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When I was 15, I had a... vision.
Thought I would be in the entertainment business.
I didn't know what.
Back then, it was the beginning of a whole new world.
50,000 people converged on the civic center
to protest a Goldwater nomination
at the demonstration for civil rights.
Shit was different then, you know?
A lot of rules were being broken.
Open another, we'll shut it down!
Whatever prompted you
to develop this topless bathing suit anyway?
Well, I believe that it is a definite trend.
Why do you think it's gonna catch on
in the United States? Aren't we prudish about such matters?
Well, I think more prudish than the rest of the world, yes.
We must decide what sort of people we are
and what sort of a world we want.
Talented young lady named Carol Doda.
Oh, you can't reach me. How about if I do a little lean?
San Francisco is a happening town.
They wanna see entertainment.
You're given credit for launching
the topless craze.
Ms. Carol Doda, the topless queen.
That's right. That's where it happened, the Condor.
She made an international name for herself.
- There's nudity in your show. - Wanna tell you something.
There's nudity, but it's done tastefully.
Art lovers go and see that. This is another form of art.
Like a nude painting or a nude statue.
It has taste.
Was always a class act.
Carol Doda, of course, was the star of North Beach.
Why was Carol famous?
She was more than a stripper, a go-go dancer.
There was just something different about her.
She was brave enough to do something
no one had done before.
In every way, it made sense
that people went absolutely wild when she did this.
But it was nowhere near the revolutionary places
that she was going to take American culture.
Broadway Street, it was fantastic.
Everybody that came to San Francisco in those days
came to Broadway.
Those clubs were packed with tourists.
North Beach was the off-season Vegas.
It was a very active music scene.
I saw all these great, great performers
and we'd see these at breakfast shows at 2:00 in the morning.
You had the Jazz Workshop.
Down the street, you had Lenny Bruce.
I mean, it was entertainment row.
10:00 p.m. in San Francisco.
This Baghdad by the Bay
is a swinging place.
The happening clubs
- were Pierre's... - The Off-Broadway.
- Roaring 20's. - Purple Onion.
- The Hungry I. - El Cid.
- Big Al's. - The Galaxie.
- Then you have Finocchio's. - Peppermint Tree.
- And the Condor. - Condor.
- The Condor. - The Condor.
- Condor was the place to go.
It was right on the corner there. It was beautiful.
Everybody was friendly.
♪ Hully gully, pretty papa ♪
* All right ♪
Carol started at the Condor as a waitress.
I really didn't know how to serve cocktails,
so it was like this tremendous pressure
because I had to do good.
I just had to prove myself
as a capable worker.
That somebody would be proud of me.
So I became one of the best cocktail waitresses
in San Francisco.
♪ Hully gully, pretty papa... ♪
When I started working at night
is when I really got to meet Carol.
And she was just one of the cocktail waitresses,
but she had the front station, the busiest station.
I had this habit
of always jumping around and dancing,
and I would be relating to the people
like I was entertaining them, only I was serving them drinks.
They thought I was crazy
and they loved me and they'd come back.
Carol Doda was friends with everybody.
Everybody liked her.
She always wore a white leotard.
The rest of us wore black leotards.
You know, she stood out.
The Condor was a blast.
And they had good bands.
1964...
Oh yeah!
...and we gonna dance some more.
George & Teddy were the big hit for the North Beach.
They sang all the Motown songs
They were the first musicians
that brought the crowd into the Condor.
♪ Mary had a little lamb ♪
♪ Whose fleece were white as snow ♪
♪ Hey! ♪
♪ And everywhere that Mary went ♪
♪ Her lamb was sure to go... ♪
George & Teddy,
they were the talk of the town back then.
- ♪ Baby ♪ - ♪ Crackin' up over you ♪
♪ I said I love you, baby Love you, girl ♪
♪ Don't you wanna love me too? ♪
I just would wail on my horn, you know,
for that style.
And those girls were really risque for the time.
♪ Crackin' up over you... ♪
George & Teddy coming out between their legs.
All of a sudden, you see Teddy going...
- He was a naughty boy. - Whoa!
Pete Mattioli and Gino Del Prete owned the Condor.
Pete and Gino.
They were two little, short Italian kids
but they ran a tough club.
Gino, he was just a character.
He was a superstar himself.
'cause he involved himself with all the people.
He was somebody to go see.
Gino was a naughty boy.
And I ain't gonna say another word.
I used to drive his father's ravioli truck
I knew Gino a long time.
Gino was wild
and unpredictable.
Pete, he wasn't a saint.
But he was a straight arrow compared to Gino.
Pete ran it totally professional.
We had go-go girls
and we had the best-looking cocktail waitresses in town.
I was always dancing.
And they said, "Oh, Carol, get up on the stage."
And I'd go between serving drinks, jump up on the stage.
They had this piano player. He said, "Get up here,
there's no room on the stage." So I got up on the piano.
Carol jumped on the piano and did the Twist
and people used to love that.
And I think that's how she got the idea, you know?
"This'll be my thing."
- George, do "Bony Moronie"!
♪ Oh, I got a girl named Bony Moronie ♪
♪ She as skinny as a stick of macaroni ♪
- Whoa!
The competition was real tough.
That's why we all tried to be a little diverse
and have something different.
You had to have a gimmick.
I go into the Condor early one night
and Gino's at the bar and we're talking and he says,
"I'm gonna have that piano come down from the ceiling."
I said, "The piano weighs a ton."
"No, I got a guy.
He's gonna do the hydraulics. It's gonna happen."
And I'm thinking, "Yeah, what's he thinking?"
Well, I had to cut a hole in the ceiling
and then we had to make a tunnel
from the dressing room to that hole
where she'd stand on the piano
and press the button and then come down.
Carol gets on the piano
and everybody's like holding their breath...
"Is this gonna work?"
You know you gotta keep up with the times
if you wanna be mine. So let's do it.
And it came down. It came down, hit the stage,
and she's doing the Twist and we're all goin', "Oh my God.
It happened."
* The dance they were doing was outta sight ♪
This crazy piano went up and down
like an elevator in the ceiling.
♪ Then I could do it ♪
- * Aww, shake it up now... ♪
There were so many dance crazes in the 1960s.
The Frug, the Watusi, the Twist,
the Limbo,
the Swim.
The Galaxie on Broadway hired a girl named...
Judy Mac.
I was a hat check girl at the Galaxie.
And the owner asked to take me to dinner.
And I thought, "Yeah, I'll go. What do you have in mind?"
He said, "Well, here's the deal.
We heard about this dance called the Swim dance.
And we wanna know if you will run a contest and perform it."
I said, "What's the Swim dance?"
He said, "I don't know.
Just dance and look like you're swimming."
And I said, "Oh, okay.
I can do that."
It was publicized in the newspaper
and people were curious and came to see it
because Judy Mac pulled her dress up and did the Swim.
That was kinda risque back in the '60s.
That became the big rage with Bobby Freeman's hit record,
who was from San Francisco.
Let me introduce an old friend of American Bandstand,
Mr. Bobby Freeman!
Come on, everybody!
A-come on in!
Bobby's gonna show you how to do the Swim!
How did it start and where?
Well, actually, I started the Swim two years ago, Dick.
It was a Twist party that took place
at the Cow Palace.
And the headliner was Chubby Checker.
Bobby Freeman got on stage and he was doing his hits.
So then Bobby had a last encore,
but he ran out of songs.
There was a musician there that was on keyboard.
It was an 18-year-old guy named Sly Stone,
and he started playing this riff on the organ.
So Bobby caught on and he started doing these gyrations
and he started doing hand motions forward.
And then all of a sudden,
you know, the crowd went ecstatic.
So after the show, Sly Stone says,
"Man, what was you doing up there?
Like you were swimmin' or something."
And the Swim was born.
I was given credit for being the creator
of the Swim dance.
I don't even claim that.
Judy Mac did her own variations of the Swim,
and that's when it caught on.
"Wait a minute. Bobby Freeman's the originator.
So what we need to do is make a song outta this dance."
Tom Donahue collaborated with Sly Stone
and co-wrote the song and called it "C'mon and Swim."
And it became a smash.
♪ Do what you wanna 'Cause it's all right ♪
♪ 'Cause Bobby's gonna show you How to swim tonight ♪
♪ Now, baby, swim ♪
Besides the fact that it's topless,
what else is unique about this swimsuit?
There isn't really anything very unique about it
other than the fact that it has no top.
The swimsuit is a particularly interesting garment
when it comes to the history of women's liberation.
Well, I could go back to the bikini.
When that first was shown in Italy, people just almost died.
Oh!
Rudi Gernreich
is surely one of the most controversial
and also most highly respected figures in the fashion world.
He is very avant-garde and a very forward-thinking person
which will influence the world, in my estimation.
Why did he come up with this idea?
How did he come up with this idea?
It's very political.
Fashion is highly political.
And has been from the dawn of time.
