Faith Bacon

In the mid-1930s, Faith brought her act to the Chicago World's Fair, where Sally Rand, who had worked for Bacon earlier in the decade, also performed with her own fan dance, making them rivals. In 1936, while performing at the Chicago State-Lake Theatre, Faith crashed through the glass box she was dancing in, collapsed covered in blood, and spent a month in the hospital. The accident left deep scars on her legs, and she credited it with triggering her slow decline. She later suffered from a glandular problem requiring major surgery in 1940, and throughout the decade she battled illness that drained her physically, mentally, and financially, leading to a suicide attempt in 1954. In 1956, she threw herself from a third-story Chicago hotel window and died that evening from a fractured skull and perforated lung.

Faith's film career was brief: she made her debut as Maxine in the crime drama Prison Train (1938) and then appeared in two short burlesque films, Dance of Shame (1942) and A Lady with Fans (1942), demonstrating her fan dancing. She was otherwise dismissed as a controversial specialty act and never appeared on film again, her later engagements devolving into carnivals and strip joints. She was American, with brown hair and a slim build, and she worked as an actress and burlesque dancer.