Wives, Learn How To Disrobe the Allen Gilbert Way!

I wonder how many graduates of the Allen Gilbert School Of Undressing  took to the burlesque stage when their new "disrobing methodology" failed to tear their husbands away from the golf course.

 Frankly as a social measure Allen Gilbert, who puts on shows for such topnotch burlesque houses as Manhattan’s Apollo and Philadelphia’s Schubert, is starting a School of Undressing in Manhattan this month. There 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 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. The Gilbert faculty is recruited from the ranks of burlesque performers from all over. Already 48 wives who suspect there is something wrong with their disrobing methodology have signed up for the $30 Gilbert course of six lessons. From these they will learn how to make going to bed appear a thing of charm and pleasure rather than a routine chore.  

- LIFE Feb. 17, 1937

Below Professor Connie Fonzlau at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in New York demonstrates "the worst possible method of disrobing," 1937.

Peter Stackpole—Time &Life Pictures/Getty Images

Burlesque star June St. Clair demonstrates (below) "how wives should undress in front of their husbands" during a class at the Allen Gilbert School of Undressing in New York, 1937.

(Actually this article was part of an elaborate promotion for Gilbert's burlesque revue, "Sex Rears Its Ugly Head.")

Via MeFi