Lydia the Tattooed Lady Stock Exchange by commandeering a microphone and singing the song before telling jokes for 15 minutes, during which time traders suspended their work to watch him perform. 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,
Tattooed Lady shared her social connections with her and helped launched her career. Initially, she performed as the youngest tattooed woman ever during the 1920s, however, by the time bathing suits and hemlines rose, Broadbent decided to shock the public when she entered a beauty pageant at the World's Fair in 1939. While she had no chance of winning, Broadbent enjoyed the attention and free advertising, and assured her audiences that her wholesome act stood apart from "those carnival floozies with one or two tattoos who would bump and grind." Like Mae Vandermark, Broadbent's tattoos also bore references to pop culture icons