Las Vegas Sun interview. “Knockers up, so to speak, and a new phrase was born.” By 1960s standards, Warren’s material was too racy to score her any radio play or television bookings. Instead, she toured the country playing nightclubs and recording comedy albums, the kind that got played at backyard parties after the kids went to bed. “Today, Rusty Warren routines sound regressive and the opposite of female-empowered,” says historian Tam Fiegel, who’s preparing a biography of Warren she plans to submit to the Lesbian Herstory Archives. “But in the early '60s, a woman talking about sex was a woman taking a place of power.”