Leola Harlow (March 3, 1917-April 28, 2011) was a New York actress, singer, and dancer. At the tail end of her career she billed herself as “the world’s oldest stripper” and was booked on The Morton Downey Jr. Show and many more in her 70s.
Harlow was elected to The Lambs in 1992, as one of the first female members of the Club. She was a frequent performer at the weekly Low Jinks, singing classics.
She was born Virginia L. Colvin on March 3, 1917, in Virginia’s Albemarle County, at the White Hurst Farm, to Johnson and Emma Colvin. Her father was a railroad laborer. She was raised by her paternal grandparents.
She married local farmer Taft William Harlow in 1938 when she was 21. Their children were James Harlow, Luther Anderson Harlow, Mary Lee Harlow, and Alice Lee Harlow.
Sometime around World War II she left her family and relocated to New York to pursue an acting career. She appeared Off-Broadway around 1947. She had a part in Tales of Tomorrow (1951). Harlow took up burlesque dancing and toured as a “Spanish dancer.” For 50 years she was a dancer and singer. She also worked as a costumer; in the 1970s she created the first costumes for Richard Skipper, who was doing a Carole Channing act.
In the 1960s-1970s she was a cabaret singer in New York. This is how she unwittingly was in the low-budget Husbands (1970), written and directed by John Cassavetes. The scene at the bar where Harlow sings “It Was Just a Little Love Affair” and is repeatedly interrupted and harshly criticized by the drunken three main characters, was completely improvised. Harlow reportedly had no idea that they were filming and thought the lead actors were actually criticizing her performance in the scene, causing the very real hurt apparent in her performance.
In 1983, when she was 66, she appeared as Daisy Mae in Li’l Abner. In 1988 she was a guest on the The Morton Downey Jr. Show as well as Sally Jessy Raphael, alongside burlesque legends Ann Corio, Dixie Evans, Jenny Lee, and Bambi Vaughn. She was named “Senior Miss New York City” in 1988 and on Beyond Vaudeville on public access TV in Manhattan.
She wound down her career with appearances at Danny’s Skylight Room in the Theatre District. Harlow continued performing private parties into her 90s when she was a great-grandmother. She retired to the Evergreene Nursing Care Center in Stanardsville, Virginia. She died on April 28, 2011. She was 94. She is interred in Maplewood Cemetery in Gordonsville, Virginia.
In 2016 Harlow was included in the book, Burlesque in a Nutshell – Girls, Gimmicks & Gags, by Dusty Sage.