and movies. Whenever the story called for a“ classy exotic”, Miss Beverly Hills was the first choice.

Harry Schiller’ s Seville club, on Santa Monica Boulevard near Crescent Heights, was dying a slow death in 1959. He tried country music, calypso, show revues, Latin bands and jazz before rechristening the room the Pink Pussycat. His wife Alice was mortified. But, pragmatically she got in step and remodeled the place in pink. Alice was probably the brains behind the Pussycat’ s long-running gimmick: feature dancers named after the Rat Pack: Fran Sinatra, Dina Martin, Samiya Davis, Jr., Peeler Lawford and Joy Bishop. She acted as den mother to the girls and saw to every detail at the club.

Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood, Lucille Ball, Marlon Brando, Paul Anka, Peter Falk … all were spotted in the Pussycat audience at one time or another. Suddenly striptease was no longer sleazy. A vintage Rolls parked in front of the building added to the upscale mood of the room.

Lenny’ s pal Jackie Gayle worked the room. He’ d crack the audience up with lines:“ I’ ll always remember the last words of King Kong as he stood on top of the Empire State Building with Fay Wray in his arms, while the planes were shooting down all around them:‘ Honey, I told you these mixed marriages wouldn’ t work.’” Or:“ There’ s a new sports car from Italy— the Mafia. You open the hood— there’ s another hood. You open the trunk--there’ s Eliot Ness!”

Lenny’ s mother, 52-year old Sally Marr, began running the Pink Pussycat College of Striptease. Tuition was a hundred dollars and courses included Navel and Pelvis Rotation, Applied Sensual Communication and Dynamic Mammary. Men’ s magazines had a field day with the idea of stripping going mainstream. With David Rose’ s“ The Stripper” a national hit record, it felt like a new era.

the Pink Pussycat can’ t do it alone.” Michelle Angelo, a girl-next door type, danced at the Pussycat in 1968. Though she made a few sexploitation films like Nymphs Anonymous and Street of a Thousand Pleasures, Michelle became the unrivaled queen of‘ 60s skin mag photo layouts. She posed for countless photo sessions; two a day were common for her. Angelo’ s most famous was in psychedelic body paint for Playboy.

The plush Losers club on La Cienega at Willoughby had a billboard in front that named the‘ loser of the week’--from Fidel Castro to Richard Nixon to Lew Wasserman. In the mid‘ 60s it featured go-go dancers and it had two stars. Haji was an exotic looking brunette who began stripping at 14, had a child at 15 and in 1965, appeared in Russ Meyer’ s Motor Psycho. Meyer was the king of West Coast soft-core cheapies— full of big-breasted women and hapless men. He walked Haji through her first acting job ever and ended up making her the lead.

But the big star at The Losers was Tura Santana--a curvy, busty Asian whose dance routines utilized martial arts moves and swords. When Meyer needed a couple of bad girls for his cult classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Haji and Tura were naturals. The movie had no nudity but was awash in violence and sexual innuendo. After years of cranking out nudies on the cheap, Meyer was suddenly considered an auteur. For years, Quentin Tarantino spoke of remaking the grindhouse classic.

The Losers went topless in 1966, where the striking Alvenia Jones danced, a few years before she became the Rolling Stones’ publicist. But the club had one more gift to exploitation cinema. Erica Gavin took to dancing after her drug dealer boyfriend was busted. Haji and Tura referred the pretty 19-year old with a mountain of brown hair to Meyer. He cast her as a Hollywood party girl in his first studio production, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls in 1970, and starred her in other Meyer opuses like Supervixens.

Billy Wilder saw Tura Satana at the Pussycat and found a part for her in Irma La Deuce. Bob Hope spoke at the opening of the downtown Music Center at the end of 1964:“ L. A. needs culture and

There were a few other Hollywood strip spots that came and went. Ben Pollock’ s Pick-a-Rib and The Scene— both on Sunset, flirted with strip policies. Before Gene Norman’ s landmark jazz-and-

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