Tuesday, August 8, 2017

August 8, 1933 -- Sally Rand Appears in Women's Court



August 8, 1933 -- Women’s Court hosts Sally Rand, “whose widely publicized nudity is keeping her busy putting on half a dozen shows daily in a loop theater and at the World’s Fair.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1933] Listening to a police officer say that her fan dance “made his pulse beat more quickly … [Rand] looked on … with apparent satisfaction.”  At the conclusion of the court case the dancer is fined $25 for staging an indecent performance in the Chicago Theater.  Judge Erwin J. Hasten, the jurist on the bench, says to Rand, whom he calls Sally, “The purpose of this judgment is not in a vindictive, punitive sense.  I’m merely trying to gain this end: that Sally, if she is to continue dancing in Chicago, put on some clothes.”  Rand appears in her own defense.  When the Assistant States Attorney “with a display of nervousness” asks Rand if she could not dance just as well with “the essential parts of her body covered,” she replies, “I cawn’t answer that, because I don’t know what the ‘essential’ parts of my body are …The reason I wear nothing but the fans in my dance is because the feathers catch in my clothing if I wear any, preventing me from using my fans in the way I wish to use them.” 


August 8, 1932:  After a dedication address by United States Senator from Illinois Otis F. Glenn, a 20-foot by 30-foot flag of the United States is raised for the first time to the top of the new 90-foot flagpole atop Tribune Tower in a dedication held on the thirty-fifth floor of the building.  In his dedication speech Senator Glenn says, “History has been made where this flag shall henceforth fly.  The first founders of Chicago settled on the land where the Tribune Tower now stands.  Fort Dearborn was here – almost within a stone’s throw Abraham Lincoln was nominated for the presidency.  Here from a great swamp has grown a great, strenuous, vital city, teeming with four million vigorous, progressive Americans.”  [Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1932]  The proceedings are broadcast over W.G.N. radio and from ten loudspeakers around Tribune Tower to the street below.

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