Tana Louise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tana Louise was a burlesque striptease artist and fetish model in the 1950s, who is most famous for her involvement in the fetish magazine Exotique, which she was both a columnist and model for. Not long after her involvement in the magazine she married Leonard Burtman, owner of the magazine. Leonard "Lenny" Burtman was born in Nebraska in 1921 and lived in California between 1941 and 1950. During this time he worked in the electronics industry and trained at California Institute of Technology. In 1949 he encountered problems with the legal authorities concerning the transportation of false securities, after which he moved to New York in 1950, to start a new career. On arrival in New York, he started to work as a professional photographer (reputedly doing some work for Irving Klaw) prior to becoming a magazine publisher and film producer. Tana Louise also did some work with Irving Klaw.
By the late 1950s, her marriage to Burtman had begun to deteriorate and they divorced. Soon after she left the magazine and disappeared from the public eye. Tana was one of the most famous fetish models of her day, but as time went on she was overshadowed by her peer, Bettie Page.
In the 1960s, Tana Louise and burlesque striptease artist Mara Gaye started an exotic bizarre costumes mail order catalog company called Tana and Mara.