When first-wave feminists were trying to get the vote,
there was also a dress reform movement
because they were dressed in corsets
and they could barely breathe.
Rudi Gernreich isn't just a fashion designer.
He's one of the first members
of the Mattachine Society,
which is one of the first gay rights groups
in the United States.
Eventually, magazines agreed to run the photo of the monokini,
but it was a big controversy from the beginning.
Do you think it could become popular?
No.
- Why not? - Lot of bashful women around.
I think men won't have respect for any girl at all,
whether she's good or bad.
Problem is, I think you'd get picked up for indecent exposure
as soon as you were found with one on.
I'm afraid I'd have to tell her to, uh, cover up.
If she refused, I would have to, uh, take her into custody.
The monokini, to me,
really unlocks a whole deeper level
of what Carol Doda was about
and what she achieved.
It seems to me that the monokini was...
a kind of momentary gimmick.
Okay.
But let's talk about
the monokini as a symbol.
And to do that, you have to understand what was happening
in 1964 and 1965, 1966.
The Vietnam War.
...this, which is really heightened in the consciousness,
would take action!
The stirrings of the feminist movement.
What you see here is the beginning of a movement
that women are human beings
and we have equal rights.
The civil rights movement
starting to gain momentum.
...to end the long night of racial injustice...
So this is an extraordinary moment
in American history
and during this extraordinary moment,
Carol Doda is handed, by Big Davey Rosenberg, this monokini.
He says he designed it only to illustrate a trend,
but buyers began demanding the topless swimsuit
and now it's reaching the market.
Davey was the PR man
and anything that would make the news, Davey would do.
Initially, he brought you the newspaper and showed you.
And it was on the front page, above the masthead.
You went, "Oh my gosh."
So Davey says, "Let's go buy it."
Everybody knew Davey.
He was very active in promoting Carol.
That was his thing at the Condor.
He called me up and said, "Come down here. We have a surprise."
Well, I got down there. They said they had a new costume.
And I just see this little bikini thing with two straps.
And...
"I'm not gonna wear that."
We showed it to her
and convinced Carol to wear it.
Carol Doda says, "I was stupid.
If you told me to do it, I did it."
She's not stupid at all.
I think, on some level,
she really knew that it was a weapon.
♪ Stand in a circle ♪
♪ Go round and round... ♪
My dad had a friend who told him
he needs to come to the Condor
'cause all hell was gonna break loose.
It was my birthday, June 19, '64.
His friend comes up and says, "Hey man,
can't have your son there. He's underage."
They stuck me in the dressing room.
I remember seeing Carol there,
and she says, "What a cute little boy."
I never had any feelings of,
"Should I do this or shouldn't I do this?"
Except for the minute that I was on the piano,
getting ready to come down out of the ceiling,
topless for the first time.
I said, "Carol, do you really know what you're doing?"
I said, "Yes, I want to be in show business
and I don't know any other way
but to start showing my business."
And the proverbial shit hit the fan.
I'm in the dressing room
and I'm hearing whistles and hollering.
Within 20 minutes, Big Al's, next to the Condor,
people started drifting out of the club,
"What's happening? What's happening?"
"The girl out there taking her top off,"
and the place emptied out.
Everybody ran to see this.
Even the band. We took off too.
♪ Come on, baby ♪
♪ I want you to swim ♪
I'm going, "I wanna go out," and the guy's like,
"No, you can't. You're underage."
I didn't know what was happening but I was buzzed.
She came down on that piano,
and it was a sensation.
♪ Bobby's gonna do the swim For you tonight ♪
- ♪ Now, baby, swim... ♪ - The Condor breaks loose
with Carol, okay?
The Condor breaks loose.
She took the top off
and everybody would gasp.
'Cause they never saw topless in those days.
They were lined up around the corner.
Like they'd never seen bare breasts before in their lives.
The shows people were usually seeing were strip shows
where they would be covered up with pasties, the nipples.
So the nipples were a big deal, you know?
The greatest things since sliced bread, I guess.
It was amazing how fast the word spread.
Man, three or four deep on the sidewalks.
I mean, you couldn't even walk down the sidewalk.
It happened during the Republican National Convention
- that was at the Cow Palace.
The eyes of the nation are on San Francisco
as the Republican party convenes
to nominate its choice for president.
The Republican man of the hour
and a smiling Mrs. Barry Goldwater
meet the people and the press
as they walk the streets of San Francisco
in the opening days of the Republican National Convention.
Best publicity they could have done.
Barry Goldwater's two sons
came into the club. Just like anybody, they wanted to see it.
Nervous that first night?
Yeah, I was for the first show.
It was different.
♪ It's Pony time! Get up! ♪
♪ Boogety, boogety Boogety, boogety, shoo... ♪
She's notorious, she's celebrated.
She and the Condor club sort of usher in
this era of topless dancing.
It becomes "a thing" because of Carol Doda
and her monokini.
After Carol started the topless,
nobody wanted to see Swim dancing.
When I had the belly dancers
with a half-empty room,
and the Condor had a line all the way around the corner
up to my place,
I said, "That's it.
The belly dancers can go."
There was nightclub life
and there was the sexualization of women's bodies.
These things converged in a way I think was really exciting.
And sort of made it acceptable, in a way, for respectable men,
um, to go watch go-go dancing
and to go see topless women.
Owner asked if I'd go topless.
He paid me enough and I went topless.
I was the second girl to go topless in North Beach
after Carol Doda.
One of my dancer friends said,
"Yes, everybody's dancing topless.
If you want a gig, you have to dance topless."
I couldn't go topless.
I mean, my parents lived across the Bay
and that would have been a...
a mistake.
Was it tough finding a topless dancer
when topless first started in North Beach?
Yes, it was tough. Now it's, you know...
It's like deer, they're in season.
Then everything went topless.
- Anything you can think of. You had Tipsy's,
which was home of the topless band, the Ladybirds.
♪ Well, oh-oh-over and over ♪
♪ I'll be a fool for you ♪
El Cid had Gaye Spiegelman
who was the mother of eight.
She had abs like a 19-year-old.
They had a topless clam chowder place.
Topless men's clothing store.
Of course, it was the saleswoman who was topless.
They had topless shoe shine.
Can you just picture the...
Working... working the rag.
When they opened up the topless shoe shine stand,
I said, "That's gonna bust the fuckin' street."
We ended up gettin' busted.
Then in April 1965,
the city made an effort to shut the clubs down
with a series of raids reminiscent
of the Prohibition era of the 1920s.
We're going to arrest all the girls
with their bosoms exposed
for indecent exposure.
We're gonna take the girls down dressed like they are,
so they can bring their street clothes down with them.
Because we're gonna have to take their costumes, you see?
What about girls not in costume?
Uh, those can remain.
Just those that are topless.
* Well, I woke up this morning ♪
Bring your regular street clothes.
♪ You were on my mind ♪
♪ And you were on my mind... ♪
Captain, you've had a pretty busy night and day.
- Uh, is this going to continue? - Yes, it will continue.
We'll make arrests where there are any violations of the law.
Do you feel this is a violation of the law?
Otherwise, we wouldn't be doing it.
We're making legal arrests, in our opinion.
I'm not worried because I feel I haven't done anything wrong.
I've done my job.
And, uh, I feel that, uh, I have no reason to be scared.
You don't think you've broken any law?
No, I don't think so at all.
If you are out on bail by the 4:30 show, will you be back?
Yes, sir.
- In costume? - Yes, sir.
All the other topless girls took it so lightly.
They thought it was a big joke.
Everybody enjoyed it,
and they just thought it was a big farce.
But to me, I took it very tragically.
I have never been in jail before in my life
and I'm not used to that sort of thing.
And in my eyes, I think I'm a very nice person,
and for something like that to happen, it was just, uh...
incredible to me. I couldn't believe it.
Gino, what time was your Condor raided?
About 10:00, 10:30.
Did you have any warning at all?
Seeing a man there with a camera. That was about it.
Was it a policeman, or...
No, it was just a reporter.
And, uh...
He said, uh, "I guess there's gonna be a raid."
And what did you do?
I didn't do nothin'. I didn't believe it.
In our cell was just Gino, Carol, and me.
They just fingerprinted us and then let us go.
What did the police charge you with?
I don't know.
Do you agree that the topless should be banned in North Beach?
Uh, no, I don't.
I think a person, if, uh, if they want to see it,
- they have a right to see it. - I don't go for it.
I mean, I think the girls could keep themselves covered.
If it's a bare-chested man, fine.
Broadway, as it now is
with the various types of entertainment
that have moved in here,
I would say it's somewhat of a cesspool.
You're speaking specifically of the topless, are you not?
Well, yes. What else?
People are overdoing it when they say,
"Isn't that terrible what's happening on Broadway?"
It is not terrible. It's wonderful.
♪ Come, let's stroll ♪
♪ Stroll across the floor ♪
We've got the cleanest, nicest area
up here in this North Beach in the whole United States.
