June St. Clair watches Connie Fonzlau clumsily disrobing next to her during a demonstration teaching wives how to undress for their husbands at Allen Gilbert’s School of Undressing, New York, 1937.
How a Wife Should Undress…as taught in Gilbert School. Life, February 15, 1937, pp. 41-43
Frankly as a social measure Allen Gilbert, who puts on shows for such topnotch burlesque houses as Manhattan’s Apollo and Philadelphia’s Shubert, is starting a School of Undressing in Manhattan this month. Three wives, anxious to improve their marital manners, will learn the correct way to take off their clothes. Mr. Gilbert feels that many a marriage ends in the divorce court because the wife grows sloppy and careless in the bedroom. “I am dedicating my school to the sanctity of the American home,” he says.
1937: learn to undress for your husband; 2010: learn to pole dance for your husband. Who says we haven’t evolved?
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