Ann Corio

Ann Corio was a destined to be a star from the time she was born, as soon as she was a teen she began performing and became an amazing American burlesque ecdysiast and actress. Corio was one of twelve children of Italian immigrants from Naples who settled in Hartford Connecticut. At age 16 Corio's father died, she was working as a dancer at the time, Ann shortly discovered she could earn much more on the burlesque circuit.

Corio's good looks along with her gorgeous auburn hair, green eyes and shapely physique landed her showgirl roles that led to her becoming a hugely popular striptease artist. Working in New York City, she was a star performer at clubs such as the famous Minsky's Burlesque and Boston's old Howard Theatre. Ann Corio was amazing on stage and within one year she became a headliner. However, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia closed down the "bawdy" houses in 1939 and Corio made her way to Los Angeles.

Between 1941 and 1944 she appeared in several Hollywood "B" motion pictures which featured her in scantly clad costumes, the best known of which was perhaps 1941's Swamp Woman and 1942's Jungle Siren. During WWII she became one of the volunteer pinup girls for YANK magazine a weekly U.S. Army publication and she appeared on the September 3, 1943 issue.

"What is called burlesque today isn't that at all. Those girls aren't artists. They just take clothes off, and they don't even do that very well. Burlesque is exactly what it says it is. It's from the Italian word burlare, to satirize, to laugh. That's what we do, and we are not offensive.'' she said this in 1976 regarding burlesque and her Broadway show This Was Burlesque. I wonder what Ann would think of burlesque now and some of today's great burlesque artists like Dita Von Tease, Immodesty Blaize or Jamie deadly. Ann passed in 1999 at the Englewood Hospital in Englewood, N.J.