44 Facts About Leroy Griffith

Leroy Charles Griffith was born on March 26,1932 and is an American theater and nightclub proprietor, former Broadway and off-Broadway theater producer and director, and former burlesque and adult film producer.

Leroy Griffith was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, to Stella Duncan and Floyd Roy Leroy Griffith.

Leroy Griffith's father was a theater manager, police officer, and concession stand operator.

The younger Leroy Griffith served as a projectionist, cashier, and usher at local theaters in his hometown.

Leroy Griffith 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 Leroy 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.

At the Grand, Leroy Griffith started as a "candy butcher," hawking candy and trinkets to burlesque audiences before and during intermission.

In 1955, Leroy Griffith was drafted into service with the US Army in Hot Springs, Arkansas.

Leroy Griffith managed the carnival's popular "Club 17 Revue," which featured burlesque shows.

Leroy Griffith recounted to the New York Times in 1970 that he built a brand new theater and showed The Sound of Music, but lost money.

Leroy Griffith told the New York Times that he became interested in burlesque while a concession manager for Harold Minsky's burlesque houses in Chicago.

Leroy Griffith directed and co-produced The Wonderful World of Burlesque, an off-Broadway show that ran for 211 performances at the Mayfair Theater, from April to June 1965.

Leroy Griffith was one of the first producers ever to hire a bi-racial couple to star in a film when he cast Tempest Storm and Herb Jeffries, "Hollywood's First Black Singing Cowboy," as the stars of his 1967 film Mundo depravados.

Leroy Griffith owned, leased, or operated more than 70 theaters, cinemas, and nightclubs throughout the US, mostly concentrated in the Northeast, the Rust Belt, and the South.

Leroy Griffith was co-operator of Toledo's Town Hall Theater with "Queen of Burlesque" Rose La Rose, a nationally-renowned stripper who, having shrewdly saved and invested her earnings, retired in 1958, settled in Toledo, and purchased the Town Hall and, eventually, another local theater.

Leroy Griffith was one of the rare women on the burlesque circuit to evolve from performer to theater owner in her own right.

Leroy Griffith bought the Boulevard in 1970 for $125,000 and renamed it the Pussycat, creating three different theaters within: the Pussycat, the center theater, was a 900-seat theater that showed adult films; the Kitty Cat featured female performers; and the Tomcat featured male performers.

Leroy Griffith originally leased it, then bought it, and staged burlesque there, under the name Paris Follies.

Leroy Griffith sold it in 1986, then bought it back after its owners failed with the nightclub Paris Moderne, and later sold it again.

Leroy Griffith continued to open new venues throughout South Florida, from Broward County in the north to Key West in the south.

Leroy Griffith began producing films and exhibiting them in his theaters nationwide.

Leroy Griffith generated publicity at the Roxy when, in 1967, he publicly invited city officials to a screening of the film, Man and Wife.

One protestor turned up at Leroy Griffith's office brandishing a gun.

In 1994, Leroy Griffith converted the Roxy from an adult movie theater to an all-nude strip club, which it remains today.

Since the beginning of his career, Leroy Griffith faced staunch opposition to his business efforts, whether as a burlesque producer, adult film theater operator, or strip club owner.

In January 1961, Leroy Griffith was fined $500 for exhibiting "an indecent, immoral or impure picture" when he showed B-Girl Rhapsody at his recently-opened Parsons Follies theater in Columbus, Ohio.

Leroy Griffith's conviction, upheld in lower courts, was overturned in 1963 after the Ohio Supreme Court agreed to hear his appeal.

The next day, Leroy Griffith won a temporary restraining order from a local judge to keep the Roxy from being raided again.

In 1974, Leroy Griffith won a $32,038 judgment for damages against Linda Lovelace, who appeared in the 1972 hardcore film Deep Throat.

Leroy Griffith filed suit to stop the committee, whereupon Ferre abandoned his proposal.

Leroy Griffith turned Hialeah's Atlas Cinema into an X-rated theater in August 1985, outraging Mayor Raul Martinez.

The day after opening, in a pre-emptive strike, Leroy Griffith's lawyers sued the city, charging that a Hialeah zoning ordinance banning porn cinemas within 500 feet of residences was unconstitutional.

Efforts by the county to charge him with a felony for screening two obscene movies within 5 years collapsed when Leroy Griffith's attorney pointed out that too much time had elapsed between incidents.

Leroy Griffith had just won a court fight with the city over his right to exhibit a film called Three Ripening Cherries.

Leroy Griffith was accused of owing more than $50,000 in fines dating back to 1978.

The city bungled part of the collection process in a technical snafu, so Leroy Griffith ended up accountable for only $21,400.

Leroy Griffith's attorneys filed suit in November 1987 against Hollywood, Fla.

Leroy Griffith announced that if the Gold Club was allowed to open with liquor and nudity, he would move his hard-core films from the Gayety Theater to the Roxy, which then was showing second-run movies for general audiences.

Leroy Griffith sued several city officials in federal court, alleging they conspired to deny him a fair hearing before the City Commission after he sued the wife of one commissioner for libel, slander, and defamation after she waged a campaign against him, claiming, among other things, that he was a tax cheat.

Leroy Griffith played brief cameo parts in some of his films.

Leroy Griffith's Miami Beach home on Pine Tree Drive was a filming location for scenes from the Frank Sinatra films Tony Rome and Lady in Cement.

In May 1964, Leroy Griffith saved the life of his 18-month-old son, Cash, after pulling him unconscious from the family pool at their Venetian Islands home.

Leroy Griffith credited his effort to reading about mouth-to-mouth resuscitation instructions while on an airplane flight the week before.