With a name like Tempest Storm (even if it is a made-up one), you know this woman is good. An iconic burlesque dancer and stripper, the fabulously stacked siren earned as much as $100,000 a year (the equivalent of about $1 million in 2021), and earned headlines like “Tempest in a D-Cup” and “The Girl Who Goes 3-D Two Better.” Born Annie Blanche Banks in Eastman, Georgia, she famously entwined with John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley, was good friends with Marilyn Monroe, and was reported to have insured her breasts with Lloyd’s of London for a cool million. Tempest once set off a riot just by removing her coat—and nothing else. Taking her act to a wider audience, she appeared as herself in burlesque films like Striptease Girl(1952), alongside the famous Bettie Page in Teasarama (1955), and Buxom Beautease (1956). She also appeared in the “Sexplosive” (so says the movie poster) Day of a Stripper (1964), and took a turn in Paris Topless (1966). Later in life, she popped up in an episode of the TV series American Pickers in 2012; her own, self-titled documentary in 2016 featuring spots with Garry Marshall and Dita Von Teese; and introducing the Portland, Oregon, strippers in the drama film The Dancer Diaries (2019). Tempest also starred in the Roy Orbison video “One of the Lonely Ones,” as the redheaded exotic dancer in purple. Honing her act well into her 80s, Tempest’s storm ended in 2021, when she passed away at her home in Las Vegas at the age of 93. Gone, but definitely not forgotten.
