A star is born
Storm made her burlesque debut in the late 1940s, and it didn’t take long before audiences were hooked. Her routines weren’t cheap strip acts — they were carefully choreographed performances dripping with glamour. Dressed in rhinestone-studded gowns, she teased with elegance, not just shock.
”I was more respectable then”, she remembered in an interview in 1973.
”You had to wear net panties and a net bra plus jeweled pasties – you couldn’t wear a G-string”.
By the mid-1950s, Tempest was reportedly making $100,000 a year — nearly $950,000 in today’s money. Her famous curves were so legendary that Lloyd’s of London allegedly insured her breasts for $1 million. The headlines had a field day, dubbing her “Tempest in a D-Cup” and “The Girl Who Goes 3-D Two Better.”
She shared stages with icons like Blaze Starr and Lili St. Cyr and appeared in burlesque films such as Teaserama (1955) and Buxom Beautease (1956) alongside Bettie Page. These films, daring for their era, blurred the lines of comedy, sexuality, and censorship.
