Georgia Sothern

Georgia Sothern was born Hazel Anderson in 1909 in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia started her career in show business performing on stage in her uncle's vaudeville act. Sothern grew up in a poor family and had a tough time as a kid: Her father abandoned the family while both her mother and uncle died when Sothern was still only in her early teens. Alone and on her own at the age of thirteen, Georgia came up with a fake birth certificate claiming she was seventeen years old, found herself an agent, and became a burlesque striptease performer with the popular burlesque outfit Minsky's in New York City. Known as The Human Dynamo due to her extremely fast and vivacious style of dancing, Sothern not only soon established herself as a top attraction along the Eastern wheel of burlesque, but also was a headliner at clubs in such towns as Miami, Boston, Buffalo, and New York. Moreover, in the early 1940's Georgia was featured as a main dancer in Mike Todd's hugely successful Broadway musical revue "Star and Garter" along with fellow burlesque legends Lili St. Cyr and Gypsy Rose Lee. Georgia went on to join the James E. Strates Carny tour for a period of twenty-eight weeks as well as was a featured performer in Phil Silvers's Cavalcade of Burlesque in 1952. One of the most hard-working performers in burlesque, Sothern was still plugging away well into her sixties before eventually retiring in 1977. She wrote an autobiography called "Georgia: My Life in Burlesque" that was published in 1972. Georgia died of cancer on October 14, 1981 in New York City.