Words by Roxy Bourdillon
In the latest edition of our LGBTease: Queeroes Of Burlesque series, writer, showgirl historian and managing editor of DIVA magazine, Roxy Bourdillon, explores the extraordinary world of a lady-loving burly legend.
Everything about Zorita was iconic. Her hairstyle (jet black with two platinum streaks), her nickname (“Queen Of The Flashers”, due to her tendency to bare all onstage) and, of course, her repertoire of outrageous striptease acts. This burlesque superstar didn’t just have one gimmick. She had three: snakes and spiders and genderfuck - oh my!
But let’s start at the beginning. In 1915 a little girl named Ada was born in Ohio. Nine months later, she was adopted by a childless Methodist couple. Her new parents were completely oblivious to the fact that their adorable daughter would grow up to become one of the most notorious burlesque queens of all time.
After her mother remarried and her new father figure started making unwanted advances towards her, Zorita left home at the earliest opportunity. She got hitched to an English fellow in the civil service. The marriage only lasted five weeks, but at least Zorita was finally free and living in Chicago. Just one small problem. She was broke. When she was, as she put it, “fifteen years old with big knockers”, she befriended a stripper who taught her how to peel off her clothes for cash. She made decent money at stag parties, but the clientele wasn’t to her taste. Her solution when they got too handsy? She wore a belt made of rope and used it to whip them away.
She soon landed a gig at the San Diego World’s Fair, playing “Miss England” in a nudist colony exhibition. It was here where she met a carnival performer who went by the name Geek, bit the heads off live chickens and charmed snakes. When Zorita left the show to join a burly troupe, Geek gave her a parting gift of two serpents, Elmer and Oscar, but more on them later.
Zorita took the burlesque scene by storm with her striking looks and unique acts. Her performance style was sensual, theatrical and jaw-dropping. Case in point: her gender-bending “Half-and-half” routine, which took the vaudeville tradition of dressing up as half man, half woman, and added a whole lot of raunch with a homoerotic twist. Decked out as a bride and groom on their wedding night, her left side wore a flowing white gown and veil, while her right side sported a slick black suit and top hat. Onstage her two halves fondled one another provocatively and removed the other’s clothing, playing with notions of gender, creating a sizzling sexual tension and rendering audiences spellbound.
For another of her innovative numbers, she paraded in front of a giant, rhinestone-studded spiderweb. Two gloved hands emerged, representing a horny, hidden spider, and proceeded to caress Zorita’s gyrating body and tease off every last layer of her costume. This ingenious concept is such a classic it’s spawned tribute acts from burly royalty including the sensational Dirty Martini and Catherine D’Lish.
And last but not least was Zorita’s most scandalous gimmick of all. In The Consummation Of The Wedding Of The Snake, she performed with her pets. Remember the snakes? Elmer and Oscar? Well, they’re burlesque stars now. Zorita liked the idea of a beautiful woman dancing with a hideous beast, but hated anyone else going near one of her beloved creatures. One night, when a drunken customer threatened to slap her snake, she was so furious she punched him in the face. As long as the audience didn’t try and attack her slithering sidekicks, the act was a roaring (or should that be hissing?) success. As Zorita writhed about seductively with her reptilian companions, her body mirrored their graceful movements. The crowd was bewitched. Who needs a boa when you have a boa constrictor?
Her snakes became her signature - literally. When she signed her autograph, she added an extra curve to the “Z” to make it look like a snake with a darting tongue.
She posed for photographs while taking her snakes out for a casual stroll. Insisting this was most certainly not a publicity stunt for her upcoming show, she told the Miami Daily News, “What’s all the shouting about, anyhow? We only were taking the morning breeze.” Her serpentine act even inspired the 1949 B-movie, I Married A Savage, in which she took the starring role. Naturally, the best supporting actors were Elmer and Oscar.
Zorita spent the 1940s and 50s headlining shows all over America. She travelled around the country in a trailer and often took her girlfriend, as well as her snake-handler, on tour with her. Although Zorita had tons of admirers, not everyone was a fan of her boundary-pushing burlesque. She was arrested numerous times, for indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, and once for alleged cruelty to animals. She was released on bail, but her snakes were confiscated.
She retired from stripping in the early ‘60s, but didn’t leave the industry entirely. She opened several nightclubs, including Zorita’s Show Bar in Miami, where she hammed it up as the emcee for her “all-girlie revue”. Then in 1974, she quit the scene for good, moved to Florida and turned her attentions to breeding Persian cats. Because just when you think she can’t get any more fabulous, she goes right ahead and blows your burly-loving mind. The incomparable Zorita shimmied off this mortal plane in 2001 at the age of 85.
There’s one more thing that makes this burlesque megastar iconic and that is the fact that even in the days when same-sex desire was forbidden, Zorita lived and loved authentically. She dated men and was married three times, but spoke freely about her sapphic proclivities, telling people she danced for men, but preferred women. In her heyday, Zorita was photographed out on the town mingling with silver screen celesbians including Marlene Dietrich. She kept a scrapbook, which she fondly referred to as her “dyke book”, containing dozens of photographs of all her glamorous female conquests, posing on rugs, next to Christmas trees and in her bed.
There’s a whole chapter dedicated to Zorita in Liz Goldwyn’s gorgeous book, Pretty Things: The Last Generation Of American Burlesque Queens. When Liz asked for her thoughts on the male of the species Zorita replied, “What is there to like? Hairy chests? A limp joint? You like them because they’re customers, because they admire you, because they applaud, because they spend their money to see you.”
There were those who objected to Zorita’s openness about her sexuality, but she never let them dim her shine. In Pretty Things she remembers, “One time I came out of the Empire Theatre, and the three owners of the theatre were standing there. I came out in a butchy suit like this [points to a scrapbook photo of her in masculine street attire] and they said to me, ‘Do you have to come out dressed like that by the stage door?’ I said,