Carnivale

Occupation: Cootchie dancer

Personality type: quiet, ambitious

Signature style: platinum blonde, feathers

Seen by others as: in her mother's shadow

Weaknesses: pliant, not terribly confident

Strengths: kind, lovely

Libby backstory: Libby was born in 1914 and is the oldest child of Rita Sue and Felix (Stumpy). She joined the cootch show at 14 as a performer.

Felix "Stumpy" Dreifuss is the manager of the cootch (striptease) show. He is married to Rita Sue, and has two daughters, Libby and Dora Mae. Their original biographies state Rita Sue was born in Michigan in 1895 as the only child of Thomas and Emma Menninger. Her parents invested in her education at the finest Eastern boarding schools, but the family's financial fortunes declined with Thomas's death in 1903. Rita Sue left her home in 1908 and started vaudeville work. She joined several traveling companies and strip-shows, where she met Stumpy, a barker who had begun his career in 1910. They married in 1914, two months before the birth of their first child, Libby. In 1916, their second daughter, Dora Mae, was born. When their company's owner died, Stumpy and Rita Sue began traveling with various carnival companies and were eventually joined by their two daughters in the late 1920s. Their fortunes steadily declined in the 1930s when more cootch family acts spawned in the difficult times. The series mentions Stumpy and Rita Sue had three more children, one of whom was stillborn and two of whom died of influenza. The Dreifuss family continues to face many personal and economic problems during the show's run. Dora Mae is murdered by an inhabitant of a haunted ghost town, the sexual relationships between Jonesy and Rita Sue, then Jonesy and Libby, cause much heartbreak, and Stumpy's affection for gambling almost ruins the family.