A little green-eyed "Cotton Picker" as a child, Abbie would learn to dance with the other children in the field. Related to the Elvis Presley family, she was born one of six children, her father being a highway builder, her mother 'Annie Mae' was a Presley (cousin to Elvis's Father, Vernon) and a cotton picker and Abbie's Grandfather was even a minister. Due to her family being low on income Abbie would dance at 'The Majestic Theater' to make a few extra dollars as a young girl. Eventually her father left the family and her mother remarried.

      Later on around 1944, young Abbie was working in a Hospital and would move to New Orleans at the age of sixteen. Abbie and her friends were awestruck with Bourbon Square and would visit some of the Burlesque clubs. While watching a live Stripper show at Gasper Gulotta's club one of the star performers not being able to perform, Gulotta asked her to fill in and her friends dared her to replace the Burlesque performer, with a little more urging from the manager, she obliged. She was a hit with the audience with her Veil dance ...

and made a hundred dollars.

      That week she got her first Burlesque Stripping job at Larry Lamarca's "Gunga Den". As time went on she would choreograph a striptease act using a large Oyster shell and briefly dyed her hair green to represent Seaweed. Life Magazine also did an article on a supposed impromptu "Stripper Cat Fight" at the Stormy's Casino Royale burlesque house on Bourbon Street, where she headlined, with a rival Stripper known as "Divena" who got billed higher than Evangeline. Furious at this, Abbie took a AXE to the glass front of Divena's 300 gallon prop water tank/tub, while the Burlesque stripper performed her underwater striptease act ... which started the feud between the two.

      Abbie retired from the Burlesque / Striptease stage around 1960. On August 28, 2005 Abbie's Bay St. Louis, Mississippi home was completely destroyed in Hurricane Katrina.

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