Tempest storm net worth
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The Complicated Life of Burlesque Queen Tempest Storm
When Tempest Storm began her career as a burlesque dancer back in the 1950s, newspapers and radio hosts would often describe her impressive bust, instead of her as a person, with headlines like, “Biggest Props in Hollywood” or “44-inch Pleasure Chest.”
She loves performing, which is why she’s done it for nearly seven decades. “No one has ever stayed in the business as long as me,” says Tempest, who is now 88 years old. While the stage may be her happy place, her life has been riddled with heartache.
During Hot Docs, when the documentary Tempest Storm by Toronto-based filmmaker Nimisha Mukerji first premiered, I had the opportunity to meet the “Queen of Exotic Dancing” at The Gladstone Hotel for an interview.
Tempest wears long satin gloves to cover her thickly veined and fragile arthritic hands. Her hair is still the gorgeous fiery red it was in her youth and is beautifully coiffed and puffed. Although she’s approaching ninety years of age, she still ha
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Review: ‘Tempest Storm’
Tempest Storm
Dir. Nimisha Mukerji; Writ. Nimisha Mukerji, Kaitlyn Regehr
Starring: Tempest Storm, Harvey Robbins, Herb Jeffries
One of the biggest stars of the 1950s American underworld scene, with its nightclubs, jazz musicians, comics and strippers, was the “classy” and marvelously endowed performer, Tempest Storm. Possibly the most renowned stripper of the period, she had affairs with Elvis and John F. Kennedy, and starred in a notorious erotic “art” film called Teaserama with the equally acclaimed Bettie Page. The Southern redhead caused considerable controversy in the late ‘50s when she married the “Black buckaroo” Herb Jeffries, a handsome African-American singer and actor. And a decade and a half later, Ms. Storm astonished a generation of rock’n’rollers by being the opening act for the James Gang when they played Carnegie Hall.
There’s no doubt that Tempest Storm is worthy of a documentary feature. Nimisha Mukerji, the Canadian director of 65 _ Red Roses, about a young woman fighting cystic fibrosis, has focused
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For this “Who’s Who in BurlyQ”, we turn to Kaitlyn Regehr, burlesque expert and co-host on the Canadian and UK program “Re-Vamped”, PhD candidate in performance and women’s sexuality at King’s College London, and producer of Tempest Storm: Burlesque Queen, a feature documentary exploring Tempest’s life and her huge impact in not just burlesque but popular culture as a whole.
Indisputably one of the best known burlesque dancers from the ‘50s and ‘60s and listed in the top 50 of Playboy’s most glamorous women of the century, Tempest Storm is truly an icon in the history of burlesque.
Born Annie Blanche Banks in Eastman, Georgia, in 1928, Storm’s ambition and talent (as well as her perfect bust, once called “the best props in Hollywood” by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis) enabled her to rise from a life on a rural cotton farm to a front stage superstar. At the age of 20, with two marriages behind her, Banks moved to Hollywood and began working as a chorus girl. There she became friends with next-door neighbor Marilyn Monroe. Banks adopted the stage name Tempest Storm in 1950 and
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