LIFE.com here features a number of photographs of women’s roller derby teams in Chicago, made by longtime LIFE photographer George Skadding. Known primarily as a chronicler of politics and presidents—before and after World War II, he was an officer of the White House News Photographers Association—Skadding clearly immersed himself in this particular assignment.

Maybe the open aggression of the sport was a tonic after years of covering Washington, where the assaults tended to be more buttoned-down. Whatever the reason, Skadding evidently enjoyed himself while chronicling these skaters. And according to LIFE, so did the fans at the rink.

“The rules of this spectacle appear to have been cribbed from six-day bike racing . . . and professional wrestling. . . . Audiences have already learned to hiss the sport’s more clumsy villains, but lady skaters are not ostracized when they kick one another in the face.”

Is it any wonder that, while always on the fringes of sporting culture, roller derby still endures?

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LizabethRonk.

A skillful shoulder block thrown by ‘Fuzzy’ Buchek (left) foiled an attempt by Vivian Johnson (center) to slip between two skaters and start a jam. These were all legal moves.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A fight broke out between ‘Toughie’ Brashun (No. 12), Gerry Murray and a hapless mediator from a men’s team (No. 13).

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby 1948

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Roller Derby, Chicago, 1948.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

An illegal hold by the skater at the left (No. 3) let her partner take the lead. It was observed that girls’ tactics were often dirtier than men’s.

George Skadding The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, Dec. 13, 1948.

LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, Dec. 13, 1948.

LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, Dec. 13, 1948.

LIFE Magazine

The post Grace and Mayhem: Women’s Roller Derby, 1948 appeared first on LIFE.

On the other hand, ask anyone who came of age in the 1940s or ’50s the same question, and the reaction will likely be something along the lines of, “Gypsy Rose Lee? I haven’t thought about her in decades! But let me tell you, back in the day. . . .”

Gypsy Rose Lee (born Rose Louise Hovick in Seattle in 1911) was and remains a force in American popular culture not because she acted in films (although she did act in films) or because she wrote successful mystery novels (although she did write successful mystery novels). The reason Lee’s influence endures can be attributed to two central elements of her remarkable, all-American life story: first, her 1957 memoir, Gypsy, which formed the basis for what more than a few critics laud as the greatest of all American musicals, the 1959 Styne-Sondheim-Laurents masterpiece, Gypsy; and second, her career in burlesque, when she became the most famous and perhaps the most singularly likable stripper in the world. (Modern “neo-burlesque” performers, like Dita Von Teese, Angie Pontani and others, cite Gypsy in near-reverent terms as a pioneer and inspiration.)

Here, LIFE.com celebrates Gypsy Rose Lee’s life and her career with a selection of pictures by George Skadding, a LIFE staffer far better known for photographing presidents (he was long an officer of the White House News Photographers Association) than burlesque stars. But, as the images in this gallery attest, Gypsy was hardly just another stripper; instead, as a performer, a wife and a mother of a young son, she had something about her an approachable, self-deprecating demeanor aligned with a quiet self-certainty that any politician would envy.

“I’m probably the highest paid outdoor entertainer since Cleopatra,” she’s quoted as saying in the June 6, 1949 issue of LIFE, in which many of these pictures first appeared. “And I don’t have to stand for some of the stuff she had to.”

“Confidently taking her place among history’s great ladies, Gypsy has for the first time in her life gone outdoors professionally,” LIFE wrote at the beginning of Gypsy’s six-month tour with what was called “the world’s largest carnival,” The Royal American Shows. The prospect of having to do her old strip-tease act 8 to 15 times a day “all across the country to Saskatoon, Saskatchewan,” meanwhile, although hardly thrilling to the 38-year-old mom, was also something Gypsy could, characteristically, put in perspective:

“For $10,000 a week,” she told LIFE, “I can afford to climb the slave block once in a while.”

She also, as LIFE put it, “had it soft, as carny performers’ lives go. She lives in her own trailer with her third husband, the noted Spanish painter, Julio de Diego. With them is her 4-year-old son, Erik [film director Otto Preminger’s child, as it turned out] and his nurse. Gypsy, who loves to fish, carries an elaborate angler’s kit, and whenever the show plays near a river, goes out and hooks fish as ably as she does customers.”

But it’s in the notes of writer Arthur Shay, who spent a week with the star in Memphis, Tennessee, in May 1949, that we meet the woman who emerges when the lights go down and the crowds depart and it’s clearly this Gypsy who truly connected to audiences wherever she went:

“Funny thing about show people or just plain fans,” she told Shay at one point, offering insights into the appeal of her nomadic life. “They think if you’re not in Hollywood or on Broadway making a couple of thousand a week taking guff from everybody and his cousin in the west, and sweating out poor crowds on Broadway you’re not doing well. [But] I’ve been touring the country playing nightclubs and making twice as much as I made in the movies, and having more fun! I get a lot more fishing done, for one thing, and I can live in my trailer and see the country.”

Gypsy Rose Lee died in April, 1970, of lung cancer. She was 59 years old.

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee with fellow performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee in front of a crowd in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A sign announced the arrival of burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy dictated a letter to her secretary, Brandy Bryant, who doubled up by doing a strip bit in the show.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (left) and her fellow performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (right) dressed other performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (center) dressed other performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee writes in her dressing room in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (top) with another performer in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (right) coached another performer in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee (center) and other performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The audience at a Gypsy Rose Lee burlesque show in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

In a reverse strip-tease act, Gypsy introduced near-nudes like Florence Bailey and dressed them on the stage.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee’s burlesque show in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee autographed programs for fans after a show in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee and some of the dancers in her show posed for publicity pictures with the carnival performer K. O. Erickson.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee with her third husband, the painter Julio de Diego, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee held her 4-year-old son (by movie director Otto Preminger), Erik, outside of her trailer, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy’s friends in the carnival included a sword swallower, a fire-eater and this cheerful bearded lady, Percilla Bejano, whose husband was the Alligator Man.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee with fellow carnival performers in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding—Time & Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy’s husband Julio painted the entrance while Gypsy and son watched. His attraction in the carnival was called Dream Show.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose rode the Little Dipper with her son, Erik, and her husband, Julio, in Memphis, Tenn., 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee gave her son, Erik, cotton candy while her husband Julio De Diego watched, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee with her husband Julio and son Erik, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Gypsy Rose Lee with her husband, Julio de Diego, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Between shows Gypsy and family managed to sneak off for sundown fishing on the Wolf River, where Gypsy caught a catfish.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, offstage, 1949.

George Skadding/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Striptease Superstar: Rare and Classic Photos of Gypsy Rose Lee appeared first on LIFE.