For decades, Blaze Starr performed her elaborate striptease act at a club she owned in Baltimore and in hundreds of other nightspots. Her affair with Louisiana’s governor, Earl Long, became a national scandal in the 1950s. It was a story later dramatized in a 1989 film.
Starr, who said she regretted nothing in her adventurous life, died Monday at her home in Wilsondale, W.Va. She was 83.
Starr was barely in her teens when she left her West Virginia hometown in 1947 to escape poverty.
Starr began working near the Quantico Marine base in Virginia at a place called the Quonset Hut and eventually moved to Baltimore. Her manager suggested the name “Starr Blaze,” but she thought it sounded better the other way around.
Without prompting, Starr gladly revealed her dimensions: 38DD-23-37. She even wrote a song about herself, called, naturally, “38DD.”
In time, Starr became, in the words of filmmaker John Waters, “the best tourist attraction that Baltimore ever had.”
Starr’s lusty life included many high-profile affairs — including, she claimed, with two presidents and two vice presidents. Except for John F. Kennedy, she didn’t reveal names.
She was asked in 1988 whether she would do anything differently with her life. “Not a thing,” she said. “I would just do a lot more of it, and try a lot harder — and seduce a lot more men.”
