American Entertainer and Actress. Commonly known as "The Queen Of Exotic Dancers," she was one of the best-known burlesque performers of the 1950s, '60s and '70s. Born Annie Blanche Banks, she was the daughter of a sharecropper, leaving school in seventh grade and worked as a waitress. At age 14, she married a U.S. Marine to escape from her abusive parents. The marriage was annulled after 24 hours. At age 15, she married a shoe salesman and, after six months, left to pursue a career in Hollywood. She was working as a cocktail waitress when a customer told her she'd make a great strip-tease performer. She landed an audition with Follies Theater talent manager Lillian Hunt, who hired her on-the-spot. Within a month, her pay went from $40 to $60 per week, and she adopted the stage name Tempest Storm. She became an internationally-famous stage performer and was featured in the films 'French Peep Show' (1950), 'Paris After Midnight' (1951), 'Striptease Girl' (1952) and 1955's 'Teaserama,' sharing the screen with Bettie Page. Storm first performed in Las Vegas in 1951, at the Embassy Club, then moved to the Dunes in 1957. She had known the stars of the Strip, including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, with whom she performed at a Hollywood awards show that spoofed the Oscars called the Mickey Awards. She also knew Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, who she dated for a time. In 1956, Storm became the highest-paid burlesque performer in history when she signed a 10-year contract at $100,000 a year with the Bryan-Engels burlesque production company. Soon after signing that deal, Storm married Herb Jeffries, the singer in Duke Ellington's Orchestra known as Hollywood's first singing black cowboy. She continued headlining on the Strip until the late 1980s. She gave her final performance in June 2010 at a Burlesque Hall of Fame reunion show. Later that night, she fractured her left hip, ending her stage appearances. A documentary about her life called 'Tempest Storm: Burlesque Queen', was released in 2016.