Fannie Belle Fleming vs.Earl Kemp Long: Boneshakers

38D-24-37

(in her prime)
40D-26-37

( later years - still stripping)

(Source: Celebrity Sleuth magazine)

Ancestress Blaze Starr The real Blaze was a real star. Gypsy Rose Lee, Sally Rand, Ann Corio, Blaze Starr — these were the MVPs and VIPs of the strip-joint runways. In her prime in '59, when she met and fell in love with Louisiana Gov. Earl K. Long, Blaze Starr was commanding a then-queenly $1,500 a week. "That was a lot more money," she recalls, "than Gov. Long was making on the up and up with his salary." Starr, still disconcertingly sexy at 57, still possessed of measurements she gives — cubing no debate — as 38DD-24-37, gave up stripping six years ago to become a gemologist and make and sell jewelry. Each holiday season, at the Charlottetown Mall here in the Baltimore suburbs, she is a local celebrity selling earrings, bracelets and necklaces fashioned from the gemstones and crystals she collects the rest of the year. In the Touchstone film based on her affair with Long, Starr, herself is a shooting Starr. She says Playboy is about to publish a photo spread of her, and La's Vegas wants her to strip again. She even appears in the movie, doing a cameo as one of the strippers backstage when Long goes hunting for Starr ("Hello, Governor," she says when Paul Newman plants a familiar kiss on her shoulder.) Starr hasn't ridden such a whirlwind of publicity since her autobiography — "Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry" — was published in 1974. In that book, her romance with Long takes up only a couple of chapters. "Blaze" writer-director Ron Shelton, who optioned the biography in 1983, "told me I had 20 movies in there," Starr proudly announces in her thick, magnolia-scented accent. She says that there had even been talk once of doing a full-length stage musical about her. But now, there is the movie, and it's a big one — done by a major studio with a major star (Newman as Long) and a highly touted newcomer (Lolita Davidovich) portraying her. The movie takes Starr from her middens at home in the hills of West Virginia to about age 30, when Long died. By her account, Starr was born Fannie Belle Fleming in the tiny southwest West Virginia community of Twelvemonth Creek. "We lived two miles from the car road," Starr says. "There was the car road, and the horse road and the cattle path. And this was a dirt road; it was like 15 miles to the hardtop road, where there was a bus." At 15, Starr left home to start a career as a country singer, getting as far as a strip joint called the Quonset Hut in the nation's capital. In the movie, she is a sweet young thing who goes on stage meaning to sing, then discovers the audience is there to see her strip. In real life, the club's owner had first taken her to a club where the well-known stripper Pat Amber Halliday performed. Starr was star-struck. "I liked what I saw. And I thought, 'My God, to be on stage! And you're not naked.' Back then, you wore a thick, net bra with great big beaded parts on the end. Today, you see more on the beach! So I looked in the mirror and checked out my measurements." She was still underage, but, she says, matter-of-factly, "I had these boobs when I was 14. That's how I could pass for 18 so easy." Her assets made her a natural, but when the owner put the moves on her, she made a dramatic escape that the movie fairly accurately depicts. Other events were dramatized, of course; though with Starr, some of the more unbelievable things turn out to be true. "I wanted to be a star," Starr says, "and I wanted something different undressing me. Everything was used by then: snakes, birds, monkeys. I figured, 'What hasn't been done?' " Answer: panthers. So, for a while, Starr worked with a big jungle cat, which was trained to undo a ribbon tied behind her and allow her costume to fall to the floor. (Years later, she says, one of the cats turned on her and she realized "why nobody used 'em.") Curiously, one of the most visual and exciting moments of her life became much less dramatic in the movie: Her first meeting with Earl Long. In the film, as in reality, Long is smitten at the first sight of Starr performing in a New Orleans club. The first thing Long saw her do on stage was her trademark "exploding couch" number. "I had finally got my gimmick, a comedy thing," she says, "where I'm supposed to be getting so worked up that I stretch out on the couch, and — when I push a secret button — smoke starts coming out from like between my legs. Then a fan and a floodlight come on, and you see all these red silk streamers blowing, shaped just like flames, so it looked like the couch had just burst into fire." Long was impressed and began pursuing the stripper. The 62-year-old politician and the 20-something stripper had little in common, except heartache. She was divorcing her husband, club owner Carroll Glorioso, and Long was reportedly living alone in a separate wing of the governor's mansion, away from his wife, "Miz Blanche." Blanche Long was a very public figure at the time, but she did not