Cabaret icons

Blog last updated on the 5 August 2025

Cabaret Icons

During the explosion of cabarets in the late 1800s, some seriously legendary women made a name for themselves with their powerful moves that are still used to seduce the crowd today, and by introducing sensuality in a far more liberal manner. This brand-new performance style was surprising yet pleasing for spectators, and showcased femininity in the most heightened fashion. A few of these women started off their career in cabarets that are still in business in the 21st century. Let’s discover the top 13 women who left their mark in the world of glitter and glamour.

Josephine Baker

What a woman! Born in 1906, this American-born entertainer went by many monikers: Joséphine Baker, Bronze Venus, Black Pearl, and Creole Goddess, on account of her ethnicity, but her birth name was Freda Josephine McDonald. She escaped the brutal racial inequality of Missouri and headed to Paris, where she landed her first big gig at La Revue Nègre in 1925.
Noticed for her dazzling dance ability, as well as her African American background, Joséphine made a name for herself at the famous Folies Bergère. Her signature routines included the Charleston, and a routine in which she sported nothing but a beaded necklace and a skirt made out of fake bananas! However, Baker isn’t only remembered for her dancing, singing, or acting, but also for her fantastic personality. She was an active member of the civil rights movement, working closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and even was asked whether she’d want to head-up the movement after his assassination – an offer she turned down, fearing for the safety of her children should she accept.
During World War II, Baker joined the French military and served as an agent of counter espionage, attending diplomatic parties at the Italian and Japanese embassies so she could gather intelligence to feed back to the Resistance. She also hid refugees and French Resistance members in her home outside of the city during the Nazi Occupation. After the war, she was honoured with the medal of the French Resistance and with a Knight of the Legion of honour. Her starry friendship group included Grace Kelly, Mick Jagger, Christian Dior, and even Charles de Gaulle! She was also the first black film star of all time!

Dita Von Teese

Still living it up and treating her audiences to her stunning moves and more than a little show of skin, Heather Renée Sweet – also known as Dita Von Teese – is a worshipped burlesque dancer. She is admired for her many talents including singing, acting, costume designing, and of course cabaret dancing. She’s been in the entertainment business since the early ’90s.

Back in 2016, she starred as a special guest at Crazy Horse Paris, and the tickets sold out instantly! She believes that classy striptease is a work of art that requires creativity and dedication. Now in her fifties, she continues to demonstrate her incredibly sensual moves, and is still invited time and time again to the grandest cabaret stages in the world. Her performance style drives the crowds wild, often featuring enormous props, like a giant powder compact, a functioning bathtub, and most famously, a huge cocktail glass, in which she dances as if she were a garnish!

Gypsy Rose Lee

American burlesque dancer Rose Louise Hovick is best known as Gypsy Rose Lee, and her relationship with her sister and mother was dramatized in the world-famous musical, Gypsy. She grew up in the shadow of her younger sister, the famous actress June Havoc, but later realized that she could become a big name by joining Minsky’s Burlesque. This is where she obtained the status of the elegant yet witty striptease dancer. One evening while she was performing, one of the straps on her dress came loose, accidentally revealing her body to the audience; they were shocked yet astounded, yet they applauded rapturously for the act. This became Gypsy Rose Lee’s nightly gimmick, and it is said that she was the one who transformed the era of striptease.

Fanny Brice

We’re sure you’re familiar with the name… Fanny Brice is the main character of the Broadway Musical and film, Funny Girl. You may not know, however, that the story was based on the story of real-life Ziegfeld Follies star Fanny Brice. Born in 1891, Brice’s dream was to become a Broadway star. She became celebrated as a dancer in Ziegfeld Follies in 1910, displaying her naturally raucous sense of humour. This led to her landing an acting career, playing the role of Baby Snooks on The Baby Snooks Show. She used the song ‘My Man’ as her signature number during burlesque revues, and it subsequently became an audience favourite in the musical, Funny Girl. She eventually made it into Hollywood and became an out-and-out star. Her life story was so intriguing that producer, Ray Stark, decided to write a biographical musical with Barbra Streisand, bringing her to life. Funny Girl was nominated for eight Tony Awards, and was revived on Broadway in 2022.

Sally Rand

Known for performing onstage with ostrich feathers, cancan dancer Sally Rand thought outside the box when it came to creating numbers that would grab an audience’s attention. She pioneered the bubble dance, which, as its name suggests, features a dancer interacting with an enormous transparent balloon, as well as dancing with an ostrich-feather fan, which is now a staple of burlesque dancing the world over. During this era, she was arrested four times for indecent exposure. In the 1920s, she began her career starring in silent films, before going on to pursue her true passion for dancing. She was idealized in show business and around the world for her dances, which tantalized spectators by only revealing a little, whilst hiding the rest of her body behind her props.

Lydia Thompson

Lydia Thompson is the woman responsible for the popularity boom of cabarets in the United States in 1868. She travelled from London to the U.S. and introduced The British Blondes, a British burlesque revue performed by visually striking women. Their trademark was to wear short skirts (shocking for the time!) and to show off their attractive legs. The company’s tour was extended from six months to six years, but caused a negative backlash in the States, where it was deemed improper due to the revue’s scant clothing and saucy jokes. Thompson actually held one of her fiercest critics at gunpoint, for which she was arrested and fined!

