The Girl Can't Help It

If you get a chance, be sure to check out the delightfully campy Liz Renay exhibit going on now down at Deitch Projects (76 Grand St. in SoHo). If you don't know about Liz -- author, cult actress, stripper, showgirl, painter, charm school instructor and Mobster's girl -- her explosive 2007 Washington Post obituary is probably the best place to start: "Her sense of her own potential was undoubtedly exaggerated, as was everything else about this starlet who boasted of her measurements: 44DD-26-36. She once won a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest sponsored by Twentieth Century Fox studios. ... Renay also encouraged her daughter, Brenda, to join her onstage [in her burlesque act]. They continued to work together until Brenda killed herself in 1982, on her 39th birthday."

But long before the no-talent likes of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie worked the press into a frenzy, Liz was a ultimate media sensation (easily her greatest claim to fame), her every move chronicled in splashy headlines and glamorous photos alongside her Mob lover, Mickey Cohen, for whom she went to jail rather than rat out. While in the clink she painted more than 150 original works of art and started the Terminal Island Follies, an all-inmate chorus line. She also ran the prison newspaper, a small theater group, and taught oil painting.

By the time she died at 80, Liz had built an enormous body of work, including four books ("My First 2,000 Men" among them!), three-dozen films (she famously played "dog food murderess" Muffy St. Jacques in John Waters' "Desperate Living") and miles of newspaper clippings, many of which are on display at the Deitch and must be seen in person to fully appreciate (I photographed a few to give you an idea, below). One of the workers at the gallery told my friend and me that Liz used to take a pen and touch up her eyes and lips (and anything else she didn't like) and then photocopy and mail the improved clips to all her friends.. (A woman after my own heart!)

"How to Attract Men" is the first New York showing of her paintings in 50 years, and in addition to her artwork and press collages, it features a salon of costumes and other artifacts from Renay's archives in the Burlesque Hall of Fame. The woman made a lifetime out of being famous. Somehow I seriously doubt a similar exhibition of Paris and Nicole's "lives" will be happening anytime down the line ...