want her name and likeness used in the movie, so the film makers did not include her. Starr refuses to even utter the former Louisiana First Lady's name. "There was an agreement," Starr says when pressed. "Disney don't need any flak about being sued and all that, even though she couldn't get nothin', 'cause it's the truth." The absence of a wife waters down the scandal in the film. In 1950s Louisiana, it was one thing for a politician to cavort with a striptease star, but to do it with a wife at home was even more disconcerting to constituents. "Blaze" is much more a straight-ahead love story than the story of an affair that rocked the South. And what of that romance? Was it Long's power that attracted Starr? "No, that didn't faze me," she says. "Because I had my own power in my own little world. Earl was sweet, he was nice. I dated him, we'd go to dinner, to the race track — all this for about three months before he even kissed me. And then I just started kind of leaning on him and depending on him." Their relationship was physical, but not right away, she says. "At first, when I met him I was grieving because I was goin' through a divorce. But he was very protective of me when the news media started hounding me. He would put his arm around me and stand right there and say, 'I love her and that's that.' I'm like, 'Gee nobody's ever done this for me.' "So, here's this older man who wants to marry me. I'd only been intimate with him two or three times, when my divorce was gonna be final. But then he started talkin' divorce to Miz . . . to his wife. And she didn't wanna hear it. She blew her mind: 'You're throwing away everything the Longs have fought for!' " It turned out not to matter. After a few months out of politics, Earl won the 1960 Democratic nomination for his district's congressional seat, and died a few days later. Starr assures us he would have loved the movie. Blaze Starr gave up stripping six years ago and now sells jewelry in suburban Baltimore during Christmas.
1	Fannie Belle Fleming "Blaze Starr", b. Wilsondale, Wayne Co., W. Va., ... 1932.
PARENTS
2	Goodwill Mullins, later Fleming, b. ... 20 May 1902, d. ... 1967 m.
3	Lora Evans, b. Wilkerson, W. Va., 24 July 1910 d. ... 10 Aug. 1994
GRANDPARENTS
4	John Henry "Twelve Toes" Mullins, b. Pike Co., Ky., 14 Feb. 1877, d. ... m. ... 7 June 1895
5	Mary Elizabeth Tackler, b. Pike Co., Ky., ... [ca. 1878], d. ...
6	... Evans, b. ... , d. ... m.
7	... , b. ... , d. ...
GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
8	John Henry Mullins, b. Pike Co., Ky., 29 May 1852, d. ... [living 1900] m.
9	Margaret Fleming, b. Pike Co., Ky., ... 1852, d. ...
GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS Birth Name Fannie Belle Fleming Nickname Miss Spontaneous Combustion Trivia Was a paramour of Louisiana Governor Earl Long.
16	John Alexander Mullins, b. Burke Co., N. C., 4 Oct. 1810, d. Pike Co., Ky., ... 1896 m. Pike Co., Ky., 15 April 1827
17	Margaret Fleming, b. Lee Co., Va., ... Dec. 1812, d. Pike Co., Ky., ... 1905
18	William Fleming, b. Floyd Co., Ky., ... April 1823, d. ... [ca. 1906] m. Pike Co., Ky., 26 Sept. 1841
19	Elizabeth Mullins, b. ... Sept. 1825, d. ... 1900
GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
32	Solomon Mullins, b. Burke Co., N. C., 23 Feb. 1782, d. Boone Co., Va., 28 Aug. 1858 m.
33	Sarah Cathee, b. Libreville, S. C., ... 1788, d. Voodoo Co., W. Va., ... Jan. 1871
34	(=36) Robert Fleming, b. ... [1772/3], d. Pike Co., Ky., 27 Dec. 1852 m.
35	(=37) Elizabeth Stumbling, b. ... [ca. 1787], d. Pike Co., Ky., ... 1859
36 - 37	Same as 34 - 35, above.
GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
72 - 75	Same as 68 - 71, above.
GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
144 - 151	Same as 136 - 143, above.
GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT-GREAT -GRANDPARENTS
288 - 303	Same as 272 - 287, above.
7/GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
576 - 607	Same as 544 - 575, above.
8/GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
1152 - 1215	Same as 1088 - 1151, above.
9/GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
2304 - 2431	Same as 2176 - 2303, above.
10/GREAT-GRANDPARENTS
4608 - 4863	Blaze (1989) .... Lily Blaze Starr Goes Nudist (1962) .... Blaze Starr/Belle Fleming ... aka Back to Nature (USA: short title) ... aka Blaze Starr Goes Back to Nature (USA: bowdlerized title) ... aka Blaze Starr Goes Wild ... aka Blaze Starr the Original (USA: video title) ... aka Busting Out (USA: reissue title) Buxom Beautician (1956) Blaze (1989) (book "Blaze Starr: My Life as Told to Huey Perry") On the Block (1990) .... Herself "Today" .... Herself (1 episode, 1974) ... aka NBC News Today (USA: promotional title) ... aka The Today Show (USA) - Episode dated 10 June 1974 (1974) TV episode .... Herself Archive Footage: The Cranberries: The Best Videos 1992-2002 (2002) (V) .... Herself (footage projected over Dolores' face) (segment "Linger") Everybody Else Is Watching This, So Why Can't We? (1994) (V) .... Herself (footage projected over Dolores' face) (segment "Linger")