And the more people who congregate here
on Friday and Saturday nights,
there's no crime, no problems, no nothing.
What they're complaining about, I don't know.
Because everything that's gone on here
has gone on in other cities.
But with a little overtone of, uh,
behind-the-barn sort of a business. We don't do that here.
Carol, how are you holding up under all this?
- I'm holding up.
Are you anxious to get back to work in your normal costume?
Yes, I certainly am.
I intend to give the police department
and office of the mayor an education.
And before the last echoes of last night's explosion is over,
why, I think that, uh, they will
be a little more in their proper places.
♪ Now, turn around, baby ♪
♪ Let's stroll once more ♪
If the prosecution couldn't prove
what the consensus of opinion was
throughout the city and county of San Francisco,
then they had failed to prove a case.
- ♪ Whoa! ♪
What was your reaction to it?
Well, I'm glad it's all over and I hope this satisfies the...
people who put it up for a test case,
as the courts have decided.
San Francisco was the first city in the nation
where topless entertainment became legal.
Ms. Doda may go back to her piano where she belongs.
Get outta this courtroom.
What are your plans, Ms. Doda?
- Do you intend to... - Go back to the piano
where I belong.
How much do you think it would have cost
to buy this kind of publicity for the Condor?
I don't think we have enough money to buy it.
It did good for North Beach.
I mean, "These girls are so bad they got arrested.
Let's go see 'em."
♪ People talkin' Tryin' to break us up ♪
♪ Why don't they let us be? ♪
♪ Bricks and stones May break my bones ♪
♪ But talk don't bother me... ♪
Lenny Bruce used to get busted all the time.
Every time he went on the stage and faced the street west,
he got busted.
San Francisco, I got arrested for, uh...
They said it was vernacular
for a favorite homosexual practice, a ten-letter word.
It's weird how they manifested that word as homosexual.
'Cause I don't. That relates to any...
contemporary chick I know or would know
or would love or would marry.
He knew he was gonna get busted
but he did it anyway.
He was somebody who skirted around obscenity
as a way to make people think harder
about how our ideas about what was obscene and what was decent
intersected with our racism,
intersected with our sexism,
intersected with our anti-Semitism.
Lenny Bruce was basically saying,
"I can't do this anymore"
as Carol Doda was winding up
and coming into her power.
There was something different about Carol Doda.
Yes.
Quite a bit different.
Is it all right if I join you up here?
Certainly. The more, the merrier.
Uh, this isn't your usual costume, is it?
Oh, well, I don't think so. Do you?
Well, I've never seen your act.
- You're missing something.
Um, what is it actually?
I mean, I know it's a beautiful gown.
But, um, what's the occasion?
It's for the inaugural ball in Sacramento.
- You're going to the ball? - Oh yes.
Like any really ambitious performer
with a subversive agenda,
that wasn't enough for her.
She wanted to do more
and she wanted to be more.
If you've got a bunch of girls topless,
what's gonna make them come and see you instead of her?
It is fascinating the degree to which size is so important
to the meaning of breasts.
Dave Rosenberg was competitive with Carol.
He wanted to make sure nobody was gonna top her.
He's actually the one who convinced Carol.
You know, "You wanna be a star?
We gotta get you pumped up."
We have this assumption in American society today
that breasts have always been erotic objects.
But if you look at these sex symbols
of the early 20th century,
you'll find they were famous for their legs.
It's only after the war
that you have the rise, so to speak,
of the big bosom as something that's very fetishized.
Because prior to World War II,
the majority of women would breastfeed their children.
And post-war, there's a shift to formula.
When a baby isn't hanging off a breast,
there's a greater opportunity to sexualize it.
Why was Marilyn Monroe so popular?
Why was Jayne Mansfield so popular?
Why was Jane Russell so popular?
Men want boobs.
* Betty Lou Got a new pair of shoes ♪
♪ Betty Lou Got a new pair of shoes ♪
I came to work one day. My boss said,
"Oh, there's this doctor that's giving these injections
that enlarge the breasts."
He says, "You should look into that."
And I thought to myself, right then and there,
"He's trying to tell me something."
She always had a cute little figure.
There... I mean...
her breasts were fine. They were...
She's small.
- She was sort of flat-chested. - She was flat-chested.
We told her she had two fried eggs for breasts.
And so she embarked on this course
which was, at the time, quite experimental.
It was quite a thing when she first did it
'cause we never heard about this,
you know, augmenting... you know, breast augmentation.
Carol Doda and I were getting silicone
at the same doctor at the same time.
Dr. Vincent Spano.
He was the famous silicone doctor in San Francisco.
You've taken these silicone, uh...
Was wondering when we were gonna get to that.
Uh, yes, I have.
Did you have any fear about these shots?
No, I didn't at that time.
You took them from a doctor?
Of course.
Couldn't have taken them from a veterinarian.
It was scary when I first went in
and he came at me with this long needle.
I was like...
It depends on how bad you want something.
You want something bad enough,
you're willing to pay the price for it.
She'd be in one room and he'd be doing her
and then he'd come in and do me.
We could hear each other and he'd say, "Carol,
I cannot give you any more silicone.
Your breasts are going to explode.
They're little. They can't hold it."
"No, come on, doctor. Just one more."
'Cause she wanted to be bigger than everybody else.
The doctor's trying to kick us out,
saying, "Look, you two girls, you're big enough.
You don't need any more silicone."
I made the comment to Davey and Gino.
They knew what was going on. I didn't.
And I says, "She's gettin' bigger,"
and they all say, "Oh, you're just imagining things."
Week after week, they were getting bigger and bigger.
And there was a point when they were just right,
and then...
eventually, they got huge.
If I was going to do this,
I was gonna do it in a big way.
She got 44 injections of silicone into her breasts,
bumping her up from a B cup
to a 44DD.
I went up to the dressing room
and she was all black and blue from the shots.
So she puts pancake makeup on.
And I asked her, I says, "Carol, what are you doing?
Do you know where that's going in your body?"
She says, "Pete, it's my body. Mind your own business."
I says, "Okay," and I left.
I'm sure she thought it was safe and it was an opportunity
to be something special.
But she was special just being herself.
I didn't want her to do it at all.
I said, "Carol, you can't be doing this. It's your health."
She kind of didn't care.
She was more interested in entertaining.
And of course, Rosenberg was pushing her to do this.
She had nobody else. She had nobody.
She just had the public to entertain.
She was that lonely of a person.
Your family say anything? Were they worried?
No. You see, I, um...
I've been on my own for quite a while
and, uh, my family never has a say-so
in matters pertaining to me.
A self-made woman.
Yes, you could say that. Really.
That's exactly how it is.
She wasn't open about her past at all.
She never talked about her family.
I never saw her family ever come into the club.
I worked 19 years on the street, but most of it at the Condor.
Where you from, Carol?
I'm from around here, Northern California.
As W.C. Fields once said about Mae West,
"I can see what's good. Tell me the rest."
Well, I don't know what Mae West answered, but, uh...
there's not too much to tell in that department.
All right.
She did have a rough childhood.
Mother and father, they split up when she was just a child,
about three or four years old.
I'm not too sure who raised her after. I guess her mother.
I was in a Catholic school.
I was too young to be there but they accepted me
because of the broken, you know, marriage and everything.
So I was about four years old
and I lived at this Catholic school.
I know she didn't feel
she had a good relationship with her mom.
Her mom was an alcoholic.
Her mother was tough on her.
Really tough.
She said beat her up and...
that's why she left home at an early age.
She was very straightlaced.
At that time, she didn't drink, she didn't do drugs.
She was very guarded.
It was hard to get to know her.
She wasn't real friendly
with many of the girls on the street.
But she and I kind of identified with each other.
She'd do my hair, my makeup. She was very talented.
And she and I were like the only two there all the time.
When she was on stage
and she was being filmed and doing publicity,
she was happy.
The rest of the time, she was a loner and very sad.
You see Herb Caen's item on you in Ramparts?
- Somebody gave it to me. - I heard about it.
Told me about it at the garage that I park.
Have any comment on it?
No, he makes good copy.
- He makes good copy... - That's all.
...and tasteless jokes, I would say.
Herb Caen was a very famous journalist
in San Francisco.
If you got in Herb Caen's column,
you really did something.
Everybody wanted to be in his column.
Dave Rosenberg, he had a lot of juice.
He could get you in newspapers, columns.
Davey and Herb were really tight.
He always got something in Herb Caen's column.
Whenever Herb Caen needed pot, he used get a hold of Davey
and Davey'd get a hold of me
and we'd get him a little pot.
Can I read a line or two of it?
If you wish. - [Feinstein] All right.
"When Carol Doda first began taking silicone...
I reported the migratory tendencies of the stuff,
concluding with this dolorous observation
by a respected medic:
'Miss Doda may yet wind up
with the two largest kneecaps in the world.'"
