One of my all time favorites.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Deborah Hoople (Barbara Stanwyck) is burlesque headliner Dixie Daisy at the Old Opera House on Broadway. It's a wild time on stage and even wilder backstage. Gee Gee Graham is a supportive showgirl. S.B. Foss owns the theater. Infatuated clown Biff Brannigan endlessly chases after Dixie. Snooty Lolita La Verne has a cat fight with Dolly Baxter. During a police raid, someone tries to strangle Dixie in the dark. Former star Princess Nirvena returns. Lolita has a fight with jealous gangster Louie Grindero and then she's found murdered.The burlesque is not particularly risqué probably due to production codes which makes the police raid kinda silly. The girls shake their booties a bit. I love Stanwyck but she's not the strongest song and dance gal. The strength is the backstage antics. I'm surprised that the Chinese waiters seem like human characters without the expected broad accents. The murderer would be more compelling if he's targeting only Dixie. The initial strangling is quite a good turn but the killer starts going elsewhere. This is nice for Stanwyck fans.

Some of my observations: I give it a ten. Barbara Stanwyck in an eye popping performance, played against the goofy baggy pants clown sidekick. I adored seeing Pinky Lee, he of the TV show of my childhood. Black and white is not my favorite, but it had to suffice.Stanwyck gave the illusion of bumping and grinding, ala the Hays Code which forbade such graphic realism. 1943 was smack in the middle of World War Two. This was a good performance for all those fighting servicemen (was this movie shown overseas in their duty stations?). Apparently the War Code plus the Hays Code did a number on the depictions and performances, but the direction was smooth and exacting.Mae West also was an author and widely censored. I thought of her when I was reading about Gypsy Rose Lee's authorship endeavors. Both women are still household names, and evoke visions of sultry sexiness and vampy delivery. Both women had brains, and were very shrewd and inventive performers -- knowing what the public (read "men") wanted.1940s was also a time of movies about bucolic rural-type small town and historical situations, Meet me in St. Louis, etc., State Fair, The Best Years of Our Lives, National Velvet, Lassie Come Home, not to mention the late 1930s classics Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. Then there were the gangster bw noir movies, but that's another story. Some more late 1930s early 1940s movies were Stage Coach, Alexander's Ragtime Band and Weekend in Havana.Lady of Burlesque was about a sleazy, brassy, cheap jewelry, dyed hair, backstage world of a former opera house that was recently converted to presenting cranky, trashy, vulgar, vindictive, bitchy bump-and-grind female performers in very little garb. If I say bitchiness, I am only copying other reviewers. Men really liked this type of entertainment better; they wanted to see a lot of skin. (Did I mention sin?). In those other movies above mentioned, people kind of kept their clothes on. Barbara Stanwyck's character here was not trashy; she managed to have some class.Barbara Stanwyck? No other name star in the movie. She was the lead. Pinky was the only other actor I had ever heard of. Could Barbara be sexy? YESSSSSS!!!!! To wit, remember her in The Thorn Birds mini series. She was an elderly wealthy woman in love with the handsome priest. She pulled out all the stops to come on to the way-younger Father Ralph de Bricassart (Richard Chamberlain). Barbara was jealous of the young ingénue female lead.Barbara was a gas in Ball of Fire. Indeed. Showing those geeky nerds how to dance. She had the legs to go with all of the steps. Talk about her opposite Fred MacMurray. I would rather see her in Lady of Burlesque.I am impressed. She could play against type. She could play any part. She knew the score. She had a very good, low singing voice in Lady of Burlesque.More observations: These women performers in this movie were not "housewives". They did not wait on husbands and children all day, serving them cocoa and washing their faces. The women were called "girls", which was appropriate for 1943 but way sexist by our current ideals. With all of their gangster boyfriends, can you imagine how many abortions they had in order to continue their careers? Abortion is the oldest form of birth control. Side note: "girls" could have killed each other, and probably did in real life, without waiting on the male murderers to do the job. There was so much jealousy and literal and figurative back-stabbing, perhaps, behind the scenes.Barbara as Dixie/Gypsy (rhymes, sort of?) Be happy Dixie Daisy (Daisy = Rose) was there. She had the best legs. She had breathtaking, ladylike yet sultry costumes. She obviously made more money than the other performers. She was the Headliner. Yes, one of her songs said she gave tons of money to Mother every week.I am a movie historian, and student of the lives of stage/movie/vaudeville/burlesque actors, dancers, singers, directors, producers and impresarios in history and of the current day.10/10

Sassy Dixie Daisy is the hot new attraction at a former opera house that's been turned into a burlesque theater. She's popular with the customers, although not with Lolita La Verne, a stuck-up diva who was hoping she'd get the top spot. Complicating matters is the return of the Princess Nirvena, the show's former star who once had a fling with the boss. When the Princess blackmails her way into the top spot, Dixie is none too pleased. When both Lolita and the Princess are murdered, Dixie becomes a prime suspect. She then sets up a trap to nail the real killer.I guess this is public domain because the print I watched this on looked like it was taken off the TV. I know this has some good reviews, but for me it was only good as a period piece, looking at the transition of burlesque close to its last days soon to be replaced by hard core porn.I didn't find much else that rewarding in the watching.UPDATE: Well i found a significantly better print and watched it again. It's still not a great film. William Wellman was well past his prime, man. The early-mid 40s were a time when Hollywood was making murder mysteries. Everybody was making them. There are far better examples out there.

This film is full of surprises. I saw it accidentally and thought it was much older than I discovered it is when looking it up on IMDb. It's like a peek backstage at a burlesque show (exactly where most of the action takes place). And it actually catches your interest and manages to hold it, because of these historical artifacts if nothing else.For example, you'll be surprised to see Barbara Stanwyck dancing and doing it very well, in long full body shots that show it's actually her doing the dancing. And, to my surprise, it was quite a body. I've never been one to think she was very attractive in the face (which in my opinion detracted from Double Indemnity because the whole point of that movie was that she was irresistible). But here she shows off a comely set of gams, as they would say in the day.Next you'll see Pee Wee Herman...then realize it couldn't possibly be him and you realize it's Pinky Lee, the one who inspired Herman's career which is nothing (period in my opinion) without Lee. But there's none of the perverse overtones with Lee that you felt with Herman even before the scandal where he proved it.You'll recognize all of the vaudeville routines from other comedians. Abbott and Costello's routines especially. But burlesque and vaudeville were the library where all of these comics and all after them drew their knowledge of how to make people laugh, even in spite of themselves. And many of the stars in this film were experts since childhood in the very acts they portrayed in burlesque and vaudeville all their lives.All in all it's a film worth watching, and watch for the surprises as well. You'll never realize how much you owe to burlesque and vaudeville and how you have laughed all your life at jokes that were written long before any of us were ever born.