Recent women's-studies interest in striptease has resuscitated the stars of the form during its mid-twentieth-century heyday, from Bettie Page to Gypsy Rose Lee. One of the biggest star strippers, tall, thin Lili St. Cyr, didn't just dance out of her clothing. She created imaginative variations (e.g., the reverse strip) and settings (bubble baths, Cleopatra and Salome portrayals, etc.) and spiced them with elements of ballet. She realized early that the greatest differences between headliners and chorus dancers were salary and the fact that the stars were usually naked, the chorines usually not. After that, her career path was clear. Although she performed nude for at least part of most appearances, much of her act seems tame today. In the 1940s and 1950s, however, her routines were sufficiently risque to cause legal trouble, and an audience member once sued her for lewdness (one wonders what he thought he was buying a ticket to see). Apparently the first book about St. Cyr since her autobiography, Ma Vie De Stripteaseuse (1982), this is an excellent show-biz study.