We had a Chinese dinner together, and then started watching the coming attractions for an X-rated film that was going to be running. "One time Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Belle Barth came into the Gayety Theater when I was running it. "These places would go under," he said in a 1993 interview, "and I'd go in and take over and make them successful with an adult policy." He soon acquired theaters throughout the United States. Identifying "legitimate" theaters that were going out of business, Griffith began acquiring them. He was in his mid-twenties.Ĭareer Theater and club owner After a limited operation of a Kansas City, Mo., restaurant and another period of short-term employment with Markovich, he opened a theater in Detroit. While stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, he worked with Bob Hope's USO show (featuring Jerry Colonna, Mickey Mantle, and Ginger Rogers, among others) when Hope was on tour there in December 1956.Īfter an early discharge, Griffith acquired his first theater, the Star, in Portland, Ore. In 1955, Griffith was drafted into the armed services. Concessions was where the real money was, just like it is with regular movies today." After working his way up to concessions manager, Griffith began saving money, his eye set on greater aspirations. In between acts, the pitchman would sell prize packages, candy, stuff like that. Griffith discovered that any profit to be made was not from the show itself but from the concession stand: "That's where I was. "In those days," he said in a 1993 interview, "they had probably 30 people in the cast, a chorus line, an orchestra, two comics, a singer, a vaudeville act, and then five exotic dancers. At the Grand, Griffith started as a "candy butcher," hawking candy and trinkets to audiences before and during intermission. Louis and a job working concessions at the Grand Burlesque Theater for East Coast-based theater concessions magnate Oscar Markovich. The younger Griffith began as a projectionist, cashier, and usher at a local theater in his hometown. Griffith was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri to Floyd R. His business endeavors in the adult entertainment industry have, for decades, put him at odds with restrictive municipalities, and he has taken legal action, often successfully, to be able to operate his establishments. During burlesque's heyday, he was a prolific producer of live stage shows featuring showgirls, strippers, comedians, and other stars of the era. He has owned, leased, or operated more than 70 adult entertainment theaters across the United States, dating from the burlesque era of the 1950s to present day nightclubs. Leroy Charles Griffith (born March 26, 1932) is an American theater and nightclub proprietor, former Broadway theater producer, and film producer. Stage shows ( Hello Burlesque, This Was Burlesque, etc.) chief executive officer of Club Madonna
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