“Str_p-tease and the Students”
In short- the LSU student magazine called the “Pell Mell”, in order to boost subscriptions, wrote an article on a local “dancing” sensation from the Burbon Street area of New Orleans, a Miss Stacie “Stormy” Laurence. They even had her come on campus and sign issues for the students. Well this upset the University administration and the magazine (and stormy) was banned from the campus.
In protest “Stormy” rented a stake truck and brought her “act” band onto the University during school hours on March 4, and began doing her night club act, in broad daylight, right in the middle of campus…within minutes she was surrounded by about 1,000 young men. When stormy got down to her “finale” a riot broke out. The truck was overturned, the band beat up, and “Stormy” was thrown into a nearby pond.
The next issue of Life, in the letters to the editors section, were some interesting comments that I post below...
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“Sirs:
After noting in your magazine the most ungentlemanly conduct displayed by the students of L.S.U. to the opposite sex and especially one so attractive as Miss Stormy Laurence, I looked up at the Stars and Bars of the Confederate states hanging so proudly from my wall and wondered if the Southern chivalry of Lee and Davis had survived the reconstruction….
May I take it on my own to apologize to Miss Laurence on behalf of the college students of the South who believe in more normal relations between male and female than throwing one another into ponds.
Toby Kaufman, Charlottesville, Va.”
Sirs:
…What has become of the well known Southern chivalry? A lady with or without clothes is a lady…
Ernest J. Leveque
Bloomington, Ind.
______________________
David Upton