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Virginia Bell

AS burlesque enjoyed the final years of its golden age during the 1950s, the top-level strippers who made the era memorable could be divided into two categories: those who reserved their artistry for the swankiest nightclubs, and those who plied their trade on "the circuit." Virginia Bell -- rivaled by few other strippers in her popular following -- was equaled by none in her dedication to the network of burly theaters that would soon become a relic of history.

Born in Montrose, California, Virginia was of Serbo-Croatian heritage; her father was said to have been a rancher. According to one Bell researcher, Virginia graduated from a Los Angeles high school in 1949, and was dating a well-known football star at the time. She graduated from junior college around 1951, and launched her modeling career after some candid beach snapshots of her formidable figure inspired the keen-eyed lensman to prod her in the direction of a professional photographer.

This quickly led her to a female theatrical agent who proclaimed, "When I first saw Virginia's picture, I didn't believe it -- I thought the pictures were faked. But when she came in and showed me what she had, I knew I'd stumbled onto something special. Mansfield's are big, [Meg] Myles's are bigger, but Virginia's are the all-time most!"

Atop a five-foot-two, 120-pound frame, Virginia's breasts were indeed an imposing sight, and were to become her trademark. The exact dimensions of her most prized assets varied with the source. When she began modeling, her bust measurement was quoted as forty-two inches; later this number was regularly inflated to forty-eight. But unquestionably Virginia Bell's bust -- which earned her such nicknames as "Little Miss Pleasure Chest" -- was among the most celebrated of her time. One magazine proclaimed that her breasts were "more than enough to make Lili St. Cyr, Candy Barr and Tempest Storm look like something out of Louisa May Alcott's 'Little Women.'"

"Little miss Pleasure Chest"

It was on the burlesque stage that Virginia first came into the public eye in the mid-1950s. She reportedly made her burlesque debut on the stage of Cleveland's famed Roxy Theater. A headliner from the start, she was billed as "Virginia (Ding Dong) Bell, 48-24-36," and earned $1,500 per week.

By 1957, the fledgling exotic's epic figure was becoming a frequent sight in girlie magazines, and remained so for the next several years. Her first magazine cover was the September 1956 Night & Day. Immediately, the magazine was flooded with letters demanding more Bell. N & D, along with other magazines, regularly ran ads for sexy photo sets of Virginia, with such text as: "Inch for Inch, the Biggest, Bounciest Pin-Up Girl of Them All ... Must be SEEN to be BELIEVED. Never before a woman like this!"

 

While she appeared in many different magazines, Virginia became closely associated with Fling, which in later years would repeatedly cite her as the definitive "Flinggirl" who set the standard to which all others would have to aspire. Arv Miller, the magazine's founding publisher and editor, recalls that Fling's future was still in doubt when Virginia made her debut in issue 10 (1958). "Virginia really put me on my feet," he declares. When her appearances in issues 10 and 16 sent newsstand sales soaring, Miller decided to devote the publication to the biggest and best bosoms in the land.

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Remarkably, Miller never actually met the woman responsible for the turnaround of his magazine. "She wrote me once in 1959 to thank me for running her pictures, but that's all." Despite the close Fling-Bell connection, "we never really had a lot of pictures of her. It was just two layouts by Ron Vogel -- that's it, aside from some amateur-quality photo packs I got from New York. And I used those two layouts over and over and over!"

To this day, oddly, Virginia is most widely remembered as a nude magazine model, while her prowess as a burlesque star is forgotten by many. Nevertheless, during her prime, she ranked in the top echelon of strip luminaries. More than once, she was proclaimed "the hottest thing to hit a runway since the heyday of Lili St. Cyr." Every stripper needs a gimmick, and Virginia's was her so-called fast bust roll, which sent her mighty mammaries flying. She was also noted for her athletic agility in bending her torso all the way back, an impressive feat considering the extra weight she was carrying up top.

The burlesque circuit, as it survived into the 1950s, was a chain of about fifty theaters operated out of Boston and most heavily concentrated in the East and Midwest. Strippers who worked the circuit committed themselves to a grinding schedule of three to four nights in one town, a day of rest, and then on to the next destination. Typically, they would tour fifty weeks a year, with minimal concession to holidays. Most other top performers, after achieving fame, left all this behind to work in nightclubs and Las Vegas. But Virginia stayed the course: from the outset of her career until its end around 1970, as the circuit steadily dwindled with the lingering death of burlesque, she continued making the rounds of theaters until only a handful remained.

Ohio was the dominant state on the circuit, with burly theaters in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, and Akron, among others. It was there that Virginia met Eli Jackson, a veteran of the carnival scene who was branching out into burlesque. They married around 1960, and for the next few years were based in Cincinnati. By 1963, they had relocated to Tampa, Florida.

In early 1958, with Virginia one of the hottest attractions on the circuit, she purportedly turned down an offer to perform with the famed Folies Bergere in Paris. Several months later, she was reported to have signed a thousand-dollar-a-week movie and TV contract with Cleota Productions; however, nothing more was ever heard of this opportunity.

In addition to serving as her manager, Jackson was a constant presence at Virginia's stripping performances. As the so-called candy butcher, he appeared onstage at intermission selling photos, magazines, and other promotional materials, such as playing cards with her picture on them. And he was instrumental in arranging the film that helped ensure her enduring renown.