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A sight to behold at The Bellevue Theatre 360 College Street, Toronto, ON - which had now become The Lux.

Photo - Cup Cakes Cassidy in Front of the Lux Theatre in 1959. Photo from the Toronto Star, April 10, 2016.

For the opening of the Lux in 1959, the owner of the theatre, Elliot Abells, flew in the famous stripper “Cup Cakes Cassidy” for a one-night performance.

Taking to the stage on May 28, 1961, Cup Cake Cassidy punctuated the end of another of Toronto’s notoriously prudish Sunday prohibitions with every shake of her hips. Under purple spotlights, the buxom burlesque star performed the bump-and-grind on the Lux Theatre’s runway to the accompaniment of live musicians. In celebration of a new law, passed by council on May 23, that allowed theatrical performances on Sundays,

The operator of the Lux, Elliott Abels (or Abells), flew Cassidy, one of the continent’s most popular stripteasers and a regular performer in Toronto, in from the States for a special one-day, four-performance engagement. By her second show, a crowd of four hundred—including, the Globe reported, “a number of couples and more than a dozen women who entered individually and were well past 40.” The whistling and stomping, the journalist added, reached “deafening proportions” as, bit by bit, the six-foot-tall brunette seductively shed her elaborate, jewelled gown - Kevin Plummer C/- D H News.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -