Godspeed Tempest Storm

Tempest Storm, the legendary burlesque performer, died on April 20221 at the age of 93.

Tempest Storm was born Annie Blanche Banks on February 29 1928 in Eastman, Georgia. She left school when she was in seventh grade to work as a waitress. At age 14 she married a Marine in order to emancipate herself and escape parental abuse. The marriage was annulled after only 24 hours. She was 15 when she married a shoe salesman from Columbus. It was six months the she left for Hollywood.

She was 17 years old when she was working as a cocktail waitress in Los Angeles when a customer told her that she would be great as a striptease performer. She auditioned for Follies Theatre talent manager Lillian Hunt who hired her as a chorus girl. It was after a month that she became a stripper. Lillian Hunt told her that she needed a stage name and gave her a choice between "Sunny Day" and "Tempest Storm." Six years later she would legally change her name to "Tempest Storm."

Tempest Storm would go onto become of the most successful burlesque performers of all time. She first performed in Las Vegas in 1951 at the Embassy Club. She was a regular performer at the El Rey theatre in Oakland, California. She moved to Portland, Oregon in 1953, initially performing at the Star Theatre there before moving to the Capital Theatre in Portland. In 1956 Tempest Storm became the highest paid burlesque performer of all time when she signed 10 year contract with the Bryan-Engles burlesque production company. In 1957 she began performing at the Dunes in Las Vegas.

>Tempest Storm appeared in burlesque movies such as Irving Klaw's Teaserama (1955) alongside Bettie Page,  as well as such films as French Peepshow (1950), Paris After Midnight (1951), and Striptease Girl (1952). In 1973 she opened for The James Gang while they were on tour, even playing Carnegie Hall. She headlined on the Las Vegas Strip as late as 1987. Tempest Storm retired in 1995, but performed would still perform occasionally. In 1999 she performed at the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, California in honour of the theatre's 30th anniversary.

Alongside such performers as Sally Rand, Gypsy Rose Lee, Lili St. Cyr, and Blaze Starr, Tempest Storm was responsible for bringing burlesque into the mainstream.. Indeed, she was among those who elevated striptease to an artform. In 1969 she gold The Wall Street Journal, "I think taking off all your clothes--and I've never taken off all my clothes--is not only immoral but boring. There has to be something left to the imagination. If you taken everything off, you please a few morons and chase all the nice people away." Tempest Storm's knowledge of the importance of the tease,  and the skilful way in which she teased, gave her a career that lasted nearly 50 years. She was truly the last of the great strippers.