Was Striptease Invented In Cincinnati? Some Burlesque Historians Think So

Is Cincinnati the home of striptease? More than one historian of burlesque has suggested exactly that. While there are any number of theories out there on just how striptease originated, a handful of historians have pointed to Cincinnati and, in particular to a publicity-hungry ecdysiast named Millie De Leon and her Cincinnati manager, James Fennessy.Millie De Leon was what was known around 1900 as a “cooch” dancer. Cooch (or cootch or hootchy-kootchy) was an erotic but ersatz style of belly dancing popularized at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1892-93. There were several women who built profitable stage careers by cooch dancing, the most famous being Fahreda Mazar Spyropoulos and Ashea Wabe, both of whom performed under the stage name of “Little Egypt.”Born in New York as either Elizabeth or Maude or Amelia Lawrence, Millie De Leon was brought to Cincinnati by James Fennessy, manager of Hubert Heuck’s People’s Theatre on Vine Street, as part of a resident company of burlesque performers…