Manhattan Strip Clubs: Jersey City official, a former burlesque queen, faces corruption charges
… Leona is about as hardworking as anybody you are going to bump into,” Healy, who wasn’t charged in the sting, said last week. “She is straightforward and honest — sometimes to the point where some people were not always happy with her straightforwardness and honesty.”
Healy appointed her deputy mayor in November 2004, soon after his election. Serving as a ceremonial stand-in for him, she performed wedding ceremonies, performed ribbon-cuttings and attended speaking engagements on Healy’s behalf. She also served without pay on the city’s economic development agency.
After her arrest, she was suspended from her $66,154-a-year job by the mayor.
Beldini, who has two adult children, never tried to hide her days in burlesque. The Hudson Theater, she once told the Jersey Journal, “was a wonderful place to be in the ’50s. It was a wonderful form of entertainment.”
Born in New York and raised near Princeton, Beldini joined a chorus line out of high school and said in past interviews she became a stripper because it paid an additional $50 a week.