La Goulue

Louise Josephine Weber also known as “La Goulue”, is a legend in the cabaret world. Unlike most other dancers, she was not slender, and her character was described by some as distasteful, but she used these qualities to her advantage to attain fame. Born in 1866, Weber started dancing at the age of six and got a taste for attention when performing for the crowds in Élysée-Montmartre. She later became a cancan dancer, and her signature move was lifting her ruffled skirt to reveal her undergarments to the audience! How did she obtain the name “La Goulue” you may ask? Weber gained her name from drinking the audience’s drinks whilst dancing around their tables – goulue means greedy! She met Joseph Oller who was planning to create a legendary cabaret, now known as the Moulin Rouge, and she was recruited to dance there at the age of 23. La Goulue was a favourite of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who frequently painted her for posters advertising performances at the Moulin Rouge; these posters are partly to thank for her endearing legacy. She was and still is thought to be the queen of cancan.

Jane Avril

Jane Avril discovered her passion for dance as a child, and went on to become one of the most famous dancers in the Moulin Rouge. As a young girl, her mother exploited her for money, and she later found herself down and out on the streets, and suffering from a disorder known at the time as ‘St Vitus’ Dance,’ which caused tics and rhythmic movements. It was dance that gave Jane a reason to continue. Known for replacing La Goulue after she left the Moulin Rouge, Avril’s dance style stood out from the rest, due to her incorporation of the mannerisms she’d suffered from during her illness, into her routine – female nervousness and neuroticism were thought to be terribly en vogue at the time, and her style was described as being like an ‘orchid in a frenzy’! She became Toulouse-Lautrec’s new muse, featuring in many of his Moulin Rouge paintings, and he was so enamoured with the young dancer that he wished to marry her. She also had a tempestuous affair with one of the other dancers at the cabaret, May Milton, whom Toulouse-Lautrec also depicted in his posters. Jane’s success peaked in parallel with the peak of ballet’s popularity, when she created the ballet of L’Arc-en-Ciel at the Folies Bergère – this dance was seductive, yet always classy, and never indecent!

Mistinguett

Jeanne Florentine Bourgeois, better known as Mistinguett was a famed French actress, singer, and performer. She lived a full life, spending decades wowing audiences onstage and onscreen. She started her dancing career in Folies Bergères in 1911, and then moved to the Moulin Rouge, like so many of her contemporaries. She performed in nightclubs from then on, up until the ripe old age of 72! Now that’s dedication. She was in high demand throughout her entire life, drawing patrons from across France, the UK, and the States.

Photo Property of History Daily

Carrie Finnell

As a Ziegfeld performer, Carrie Finnell – The Bad Girl of Burlesque – is best known for holding the record for the longest striptease dance, which lasted a whopping 54 weeks! Each week, she’d undo one strap of her costume, telling her fans to come back the following week if they wanted to see even more. Her final performance, in which she removed the last garment, sold out pretty much instantly! This feat also saw her create one of the most iconic garments in burlesque: thinking how she could prolong her year-long striptease, Finnell had the idea to attach tassels to her nipple pasties, and thus was born her greatest gimmick! It then became a regular feature of her performance to make her breasts dance, so that the tassels spun round, making her look like ‘a twin engine bomber,’ according to fellow dancer, Ann Corio. Whilst stripping had been invented long before, Finnell was thought to be the pioneer of the striptease, making it into a seductive and tantalizing artform. She also encouraged Gypsy Rose Lee to pursue a similar career.

Mae West

Considered as the 15th greatest female screen legend of all time by the American Film Institute, Mae Jane West, born in 1893, was the archetypal sex symbol of the 1920s. She first demonstrated herself to be a talent at the age of three, performing for her family members, and made her stage debut at age five. She got her big break starring in the Broadway comedy show, À La Broadway, and then added more strings to her bow as a director and playwright. One of her plays was so sexually explicit that it landed her an eight-day stint in jail! However, West proved that there is truly ‘no such thing as bad press,’ and became even more of an icon as a result! By age 38, she was scoring lead roles in films, and had signed on with Paramount Pictures. Her stardom knew no bounds!

Bettie Page

Bettie Mae Page was simply walking around Coney Island when she was spotted by a budding photographer, and thus was born the most iconic pin-up career in history. She was sought after as a model the world over, and is one of the most famous Playboy models ever. Her jet black bangs are an instantly recognisable feature, inspiring the stylings of Dita Von Teese and Katy Perry. You may well have even seen her likeness in tattoo form, as her pin-up image became a universal sex-symbol statement. On top of that, Page featured in more than 50 burlesque films – they may not have been to everybody’s taste, but they certainly garnered her some recognition!

Blaze Starr

Fannie Belle Fleming, known by her stage name, Blaze Starr, stood out from other performers with her voluminous red hair, her boundary-pushing entertainment style, and of course her curvaceous body. Onstage, she would perform with wild animals like black panthers, and her signature trademark was to perform a dance routine atop a couch that appeared to burst into flames the moment she sat down! While working in the French Quarter in New Orleans in the late 1950s, she obtained even more notoriety after being caught having an affair with Louisiana Governor, Earl Kemp Long.

They made history…

There you have it: a long history of performers who made history and helped cabarets evolve to what they are today. Take a stroll through some of Paris’ memorable cabarets still up and running till this day, and see for yourself what all the fuss is about!

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