With a name like Tempest Storm, you expect fireworks—and she delivered. Fiery red hair, a stare that could stop a room, and a career that ran for more than sixty years turned a small-town runaway into the queen of an art form.

She began as Annie Blanche Banks, born on Leap Day 1928 in Eastman, Georgia, where poverty and abuse were part of the landscape. At fourteen she ran, married a

Marine to free herself legally, and saw it annulled a day later. By fifteen she’d tried again, this time to a shoe salesman. None of it quieted the drumbeat in her chest: Hollywood.

Los Angeles gave her a new life—and a new name. A casting agent tossed out, “Tempest Storm.” The alternative was “Sunny Day.” She chose the lightning. While cocktail waitressing, a customer asked if she did striptease. She didn’t even know what that was. A few months later, she did—and discovered she could turn a room into a held breath.