Photo Shoot for Sally Rand American Sex Symbol in Chicago

 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

The First Kim Kardashian...Sally Rand

 She was famous for being famous. We  take this for granted today. But in 1933 Sally Rand was a phenomenon. She became famous overnight for crashing the Chicago Worlds Fair on a white horse with viturally nothing on. She was imediately arrested and then immediately hired. She became the biggest financial draw of the Worlds Fair and was responsible for making it profitable. She made 5000 a week in depression era dollars and ended up dancing for two years behind seven foot ostrich feathers. 

She then went on the road and there she stayed for forty years. She would dance for the Apollo Astronauts end up on To Tell the Truth, give speeches at Harvard, star in movies, have cartoons built around her...but her fame all dated back to the night ride into the Worlds Fair. She had her own television show, nightclub, and flew to her gigs at a time when few people flew anywhere. She got her pilots license when most women didnt even drive a car. She was her own business manager, agent, publicist, and made over a million dollars at a time when few options were open to women besides being a teacher, nurse, or secretary. 

She married three different husbands who squanderd her money. She took care of her family her entire life. She kept dancing well into her seventies. When she died Sammy David Junior gave her ten thousand dollars for her medical bills. Her name was Harriet Beck but Cecil B. Demilles changed her name for the movies and the world would remember her as SALLY RAND