HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - When a police officer climbed through a rear bedroom window of a cream-colored duplex at 708 Columbus Parkway on Nov. 14, he found the body of a St. Louis legend.
Amy Charles had not been seen for several days. Friends from Tampa, Fla. - those who had known her in her heyday - had called and e-mailed repeatedly but got no response. They called the police, who found the door locked and no one to answer the knock.
As it turned out, Charles had died in her sleep. Nearby were medications for thyroid and heart problems. Officer William Comeford filed his report - death apparently from natural causes - and returned to business as usual.
He ignored the clues that this 83-year-old woman once had been famous. They could be found in the stacks of provocative photographs all about her quarters; three bedrooms stacked with boxes that made it impossible to walk through the rooms. Some contained the outfits she donned backstage and then discarded onstage to the cheers of hundreds each night.
Amy Charles was known in St. Louis as Evelyn "$50,000 treasure chest" West. Her chief claim to fame: her 39 1/2-inch bust that Lloyds of London insured for the $50K. She performed twice nightly in a striptease act at the Stardust Club on the old DeBaliviere Strip, just north of Forest Park and its Jefferson Memorial. In St. Louis in the '50s and '60s, her name was as familiar to male adolescents and young adults as that of Stan Musial, though, of course, the two inspired different forms of adulation.
Go read the whole, nicely done, article.
It may have been a bit before my time, but I've always honored my elders. If you are rated up there with Stan the Man who could argue with that? I'll raise a glass soon to a lady who was truly iconic in the Midwest.
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