Leroy Charles Griffith (born March 26, 1932) is an American theater and nightclub proprietor, former Broadway and off-Broadway theater producer and director, and former burlesque and adult film producer. In a career spanning 75 years, he owned, leased, or operated more than 70 theaters, cinemas, and nightclubs across the United States, dating from the burlesque era of the 1950s to the present. Earl Wilson, among others, nicknamed him "Burlesque King."
During burlesque's heyday, Griffith was a prolific producer of live stage shows featuring showgirls, strippers, comedians, vaudevillians, and other stars of the era. As burlesque declined in popularity, he made the crossover to exhibiting as well as producing adult films and operating strip clubs, notably past and present Miami-area clubs such as Club Madonna, Deja Vu, and Wonderland.
His business endeavors in the adult entertainment industry have, for decades, put him at odds with restrictive municipalities. He has taken legal action, often successfully, to defend his constitutional rights and be able to operate his establishments. His and others' trailblazing victories helped to make the adult entertainment industry more accepted and tolerated in 20th and 21st century American society.
Griffith was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to Stella Duncan (1909–1961) and Floyd Roy Griffith (1909–1984). His father was a theater manager, police officer, and concession stand operator. The younger Griffith served as a projectionist, cashier, and usher at local theaters in his hometown. He started out selling popcorn at his father's Strand Theater and was a concessions operator at the Jewel Theater, both in Poplar Bluff. Decades later, the senior Griffith relocated to Florida to work for his son's expanding theatrical empire.At 17, Leroy Griffith left for St. Louis and a job working concessions at the Grand Burlesque Theatre for East Coast-based theater concessions magnate Oscar Markovich (1895–1982). At the Grand, Griffith started as a "candy butcher," hawking candy and trinkets to burlesque audiences before and during intermission. "In those days," Griffith recalled 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. It was a good show."
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 between acts, the pitchman would sell prize packages, candy, stuff like that. 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 accruing money for higher ambitions.
A June 1955 Billboard magazine column noted that the 23-year-old "Leroy Griffith, concession manager at the Folly [Theater], Kansas City, Mo., is now the owner of the Missouri Coffee Shop with an enlarged dining room and a new air-conditioned system."
In 1955, Griffith was drafted into service with the U.S. Army in Hot Springs, Arkansas. 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.
After an early discharge from the military, Griffith acquired his first theater, the Star, in Portland, Oregon. After a limited operation of a Kansas City, Missouri, restaurant and another period of short-term employment with Markovich, he opened a theater in Detroit, Michigan. He was in his mid-twenties.
A 1959 Billboard article described Griffith as one of the "brigade of regulars" employed by the popular King Reid Shows, a carnival that traveled the New England and Canada circuit and which was founded by Vermont showman and state legislator "King" Reid Lefèvre (1904–1968). Griffith managed the carnival's popular "Club 17 Revue," which featured burlesque shows.
Identifying "legitimate theaters" that were going out of business, Griffith began acquiring them. "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 gradually acquired scores of theaters throughout the United States.
Converting such theaters to adult fare proved popular and lucrative. He recounted to the New York Times in 1970 that he built a brand new theater and showed The Sound of Music, but lost money. Upon switching to an adult policy, he reaped $4,000 the first week (equivalent to $32,000 in 2024).
Griffith told the New York Times that he became interested in burlesque while a concession manager for Harold Minsky's burlesque houses in Chicago. From the late 1950s to the late 1960s, he was one of the nation's leading producers of burlesque entertainment. Entertainment columnist Earl Wilson called him the "new Minsky" and he and other newspapermen often referred to Griffith as "Burlesque King." In 1966, the New York branch manager of the American Guild of Variety Artists, which exercised jurisdiction over burlesque throughout the nation, told the New York Times that Griffith was the largest producer in the field.
Nightly, and during matinees, the curtains went up in Griffith's circuit of theaters throughout the country — from small cities such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, to metropolises like Chicago and New York City — with live shows featuring showgirls, strippers, comedians, vaudevillians, and other performing stars of the era.
Among the countless burlesque performers hired by Griffith were Candy Barr, Virginia Bell, Ann Corio, Dixie Evans, Lili St. Cyr, Blaze Starr, and Tempest Storm.
Even as burlesque's popularity faded in the 1960s, one of Griffith's Miami Beach theaters was reported to be thriving as one of the 20 remaining burlesque theaters in the nation. When finally the genre ceased to be a popular and profitable attraction, one of its last remaining producers adapted to changing tastes and times, converting his burlesque houses to adult film theaters and strip clubs.
Broadway and off-Broadway producer
This Was Burlesque, a revue conceived by and starring burlesque star Ann Corio, was staged for 124 performances at Griffith's Hudson Theater on Broadway during the 1964–65 season, from March to June 1965. It went on to tour across the U.S. in various productions over the next two decades.
Griffith also produced Hello Burlesque, a 1965 show featuring showgirl Julie Taylor, "Miss Sex 5th Avenue."