60 Years Ago: Carol Doda and The Birth of Topless Dancing

August 29 was the birthday of exotic dancer Carol Doda (1937-2015). And learning about her has provided delights beyond the obvious.

To wit: I had long wondered about when American culture transitioned from burlesque/post-burlesque (i.e., female centered spectacle that often involved partial undress, i.e. stripping) to out-and-out topless dancing in so-called gentleman’s clubs. It may seem a nice distinction, but it is actually a major one, which is why a burlesque revival occurred in the ’80s, ’90s, and thereafter. Old style burlesque had died out! At some point previous to the revival, all sorts of theatrical formalities and traditions had been dropped, and the experience began to privilege the nudity as the entire raison d’etre. As a rough analogy, the show went from being a dining experience with many courses….to just a lot of sugary dessert. How do we get from Minsky’s to The Bada-Bing?

The answer proves to be Carol Doda. Doda was only a teenager when she began working at San Francisco’s Condor Club as a waitress and entertainer. The Condor Club was a music venue that offered R&B acts like Bobby Freeman (“Do You Wanna Dance?”) and young Sylvester Stewart (later better known as Sly Stone). But after June, 1964 all eyes were on Doda. That was when she began to dance topless, showing off her size 34B endowments, performing popular dances like the Swim, the Frug, the Twist, and the Watusi. She made a spectacular entrance dancing on top of a grand piano that was lowered from the ceiling. She later enhanced the spectacle by increasing her bust size to 44DD with silicone injections.

This wasn’t just novel, this was the bursting of a dam. Obviously, publicly topless women have existed in many cultures throughout history. But never before had this been hazarded in mainstream American nightclubs. Very rapidly afterwards, all the men’s clubs in San Francisco featured topless dancers, and then most of them throughout the country. As had been the case throughout the history of burlesque, there were periodic raids and busts and court cases on obscenity charges, but most were thrown out on First Amendment grounds, or in any event were but temporary inconveniences. By the end of decade, Times Square in New York, the once and future heart of Broadway, had become a nabe of go-go bars, sex shops, peep shows, and porn theatres; and Boston, the Capital of Puritanism, had its own “Combat Zone”.

In San Francisco, Doda became a local celebrity and her fame spread beyond the night clubs. She did humorous segments for a local television station. She made several appearances on Gypsy Rose Lee’s talk show. She appeared as Sadie Thompson in a 1968 local theatrical production of Somerset Maugham’s Rain. She was in The Monkees’ movie Head (1968), and the Italian crime thriller Machine Gun McCain (1969). In 1969 she raised even more eyebrows by going bottomless, a stunt she pulled onstage until 1972, when it was made firmly illegal. Later movies in which Doda starred included Rise and Fall of the World as Seen from a Sexual Position (1972), Honey Tonk Nights (1978), Trashi (1981), and Never So Deep (1981).

By the ’80s, Doda had toned her act down somewhat, and classed it up with traditional burlesque accoutrements such as evening gowns and elbow-length gloves. In 1983, her famous piano became the instrument of a freak accident. Manager “Jimmy the Beard” Ferrozzo was shtupping his girlfriend atop the thing. They accidentally flipped a switch and the hydraulics hoisted the piano to its place in the ceiling, crushing the corpulent Ferrozzo to death in the process. What a way to go! Somehow, it doesn’t seem irrelevant. (The girl was fine, btw. Did she flip the switch?)

Doda retired from topless dancing in 1985, thenceforth dividing her time between her lingerie boutique, and her dance band The Lucky Stiffs. In 1998 she appeared on two episodes of the TV show Nash Bridges with Don Johnson and Cheech Marin. In later years she performed (fully attired) in cabarets with a singing act.

Earlier this year the documentary Carol Doda: Topless at the Condor (2024) was released. Directed and produced by Jonathan Parker and Marlo McKenzie, it’s a terrific record of a time, a place, and a person. Doda comes off as witty in the tradition of Mae West, and an all around savvy player who had to do some swimming amongst some serious sharks. The footage in this film coverage of San Francisco’s Broadway night club scene in the ’60s and ’70s is just amazing. You meet the musicians, the dancers, some of the club owners. You see the whole scene devolve from the relatively naive early rock and roll and jazz days (when it was so wholesome that even Barry Goldwater’s sons went to check it out), to the sleazy peep show and porn scene of later years. Doda herself has been gone for nearly a decade now, but there’s lots of vintage footage of her. The one missing element is some hard information about her background, her parentage, and a rumored first husband and possible children. She was tight-lipped about it in her lifetime, and the film-makers apparently didn’t do any digging. It would have added something, I think. Otherwise, this is a VERY enjoyable film. You can access it here.