April March: The First Lady of Burlesque

How delightful that April March (Velma Fern Worden, b. 1935) has a June birthday! Mark your calendar — I certainly did! April March is still very much with us, feted and lauded as one of the vaunted Legends of Burlesque at the annual Miss Exotic World celebration in Las Vegas, and featured in Leslie Zemeckis’s 2010 film Behind the Burley Q, which is surely how I first learned about her. She is one of the last of the old cohort.

Originally from Oklahoma City, April March was fifteen when she married the first of her eight husbands, and seventeen when she got a job as a cigarette girl at a local nightclub (having recently gotten divorced). This led to employment as a stripper at a Dallas night club run by Barney Weinstein, a competitor of Jack Ruby’s. She worked up an act that stressed her grace, innocence, and class, dancing to songs that were commissioned for her act, “Blues for April” and “Springtime for April”. Later, her resemblance to Jackie O earned her the nickname “The First Lady of Burlesque”. Her career took her all over North America and the U.K., performing alongside the likes of Candy Barr, Lili St. Cyr,Blaze Starr, Ann Corio, Rose La Rose, Fanne Foxe, and Billy “Cheese and Crackers” Hagan.

In 1964 her excellence as a golfer got her written up in Sports Illustrated. The following year, she danced in Jim Henson’s short film, Time Piece, the only known film of her act. Her affairs included the likes of Mel Torme, western star Dale Robertson (Tales of Wells Fargo, Iron Horse), country singer Hank Thompson, and congressman Wilbur Mills, whom she fobbed off on Fanne Foxe, leading to a 1974 scandal. There were also adventures with Arabian King Saud in Miami, and more than one shooting incident at clubs where she was performing. She retired in 1978 because the business had gotten too seedy — she found herself being booked as an opening act for porn films.

Her memoir Reflections of My Life was published in 2016. In 2018 she was the subject of Craig Martin’s documentary Becoming April March. I had the good fortune to be present when she presented in a panel in the 2013 at the New York Burlesque Festival. See my account here!

For more on show biz history,pleaseconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.