Even to those who have never seen and would never consider seeing a strip show, the name Gypsy Rose Lee conjures up a glittering image. In the parlance of her trade, Lee was part "parade stripper" and part "society stripper." She invented the intellectual striptease performance and took stripping out of the dingy burlesque halls and into the high-toned venues of Broadway. Though she was notorious for her inability to sing or dance, Lee was a natural performer who knew how to control an audience with timing, humor, and sex appeal. In the 1940s, Variety's J.P. McEvoy described Lee's act as a "burlesque of burlesque—literally more tease than strip."

Lee was born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle, Washington, on January 9, 1914. Her father was a cub reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and her mother was an amateur performer with big ambitions...