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 $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