Well, I could, uh, readily believe that statement
if I was not, uh, up to date on it.
All these doctors have all these different theories.
You see, it's a very controversial subject.
Mm-hm. You don't mind? You're a good sport?
I think they have to make their column interesting
so if they need me to make it interesting,
I must be pretty important.
She's fabulous. She's complicated.
We didn't need another Betty Friedan
to tell us about "the problem without a name."
Carol Doda shot up her breasts
and she showed us that there was a problem without a name.
The problem was ridiculous double standards about women
and objectification.
You could say, "Oh, look at her,
submitting to the male gaze,
being a Barbie doll on steroids." Yeah, no kidding.
It was almost like Carol Doda was saying,
"My body is the art
and the performance is going to go on."
* Come on All you surfers, grab a girl ♪
"And if my route to success
is the male gaze and objectification,
I'm gonna fuck it up.
I'm gonna go all the way."
♪ Come on, baby ♪
♪ Woo-woo ♪
- ♪ Come on, baby ♪ - ♪ Woo-woo ♪
The key thing is that women are the object of male gazes
and the male gaze is dominant and it is a form of power.
So women grow up learning to perceive themselves
through the male gaze
and men don't.
People would say,
"Oh, that's such a demeaning thing you're doing."
Well...
"If I'm not doing it, somebody else,
and look at all the money I'm making.
What's the big deal?"
It was great. Here I am, a woman. "Give me your money."
On the one hand, Carol Doda took the male gaze
and twisted it to her own benefit,
and she did well by that.
But I think what she couldn't have anticipated
is the legacy that she would leave on women to come
who then felt that they needed to live up to this male gaze
which had been sort of enhanced and exaggerated
by the presence of these large breasts.
It's a very particular lens through which to see beauty
and through which to see sexuality
that's ultimately been very limiting
and has led to some serious body dysmorphia,
uh, in women to follow.
There's no question in my mind that
the unequal division between
the female dancer and the male viewer
and the transaction of the money involved...
Topless clubs are a reflection of a patriarchal society.
But that doesn't mean there aren't individual women
who may very well find a very strong sense of empowerment
for themselves in those environments.
My fantasy was to be a stripper.
It's just kind of exciting
and here, you got all the lights
and people are watching you like you're really important.
And just kind of a good feeling.
I don't know if every girl has that fantasy.
Maybe not. But I did.
I've always been a free spirit, I think.
So I moved into San Francisco
in a hotel above the Trieste coffee shop there.
I was just calling up every place
and eventually somebody would need a stripper.
'Cause if I would have auditioned,
they would have never hired me.
I had legs, but I'm kind of flat-chested.
But I still wanted to do it.
I would wait until they were desperate,
when they really needed somebody.
And before they saw me, right?
They were desperate.
And then I would do one set at one place
and then they'd get rid of me.
So I'd call up another place, like the Condor,
and I'd go, "Need a stripper?
My name's Sharon. I danced at the El Cid last night."
If I said I was Mary Ann, they'd go,
"Oh, no. Don't want you."
I was Sharon one night, Judy the next.
I think I danced at every club.
But just once.
You know, they were selling boobs.
And here they have this girl up there with no boobs.
Boo. They didn't want to see that.
The word "exploitation"
is really important to look at and pick apart.
It's usually used in two ways.
One, feminists who believe
that it's not possible for a woman to be a sex worker
or an adult performer
without being inherently, fundamentally exploited
by the patriarchy, by the male gaze.
Then there's a counter argument to that which is,
these women are leveraging it and making money.
Exploit... Of course we were all exploited.
We were in our little leotards and serving cocktails
and Carol's up there being topless.
I mean, in a way, you could call it exploitation.
But... that's how we look at it now.
I think in those days it was just a job.
I don't think she felt exploited.
I think she loved what she did.
She wanted to be a dancer,
she wanted to be on stage, and she was.
How do you feel now being a sex symbol?
You didn't feel that you were prostituting yourself
by going topless?
No, because you could prostitute yourself with your brain,
with anything, any part of your body.
Uh, your breasts are just another part.
I really wanna know what you think of the Broadway scene
and sex today.
Do you think this is a good step forward?
Has this sort of cleaned up
a lot of the puritanical hang-ups that we had?
Do you see it as healthy?
So many people in America today
do not have
the, uh, imagination for sex.
To have sex, you have to have something in your mind first.
You have to have something in your imagination.
I give them a fantasy, which people need.
The lovely Carol Doda on stage here tonight!
Carol was a seductive stripper.
Like a star.
You know? Had an attitude.
You don't wanna go up there and be meek.
Gotta show 'em what you got.
She was funny.
She had a very comedic sense of humor.
She was really good at getting to audiences.
♪ She don't know nothin' ♪
♪ Thinks there's nothin' she don't know ♪
♪ She thinks she's where it's at ♪
♪ In that one spot she never left ♪
♪ She spends all of her time ♪
♪ Tryin' to prove it to herself now ♪
♪ Well ♪
♪ I don't want no woman wrapped up in cellophane... ♪
Wasn't just a performance.
It was an interaction with the crowd.
It's an escape for a little while.
'Cause everybody has problems.
If I can alleviate them of their problems
for a few moments,
that's the greatest gift in the world
that I can give to somebody.
She reminded me of Mae West.
Well, it's better to be looked over than overlooked.
Oh, just that they measure up right.
What would be the proper measurements for a topless girl?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, myself, I never know my own.
I expand with... the weather.
I understand you were just honored nationally.
Yeah, hidden assets. Business Person of the Year.
But I think they made a mistake.
It should have been Business Persons of the Year.
I didn't get the award.
But they did. You know?
- So I just went along with them
to Boston to accept this award.
Carol, what makes you go? Is it-- You know,
they say that money or power or prestige are the three big--
Oh, I know that.
- I... No, it's, uh, insecurity. - What is it for you?
- Is it really? - Vitamins and insecurity.
But...
That's marvelous.
Carol, where do you see yourself in 20, 30 years?
- For what? - The whole life of--
I see myself as an entertainer
in many different fields of entertainment.
I feel I would be stagnant
if I was just one thing all the time.
One day, I decided to go to the Garden of Eden
and there was a sign, "Batman."
And I was like, "Oh, wow, this is gonna be cool."
That's when I met Jimi.
Jimi and Tara were the main act.
Went home one night and I was watching television
and I saw this woman doing a voodoo dance with snakes.
I said, "I can do that."
I was terrified of snakes.
She go into the pet store and want a boa constrictor.
I just kept getting bigger and bigger
and I ended up with a seven-foot anaconda
which was as big around as my leg.
One morning, I'm getting up and all of a sudden,
"Jimi, Jimi! Come and help me!"
She's got this thing started around her
and got this snake by the neck
and it's got its mouth open...
This woman was brave.
I had 120 pounds of snakes on me at one time.
Then I decided I needed a monkey.
Oh, please.
My monkey's name was Miss Troubles
and she'd have a little costume on.
If I had a sequined outfit, she'd have one.
She would just sit on my arm
and play with my boob, and people loved her.
And put a diaper on it to keep it from messing.
But that was her baby.
We billed her as the world's only topless monkey.
And then I decided I wanted to do a fire act.
She saw a guy in the streets doing the fire.
She said, "Teach me how to do that."
She'd shoot out fire from her mouth.
Said, "Girl, what's up with you?"
"Are you from heaven or hell? What is this?"
Fire, snake, a monkey.
But she drew crowds by the thousands.
They came in, night after night.
♪ Wah, wah-a-watusi ♪
♪ Come on and take a chance ♪
♪ And get-a with this dance... ♪
North Beach put millions of dollars
in the coffers of the city.
If you have a sales convention, I'll guarantee you sales guys,
they wanna go to San Francisco. "We wanna see this topless."
And synonymous with the word "topless" was Carol.
You've made a pretty good name for this place in North Beach.
You ever plan on touring with your act or anything?
Oh, I plan on...
spreading myself out.
Been receiving a lot of mail from Vietnam.
- That's right. - How'd they get your picture?
Well, uh, somehow, my picture
got into Stars and Stripes .
You answer all of them?
Oh yes, I have writer's cramp.
I talked with her
about some of her 16,000 letters
from overseas.
This one says, "Dear Miss Doda.
Let me just say that I enjoyed your act so much.
I would like to remember you when I'm overseas.
Would you be so kind as to send me a picture of yourself?
It would help me so much. Thank you. Love, Mike."
Does any of this mail contain proposals, of marriage that is?
Uh, no. I'm not the type they want to marry.
I'm just the type they want to look at.
They say every war generates
the kind of pinup girl it deserves.
I mention this meaning no disrespect to Miss Doda
or to the war in Vietnam.
She had national and international renown.
She blew San Francisco wide open.
Internationally.
People from around the world would come
to see Carol Doda.
Carol was the star.
Busloads of people drove up.
It was huge.
The cars, people going up and down the street.
