[Ads-l] Antedating "strip tease"

[Peter Reitan]

In April 2014, Fred Shapiro posted an antedating for "strip tease" from Billboard Magazine in June 1931 (OED 1936).

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2014-April/131818.html


There is an earlier example in Variety Magazine from October 1930:


[Excerpt]

Business still holding up big in San Francisco’s only burlesque house, and this week’s show is up to standard. . . . Rhodes has nice blues voice and goes over with a bang in her strip tease numbers.  Has a good looking figure and handles herself well.  Peggy Hill does a cute tease number, working to the boxes, and is a favorite with the bald heads.”

[End]


Variety, October 25, 1930, page 15.


Precursors include:

"Strip number", Variety, January 16, 1929, page 44, and "tease numbers", Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), Febreuary 25, 1929, page 5, and "strip and tease":


[Excerpt]

The runway outfit got the usual return of formal applause, but it becomes obvious week by week that the boys are going cold on that strip-and-tease.

[End]

Variety, January 30, 1929, page 42.


The alternate expressions, "tease strip" and "strip pleaser", appear a few times in a few places during the 1930s, but do not seem to have caught on.




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