The Nude Deal

Larry Flynt's plea for a porn stimulus plan has attracted much ridicule.   Nevertheless, during the thirties burlesque was part of FDR's National Recovery Administration.  Here's Jonathan Bean at The Beacon on the history.

The National Recovery Administration
(NRA) was the first New Deal effort at recovery. The agency mandated
that all industries draft “Codes of Fair Competition” to benefit
business and labor. NRA codes – all 700 of them –corporatized the
entire economy. Wage and price fixing was o.k. as the experimenters rid
themselves of old superstitions that price fixing was somehow harmful
to Mrs. Consumer. As long as everyone put in the “fix,” all would be well. The Supreme Court disagreed and ended the experiment in May 1935 (Schechter v. United States).

Yet there was an upside to the code-making. It made Americans
realize how complex the economy had become by 1933. After all, there
were codes for the Dog Food Industry (Code 450), Curled
Hair Manufacturing and Horse Hair Dressing Industry (Code 427),
Shoulder Pad Manufacturing (Code 262), and the Burlesque Theatrical
Industry (Code 348). The latter limited burlesque dancers to four strip
teases per evening. The goal was to spread the work, and it simply
wasn’t fair that the pretty girls got to strip more than the other
gals.

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