Blaze Starr
Nude

Has there ever been a better stage name than Blaze Starr? A voluptuous vixen with flaming red hair, the renowned stripper and burlesque dancer also earned the nicknames Miss Spontaneous Combustion and The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque—a far cry from her parent-given name of Fannie Belle Fleming in her native West Virginia. With hourglass measurements of 38D-24-37, her stage presence was legendary, and one routine even included having a large trained black panther untie a ribbon on her costume. The beyond-sexy star displayed her assets in over seven men’s magazines, regularly performed live, but had only two movie credits on her resume. Portraying herself in the supremely popular Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962), the cutie nudie fun film features lots of long-lasting looks of the fiery redhead’s D-lightful twin titans in a variety of totally naked scenarios: slippery and swimming at the pool, hanging out with friends at the clothesline while showing off her tan lines (both rear and front), improving her archery skills (!) with a male partner, and playing chess seated at a table in the middle of the forest. (Gotta love the ‘60s.) Her second and final role was in 1989, when she appeared in the film Blaze, in the cameo role of Lily. The movie was loosely based on her affair in the late 1950s with Louisiana governor Earl Kemp Long. After retiring from stripping in 1983 at the age of 51, she owned and operated the Two O’Clock Club in Baltimore, Maryland, and designed and sold her own hand-crafted jewelry. She passed on to the great burlesque stage in the sky in 2015, leaving the world is a little less colorful without her.