Strip Poker (1919)

[Baker, John]

        It sounds like this unnamed play, from the 1918 - 1919 theatrical season, may indeed have been the origin of both the name and the game.  Is there any indication as to what play it was?

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: Bapopik at AOL.COM [mailto:Bapopik at AOL.COM]
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 9:44 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Strip Poker (1919)


  "Strip poker" was not coined in the 1920s play CHICAGO.  It was in another play, a few years earlier.

Barry "Get me Catherine Zeta-Jones's T-Mobile number!" Popik


   16 February 1919, NEW YORK TIMES, pg. 42:
   In the current season a play was produced in which four of the characters, obviously of the loosest possible morals, engaged in a game of "strip poker," in which the player who lost a hand took off one more garment.  The more scantily clad of the women kept losing; and, as it all happened among friends (on the stage) the audience had a bad quarter hour of apprehension...