That was the place to go.
And you see the lights and you're like, "Yes, Broadway!"
When we first started on Broadway,
you had the cream of the crop:
movie stars, politicians, professional athletes.
Lew Alcindor came in and I come with my tray and I see this.
I'm like...
He came in with his mom to the Condor.
Oh, he was so famous all over the world.
The piano brought him in.
There was this one little table
that was sort of roped off.
Sat about eight people.
He'd always call, "Pete, could I have that table?"
I'd say, "You got it, Walter."
And that's the way it is, Monday, September 2, 1963.
When Andy Warhol was in town,
he would always ask Carol to be part of his entourage.
I was very impressed by that.
I'm like, "Oh, you get to go out with Andy Warhol."
And she was like, "Oh, Pamela, you wouldn't like him."
I said, "What do you mean?"
"Because he never talks."
Aren't you gonna say one word, Andy?
" He just wants to record us.
So you wouldn't like him, Pamela,
because he's very boring."
Carol told me the almost unknown fling
that she had for a while
with Frank Sinatra.
He would send his private plane
down to pick her up in San Francisco
from Cal Neva casino and resort
where he was one of the owners.
She'd be walked through
to what's called the Celebrity Room
when there was no one in the main bar.
Basically, it was your typical trap door with a rug over it.
A handler would lead her down into tunnels
that went in different directions.
It was set up so that gangsters
that were not allowed to be around gambling
could get in and out.
And so Frank used it
to bring his girls in and out of there.
She would be taken to Frank's personal chalet
down by the lake.
She really had an affinity for Frank.
She thought he was one of the greatest men she'd ever met.
She really dug Frank Sinatra.
He was like an idol to her.
♪ 'Cause you make me feel so young... ♪
One thing that she got a kick out of
was that Frank pictured himself
as being a really, really macho man's man.
And he had this bald spot which nobody knows about
because he always covered it up.
He would actually have her come in before he did a show
and give her some boot spray
to spray paint the bald spot on his head
before he headed out onto stage.
When she told that story, she just chuckled like crazy.
At the western end of the continent,
rising majestically above the Pacific,
is a city constantly alive,
full of anticipation,
exciting and beautiful: San Francisco.
Where no matter who you are or where you come from
or what you like to do,
something exciting and wonderful and different
happens to you in San Francisco.
Have you seen any of these shows?
- Yeah. They're really funny. - Did you like it?
They were funny.
The funniest part was watching people.
The women turn away.
They talk about recipes and things
while their husbands are looking up.
Did you know that we have shows here
where people make love live on the stage?
- Uh, no, I didn't. - Have you been to any of these?
Not yet. We were just on our way
to walk around a couple of these places
- to see what it was like. - What do you expect to see?
Nudity.
It wasn't that Bay Area residents were prudes.
By this time, they were quite blase
about the topless dance clubs in North Beach.
But when one club offered as an attraction
an interracial love dance, that was too much.
Gay 60's was the name of the club
and they came to me and they asked me
if I would do an interracial love dance.
And I said yes.
The interracial couple was busted.
Is it true you engaged
in a sex act during the act?
What do you call a sex act?
They arrested me. So what? I still did it.
I wanted to do the topless, I did the topless.
"You're not supposed to go with a Black man." I did.
You don't like it? I'm sorry.
It's my life.
I want to do it. I'm gonna do it.
- ♪ Come on, everybody ♪
♪ Come and get some soul ♪
♪ Do the jerk ♪
♪ Do the jerk... ♪
My mother had a breakdown
when I married Jimi. Oh my God.
My dad, who is Mexican, disowned me.
And in San Francisco, when we first met,
we couldn't drive down the street.
The cop would pull us over.
Bam-bam. Knock on the door.
About three policemen at the door.
They saw Judy in the bed and, boy, they didn't like that.
I was arrested for vagrancy.
Vagrancy was a law that if you didn't have a job,
you were a vagrant.
And they could arrest you.
They took her, put her in jail.
It was a racist thing.
I stayed in a week or so.
- It was horrible. - My heart was bleeding,
just thinking of her being locked up in jail for nothing.
The bondsman says, "Jimi, don't come into the court with her
because the judge will throw the books at her for sure."
So she went... she went in.
And the judge gave her a lashing.
And says, "You get outta town.
As long as that nigger's here,
you don't come back into Santa Cruz."
Now, the judge is saying this. Publicly.
All of the clubs were prejudiced
and didn't let Black girls dance.
Not until the late '80s.
But not many.
* Well, I guess I'll start walking... ♪
It was white and Black when I was growing up.
If you liked Black music and you were white,
then there were all kind of names they'd be calling you.
George & Teddy were the first popular interracial band
in the area.
♪ Hoppin' and poppin' all night long ♪
They were great entertainers.
We had a great band.
And it could never rise above...
The highest gig was the old Caesar's Palace.
And a thousand bucks a week.
Man, that's like 20 grand a week now. You know?
I turned it down and made ten dollars a night with Sly.
I was the only funky white boy around in San Francisco.
That's why Sly hired me.
Sly and the Family Stone
was the first interracial pop group,
men and women and different races,
that made it.
♪ Don't call me nigger, whitey ♪
♪ Don't call me whitey, nigger ♪
Those first road tours,
when we was driving all over the country,
we got run outta towns.
We got chased out by police.
I was a white man with long hair and a beard
in the Black band of people
that dressed weird, looked weird,
and Sly also had a white girlfriend.
That's a death sentence.
Now if we can get you to spell "Love" one time...
...who are the kind of unlikely igniters
of civil rights
and feminists and gay rights.
And I think Carol Doda was one of them.
She changed our thinkings
about something as personal and basic as nudity.
She was such a symbol of progressiveness there
and what it was to be a subversive San Franciscan.
Her work basically said,
"Showing my body is a form of fundamental, basic freedom."
It was right in the thick of the women's movement
and these women genuinely felt
that they were pioneers.
That, "Goddammit, this is my body
and if I want to show my breasts to the world,
I'm gonna do it." Boom.
In the new environment of the future,
people will accept their bodies.
Clothes will be utilitarian,
organic, and minimal.
There will be no more squeamishness about nudity.
The body itself will be beautiful.
It was easy to get jobs dancing on Broadway.
I mean, basically all you had to do was be young
and willing to take off your top.
I moved to San Francisco in 1967.
I met a couple of gals who were dancing
in North Beach, on Broadway Street.
They were young girls, my age. We were in our early twenties.
And they were working their way through college.
And one night, one of the girls called me up and said, "Marsha,
one of our dancers didn't show. Can you get over here?"
And I said, "Oh my God, are you kidding? I'm very shy!"
"Oh, come on," they said, "It's easy. It's no big deal.
Nobody's gonna bother you.
It's fun because we get to dance."
So I did it. I can't believe I did it.
For me, and the little other hippie girls doing it,
it was a very innocent thing.
♪ Follow your own beaten path... ♪
Summer of Love.
I had my share of fun. And I tried all the drugs.
Everybody was having sex with everybody.
So much fun.
We were all learning different techniques
that we never would have talked about before.
It was all taboo
until the '60s.
That was a free time.
That was a hippie time. Free love. Dope.
It was all going around in a circle and we all loved it.
Summer of Love?
You can say thank you to Carol Doda, and you're welcome.
'Cause she helped loosen up our ideas about sexuality.
She was somebody that liberated other women's minds.
Because the first time I ever saw her,
there was a picture of her,
and I saw that as a child
when I was, you know, maybe 13 or something.
And I don't know, it just made an impression in my mind.
And it was like, "Wow. How free."
Would you consider yourself
a pioneer in feminism?
I don't know if I consider myself a pioneer.
You been attacked by feminists?
Oh yes, they did picket outside of the club
when I was working there.
I said, "I guess I was one of the original bra burners.
So what are we talking about?"
That's great.
Beauty pageants gotta go!
The women's liberation movement
organized several groups
to protest the Miss America pageant
as a symbol of society's exploitation
of women as sex objects.
In 1968, some feminists gathered
outside the Miss America pageant
in Atlantic City
and constructed a Freedom Trash Can
into which they would throw bras.
* Everybody's doing a brand-new dance now ♪
♪ Come on, baby, do the Locomotion ♪
♪ I know you'll get to like it if you give it a chance now ♪
That trash can was never actually put on fire.
The boardwalk in Atlantic City is made out of wood
and the fire department wouldn't let them.
So the bra burning's a media myth
but it is definitely the case that bras
were perceived as shackles of patriarchy.
It was just one of those freedoms we wanted to take.
It was an act of defiance.
We didn't have to wear a bra if we didn't want to.
♪ Well, I think you've got the knack ♪
♪ Whoa-whoa, now that you can do it ♪
♪ Let's make a chain now... ♪
We took birth control the same way
and said we're gonna have that too
and the right to talk about sex.
So we had gained it 'cause we took it.
We were taking that freedom.
