Words by Roxy Bourdillon
In the latest edition of Trailblazers Of Tease, we shine the spotlight on a phenomenal fan dancer, inspiring activist and all-round burlesque badass.
Picture the scene. It’s 1939 and you’re all dolled up for a decadent night out at San Francisco’s tantalisingly named, Forbidden City. The country’s first and only Chinese club is packed to the rafters. It’s been three months since burly bombshell Noel Toy started stripping here and in that time business has tripled, cementing Forbidden City’s status as the hottest spot in town. And now here she is in the glorious flesh!
The raven-haired beauty glides onstage, all sensuality and seduction. At five feet tall, Noel’s nearly nude figure is entirely concealed by two extravagant, not to mention enormous, ostrich fans. She twirls them through the air with seamless grace. It’s as if the plumes are an elegant extension of her arms. You, along with the rest of the audience, are completely transfixed in the quest to determine exactly what, if anything, she has on behind all those feathers. Noel knows how to tease a crowd and how to reward them too, with a cheeky glimpse of her minuscule, bejewelled G-string. She spins her fans high above her head, arching her spine into an impressive back bend as you holler your approval.
The billboard out front may advertise her as “the Chinese Sally Rand”, but Noel is so much more than that. She’s a sensational performer in her own right and a veritable pioneer of peeling. While it’s important to acknowledge the history as it happened, it’s harmful to celebrate Noel’s achievements by comparing her to her white peers. She is the Noel Toy.
With her powerful presence and outspoken advocacy for racial equality, she doesn’t just subvert the stereotype of the passive, obedient Asian woman. She smashes it to smithereens with a wink and a big reveal. Noel Toy is a burlesque queen and, importantly, a groundbreaking activist. This is her story.
Born Ngun Yee in San Fran in 1918, she was the first of eight children. Her parents had emigrated from Canton to the US, where they were the only Chinese residents in their neighbourhood. Ngun was a creative kid and began studying journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. To earn some extra cash, she took a job at Treasure Island during the 1939 World’s Fair. The event’s theme? “Pageant of the Pacific”. Ngun was hired to greet guests, while looking stunning in an sumptuous Chinese gown. Renowned fan dancer Sally Rand was among the other entertainers and Ngun was enraptured by this dazzling new dreamscape.
Local businessman Charlie Low recognised her potential and offered her a gig at Forbidden City. Ngun immediately dropped out of college and reinvented herself as burlesque goddess, Noel Toy, a name she chose because she was so crazy about Christmas. She told the New York Post, “Well, school was full, and I couldn’t see anything wrong with appearing there. I went home and told my mother what I was planning to do, and she raised the roof.”
Luckily, over time her mum grew to accept her unusual profession. “I guess it’s true that you can get used to anything, because now [my mother] sees me in the nude in nightclubs and thinks nothing of it.”
It wasn’t long before Noel became the star attraction. Like Sally, in addition to her fan dances she had a number featuring a giant, transparent balloon. She floated around the stage with her celestial prop, utterly starkers save for her sparkling heels and that megawatt smile.
As a performer Noel was poise personified, but she was also unapologetically erotic and always maintained her strong sense of self.
Documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong remembers, “She was an outrageous rebel. You never thought of a Chinese woman being like Noel, and that’s what made her so special.”
When her flourishing career took her to New York, an article in cheesecake tabloid CO-EDS described her “growing reputation for biting repartee and devastating treatment of Fifty-second Street wolves”.
Noel brought the house down at iconic venues like the Stork Club, Maxie’s, 18th Club and Leon & Eddies, where her 26-week engagement broke records. When she finally returned home she joked, "If I'd stayed there any longer, they would have had to reverse the name Leon and made it Noel and Eddie’s!”
Another of her favourite places to perform was Lou Walter’s Latin Quarter. One evening in 1945 she was up onstage being awesome while a dashing young man sat spellbound in the audience. Captain Carleton Young of the U.S. Army Air Corps saw Noel dancing and fell in love right there and then. That very night he told her, “I’m going to marry you”. At first Noel just laughed it off. After all, she had a strict rule against dating soldiers or actors and this fella was both. But he was also persistent and, sure enough, Noel was soon smitten too. The couple were married on 19 December 1945, just in time for a romantic Christmas. They stayed together for almost 50 years, until Carleton’s death in 1994.
Although he was in the biz himself, as a character actor with extensive film credits, he persuaded Noel to pack away her pasties and quit dancing for good.
She went on to work as an actress in Hollywood, sharing the silver screen with Clark Gable, Humphrey Bogart and Betty Grable, but she was frustrated by the limited roles available to Chinese women. She boldly spoke out against being typecast as, in her own words, “the ornamental Oriental”.
In the mid-1950s, she gave up performing apart from the odd TV appearance, and turned her attentions to real estate. She never gave up on glamour though and carried on wearing eye-popping ensembles and painting the town fabulous. Her nephew, Michale Now, told SFGATE, “Until the end, she was quite scandalous”.
Burlesque legend Noel passed away on Christmas Eve 2003, aged 84. She is buried next to her husband at Hollywood’s Forever Cemetery, but her legacy lives on.