Fading divas
The mission to save the memory of burlesque came about largely by accident.

While visiting U.C.L.A. to do research for her dissertation on Las Vegas in the 50s and 60s, Red Tremmel heard tell of Dixie’s Exotic World Museum. A grad student at University of Chicago, Red was a stranger to both the Mojave Desert and burlesque. But her curiosity was piqued, so she took the trek out of L.A. and into the past.

She was particularly riveted by the museum’s proprieter. Evans, once billed as the “Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque,” performed a rapid-fire history of her art form, studded with first-hand anecdotes of a campy, glittering past.

Red realized the world enshrined at Dixie’s museum was passing away before her eyes. Dixie, already in her 80s, wasn’t the only burlesque queen on the premises. She shared the grounds with a few of her former colleagues, some stricken with cancer. Dixie also served as caretaker for the ashes of several burlesque performers who’d already passed on.