Southern Nevada lost a legend last month when burlesque queen Tempest Storm, who was pals with Frank Sinatra and dated both Elvis Presley and John F. Kennedy, died at her Las Vegas apartment at age 93.
I first met the red-headed sensation in June 1983 when she was a 55-year-old dancer and I was a 26-year-old reporter assigned to cover Star ’80 at the Sahara hotel, an event billed as the world’s first exotic dancer convention.
You could call Tempest Storm a dancer or a classical cabaret vedette, but I made the mistake of referring to her line of work as “stripper.” Tempest Storm was quick to set me straight. She argued that there was a distinct difference between a stripper and a professionally trained headline performer in a revue.
“Burlesque is sensuous moves, expression, showing your personality with your eyes and your smile,’ ” she would tell a Sun reporter some 30 years later. “I was always a class act.”
Who could blame her for being angry at me? I heartlessly reduced what had been — and what would be — her entire life’s work to the lowest common denominator.
Tempest Storm strived to make the word “tease” the main component of the word “striptease.”
She long remained a hit with the fans who appreciated her efforts as a rare veteran of what always has been — and always will be — a young woman’s game. She was in tremendous world-wide demand even in her later years.
In 1952, Tempest Storm came to Southern Nevada and first performed at the Embassy Burlesque Club on North Main Street in North Las Vegas for five years before moving in 1957 to the old Dunes Hotel where the Bellagio now stands.
Storm last performed on the Strip at age 59 in 1987 at the old Hacienda. She moved to Las Vegas permanently in 2005, where she was inducted into the Burlesque Hall of Fame.
Storm was — among others like burlesque performers Gypsy Rose Lee, Blaze Starr, Sally Rand and El Rancho Vegas show luminary Lili St. Cyr — a pioneer in the effort to bring burlesque from seedy dark, Depression-era joints into the light of a modern mainstream art form.
To the very end, Storm — born Annie Blanche Banks in Eastman, Ga., on Feb. 29, 1928 — was involved in burlesque. So much so that local exotic dancers Miss Redd and Kalani Kokonuts were at her bedside along with longtime business partner Harvey Robbins when Storm died.
From humble beginnings, Storm dropped out of school to work at age 13 and was twice divorced by age 15. She moved to Hollywood in 1951 at age 23. She was offered the stage name of either Sunny Day or Tempest Storm, and reluctantly took the latter.
Soon she was earning $60 a week — a lot money for a woman wage earner at that time. In 1957, she legally changed her name to Tempest Storm. In the mid-1950s, Storm signed a $100,000-a-year contract for 10 years with a burlesque company — said to be the highest amount ever paid to any performer in burlesque history.
Storm also was featured in 21 movies and TV shows, and in 1959, married Hollywood’s “singing black cowboy” Herb Jeffries at a time when interracial marriages were unacceptable to many. She later claimed the eight-year marriage cost her a profitable career in anything but R-rated films with a lot of gratuitous nudity.
Storm’s final — and tragic — stage performance was in June 2010, where she fractured her hip and suffered a concussion during a fall. In a November 2010 Sun interview, Storm admitted she feared returning to the stage and potentially falling in her high heels again.
Storm got to know many celebrities. One friend, Sinatra, introduced her as a member of the audience during a performance at Caesars Palace. Storm dated both President Kennedy and Elvis and opined that, had she and the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll stayed together, she could have helped Presley live a better life. Storm said she never drank alcohol, did not smoke and never took drugs.
Storm, who once played Carnegie Hall, announced her retirement from regular performance at age 67 in 1995 but continued to work in occasional stage shows until the 2010 fall at age 82.
Tempest Storm will long be remembered for her creative boldness yet sweet demeanor on stage.
Las Vegas is indeed diminished by her loss.
Ed Koch is a former longtime Sun reporter.