When Nancy Seaman left the Midwest and drove out to L. A.,“ California Dreaming” was on the radio. She had no idea how she would support herself and wound up dancing at the Cat. At the end of the decade, she became the first dancer in Hollywood to go bottomless. Like most of the women her age, she was a rock chick, and was soon hanging out with her friends at Leon Russell’ s home in the hills. She reflects on her colleagues:“ We were like school girls, and it was a school of sorts. The girls were wonderful; they were just like me. Some of them were going to school, raising kids, had husbands and families. One girl was studying to go into real estate. Another, Sylvia, did the filthiest dance I’ ve ever seen in my life. But I saw her at home, and she was a wife and a mother, cooking and the cleaning.” |
Filming Marlowe on the Sunset Strip |
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Despite‘ no mixing’ policies, aggressive hustlers usually found a way to get to the girls. Everything under the sun was promised by men who wanted to set up photo shoots and run cameras, and Seaman distrusted them all. She even walked away when a funny little man in thick glasses approached her at the Cat, offering a TV commercial. Stan Freberg had to find a Swedish blonde to look seductively into the camera and coo:“ Take it off, take it all off” for his iconic Noxema shave cream ad.
The Largo’ s fame spread through movies. Dustin Hoffman took Catherine Ross for an ill-fated date to the club in The Graduate, she squirmed while Lainie Miller’ s toned bod worked out behind them. One of the great under-appreciated L. A. movies of the decade – 1969’ s Marlowe, starring James Garner – also featured the club. Rita Moreno’ s strip sequence leading up to the film’ s gunshot conclusion will forever serve as The Largo’ s memorial.
As sixties came to a close, the world of nubile flesh was changing. Feature movies were becoming more risqué and porno films were beginning to go mainstream. Beverly Powers( Miss Beverly Hills) wistfully told a reporter:“ They expect things of you now that I just can’ t live with.” For the first time she was asked to work without pasties and make eye contact with the audience.
Before it closed its doors and reopen as the Roxy, the Largo had one last hurrah. Liz Renay, in her late forties, headlined before the doors closed. She soon made her way to the seedy Ivar Theatre in East Hollywood. Liz and her daughter appeared as probably the first mother-daughter strip team— with matching heart-shaped pubic mounds. By the mid 1970s, former Russ Meyer star Erica Gavin was a waitress at the Roxy. Beverly Powers’ movie and TV career lasted to 1979. She became a minister and has a lucrative wedding business in Hawaii. Nancy Seaman maintains the popular Hollywood Hangover website, the cyber meeting place for all of the scattered souls who drank at the Hollywood fountain in what now seems like a golden age.
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The Body Shop in 1962
“ They expect things of you now that I just can’ t live with.” |
left top and bottom: Bison Archive, top right and bottom right: Photofest |