Obituaries

In Memory of
Blaze Starr
April 10, 1932 - June 15, 2015

Visitation:
Wednesday, June 17, 2015 from 6:00pm until 9;00pm
Richmond-Callaham Funeral Home in Warfield, Kentucky, 51 Riverfront Road, Warfield, KY 41267

Service:
Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 2:00 p.m.
Richmond-Callaham Funeral Home in Warfield, Kentucky, 51 Riverfront Road, Warfield, KY 41267

Blaze Starr, the voluptuous stripper who was billed as the Queen of Burlesque and whose affair with a Louisiana governor was the basis of a 1989 movie, died on Monday in Wilsondale, W.Va., the coal country town in which she was born. She was 83.
A nephew, Earsten Spaulding, said Ms. Starr had been stricken at home in Wilsondale and pronounced dead at a nearby hospital. She had undergone heart bypass surgeries in recent years, he said.
With thickly luxurious, fiery red hair, an ample bosom and a penchant for playful humor, Ms. Starr stoked the imaginations of legions of admirers from the runways of clubs across the country for more than 30 years, seducing many men along the way.
Her most famous affair, with Gov. Earl K. Long of Louisiana, who was married, caused a scandal that was the basis of the Ron Shelton film ''Blaze,'' starring Lolita Davidovich in the title role alongside Paul Newman as the governor. The film drew on her memoir,''Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry,''published in 1974.
Ms. Starr said that she and Mr. Long were engaged to be married when he died in 1960, two months before his divorce was to become final. She continued to wear a five-carat diamond ring that she said he had given her.
''Society thought that to be a stripper was to be a prostitute,'' Ms. Starr told The New York Times in 1989, at the time of the movie’s release. ''But I always felt that I was an artist, entertaining. I was at ease being a stripper. I kept my head held high, and if there is such a thing as getting nude with class, then I did it.''
She was born Fannie Belle Fleming in Wilsondale on April 10, 1932. As a child, the eighth of 11 in her family, she washed laundry for $1 a day. Her father was a railroad worker. As a teenager she got on a bus to Washington and landed a job there as a singer in a country band. But while working at a doughnut shop she met a promoter who persuaded her to become a stripper, saying the pay was better.
At 15, Ms. Starr began performing at a club near the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Va. In 1950, after moving to Baltimore, she stepped onto the runway of the 2 O’Clock Club on the Block, that city’s famous strip of adult entertainment shops and stages. Two of her sisters, following her lead, also worked as strippers on the Block.
Ms. Starr gained national recognition when she was featured in Esquire magazine in 1954, hailed as the successor to Lili St. Cyr on the burlesque circuit. Unlike Ms. St. Cyr, however, she made many of her own costumes, part of a stage wardrobe, including three mink coats, that was valued in 1967 at $20,000 (about $142,000 in today’s money).
Ms. Starr outside the 2 O'clock Club & Club Miami in Baltimore in 1989. Credit Michael Abramson/The LIFE Images Collection, via Getty Images ''I didn’t have a thing to do between shows, so I started to sew,'' Ms. Starr told The Times that year.
She had recently spent four months sewing and gluing hundreds of beads on a black lamé gown. She also designed her $100,000 ranch-style house in Baltimore, complete with a purple sunken bathtub and fur-covered furniture. The newspapers called it ''Belle’s Little Acre.'' She was earning up to $100,000 a year in the mid-1960s.
Onstage, she often delighted crowds by tucking a rose in her bosom and blowing the petals across her chest. Sometimes she stretched out on a couch and wiggled seductively while removing her garments. When she got to the last pieces, smoke would emerge from between her legs, drawing laughs.
Ms. Starr met Governor Long while performing at the Sho-Bar in New Orleans in 1959. She recalled their affair in her memoir, and also claimed to have had a sexual encounter with President John F. Kennedy after he attended one of her shows.
Ms. Starr performed for more than 30 years, sometimes in the Times Square theater district, before hanging up her G-string and pasties in the 1980s, telling People magazine in 1989 that she stopped because burlesque had become raunchy. She became a gemologist, making jewelry and selling it at a mall in suburban Baltimore.
Reflecting on her career as a stripper, she told a reporter for The Baltimore Sun in 2010: “Honey, I loved it. But everything has its season.”
Ms. Starr was married to Carroll Glorioso, the owner of the 2 O’Clock Club, for 12 years before they divorced. Her survivors include five sisters: Betty June Shrader, Debbie Fleming, Berta Gail Browning, Mary Jane Davis and Judy Maynard; one brother, John Fleming; and a host of nieces and nephews.
In a short video profile filmed before the movie ''Blaze'' was released, Ms. Starr was asked whether she would change anything about her life if she could.
''Not a thing,'' she responded. ''I would just do a lot more of it and try a lot harder, and seduce a lot more men than I did.''
Funeral services will be held at the Warfield Chapel of the Richmond-Callaham Funeral Home in Warfield, Kentucky on Thursday, June 18, 2015 at 2:00pm. Friends may visit at the chapel on Wednesday, June 17, 2015 from 6:00-9:00pm. Full obit to follow. Arrangements are under the direction of the Richmond-Callaham Funeral Home, Inez, Kentucky.
Richmond-Callaham Funeral Home, Warfield Location
51 Riverfront Road
Warfield, KY, US, 41267
kellycallaham@yahoo.com