- ♪ Please say something sweet ♪
♪ Please say something sweet ♪
She seemed to be like a sailor.
She had a lot of boyfriends.
She did not have good luck with men.
She probably didn't trust any man she'd ever been with,
thinking that they were all there just for one thing.
Her fame.
Fame brings problems.
"When a man asks me out," she complains,
"I never know if he's interested in me... or them."
I think that with all the glitter and everything,
I think she was basically lonely.
I can't even find a steady boyfriend right now.
Because I think most men have preconceived notions
and they can't handle what I'm doing.
She used to call me up all the time
and want advice on men.
Only young guys.
She wanted nothing to do with anybody over 30.
She did rather like younger men.
Because I don't think she wanted anybody
to tell her what to do
or to have a man
controlling her life at all.
Very free-spirited.
I started working in... when I was underage, at 19.
I was checking IDs and became a doorman at my uncle's club.
When I got inside and was bartending, she'd come in
and say, "Hi, Phil. How are ya?"
And she just took a liking to me
and then we got kinda close.
"What are you doing tonight?" "Oh, nothing." She's asking me.
I looked up to her 'cause she was famous.
You know, I was in awe.
What kid gets to do this kinda thing?
When we started seeing each other, I was about 19 or 20.
One of the first things she said, "I want you to feel 'em."
I thought if I squeezed hard enough,
I might leave a thumbprint. Felt like modeling clay. Was heavy.
It didn't feel natural.
If I touched too hard, she didn't like that.
Not at all, 'cause it hurt.
But she did it for her career and she had the career
and the fame from it.
It's time for the hottest talk show in town.
Single in the City,
starring two of San Francisco's most famous landmarks,
Miss Carol Doda.
Hi! This is Carol Doda,
and welcome to Single in the City.
I don't know. Where do you go to meet people?
I find it very hard for me to go sit at a bar
and try to meet somebody.
You know, I get very... embarrassed.
I feel like, "What the hell am I doing here by myself?"
"Why am I not sitting with Mr. Wonderful?"
Then I look around, I don't see Mr. Wonderful.
Start thinking something's wrong with you, right?
Gotta love yourself.
It is a great city for self-development.
Yeah, but I'm overdeveloped as it is.
If I get any more developed,
I won't be able to stand up and walk.
I do remember it just being a long-standing joke
that she's never gonna find anybody.
"I'm gonna be single for the rest of my life."
I think a relationship with one person
can get better and better and better and better.
Because that's what I want. That's my ultimate goal.
- You've never been married? - No. Mm-mm.
Have you been engaged?
Have you any close, personal loves in your life?
Oh, well, I've had a lot of those.
She just wanted somebody to love.
That's really all she ever wanted,
was to be loved.
A lot of people wondered about Carol being married.
There was rumors.
Nobody ever said anything.
Carol was married young.
I did not know the gentleman that she married,
but I do know, the stories I've heard,
it was not a good relationship. It was abusive for her.
When that relationship ended,
she moved on to the city.
♪ Washed by the waves to a sandy shore ♪
♪ Now she won't be happy ♪
♪ Anymore ♪
In the cult of the body beautiful,
California leads the way again.
What can top topless? Bottomless, of course.
In 1969, she takes it all off
and she's the first bottomless dancer of note.
She went nude. I never went all the way nude.
♪ You can climb a mountain ♪
♪ You can swim the sea ♪
♪ You can jump into the fire ♪
♪ But you'll never be free... ♪
Bottomless was controversial
because it took away some of the innocence of just topless.
But people wanted to see it. You had to compete.
They went bottomless
and then San Francisco said, "Can't do that."
"Gotta do shaved with merkins."
Which is, as my uncle calls it, a beaver toupee.
This furry little G-string thing
and it looked like... you know, like it was pubic hairs.
You may be looking at the focal point
of one of the pressing legal questions of our age.
What was at issue here was a 1970 board rule
prohibiting any sexual acts,
whether real or simulated,
the displaying of the genital area,
body contact between nude performers,
and nude performers
who were less than six feet from the audience.
As far as "naked," "nude," and "bottomless,"
we are gonna fight those words both outside and inside.
We are not going to cover up or put G-strings
on our bottomless entertainers.
So your entertainers are dancing nude tonight
in violation of this ruling?
- Yes, we are. - What happens next?
And surrounded by a bevy of performers,
including Carol Doda,
Belli expressed shock and dismay.
Now you tell me if it's fair in America
that the theater can do that,
legitimate and on the silver screen,
and my gals can't do that out in the North Beach.
I think that's the damnedest kind of discrimination
I've ever heard of.
Now I defy anyone to go up and see Hair or Curious
and say that there is such a thing left
as obscenity or pornography.
We're not allowed to show everything.
But like he said, these movies and these plays are.
And it's funny, after five years,
that they're getting this moral kick again.
I don't understand.
Look, we've got nudity here.
You can't all of a sudden say, "We haven't got it."
You know, like the mayor's office or Dianne Feinstein
or the supervisor. They're trying to ignore this street.
The Chamber of Commerce ignores us
with all the convention bureaus that come in here.
They ignore us, when it was our publicity
that has set San Francisco up as a major tourist town.
I have been publicized throughout the years as nude
and if they can't see any of this,
they're gonna be very unhappy
and they're not gonna want to come to San Francisco.
The star witness,
eminently qualified in her field,
San Francisco's Carol Doda came to testify
in Sacramento's famous topless/bottomless trial
on behalf of the defense
to demonstrate for a ten-man, two-woman jury
her version of prevailing community moral standards
in nightclub entertainment.
Your show perhaps illustrates standards in San Francisco.
How do you think that applies to Sacramento?
Well, they're only 80 miles apart.
It couldn't be that much different.
Today, the Supreme Court of the United States
may have dealt them a mortal blow.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled
that under the 21st Amendment,
which repealed Prohibition,
the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Board
has the right to regulate the type of entertainment
offered by any establishment
which is licensed to sell drinks.
It would seem then
that if you want to watch naked lady wrestlers,
seductive nude stewardesses, or college coeds,
or whatever your pleasure in the future,
then you're gonna have to do it
while either eating candy bars and popcorn
or drinking milk, orange juice, or soda pop.
And so, bottomless was dead.
The stigma attached to erotic work
is a problem for women's liberation
and equality.
Collective empowerment comes through
changes in policy, changes in laws,
general changes in the culture.
And those things are hard-won and take a long time.
Carol Doda was a fighter
and she didn't want hypocrisy
about whether women were being exploited
in bottomless clubs, topless clubs,
to mask the equally deep issue of worker exploitation.
♪ I hate to say it but I told you so ♪
♪ Don't mind my preaching to you ♪
♪ I said, don't trust him, baby Now you know ♪
♪ You don't learn everything There is to know at school... ♪
She sometimes would do 12 performances a day.
You work here at the Condor.
Steady. Seven days a week.
For each show you...
Dress, undress.
You know, there's no diversion.
Her other disputes with the Condor
were literally about money.
And that was about being an actual person, not a symbol,
and being a woman, and the wage gap.
At a certain point,
she had a year-to-year contract
and she wasn't happy about it.
Would always naturally ask for more money
and we'd have to negotiate.
And we paid her pretty fairly well.
You know? But she was never happy
because they figured the club owners
were making all the money.
Well, we own the club, you know?
I think at one point she wanted to buy in to the Condor
when she got really successful.
But I don't know what happened with that.
Naturally, we turned her down.
We aren't gonna give her any percentage of the place.
We own the place.
When she had left the Condor,
Voss started managing her and Voss owned the Off-Broadway.
Him and Gino got together
because Gino wasn't part of the Condor anymore.
They opened a club down the street
called Carol Doda's.
That's what they called it so they could make
as much money as they could off her name and image.
We weren't worried
because we just hired other go-go girls
and we still made money.
Maybe not as much, but we still made money.
And today, a press preview
of a talented young lady named Carol Doda.
Her new revue seems to fly in the face
of the current trends
for pornography and skin.
A revue that presents lavish costumes,
a Las Vegas-type choreography,
and even political satire.
Carol says she thinks it'll work.
They're gonna go and see these little movie houses
but then they'll say, "Okay, we saw it. What's next?"
Now they're ready for entertainment.
Do you sort of long for those simple,
straightforward days?
You mean the topless days, going up and down on a piano?
Those simple, straightforward days are exactly that.
Simple and straightforward.
You cannot stay at the same...
On anything. I don't care what you're doing,
politics, religion, anything,
you cannot stay on the same level.
You always have to graduate.
They rigged a pretty nice little show for her,
but it didn't work.
It was only there for less than a year.
It went broke.
She was nothing without the Condor.
And we knew that. She didn't know that.
Would you go back to the Condor?
They still have your name up there in lights.
No, I'm not planning on it.
The queen of topless, Carol Doda,
decided to put her clothes back on
and make her debut as a dramatic actress and singer.
