Exotic World, the burlesque museum once located off Route 66 in Helendale, Calif., and run by the irrepressible Dixie Evans, now is the subject of an upcoming documentary.
“Exotic World and the Burlesque Revival” is being produced by Red Tremmel, a professor at Tulane University and a longtime scholar about gender and women’s issues.
Here’s some footage from the film, including Evans when she ran the museum in the middle of Southern California’s high desert. (Some of the footage is risque, but there is no real nudity.)
According to Weekly Volcano, Tremmel says he expects to have the film finished by June.
Weekly Volcano also gave a brief description of Exotic World:
Burlesque performer Jennie Lee, known as “The Bazoom Girl,” and her husband began preparing to build the museum in the Mojave Desert by collecting photos, props, stories and other materials from retired strippers beginning in the late 1950s, but it didn’t really come together until the 1980s when she teamed up with another exotic dancer, Dixie Evans, known as “The Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque.” The museum was located in an old goat farm in the desert. It was named Exotic World.
Jennie invited strippers to come to the museum and share their experiences. An annual retreat became something of a Mecca for exotic dancers.
Jennie died in 1990, but her husband and Evans kept the museum alive. The annual reunion of strippers that Jennie had started continued and gained fame. Young performers and older retired strippers began to flock to the annual reunions turning the unique museum at the old goat ranch off Route 66 into a national phenomenon. It sparked an international revival of the art of burlesque.
The hospitable Evans also provided memorable moments for many road-trippers who paid a visit to her museum. But the place still languished with attendance because of its isolated location.
Exotic World eventually moved its collection to the more tourist-friendly Las Vegas, where it reopened as the Burlesque Hall of Fame. And I’m glad to see Evans still is very much involved in the museum.