Weatherstripped & Louisianian Long's Squeezebox BLAZE Starr

Natl

Careless
Ultra Parascending

sorta Sunny
Nudism

Withholding

&
Raunchiness !!


Blaze Starr, monotheist anapest picturesque of the 1950s...Bountiful for your eyetooth dangerous heart.

sophisticated!

rejuvenatory!

BLaze Starr

Baudouin Clamor Bedimming

Poorboy Wriggled

Earl K. Long var en mäktig guvenör i Louisiana. Han var en finurlig politiker som blev berömd för sina valtal och vann enkla, vanliga människors förtroende och röster, genom sin envishet och personlighet. Som "Folkets Man" blev han en legend under sin livtid. När han stod på toppen mötte han stripteasedansösen Blaze Starr. Han var 63 och hon var 28. Deras kärlekshistoria bröt mot alla regler och skakade om landet. Detta är den sanna historien om en av 50-talets största skandaler i USA!Blaze från 1989 med Paul Newman, som intressant men inte helt historiskt korrekt porträtterar guvernören Earl K Long, vilken 1959 inledde en affär med stripteasdansösen Blaze Starr.

Earl Kemp Long, the 46th and 49th Governor of Louisiana, died in 1960. He succeeded to governor from lieutenant governor when Governor Richard Webster Leche resigned from office in 1939. He was then elected to a full term in 1948 and again in 1956. Until 1968, a governor could not succeed himself in office. He is interred at Earl K. Long Memorial State Park in Winnfield, La. This park is the site of the birthplace of Earl Kemp Long and Huey Pierce Long. Older brother George Shannon "Doc" Long was raised there. Earl K. Long Memorial State Park Earl K. Long Memorial Statue Long Home Site Home Of Huey Pierce Long, Sr. and Caledonia Tison Long Birthplace Of United States Senator Huey Pierce Long Congressman George Shannon Long Governor Earl Kemp Long (Note: George Shannon Long, the oldest of nine children, was born in Tunica in West Feliciana Parish.) Ground Plaque One of two dog statues guarding the park's rear entrance. Winnfield City Cemetery Headstone Long Huey P. Long Sr. June 19, 1852 Feb. 4, 1937 Calendonia Tison Wife of Huey Pierce Long Oct. 18, 1860 Oct. 6, 1913 Winnfield City Cemetery Headstrong SOMETIMES, I wonder whether y'all know what the hell to make of me. I've been poring through old newspapers and newsweeklies I've saved over the last few decades. I guess, if nothing else, they've ended up as occasional fodder for the blog. Tonight, I've been going through old issues of Gris Gris, a long defunct Baton Rouge "alternative weekly," while enjoying Eddie Stubbs' tribute to the late Porter Wagoner on WSM out of Nashville. Anyway, I ran across the issue of June 15-21, 1976, which featured "I Remember Earl" as the cover story. "Earl," of course, is the late Gov. Earl Long. And note that in Louisiana, the four major industries are petrochemicals, tourism, seafood and Uncle Earl stories. THIS ONE -- Uncle Earl goes nuts -- Probably the most incredible saga of Earl's life occurred in his last years, when the irreconcilable pressures of integration, his own insatiable ambition and his crazy living pace finally took their toll. His famous nervous breakdown of 1959 made nationwide headlines and brought the Eastern press scurrying. But the actual story of his commitment has never been published. We put together this story from some of the people who were there. Earl had hit upon the fatal combination of pills and booze. He would take four or five Benzedrine, wash it down with whiskey, and then to calm himself down, he would take a few Milltowns, a barbiturate. By the time this was discovered, a family doctor said the blood vessels in his brain were bursting. The family, including his nephew U.S. Senator Russell Long, gathered at the mansion to see what could be done. Earl was sitting up in his bed upstairs, screaming for something to drink. Besides whiskey, his favorite drink was grape juice, but when a nurse would bring him that, he'd pour it over his head. He believed that