Charmion

disrobing trapeze artist / 1900s


Charmion - The World's Most Perfect Woman

(from Wikipedia)

Laverie Vallee née Cooper (July 18, 1875 – February 6, 1949), best known by her stage name Charmion, was an American
vaudeville trapeze artist and strongwoman whose well-publicized suggestive performance was captured on film in 1901.

Career Trapeze Disrobing Act

A native of Sacramento, Charmion built her act around a memorable routine which opened with her on-stage entrance dressed in full
Victorian street attire. She subsequently mounted the trapeze and disrobed down to her acrobat leotards in the midst of the trapeze's
swinging motion. She appears to have begun performing while in her late teens and this was part of her repertoire at least as early as
May 1, 1898, and possibly before 1896, when her act was seen by critic George Jean Nathan when he was a boy.

Charmion performed a version of this then-risqué striptease for an Edison short film, "Trapeze Disrobing Act", on November 11, 1901.
Two men are pictured in the film as an on-screen audience, applauding Charmion, and catching her clothes. This was deemed necessary so that
the men in the actual audience would have a visual cue to enjoy the performance, instead of reacting with disgust, as polite society then demanded:

"Tom Gunning has called early cinema an exhibitionist cinema rather than a voyeuristic one as Christian Metz defines it. While this may be true, historically this rupturing of a self-
enclosed fictional world usually mediated the spectators' experiences in ways that facilitated their voyeurism, not undermined it. This is evident in Trapeze Disrobing Act , made that fall.


- Charmion being filmed by early Edison kinescope -
The performer in this studio production was probably Charmion, whose "risque disrobing act on the flying trapeze" was popular at the turn of the century. Although her striptease was performed
for the camera and cine-viewers, the two male spectators inside the mise-en-scène authorized the film spectators' voyeurism. Such pictures were so "hot" that the Victorian males' repressive
psychic mechanisms had to be allayed if these patrons were to find the intended pleasure rather than voyeurism. Produced for burlesque houses and "smokers," these films were by
male filmmakers and for male spectators."

from Before the Nickelodeon by Charles Musser (University of California Press/1991)


- Buffalo (NY) Times / August 11, 1901 (pg.6) -                      - San Franciso (CA) Chronicle / October 28, 1901 (pg.1) -

- Buffalo (NY) Times / June 28, 1902 (pg.6) -                      - San Franciso (CA) Chronicle / October 28, 1901 (pg.1) -



- Buffalo (NY) Times / August 11, 1901 (pg.6) -




- Washington (DC) Evening Star / March 14, 1903 (pg.4) -                    - Stockton (CA) Eve-Record / August 18, 1904 (pg.5) -                    - Hartfort (CT) Courant / December 31, 1904 (pg.5) -


- Boston Globe / December 10, 1905 (pg.27) -                    - Atlanta (GA) Constitution / August 15, 1905 (pg.5) -                    - Atlanta (GA) Constitution / August 15, 1905 (pg.5) -


- Bridgeport (CT) / April 29, 1909 (pg.3) -


- Bridgeport (CT) Times / May 4, 1909 (pg.3) -                    - Arkansas Democrat / November 7, 1909 (pg.18) -                    - Arkansas Democrat / November 7, 1909 (pg.18) -


- Scranton (PA) Truth / April 4, 1910 (pg.8) -           - Scranton (PA) Truth / April 5, 1910 (pg.16) -           - New York Sun / August 21, 1910 (pg.30) -


- San Francisco Chronicle - July 1904 -

Vallee died in Santa Ana, California at the age of 73.

Programs:

  • 1909 B.F. Keith 5th Avenue Theatre Vaudeville-Kinetograph program

    • Return to Index of Performers