♪ So the Bible said ♪
♪ And it still is news ♪
The critics, everybody's who's seen it,
know that we have an excellent show. Marvelous show.
It's Carol's dramatic debut
and she surprises everybody in it.
But the newspaper strikes, uh, may kill us.
When almost nobody came to see her show,
Miss Doda blamed the newspaper strike.
She went to Los Angeles.
Los Angeles had a ton of burlesque shows,
so strippers were all over the place.
And then she went to Vegas, and, oh, Vegas.
Vegas wasn't her thing.
There was too many beautiful, tall, talented,
gorgeous women in Vegas.
So she was just another girl.
Then she'd come back and then we'd give her her job back.
I love you!
Hi, darlin'. How ya doin', darlin'?
Showtime! Break it up!
Are you happy with it?
And what have been the side effects of it?
Oh, um...
Yes, I'm happy with it.
I mean, it would be awful to be unhappy with it at this point.
- What was the other question? I'm just...
Have you ever had any complications?
Oh, complications.
Uh, not real complications. The only thing is...
is that silicone does harden a little bit.
Women first started getting injections of silicone
in their breasts
probably right after World War II,
where there were big vats of industrial-grade silicone
hanging out on the Yokohama Harbor in Japan.
And Japanese prostitutes started injecting the stuff
into their breasts
as a way to attract male service members
from the United States.
They actually exported that practice
to other parts of the world, including the United States.
Well, I'll tell you. I'm from Japan and I'm half Japanese.
From here to here.
Made in Japan.
Does it collapse at all?
Nope, still there.
They have not collapsed
and you haven't had to have more injections?
They don't look collapsed to me.
No, I haven't.
So I didn't know silicone collapsed.
I thought the inflatables do. Don't they?
They don't?
Yes, they can.
You could see what was happening.
She had to keep getting the injections
just to keep looking normal, balanced.
You had it to do all over, would you...
Well, I don't see why...
You can't cry over spilt silicone.
Hm. Okay.
What kinds of problems have you seen?
We have had women with marked skin discoloration,
anywhere from bright red to actually black
with some of the oil exuding through their skin.
We've had... Most of the women have lumps,
many of which are very, very painful.
Their breasts become hard and rock-like.
And, uh, cancer detection is impossible
on an early basis.
Carol could've never made it without silicone.
I wouldn't have been a big act if I hadn't had silicone.
That was my life. That was my money.
I wanted it, so I was willing to take the chance.
I figured, "What the heck?
If they go bad, just cut 'em off."
You can live without your boobs.
But luckily, I didn't have any trouble with them.
Until I had a child
and I wanted to nurse my child.
So the milk came in
and we had to put a sheet around me to hold my breasts,
they were so huge.
And the milk in my breast
cut the circulation off
and my breast turned black and I got gangrene.
I had to have five surgeries to take it out.
I have no breasts.
To be 30 years old and used to being a sex symbol
and lose your breast?
I coulda died if I hadn't have discovered it.
The FDA banned the practice
because industrial-grade silicone
was creating all sorts of health problems in women.
By the mid 1970s, silicone implants,
which was basically taking the silicone
and encasing it in sort of a baggy, a silicone baggy.
And at that point, the implant business
really took over from the injections.
A lot of women started to report health problems
associated with their implants.
And they actually joined
the largest class-action lawsuit ever
against a consumer product,
and that was against Dow Corning
and manufacturers of breast implants.
It became the largest class-action settlement
in history at that time.
And Dow Corning actually was driven into bankruptcy.
Carol was asking herself,
"Why am I going through this?"
"I need to get more for sacrificing myself for this."
Show business is very, very hard.
Not only topless,
but say at the level of Lena Horne.
She told me that you need a cast iron belly
and being a woman, she doesn't like...
You need a cast iron heart to go along with it.
She did mention to me several times that,
"Yeah, this thing... I wonder if I made the right choice."
They always say people in show business are crazy
or they're... they are freaky or they're...
they do everything.
Well, I'm pretty basic and very simple.
If...
I'm probably the only one I know that, uh...
is all-American girl likes all-American guy,
and probably the one next door.
How about a home and a family?
Did you ever think of settling down someday
and raising children?
No. I, uh...
I really am not... a mother.
I know what I am. I know I'm an entertainer.
I think... I wouldn't bet my life on it,
I think that she had a kid.
She had a child, I heard.
One... One or two.
She had two children. A son and daughter.
I'll be damned.
Never talked about that, ever.
That was like a secret.
I don't know who the father was. I don't know...
I don't know if she was married.
You know, we never really talked about our personal lives
in North Beach.
We talked about our professional lives.
Your act and your hair and your makeup
and people on the street.
I never talked about my kids. Nobody knew I had kids.
I never knew Carol had kids. She never mentioned...
Ever mentioned it.
Well, Carol's divorce was not a good divorce.
I believe she lost custody of her children.
And that's part of what shaped
her protective layers and walls that she built up.
Somebody said I should, uh, write a book about
Broadway or my life.
I said, "My God, I don't want to start crying," you know?
- Forget it. - Is Broadway sad?
No, I'm talking about my life.
Everybody asks me, "Where is Broadway going?" every year.
I've had people say, "Oh my God,
it isn't like it used to be."
But one second away is not like it used to be.
And if you live like that,
then you will be living in the past.
And I just don't... You know, I don't relate like that.
Is it a boulevard of broken dreams?
You think people who work on Broadway
have fairly normal lives?
Like if they were a stockbroker working on Montgomery?
No way, Jose.
Every place had a barker out there going,
"Naked! Naked! Naked! See the naked girls!
Two-drink minimum."
The hottest show on Broadway, right here!
"Man-woman sex act right on stage!"
Come on, take a peek. No cover charge.
I might get a heart attack, I'm afraid.
Come on. No, you won't.
You'll get a hard-on. Check it out.
I was a barker.
Didn't know how to do it. I just watched my uncle.
"Two teachers, a housewife, and secretary
in our amateur topless contest!"
Young ladies here for more than one million dollars.
That's a lot of money, man.
You gotta have a perfect body.
Supernatural sex for sale!
Who bit that apple?
Nothing but Eve, that's what. Come in.
Excuse me, gentlemen. Right here it is...
Step right up.
When you've got a five-piece band
and a topless dancer, and go-go girls,
that's a lot of people you gotta pay.
You gotta be charging big bucks for drinks.
You gotta have full houses every night.
When I left, I said,
"This isn't gonna last long."
The crowd began to diminish.
So the action was dead.
First thing they did
was fire the live entertainment.
They went from band to canned music.
All the clubs would do that because it was a money thing.
Back in the 1960s, as many as 15 topless clubs
blossomed here on the Broadway strip.
But in recent years, business,
and a few other things, have sagged.
When it was on the downslide, the customers were different.
Before, it was couples.
And it just ended up with these guys in overcoats.
We didn't know it at the time. We're living through it.
We couldn't see it for what it was worth.
It was big before, but it was not big now,
and it's gonna get worse.
They started getting girls
that weren't too good.
They'd just come in off the street.
Didn't have gimmicks.
Didn't have pretty costumes.
♪ Needy song on Sleazy Street... ♪
It got out of the artistic
and got into the sleazy part, you know?
Right about the time the porn biz came in
and the dancers realized they could make $2,000 more
crossing the line than they can dancing.
They had a hard time getting young, attractive women,
so they were coming up from the Tenderloin.
These looked like hard chicks.
Much more readily tell you to fuck off.
Hard drugs started to come on the scene.
Mostly speed and downers.
It got dark because of that.
Nude encounter parlour, they were called.
We put up little partitions to make private rooms.
And the girl would even tell the guy,
"Yeah, you can take your clothes off if you want.
Do anything you want.
But no touching."
I think we charged at that time $50 an hour.
You wanna go to the back room, it's $150 an hour.
So guys thought if they go to the back room,
they were gonna get sex now.
All that happened in the back room
is she'd bring another girl in with her
so two girls would be in.
We were, you know, conning 'em.
They were rippin' people off and all that.
We didn't do any of that.
Tenderloin was known for that.
They ended up starting to buy up all the clubs.
We wanted to get on Broadway
because that's where the tourists were, the business.
It was hard to lure 'em down the street.
The reputation of the Tenderloin, very rough.
All those guys packed iron.
We got Big Al's,
and Big Al's we turned into a nude encounter parlour.
I did work at Big Al's one night.
And I was just really young and naïve.
I didn't really know what was going on.
I didn't know what that box of Kleenex was for.
Then we got across the street,
the Garden of Eden, which was big at that time.
We turned that into a nude encounter parlour.
Anybody that was legitimate
didn't wanna go up against those guys,
so they'd sell out.
After a while, I got out
because I thought they were gonna blow me away
if I didn't.
They ended up ruining the street is what they did.
Don Levine, he owned the club after Mattioli.
He was very difficult to deal with.
Carol worked for hardly anything at all.
She got like, I think in those days, $45 a show.
