- Born
- Died
- Birth nameFannie Belle Fleming
- Nicknames
- Miss Spontaneous Combustion
- The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque
- Height5′ 6″ (1.68 m)
- Legendary stripper and burlesque dancer Blaze Starr was born Fannie Belle Fleming in 1932 in Wilsondale, West Virginia. Her parents were Lora Evans and Goodlow Mullins. She had ten siblings. Blaze left home and moved to Washington, DC while only in her mid-teens. She was discovered by her first manager Red Snyder working as either a hat-check girl or at a donut shop. Starr got her stage name from Snyder, but, nonetheless, still left him after he attempted to rape her. With her fiery red hair, shapely and voluptuous 38D-24-37 figure, and sultry, energetic, and captivating stage presence (her stage routines included a comedic exploding coach gag and having a large trained black panther untie a ribbon on her costume, which made it fall to the floor), Blaze became a major headliner at the Two O'Clock Club in Baltimore, Maryland, and earned the nicknames "Miss Spontaneous Combustion" and "The Hottest Blaze in Burlesque." Starr made $1,500 dollars per week at the peak of her stripping career. Among the men's magazines she appeared in at the height of her fame are "Sizzle," "Ace," "Scamp," "Sir!," "Best for Men," "Rogue," and "Modern Man." Moreover, Starr posed for pictures for noted fetish photographer Irving Klaw. Blaze achieved her greatest notoriety in the late 1950s as the paramour for Louisiana state governor Earl Kemp Long (Earl Long); this affair inspired the 1989 feature film Blaze (1989), which even has a cameo from Ms. Starr as a stripper. She portrayed herself in the immensely popular Doris Wishman nudie cutie romp Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962). In 1974, Starr wrote the autobiographical book "Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry." Blaze retired from stripping in 1983. In 1989, Starr had become a gemologist who spent several holiday seasons selling hand-crafted jewelry at the Carrolltowne Mall in Eldersburg, Maryland. Blaze also owned and operated the Two O'Clock Club in Baltimore, Maryland. Starr died at age 83 on June 15, 2015 at her home in Wilsondale, West Virginia.
- IMDb mini biography by: woodyanders
- SpouseCarroll Glorioso (divorced)
- Was a paramour of Louisiana Governor Earl Long.
- Starr died June 15, 2015, either at her home in Wilsondale, West Virginia,[20][21] or at a hospital in nearby Williamson (sources vary). She was 83 years old. She had been worried about the health of her dog, whom she adopted as a stray. Her dog died hours later.
- In her later years, she moved back to West Virginia, to what was described in the press as an eighty-acre compound that she shared with a number of her siblings, nephews, and nieces. She had always stayed close to her family.
- Her trademark routine was "the exploding couch". As she explained in 1989, "I had finally got my gimmick, a comedy thing where I'm supposed to be getting so worked up that I stretch out on the couch, and - when I push a secret button - smoke starts coming out from like between my legs. Then a fan and a floodlight come on, and you see all these red silk streamers blowing, shaped just like flames, so it looked like the couch had just burst into fire.".
- She began performing at the Two O'Clock Club nightclub in 1950. She eventually became its headliner. She rose to national renown after she was profiled in a February 1954 Esquire magazine article, "B-Belles of Burlesque: You Get Strip Tease With Your Beer in Baltimore". The Two O'Clock Club remained her home base, but she began to travel and perform in clubs throughout the country.
- [from a 1989 newspaper interview] Then you wore a G-string. Today you wear nothing. It was an art form. Burlesque took over when vaudeville ended and porn took over when burlesque ended.
- I did a comedy act. I never tried to be sexy. I always wore a mink coat and said, "Phew! It's warm in here." (from a 1989 interview with the Evening Sun)
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