Lydia the Tattooed Lady Lydia the Tattooed Lady "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" is a 1939 song written by Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen. It first appeared in the Marx Brothers movie "At the Circus" (1939) and became one of Groucho Marx's signature tunes. The complex lyrics by Harburg – with clever rhymes such as "Lydia/encyclopedia" and "Amazon/pajamas on" – were inspired by W. S. Gilbert. Harburg made many contemporary references to topical personalities such as Grover Whalen, who opened the 1939 New York World's Fair. Among the items, persons, and scenes tattooed on Lydia's body are the Battle of Waterloo (on her back), "The
Tattooed Lady $100 to $200 weekly during the turn of the century. Amelia Klem Osterud further expands on the significance of this salary:"Teachers were making an average of $7 a week in 1900, which generally included room and board; in 1909, clerical workers were only earning about $22 a week […] while the average weekly salary for a man working in a factory or some other industrial job in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was only $9."The "Roanoke Daily" reported in 1895 that an unnamed tattooed woman, "was paid $100 a day," and,"[…]the fairy tale about her, as told by the showman, only heightened the