The Troc Burlesque Theater operated in Philadelphia from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. During it’s glory years, all of the top burlesque acts performed there including Tempest Storm, Gypsy Rose Lee, Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr and Dixie Evans. By the 1970’s however, burlesque was in decline and the strippers who traveled from city to city were performing to dwindling audiences.

In 1974, Robert Adler was given unprecedented access to the theater and photographed the dancers both on and off stage, documenting the last days of burlesque.

Photographing The Series Backstage at the Troc

The Troc, and the women who performed there, always fascinated me. I never went there as a teenager, although most of my friends made occasional pilgrimages down to its Arch Street location to catch a Friday night show. I walked in for the first time when I was in my twenties after I had been given an assignment to photograph a stripper for one of my clients. The Troc was the natural spot to carry out this mission. It was only a couple of blocks from my studio, so I stopped by to talk to the manager about hiring one of the dancers to pose for me.

The manager was a physically imposing, Runyonesque character; a big man with a weathered face that looked like it had been in too many fights. I nervously approached him with my request, but my fears were unfounded. He turned out to be a gentle giant. Soft-spoken and very accommodating, he agreed to introduce me to some of the dancers.

Walking together through the theater, we entered a side door that led to the backstage area where we encountered DiDi. A voluptuous, raven-haired fantasy gift wrapped in sequins, she was hanging out with her boyfriend before going on stage. After a brief introduction, she graciously agreed to let me photograph her for my project. The session took about twenty minutes, and then she walked to the stage to begin her performance. I put down my camera gear and watched spellbound from the wings.

There she was, seductively dancing and stripping in front of a small audience of solitary, faceless men. Her glistening, almost-naked body undulated and shimmy’d to the pulsating disco music that blared through the Troc’s antiquated speakers. It was hypnotic; it was pure sleaze; it was the Vargas poster come-to-life that generations of pubescent male teenagers dreamed about at 2:00 a.m. when they couldn’t fall asleep. I’d been transported back in time to that primal, sexually innocent era.

As I looked around I couldn't help but notice the rundown theatrical environment. I knew I needed to come back and do a photographic series about the Troc. Before leaving, I told the manager I'd like to return and do some more shooting. He said I could come back any time and he’d have his employees buzz me backstage. But I’d still have to work out my own arrangements with the dancers. The project was a “go.”

I was apprehensive the first day I shot at the Troc. Only a few days had passed since my first photo session with DiDi. She was still performing there when I returned, so I immediately sought her out and gave her a print of one of the shots from our first session. She really loved it, and introduced me to some of the other dancers who were working there that day.

I found out from speaking to these strippers that many of them were on a circuit traveling around the East Coast from city to city, theater to theater. It was a tough, lonely life. Most of the time they traveled to the different venues by bus, and the money they made from performing barely covered their expenses and per diem needs. They usually stayed in cheap hotels near the theater and some of them used their off hours to engage in prostitution. Others traveled with their boyfriends or hooked up with a guy when they first arrived in a town and stayed with him until they moved on. I kept being reminded of old black and white movies in which vaudeville entertainers went from town to town as sequences of steam locomotive powered trains flashed by on the screen.

Spending time in that theater felt like being in an old movie. The Troc was built over a hundred years ago and opened as the Trocadero. In its heyday, it was one of the most elegant venues in town, offering the period's best show business and burlesque acts. All the biggest names performed there through the depression, the war years, and into the late 1950’s, until the decline of high-class burlesque began to take its toll. The theater mirrored the art form’s descent, as it fell into decay and disrepair.

One of the things I noticed when I started shooting there was that the Troc had never had a complete remodeling. Nothing was ever removed. Instead, improvements over the years were made piecemeal—one on top of another. It was impossible to look at the interior walls around the stage without time traveling through the theater’s storied history courtesy of the faded posters, former performer’s autographs on the dressing rooms' walls, and the tarnished counterweights, and frayed ropes of the rigging system.

Burlesque was going through its final transformation at this time. Strip clubs and topless bars were beginning to pop up around the country. While old time burlesque’s days were numbered, these women refused to surrender, still considering themselves performers in the true show business tradition. Many of them moonlighted as dancers in GoGo bars and strip joints, but it was at the Troc where they took their dancing and performance skills seriously. They all had expensive custom-made costumes, and some of them even continued their in-theater role of "Burlesque Queen" out in the real world, beyond the confines of the theater.

Those confines would accurately be described as “filthy.” Layers of dust and grime covered everything and the dressing rooms were a mess. But somehow, the dancers would find a way to settle in and make these rooms into their personal refuges. When I first began shooting at the Troc, I noticed those doors were never closed. Watching the dancers getting ready for a performance or relaxing afterwards, I realized I was in a very different place than the predictable, safe world I was accustomed to. The air was always thick with danger, sensuality and anticipation.

When I felt it was appropriate, I would introduce myself to some of the new performers and explain why I was there. I’d ask if I could photograph them, and most of them agreed. The run down setting and the partially clad dancers seamlessly merged as I started taking my pictures. The women were exhibitionists by nature and enjoyed posing for me. But although the dancers were friendly enough, I still felt an underlying sense of suspicion.These women lived in a world of hustling and exploitation. They made a living using their sexuality to take advantage of the unfulfilled erotic needs and fantasies of the customers. Yet their short-lived power over their audience was in direct contrast to the helplessness of their situation when dealing with management and society. As if that situation wasn't difficult enough, those negotiations were often conducted while they were half naked.

The dancers generally viewed all men as predators who were trying to hit on them, and seemed to enjoy the feeling of control they experienced in these interactions. I was honest enough with myself to know that I was not viewed any differently. Because of this, I quickly realized I had to be totally straight with these women; that was the only way to earn their trust. If they thought I was trying to pull the wool over their eyes, they would see right through the attempt and refuse to pose for me.

Most of the dancers I met were loners. The men in their lives were often gangsters, pimps or drug dealers, and if they traveled with a man, it was usually for protection. Many were drug users themselves. It was a lifestyle fraught with visible physical danger and risk. The dancers interacted with each other like siblings in a dysfunctional family. There was always camaraderie amongst them, but also a marked distrust. Like a soap opera, their lives revolved around a seemingly endless conveyor belt of temporary relationships. Status in the theater was an important and constant topic of conversation, and there was always an undercurrent of gossip.

I spent a lot of time with the dancers at the Troc. We had many conversations in between photo sessions and we often left the theater together to catch a bite to eat or have a cup of coffee. I found some of the women to be fascinating while others were decidedly dull. I became friends with a few. We got to know each other and shared our thoughts about our mutual struggles to get somewhere in this world.

Over the years I've thought a lot about those women. I often wonder what they're doing now. How have they changed? How have they grown? I suspect I'll never see any of them again, but the photographs will always take me back to that seminal moment in my life when I first crossed over society's safe and tame boundary line into the sexual underground of the world of Burlesque.