by Michelle Carr This interview was originally published in the September 11, 1997 Velvet Hammer souvenir programme.

Velvet Hammer: But back to burlesque. Tell us about some of the dancers you’ve worked with. What were they like?
Anton LaVey: There were two types of girls, the fast girls and the honorable girls with the bad reputations because they happened to look sharp with hair and makeup and clothes. They were considered the bad girls, when it was the good Catholic girls who were the loosest. Appearances were deceptive then. I was like a fish in water when I was able to get into the burly world. I worked with Sally Keith, the tassel twirler, Betty Roland, the bouncing bombshell, and Lily St. Cyr within four months from when I started playing. There was a chorus line, then the headliners, like Tempest Storm and Zorita. They had their own pecking order too, a sort of hierarchy. Tempest broke the sound barrier with the help of Pete De Cenzie. She didn’t mention it in her autobiography, but he was the one who put her name up in lights. He really made her. Tempest was the first known to the straight outside world, mainstream, and so was the first to break that barrier in the modern burlesque world. Most had been dancing since they were 13 or 14. That was standard operating procedure, saying that they were 22. Every girl I met in burlesque was 22. I never worked East Coast burly shows, mainly Bay Area and L.A. You worked with certain drummers, sax players — you worked the same circuit. A good burly drummer...you can’t teach these kids, they don’t know what it’s like to be sparing, to be thrifty and really explicit, to watch the movements of a dancer, to take every nuance and do it on the drum. That’s what I’ve always tried to do with the organ. When you get a drummer that can give a little kiss on the cymbal or a rim shot to accentuate a move, these kids can’t do it. I’ve yet to find a contemporary musician that can play an exotic beat, a jungle or burly beat. “Strange Enchantment,” “Ravel’s Bolero.” A drummer that can bring a whisper to a crescendo climax over a period of 12 minutes is hard to find. Symphony or Las Vegas show drummers can do it. But I don’t count them ’cause you couldn’t get them into a burly pit and do a grind show.

Velvet Hammer: Do you ever go to strip bars just for kicks anymore? If so, which is your favorite?
Anton LaVey: I don’t go to strip bars anymore. I used to go incognito, trouble was they always thought I was an undercover cop.

Velvet Hammer: Have you ever thought about opening up a ”satanic gentlemen’s club”?
Anton LaVey: We thought about it a long time ago — “Szandor’s Hell Gate,” but it never came to fruition. More like a funhouse atmosphere, crossing the River Styx, blow holes to blow up the women’s skirts — this was in ’66 or ’67. I’m sure it will come to pass very soon that there will be something like that. But the average person doesn’t have that much imagination. They just want to be entertained. They want to have the tableau presented for them. They don’t want to participate beyond a certain point. They want the safety of the herd, to be catered to, sit back and enjoy. It’s just as well too.

Velvet Hammer: What’s your opinion on boob jobs?
Anton LaVey: Well, I don’t have an opinion. It’s the results, well...bars do not a prison make. Marilyn Monroe’s breasts were not big, Jayne Mansfield was big, but not by today’s standards. She made the most of what she had. She pulled her stomach in and used those built-up bras. I appreciate a balanced body, a wasp waist, full hips and breasts. I’m not that impressed by big breasts per se, but I’m from a different era. I’ve always been a leg man and a butt man. I like the lower half. Like the saying goes, ”What nature has forgotten we can pad with cotton!” You can always build up some breasts. Hopefully by bringing back burlesque, you’ll bring back the kind of body that’s round on top and round on bottom. I love cellulite and stretch marks!

This is the conclusion of our interview with Doctor LaVey, however, as an added bonus, we dug deeper into the recesses of the doctor’s personality, likes and dislikes, etcetera, and had him fill out the same personality profile that our Velvet Hammer girls filled out.

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