Carrie Finnell

Carrie Lee Finnell (November 14, 1899 – November 14, 1963) was an American burlesque dancer and comic entertainer.

Biography She was born in Covington, Kentucky, and during her teen years was active in local sports and training for national competitions. She also took to the stage as a member of the Le Roy Musical Comedy Company and the Guy Players. As a dancer able to produce high kicks and precise turns, she soon joined a national touring company, and became known as "Minneapolis's Sweetheart". At one point, her legs were insured for $100,000 by manager Noah Schechter as a publicity stunt.

By 1923, she started performing as a solo burlesque dancer, performing an early form of striptease. Though ballyhoo tells of a striptease engagement in Cleveland extending over 54 weeks (in which, the legend says, she removed an item of clothing every week to increased customer demand and ticket prices, and also added tassels from a can-can costume to her pasties, and twirled them round as part of her dance though she returns in October of the same year for a shorter run.

Finnell developed techniques using her muscles to make her nipple tassels dance, at different speeds and in opposite directions, a technique adopted by later performers. Her obituary said that "the accent was on comedy, not on smut".

She died in Fayetteville, Ohio, in 1963 at the age of 64 (though contemporary obituaries gave her age as 70).

Finnell was married twice: in the 1920s to Charles Grow, with whom she had a son in 1925; and from 1936 to Thomas Morris, until his death three weeks before her own.