She had to get all dressed up,
spend hours up there.
Carol wasn't a very good businesswoman
but she was a wonderful person.
She should have made a whole lot more money than she did.
Here I was, spending a lot of money on costuming,
my wigs, my this, my that.
And I felt like I was holding the world on my shoulders.
And then, the owner at that time
was letting the club go down the drain.
When you let someplace deteriorate,
people are gonna notice that.
But he wanted to take it out on me.
He just wanted me to work on the weekends.
So he wanted to take advantage of my name,
wanted me to take a tremendous salary cut.
Was very demeaning
after I'd worked so many years and so hard.
Very few women
have been entrepreneurial enough
to really make a long-term successful business
out of their chest.
It tends to be a fleeting commodity.
One can imagine great anxiety around...
her primary asset.
It's going out of fashion.
It's aging. It's literal deflation.
What is perennial out of fashion is the old boob.
- How old are you now? - [Doda] How old am I now?
- Well... - Are... You don't say?
Well, uh, I do say or I don't say
but what difference does it make?
It now seems absurd to think of a woman
in her thirties, forties, as aging.
But she knew society had said she had an expiration date.
I drew up a contract with Levine and gave it to him.
Said, "These are the conditions we want,"
and I got him to sign the agreement.
Otherwise, he never would pay her anything.
And Don Levine is the one that brought Jimmy the Beard in
as the protector.
Because there was other people that wanted to muscle in
on some of the clubs on Broadway.
Jimmy the Beard.
He was the manager of the Condor.
Tough guy, but he didn't act like a tough guy.
Was not a bully.
But I knew he's not somebody that you'd wanna mess with.
If there was a fight, and there were occasionally,
never more than three or four punches thrown
because Jimmy was the best.
If there was any hot action, he was on it.
I mean, he was gruff
and it was just, whatever he said went.
But everybody liked him
'cause he had one of those personalities.
And his wife, Ginger, was my friend.
Ginger was a dancer and a waitress.
They end up moving to Vegas,
and Jimmy got in a fight with the son
of one of the big Mafia guys in Vegas.
He beats the hell out of the guy.
Think he put the guy in the hospital.
Anyway, when this happened,
the word got out that they're gonna kill him.
He came to me, told me what happened.
I says, "Oh, Jesus, Jimmy."
"You're gonna have to have eyes behind your head."
He says, "For how long?"
I says, "Forever."
-"They're gonna get you." - Bizarre.
Perhaps the most overused word on television newscasts.
But how else to describe the death of Jimmy the Beard?
The lights may be on,
but the Condor club is sealed tight.
Homicide investigates the bizarre death of this man,
James "the Beard" Ferrozzo.
He came in really drunk and was with a girl.
They were drinking Green Chartreuse,
I remember that clearly.
It's pretty strong stuff.
He said, "Phil, you can go home now."
I knew what that meant. They wanted to party.
Ginger called me up.
She said, "Jimmy didn't come home last night."
I said, "Weren't you worried when he didn't come home?"
She said, "Well, that wasn't the first night
he didn't come home all night."
I found the guy, and I lost a good friend.
- What happened, do you know? - Crushed to d-- He's crushed.
Found at 10:00 this morning on top of a piano
suspended in the air.
He was fully clothed.
Next to him, naked, was 23-year-old Theresa Hill.
I heard the girl's voice.
So I went through the dressing room
and through the tunnel where Carol Doda goes to do her show
and saw that the girl was alive.
And I reached down and felt Jimmy.
And... Well, I knew he was dead.
The survivor, incoherent when found.
She says she remembers nothing of what happened.
They had been partying all night.
There he is
with his head right in her bush.
And laying on the bar are these lines of blow, cocaine.
I said, "I better get rid of this stuff
before the heat comes."
So I didn't blow it off the bar.
I stuffed it up my nose.
The whole place is turned upside down.
Chairs upside down.
A fight went on in there.
When homicide inspectors finally came out,
they weren't sure.
It appears to be a homicide, but that's all we know now.
Maybe. Maybe not.
But everybody who knew anything about it
knows that piano moves up slowly.
And though it's controlled from a separate panel,
it can also be stopped with a switch on the piano itself.
If you know where the switch is.
What I believe is they killed him.
I think it was a setup.
Yeah, I think they killed him first.
But Art has another theory.
I think it was a total accident.
He had on cowboy boots.
His toe hit the up button
and he was too goofed-up to know that it was moving.
He woulda loved that story though.
Jimmy would've loved it.
It's a great story, right?
The piano goes up and his foot just happens to hit the switch
that's way over there, by the way.
Maybe they just threw her up there
and they threw him on her
and they sent the piano up.
And they told the girl, "We're not gonna kill you.
Now you get outta town.
Don't ever come back here again."
But that's how Jimmy the Beard, why he got killed.
Since that bizarre accident last week,
Carol Doda's been off work.
Tonight, she returns, and the piano still sits there.
When I was using it, it was like part of me.
But now, I mean, the things that happened on it
are certainly not a part of me.
And I really can't relate to it anymore.
When Carol retired from the Condor,
she had to reinvent herself.
In the '80s, it still was hard for women to survive.
She was really scared to support herself,
so she was struggling to figure out how.
She was not going to accept her expiration date.
She was going to deny it, work with it,
work around it, blow it up.
The best thing in my life right now
is my rock and roll show,
and it's called Carol Doda and Her Lucky Stiffs.
And I have my adult fantasy line.
Yeah. You've got it.
976-D-O-D-A.
You're such a... handsome guy.
She was kind of a jack of all trades
at trying to find ways to bring in income.
Carol Doda is marketing
her own line of skin moisturizers,
and she also exercises every day.
Who is Carol Doda?
Know what I am? A court jester.
Makes people laugh, entertains people. That's all I am.
Is there a serious side to Carol Doda?
I've seen my serious side. Forget it.
Why not laugh, huh? Why not laugh at yourself?
Carol Doda, how are you?
I'm fine. How are you?
- So whatcha doin' nowadays? - I got a boutique.
Champagne and lace lingerie boutique.
In this little side street off of Union Street...
She had this really nice boutique salon.
With custom-sized bras and lingerie.
I have nice dresses like this. You like this dress?
- Yeah. - She hasn't changed much.
- Look.
She went through
so many bra sizes in her career,
she could look at somebody and know their bra size.
She was a master.
A lot of people that were her customers,
they weren't really customers.
They were people that wanted to come and see her.
The legendary Carol Doda.
* Just in time ♪
I think my father was a little star-struck initially.
They met for the first time at Gino & Carlo's
which is a very famous watering hole in North Beach.
My father, he loved her for her
and not for "Carol Doda" the image,
the marquee, the superstar.
He was her boyfriend for a lot of years.
He really took care of her.
Carol and my dad, Jay,
were together for about ten years.
That was the longest relationship
Carol had ever had.
She just adored him.
She described him as the love of her life.
Her best friend.
"Just in Time" song, I think it had a deep meaning
between my father and Carol.
Whenever she'd hit the stage,
she'd sing "Just in Time" and point at him
and look at him the whole time.
♪ You found me just in time ♪
♪ And changed my lonely life... ♪
He saved her and she saved him
in many regards as well.
When Jay passed away, it hit her really hard.
Her health was deteriorating
in different ways.
The doctors said that the effects of the silicone
had caused a disease called Goodpasture syndrome.
It attacks your kidneys and your lungs.
She was very ill,
and she insists on going to the Tupelo.
She was adamant. "People are counting on me.
I gave 'em my word."
She lived to be on stage.
That was her whole raison d'etre.
So we ended up relenting and we took her to the Tupelo.
And Carol pulls out this sack of makeup out of her purse
and starts drawing eyebrows
and drawing the eyeliner around her eyes
and transforms herself into Carol.
She's the icon of North Beach
and has been for many years. Miss Carol Doda.
I remember her walking very slowly
because her breathing was labored.
She would put her hand on the keyboard
and feel the music
because she couldn't hear.
And she broke out in "All of Me"
like she's done a million times.
♪ All of me ♪
♪ Why not take all of me ♪
♪ Can't you see I'm no good without you ♪
♪ Take my lips ♪
♪ I'll never use them ♪
♪ Take my arms ♪
♪ I won't use them ♪
♪ Your goodbye ♪
♪ Left me with eyes that cry ♪
♪ How can I go on without ♪
♪ You took that part ♪
♪ That once was my heart ♪
♪ So why not Why not take all of me ♪
Okay, boys.
♪ Why not ♪
♪ I said, why not ♪
♪ Why not, baby ♪
♪ Why not take all of me ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪
Your frustrations have to come out some way.
So mine come out in my drawings.
I believe in entertainment.
And I believe in love.
Why, all of a sudden,
is everybody becoming so puritanical?
Are they afraid of the body?
Are they afraid that people don't have minds of their own?
I think I'll just go on doing my act.
I think we've covered everything.