Lady of Burlesque is a 1943 American mystery film starring Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck

Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong screen presence, and a favorite of directors including Cecil B. DeMille, Fritz Lang and Frank Capra...

 and Michael O'Shea

Michael O'Shea (actor)

Michael O'Shea , was an American character actor whose career spanned from the 1940s-1960s. O'Shea was born in Hartford, Connecticut...

, based on the novel The G-String Murders

The G-String Murders

The G-String Murders is a 1941 detective novel written by famed American burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee. There have been claims made that the novel was in fact written by Craig Rice but others have suggested that there is enough documented evidence in the form of manuscripts and correspondence...

written by famous strip tease artist Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.-Early life:...

 (with ghost-writing assistance from mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

 writer Craig Rice

Craig Rice (author)

Craig Rice was an American author of mystery novels and short stories, sometimes described as "the Dorothy Parker of detective fiction." She was the first mystery writer to appear on the cover of Time Magazine, on January 28, 1946.- Early Life :In 1908, Mary Randolph Craig reluctantly interrupted...

). The plot concerns the murder of two strippers, backstage of a New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 burlesque

Burlesque

Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...

 theatre and the detection of the killer.

The film is a faithful, if sanitized due to the censorship of the time, adaptation of the original novel, although Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy Rose Lee

Gypsy Rose Lee was an American burlesque entertainer famous for her striptease act. She was also an actress, author, and playwright whose 1957 memoir was made into the stage musical and film Gypsy.-Early life:...

, who appears as a character in her own book, is here renamed "Dixie Daisy" (Stanwyck). Michael O'Shea plays her romantic interest, comedian Biff Brannigan, and Iris Adrian

Iris Adrian

Iris Adrian was an American film actress.-Life and career:Born in Los Angeles, California as Iris Hostetter, Adrian won a beauty pageant and worked with the Ziegfeld Follies, before she entered films at the end of the silent era in Chasing Husbands and appeared as an extra or chorus girl in early...

 portrays a showgirl. Pinky Lee

Pinky Lee

Pincus Leff , better known as Pinky Lee, was an American burlesque comic and host of a children's television program, The Pinky Lee Show, in the early 1950s.-Biography:...

, a burlesque comic in real life, is another notable supporting player, as is Gerald Mohr

Gerald Mohr

Gerald Mohr was an American radio, film and television character actor who appeared in over 4,000 radio plays, 73 films and over 100 television shows....

as villain Louie Grindero. The film depicted as much as the censors would allow with respect to the precise nature of "bumps" and "grinds", and the slapdash nature of burlesque shows. Songs include "Take it off the E string, play it on the G string", rendered by Stanwyck.