Stripping History: Lorraine Gail Smith

Lorraine Gail Smith was a creative, cute, petite, brunette off stage, but as a featured performer and costume designer, she could create another world on stage. One where she could melt away her troubles and let the spirit of Jean Harlow wash over her under the hot stage lights at the Combat Zone's Two O'Clock Lounge in Boston. She started dancing young, in the early 1970s and took the stage by storm. She was respected as a strict, burlesque loving creator, actor, and dancer. Striptease was not all about the money for her. Sure, she loved the money, she loved being a featured performer which gave her clout inside the club, but she wanted real luxury. Lorraine wanted refinement, protection, luxury, respect, safety, and she simply wanted to dance in an environment where she wasn’t harassed by the patrons.

How telling that safety was considered a luxury for her. For many of these performers of the 1970’s in Boston. She longed to perform in an environment where she could arrive in style to a nice club and put her two German Shepherd‘s directly outside her dressing room door so that nobody could ever enter without her approval. This was a huge deal for her up until her life was cut short by a jealous ex-lover in 1975.

Until that fateful day, she traveled between LA and Boston to work the strip circuit. I’m still researching what clubs she worked at, but I do you know that she was able to get a few small parts in some rather well-known movies while she was in LA.

In 1975 she returned home, asking her parents for safety and shelter. Lorraine was afraid for her life after fleeing a relationship with a man from Boston, who she started dating while she was only 17 years old. He was 10 years her senior and laid claim on her Jean Harlow routine, insisting he was the one who came up with the concept. The concept that made her so well known in the industry, the concept that made her a featured dancer.

Upon her return, she also came home to The Combat Zone and the Two O'Clock lounge. She remained a treasure there until her last dance.

Oddly, a curious man named Roswell Angier, came to the Combat Zone that day to interview the performers about the city’s adult playground for a book he was publishing with the Boston Globe. This book is entitled kind “A Kind of Life": Conversations in the Combat Zone.

He got a great interview from Lorraine, but she was exhausted and she was scared. In the article, she explained that she had just broken up with her boyfriend. By the time Roswell returned for a second interview, she was already in the hospital on life-support.

He never had an opportunity to revisit the interview because she never made it out of the hospital alive.

Loraine was vocal, she asked for help, she received help, and even that could not stop what was about to happen.

Yes, I know the killer's name but I refuse to say it for right now because this is about Loraine. Her triumphs, her loves, her personality, and her right to be the center of attention in her own story.

He took all of that from her and was put on psychiatric monitoring for only 40 days before he was set free. He never saw one day in jail. He was let go on an insanity plea, which is incredibly rare. A lot of people went running from the Combat Zone around that time due to mob-related violence, so it’s really hard to find witnesses willing to speak too much.

But I’m still searching...

Here is a behind the scenes peek at our shoot with Yuli Padilla as Lorraine Smith modeling Lorraines costumes.