February 7, 1890 – July 21, 1982),[1][2][3] was a dancer whose onstage performance at Winter Garden Theatre on the night of April 20, 1925 was memorialized in The Night They Raided Minsky's.
[5] On the evening of April 20, Mademoiselle Fifi wore a skintight black net from her toe tips to her bra.
As the orchestra played a medley of Puccini, ragtime music, and Gaite' Parisienne by Offenbach, she pulled one of her straps from her shoulder and then removed her bra.
[6] She was later arrested by John Sumner, the secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice under the action of public obscenity.
[4] Fond of classic subjects, Mademoiselle Fifi performed The Dance of the September Morn.