The management of Stormy's Casino Royale, burlesque central in New Orleans in the 1940s, was a wisecracking bunch. This advice on how to live on $15 a week is very witty and probably says a lot about the character of the clientele. The lines are crooked, by the way, and we've left them like that so that the menu is in its original state. The booze list was short and sweet - hadacol was a famously alcoholic vitamin tonic that turned out to be a hoax – and we think this was another "in' joke.
Evangeline the Oyster Girl, whose real name was Kitty West, was one of the burlesque performers. She dyed her hair seaweed green, rose out of a giant oyster shell and performed exotic dances to live music. Born to a sharecropping family in Mississippi, Kitty had a tempestuous nature and featured in a LIFE magazine article after getting into a catfight with another stripper.
