She danced at the Chicago Theatre in 1933. That is where the Tribune wanted to have the photo shoot so I went down to the city after not being there for eight months. It was a strangely beautiful November day. We had a spate of warm weather for the week and the morning was warm, sunny, and felt like spring. The police were in the streets and the stores were boarded up including the Chicago Theatre. The usual crowds were gone leaving some street people, security guards, the police and one author waiting for the lights to get set up outside the theatre.
And then we started shooting. The photographer wanted me to think about Sally Rand. She could have related to 2020. She crashed the Worlds Fair during the worst year of the Great Depression. She had been in Hollywood where her career disintegrated then ended up sleeping in alleys in Chicago before a tryout at the Paramount Club gave her an idea to use seven foot ostrich feathers to hide her nudity. It worked and she got the job and then set her sites on the Worlds Fair.
Sally Rand tried out but the fair wasn't interested. So she got a boat, a horse, covered her body in white makeup and then took the boat to Northerly island on the opening night and galloped into the celebration which was for only the money set of Chicago. The horse reared up and Sally Rand was arrested and then became famous for forty years. And so that was what I thought about while the photographer snapped away. It was a desperate move during desperate times. In the year 2020, we can relate. Sally Rand American Sex Symbol
