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Legs -- long, high-kicking legs performing the world's most famous dance, the cancan. Statuesque Amazonian beauties in a whirl of feathers, rhinestone G-strings and fishnet tights. Get the picture?
When it comes to those sensational line-ups of tall, leggy lovelies at the most celebrated Paris nightclub of them all -- the Folies Bergere, built in 1869 -- there is only one woman left in the world today who can tell the real inside story of the glamorous dancers who have successively performed there for most of the last century.
Madame Bluebell, the 91-year-old founder of the world-famous Bluebell Girl dancers, can claim to have provided more after-dark dazzling titillation, more starry-eyed nights of lascivious anticipation and glamorous pleasure for millions of fans, than any other living woman.
Until her retirement at the age of 79, "Miss" Bluebell, as she was always respectfully known to the thousands of dancers whom she personally recruited and trained, was the queen of Paris night life.
For 41 years, every night at her Paris Lido headquarters, she ran the show from her tiny dressing-room office with a number 13 on the door.
On her 90th birthday a year ago -- almost 70 years after she led her first troupe of Bluebell Girls on to the stage of the Folies Bergere, she was awarded France's highest tribute -- the French Legion of Honour.
In 1984, she had already received the Paris Medal of Honour. The citation read: "For her inestimable contribution to the enchantment of Paris nights".
As founder of the long-legged Bluebells, the girl from Dublin made her own pet childhood nickname, Bluebell, synonymous with the exotic dancing troupe.
To be a Bluebell was to be one of the show-business elite, the creme de la creme of the chorus lines.
These were the ultimate glamour girls, chosen for their class and beauty. Aristocrats and millionaires would fall over themselves to secure one...