Everybody's Girl

I'm a huge fan of biographies, but never really understood why someone would want to go to the trouble of researching and writing 500-some pages of facts about a person they never knew. That is, until...

Sometime last year, my personal hairdresser, Mr. Angelo, handed me an old newspaper clipping about a vintage burlesque queen known as Gay Dawn...

...along with a few small, candid snapshots of her, taken by a fan (who shall remain nameless), some years after she retired her pasties and g-string...

I've been smitten ever since! According to the article, Miss Dawn hails from a little lumber town near the Washington coast called Hoquiam, which butts right up against another little town known as Aberdeen, almost famous now for being the hometown of a young man named Kurt Cobain...

Not just another pretty peeler, Gay Dawn had a career in burlesque spanning over 15 years, starting in 1950 at the Follies Theatre in L.A...

...playing burly-q theatres in the USA from Minsky's in Newark, NJ to The Rivoli in Seattle...

...and everywhere in between: Boston, St.Louis, Baltimore, Cleveland, San Francisco, Oakland, and more. So popular was she, in fact, that she even starred in a movie called "Everybody's Girl"...

...and had plenty of press coverage, if not clothing coverage...

...as well as some cheeky cheesecake! Isn't she lovely?

But whatever happened to lovely Miss Gay Dawn? I see she passed away in 1998, in Juneau, Alaska. The newspaper article references a daughter whom she named Gayleen and groomed to be a pageant princess, however, I think the former Miss Tujunga may have given up on pageants to join the police force. Further searches for either of them were fruitless. Does anyone out there have any clues or other information to help me with my Search For Gay Dawn? For some reason, I feel an affinity towards her, and finally, I know how it feels to be passionate enough and curious enough to attempt writing a life story about a perfect stranger. I'm not saying I'll ever write it...but hey, she loved show biz and money! Now, that's what I call Blonde Ambition, darlings.

I was lucky enough to find this video clip from good ol' Something Weird...so now, for your pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Everybody's Girl, Miss Gay Dawn!