Fact: In Australia, Airplane was released as Flying High. It was a huge success and the first of it’s kind for this particular type of practical comedy. To this day, it remains a very funny film, however some might consider most of it’s content as offensive.
Leave My Kitten Alone!: Burlesque queen -- and Miss Nude Universe of 1973 -- Francesca "Kitten" Natividad promoting her act in Omaha, circa the mid-'70s. This would've been right around the time that Sexploitation Movie doyen Russ Meyer discovered her and cast her in his zany murder mystery "Up!".
“I went to Lili St Cyr’s to buy my bras and she would help me strap ‘em on and she’d bend in and put “the girls” in. And she’d bend all the way down because she told me that’s the way to get your cleavage and she showed me how to wear a bra. She was really nice and one time she zipped me in and she kind of put her knee between the backs of my legs to make sure she could really pull that zipper up and I thought, “My God she’s strong!” But she had a limp on her, and her skin was yellow because she was a big smoker – a chain-smoker. I said, “Are you Lili?” She goes, “No. No, I’m not. We never see her.” But it was her. She didn’t want people to know. And there were other times when she would give people autographs. Who knows? It was whatever day it was for her, you know. I kept going there, but I never wanted to expose her or be rude to her. So, I respected her wishes – not being Lili. I used to see other women working there with her and they all looked like old strippers. They all had lots of make-up and wigs and they talked dirty. They were in their eighties, and they all had sailor mouths. And I thought, oh my God – that’s going to be me some day!”
Shortly before her death aged 74 in 2022, bodacious sexploitation icon Kitten Natividad gave her final interview to Ashley West of The Rialto Report (the essential website / podcast devoted to documenting the golden age of porn). When asked what other exotic dancers she admired, Natividad cited Lili St Cyr (1918 – 1999). “Oh God! I could never be her but wow it would be so nice!” Natividad clarified that she never saw St Cyr perform but did used to purchase her bras from St Cyr’s Los Angeles lingerie emporium The Undie World of Lili St. Cyr. (Another customer: Cassandra Peterson aka Elvira, Mistress of the Dark).