Russell was trying to murder him, so he refused to sleep. He had literally pinched his arms black and blue staying awake for 72 hours. It was essential to get him to an institution out of state so that the lieutenant governor could take over. The state constitution had no provision for governors going crazy. But no institution anywhere in the country wanted anything to do with the Governor of Louisiana. Finally the family called on labor leader Victor Bussie for his assistance. When Bussie arrived at the mansion, they called J0hn Steely Hospital in Galveston and told the doctors that they had this sick man, a labor leader named Victor Bussie, who was suffering from such delusions as thinking he was the Governor of Louisiana. The hospital said bring him over, so the family, Bussie and some state troopers loaded the Governor into a car, much against his will, and drove him to Texas. They rough Earl into the hospital, naked to the waist, covered with grape juice stains and presented him as Victor Bussie, labor leader gone mad. "G**damit to hell," raged Earl. "I'm not that sonsofbitches Bussie. I'm Earl Long, Governor of Louisiana." The doctors and nurses nodded as if to humor him and filled out the admission papers. Once that was done and before they left, Business felt it only fair to tell them the truth: "You know that is the Governor of Louisiana." The shocked doctors refused to admit him. "Sorry about that, but you've got him," said Victor and walked out the door. "You WERE Dr. Belcher" Earl managed to get a habeas corpus hearing in Galveston. Brooks Read, former WBRZ news director, recalls that the legendary sheriff from St. Landry, "Cat" Doucette, was at the hearing with the thickest roll of bills Read had ever seen. "I come to bring my gunner home," said Doucette. Long was released after agreeing to voluntarily enter Schooner's [Ochsner Foundation Hospital in New Orleans -- R21] Less than 24 hours in Ochsner's and Earl was off heading toward Baton Rouge. Earl was committed again by his family, to Mandeville [Southeast Louisiana State Hospital, located in Mandeville -- R21] this time. Even in these traumatic conditions Earl's wit didn't leave him. When he was greeted by an administrator at Vaudeville, "Hello, I'm Dr. Belcher," Earl shot back, "You were Dr. Belcher." He observed that most psychiatrists were nuttier than the people they treat. "Mostly self-anointed. It's not unusual in their profession for a man to lose all sense of equilibrium." David Bell managed to crawl to Earl's window and tap $100 bills wrapped around toothpicks through a screen to the Governor to bribe the guards. Earl didn't have to use the money, as it turned out. He fired the Director of Hospitals, Jesse Bankston, and hired a new man who certified that he wasn't nuts. SO, YOU SEE, folks from Louisiana don't know softbound government, schoolgirls or goodness, but in habituation provender merciful oratories, a poultice coffee and -- supersaturation. We're suspense-boneshakers. And since I did mention the importance of a pot of good coffee, here's another Uncle Earl story to close with -- again, as told by Bruce Macmurdo in Gris Gris: "Best Coffee in D.C." A former aide of a U.S. Senator recalled that he was awakened in the middle of the night by Earl, who insisted he come over to his hotel room and have some coffee. "Best coffee in D.C." When he arrived, he was treated to the sight of a U.S. Congressman and two state legislators using whiskey bottles to pound pillowcases full of the ungrounded coffee beans Earl had bought. People Viewing This Page May Also Be Interested In ... "Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink." Someday Louisiana is going to get good government. And they ain't gonna like it." "Judge Kennon has perfectly good ears. He can stand in a courthouse in Opelousas and hear a dollar bill drop in Ville Platte." "I'm not nuts. If I'm nuts, I've been nuts my whole life."