If the name Liz Renay don’t ring a familiar note she was a famous actress in exploitation movies.

Las Vegas- Liz Renay, the ultimate stand-up girl, didn’t reach her 80th birthday by being bitter.

The blond bombshell and movie vixen learned long ago to cast aside the troubles life has thrown her way. Like a tough childhood, for instance. And several husbands.

And the 27-month stint at Terminal Island she did as mobster Mickey Cohen’s loyal girlfriend.

Lucky Liz of Las Vegas, star of John Waters’ cult classic “Desperate Living” and three dozen other flicks and the best-selling author of “My Face For the World to See” and a half dozen more books, served hard time for perjury in the early 1960s. She denied funneling Cohen a few thousand in spending cash disguised as a loan. It was Cohen’s own cash, money he was trying to clean up in an effort to beat the IRS.

Renay was 37 when she went inside. She spent nearly every waking minute of her time productively, painting 150 canvases and several prison murals, teaching classes and writing the first draft of her autobiography. Perjury was her first and last conviction.

Renay, who got her start in the glitz and glamour trade by winning a Marilyn Monroe look-a-like contest, returned to society and became a popular drive-in movie star who wasn’t afraid to strut her substantial assets on stage and even down Hollywood Boulevard.

As I watched Renay celebrate octogenarian status recently, I was reminded that she did more hard time as Cohen’s loyal moll than corrupt former Clark County Commissioner Erin Kenny probably will serve for admitting to deceiving the public, cheating the taxpayers and sucking up at least $400,000 in bribes and benefits while in office.

For that matter, I’ve paid more in parking fines while covering the ongoing federal trial of former Commissioners Dario Herrera and Mary Kincaid-Chauncey than Kenny has paid so far for whoring out her position and embarrassing the entire community. Kenny faces $70,000 in fines and less than four years in prison, and her recent cooperation in federal court could shrink those figures into a glorified Henny Youngman joke.

If everything goes her way, you’ll spend more time in morning traffic than Kenny will spend in prison.

Then there’s the stinging fact that she hasn’t paid taxes on the approximately $400,000 in bribes she has admitted taking. As part of her plea agreement, she won’t be criminally prosecuted for tax fraud but could be pursued civilly.

And we’re asked to forget for now that she has been accused by a variety of sources of accepting cash payoffs from developers Bill Walters and Jim Rhodes, allegations she’s denied.

Kenny’s testimony in the current case has been criticized for its lack of depth and specificity, but that doesn’t mean she’s useless as a witness.

In fact, Kenny may yet earn her privileges and her freedom in the upcoming corruption trial of former commissioner-turned-Michael Galardi bagman Lance Malone. It could be a breakthrough moment for federal prosecutors who have been stuck with less-than-favorable corroborating witnesses. Compared to their images in the ongoing case, Kenny and Galardi figure to shine like new shoes in the Malone trial.

But news of Kenny’s sweet deal with the government has reverberated through the community, which has closely followed the current political corruption case. Lately, I’ve heard much more anger directed toward Kenny than the defendants. Even Galardi accused Kenny of giving him oral sex while he was giving her a stack of Benjamins.

So I asked Liz Renay what she thought about the case, which she’s followed in news accounts. She tried to keep her sense of humor.

“A long time ago, I tried to help a friend who happened to be a gangster and was sentenced to three years for perjury,” Renay says. “Politicians do the dirtiest act. Their act is way beyond what any dancer could do if they were trying to do dirty dancing. Martha Stewart got a slap on the wrist for lying, and her lie could have hurt people.

“But those politicians in this case, they wiggle out of things more than the strippers wiggle on stage.”

Compared to the sleaze discussed so frankly in the ongoing political corruption case, Renay’s career as a burlesque queen and professional eye candy was Clorox clean.

The ultimate stand-up girl could teach all of them a thing or two about class.