Betty Jane Rowland

Vocation

Notable

American entertainer, a burlesque queen. She had a vaudeville act with her two sisters until one died of a heart attack in 1945. She and her other sister went into the chorus line in 1932 and progressed to solo acts, both as exotic dancers. Her sister Rozelle became known as the "Golden Girl" and she married a wealthy, titled Belgian. Betty, a whirling dervish, was called the "Ball of Fire" as she slowly peeled the clothes off her satin skin for $2,000 a week. The parents of the girls nearly died when their daughters became strippers but finally came around; her dad even kept a scrapbook. Betty gave up show biz when she married a wealthy lumberman in 1951, moving into a Bel Air mansion. They divorced later. By the '80s, she lived in a luxury condo, tending bar a couple nights a week as a diversion.