Chickee Lane
A renowned burlesque performer in early New York, Miss Lane jiggled and jived at the Arlove Theatre on East 14th Street. Celebrated as the original Koochee Coochee Girl, she was a beacon for poor garment workers and the down and out. Throngs, erupting from tenement sweatshops, marched daily from Cherry and Orchard to see her perform. Craving a mere glimpse, this “fresh off the boat crowd” nursed cheap cocktails as they stood in awe of the bangs and booms of Chickee’s erotic disrobing.
Even the wealthy enjoyed the performances. In contrast they arrived at the Arlove already liquored up and incognito. When the show was over the tired, hungry, and poor retired to flop houses and beds rented by the hour. They were desperate for a bit of shut eye before another grueling workday in the “Rag Trade” of the Lower East Side. The wealthy headed to speakeasys and opium dens, or home to beds of luxury. Miss Lane stripped for all of them in the decades before the Great War. Americans, poor and far from native lands or monied bourgeoisie from uptown apartments, the whole rainbow melted into the audience of Chickee “Boom” Lane.
Even at the height of the 30’s depression multitudes of down and outers were at the Arlove theatre. Radical cigar smoking Lesbian feminists in need of free meals scrounged up tickets just to see Miss Lane. Drunk on cheap liquor, they threw flowers at Chickee screaming “Drive us Insane, Make it Rain!” Responding, the Koochee Coochee Girl sprayed them with beer, then slid, umbrella in hand, across the liquor soaked stage and stopped to a skid in her splits finale. These infamous jiggles at the Theatre Arlove were a respite for so many dreary lives. The drunken mass went crazy.
Chickee Lane was an immigrant too after all. During Tsarist times she journeyed to America from Minsk, the capitol of White Russia. It was before the Revolution. Like most impoverished peoples, this young girl traveled steerage.
Boom Jigga Boom! (Cont.)
Chickee Continued . . .
As she tells it, conditions were rough and the voyage hard. The passengers were crowded and desperate. To survive this journey across the sea, they stayed sane by dancing. The chosen form was the Humba, a primitive gypsy love dance, a dance of seduction. Their minds stayed distracted from the suffering at hand. It helped with sea sickness too.
Arriving at Ellis Island, Chickee (an Americanized version of her Yiddish name - Chickalah Rene Boinsteen) pleaded with the dancers to teach her their ways. She craved knowledge of the Roma love traditions. Her mother Phyllis and her loving uncle, Tio Toadie Shmuel Boinstein, were on the journey as well. They had other ambitions for the smart young girl constantly nagging her to be a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or even Certified Public Accountant. But in this new land Chickalah knew her destiny was to please the masses. Her journey would be as a siren with waves of her torso in ritualistic dance.
So came the infamously famous career of Chickee Boom Lane, the original happy Koochee Coochee girl of lower Manhattan. She titillated many. Sad soldiers and veteran dough-boys, “women craving women”, all were her congregants through hard times and tough luck.
Thank you Chickee, (Miss Lane), for your life, inspiration, and fervor keeping the downtrodden hopeful during the roughest of history. You are an American institution, an icon. May the Boom be a national treasure for eternity or longer. God bless America. God bless our newcomers. God bless dances of seduction.
Boom Jigga Boom! Boom! Boom!