GetOut Magazine

Retired A.J. stripper featured in play
By MAX McQUEEN
Get Out
Nov. 24, 2002

The sexual revolution stopped baby-boomer strippers in their tracks.

Just ask Angel CeCe Walker, known as Satans Angel on the strip club circuit of the 60s and 70s. This is what the retired Apache Junction stripper did to keep her customers happy: Shed set fire to tassels on her breasts, navel and cheeks (not the ones on her face), then shed twirl faster and faster until her self-made breeze blew out the flames. Talk about a surefire gimmick.

However, when the sexual revolution took hold in the 70s, the upcoming generation of strippers didnt have a routine. They just took off their clothes.

Anyone can do that; it takes a real artist to strip, says the 58-year-old Walker, the subject of Have Tassels Will Travel, the newest play by Valley playwright Terry Earp.

The strippers who were popular in my time such as Blaze (Starr) and Tempest were real ladies, notes Walker, following a question-and-answer session with playgoers who had just seen Earp as Walker in Tassels at On the Spot Theatre.

You had to be beautiful. Not just nice-looking, but beautiful. You had to have grace. And style. You had to have more class on stage than you did off.

Despite a death-defying act no one has repeated to this day, Walker considered herself in the company of Depression-era exotic dancers such as Gypsy Rose Lee and Sally the Fan Dancer Rand. They each had a gimmick that was theirs alone.

In my day, you couldnt touch yourself on stage. You couldnt make movements that insinuated anything sexual, says Walker, so you had to develop some kind of act. I knew a stripper who would lay on a slanted board and juggle three Chihuahuas with her feet like they were apples. But she always wore a bikini bra and panties while tumbling those doggies.

From 1964 to 1984, Walker made and spent a fortune turning mens heads from St. Louis to Saigon. But a New York engagement prompted her sudden retirement. Although she was top billed, an opening act stole her thunder by going totally nude, which Walker had never done. And never would.

I peeked through the curtain to see what she was up to. And for 20 minutes she was butt-naked. I wont even say what she was doing. I knew when it was my time to go on, the fellows would be expecting the same, Walker says.

The curtain went up. But Satans Angel did not go on. The manager was fit to be tied, but Walker had other plans: I said nothing in the world would make me do that. He said I had to or I would never work his place again. I shot back, I have news for you: Ill never work anywhere again. Im quitting.

With that, Walker turned her back on a lucrative showbiz career that had her living in the lap of luxury. In fact, money was the only reason she got into stripping. In San Francisco in the early 60s, shed seen a very bad stripper make $100 for a five-minute routine. Walker was making $90 every two weeks at a phone company. It took a split second for the busty young Catholic to conclude she was in the wrong business.

Two decades of performing for all kinds of men would surely give Walker enough material for an insightful biography. It could be a tell-all, too, as Walker had such dissimilar lovers as the late singer Bobby Darin, actor/director Clint Eastwood and Phoenix comedian Rusty Knockers Up Warren.

Until Earp approached Walker about writing a play about her life, Walker didnt realize just how interesting her life has been. Any book would have to include Walkers years in a topless all-girl band and Bob Hopes USO Tours, not to mention full recoveries from a near-fatal motorcycle accident and cocaine addiction.

This play is nothing compared to my whole life. Terry would have to write part one and part two and part three, Walker says. Ill tell you this, though: The womens movement spelled doom for independent women like me. My life was much better before the sexual revolution I dont care how liberated we are or how many bras we burned.

IF YOU GO

What: Have Tassels Will Travel
Where: On the Spot Theatre, 4700 N. Central Ave., Phoenix
When: 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat. Ends Dec. 14.
How much: $13-$15
Info: