Holy Fassbinder! Taxi dancing is experiencing a revival in Berlin.
...[Roland] Waizenegger became inspired by stories of taxi dancers, a trade that
peaked in popularity in the 1920s and 30s in Berlin and other major
cities. (The term is derived from the fact that a dancer's pay is
proportional to the amount of time spent with a patron, like that of a
taxi driver.) In Berlin between the two world wars, when young
able-bodied men were fairly thin on the ground, ousted aristocrats and
jobless army officers with posh manners began earning money spinning
ladies in the city's many dance halls. (Billy Wilder,
a Polish-born Hollywood film director, allegedly worked as a taxi
dancer in Berlin for several months in 1926. He was a 20-year-old
aspiring journalist at the time.)
