Archive

1942

Unidentified Photographer, Sherry Britton, ca. 1942
AN EXOTIC STRIPPER
Sherry Britton’s Exciting
and Fiery Dance
HER DUAL PERSONALITY

BY E. FARRELL

Viewed from an orchestra seat, the personality of a beautiful performer often remains an unsolvable riddle…
Thus, when exotic Sherry Britton chants a slightly naughty ditty, and drops with thorough finesse and little difficulty the bright scarlet satin gown and the interesting undergarments which lie beneath it, we are inclined to regard Miss Britton as a daring performer.
Recently I sat out front at the Gaiety Theater [1545 Broadway] in New York and joined in the applause which greeted Sherry.
In a husky, low voice, full of delightful suggestions, the strikingly beautiful brunette sang clever lyrics of “How I Got My Start.” It was a charming way of introducing the better thins to come. When Sherry got to the lines which went, “And so I’m being chipper with my zipper”, and unzipped her gown, the audience fairly howled.
With remarkable grace, Sherry stepped out of her gown, turned her back to the audience and to the accompaniment of Turkish Harem music, performed a series of deep grinds and low bumps, which would have warmed any Sultan’s heart. Her long, dark brown hair fell in deep waves down her back, rivuleting at her waist seductively. Then Sherry, clad in her diaphanous underskirt of bright red voile, with a small, matching brassiere, paraded enticingly across the stage.
Finally, she dropped her underskirt and bra and stood before the audience, revealing the full glory of her firm young body…
I caught Sherry backstage…
“Don’t be so amazed,” Sherry told me, when I mentioned my confusion at the metamorphosis. “Truly I’m quite apart from my work, I have the amazing capacity of transforming myself in and out of character…
Things on the stage are not always as they seem.”

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

The National Police Gazette, February 1942 [shortly before the Gaiety was closed]

Abandoned Baby Smiles in Crib at N.Y. Foundling Hospital…

Our police Headquarters man, an experienced photographer of the down and out, took this picture last week at the New York Foundling Hospital. “This one foundling,” he reported, “that really laughed for me without being tickled under the chin.” The baby had been abandoned by his mother in a rooming house at 309 W. 48th St. She paid $1 deposit on a room, put the baby in it and left, after telling the caretaker she was going to a bus station to pick up her bags. Early next morning the caretaker found the child, alone and crying, and turned him over to the police who promptly took him to the hospital. In our picture, taken 3 hours later, the infant is wearing under his hospital gown, the white undershirt and long, white stockings in which he was discovered. A bottle and a nap have restored his good humor. Attendants, remarking “what a pretty baby,” guess he was seven months old.”
PM Daily, November 15, 1942, p. 10