Free expression documentary fund nears 70 percent

San Francisco topless legend Carol Doda performs during Sacramento indecency trial 

The online campaign funding a Sacramento documentary exploring the 1969 strip club indecency case that took the jury to the club is approaching 70 percent funded with 9 days remaining.

Using the crowdfunding site Indiegogo, Fletcher and his team are trying to raise $10,000 by March 22. Through March 15, the month-long campaign was at 68 percent of goal.

The feature-length documentary will use the colorful 1969 trial over “bottomless” dancing at Orangevale’s Pink Pussy Kat to help to tell a broader story about the limits of free expression then and now.

The impactful Sacramento trial went national when Judge Earl Warren Jr. decided to take the jury to the club see the dancers “do the dance.” The case helped write the rules for exotic dance in California.

Sacramento journalist and filmmaker Ed Fletcher said he was confident the team will hit the goal.

“There is so much Sacramento love for a deeply local story. We will get there,” said Fletcher.

The reaction to the campaign has been mostly positive, Fletcher said.

“Some people don’t want to talk about it or maybe they think it’s anti-women. To me, it’s just history,” Fletcher said. “This happened and we want to tell the story. I’m not pro-strip club or anti-strip club. I’m a journalist. But at the same time you can’t be afraid to show a little leg in marking if you’re making a project about free expression.”

Directing the project is DQ Hayes, an emerging filmmaker and former musician from the band Shakedown.

"There is love for this project from all over. We get people hitting up our page from UK, Spain, Sweden. Free expression and women's empowerment is universal," said Hayes.

More information at: Dothedance.net

CLICK HERE to contribute

California beer bar challenged legal nudity limits of late 1960s

During the summer of 1969, a beer bar in the Northern California community of Orangevale dared to go full-nude setting off a series of legal challenges that ended with the dancers, including Carol Doda, performing for the jury.

"Do the Dance," a documentary telling the story of this wild and influential trial, is currently raising funds on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform.

Carol Doda's dead, now what

Death of would be documentary star adds urgency to project 

Carol Doda performing at Chuck Landis' Largo during Sacramento obscenity trial 

By Ed Flethcher
Meeting Carol Doda always seems a matter of when, not if.
Once I began to pursue producing a film about Sacramento’s infamous strip club indecency trial, I’d decided Doda could be key in securing more media coverage and access to financial backers.
The world famous San Francisco entertainer turned the 1969 trial into a national story when she was called to testify by performing a striptease for the jury.
Doda’s cooperation and (hopefully) support would open the doors to media coverage and financial backers, I’d reasoned.
While I briefly spoke with her (more on that later), I never got my interview.
She died Nov. 9  at age 78 due to complications related to kidney failure.
Doda’s death and the passing of Sacramento County Undersheriff Larry Stamm is a sad reminder that time is of the essence when it comes to uncovering dusty historical gems contained in human memories.
When the project was first conceived it was singular in focus: produce a feature-length film on the arrest and trial -- think “American Hustle” meets “The People Vs. Larry Flynt.”
Maybe some screenwriters have a clear distinction between research and writing phases while writing a historical fiction. That has not been the care for me. I researched and wrote, then researched some more.
All along the way, I’ve been sharing the process and the bits history I’ve uncovered.
Somewhere along the way, we decided this rich American story is worth sharing as a documentary.
Doda would have been one of the stars.
I’d resisted the urge to rush right into calling Doda early in the process, but more than a year ago a summoned the courage to call Miss Doda. I looked up the number to her San Francisco lingerie shop and dialed it up.
The problem was she said she had not been to Sacramento and did not perform at the trial. Rather than trying to convince her otherwise, I politely let her off the hook and resolved to try to meet her face-to-face once I had the pictures to show her.
Now I have the photos, but Doda is no longer with us.
Former KCRA reporter Steve Swatt said her appearance was a highlight of the trial.
“Carol Doda was the main attraction in Sacramento's famous topless-bottomless obscenity trial in the late 1960s. She testified at the trial by performing her San Francisco act -- topless, of course -- at what was then the Largo nightclub on Fair Oaks Boulevard,” said Swatt, who covered the trial. “Needless to say, her appearance in front of judge, jury, attorneys, media and curious onlookers was the highlight of the trial.”
The San Francisco Chronicle credited with helping take the strip tease out of the fringe and exposing it mainstream audiences.
Using her loss as added motivation, stay tuned for announcements aimed at kicking the documentary project into high gear. If you’d like to help please contact Ed Fletcher at pinkfilm1969@gmail.com.

Orangevale's Pink Pussy Kat left legacy

Orangevale's Pink Pussy Kat a Go-Go may have been short-lived and lacking in grandeur, but it left its mark on American culture through its challenge of perceived and later instituted indecency standards. Having found no recorded account of the club or the trial, I wrote one based on news stories obtained through The Sacramento Bee and an autobiography written by former exotic performer Susanne Haines Register. Please help me improve on this article. -- Ed Fletcher

Tavern owner Leonard Glancy
 is flanked by dancers
Susanne Haines (left) and Shiela Brendenson  Sacramento Bee August 27, 1969

Orangevale strip club impact outlasts club

The Pink Pussy Kat was a beer bar and strip club noted for its legal wranglings with county and state authorities over indecency standards in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was located in Orangevale, CA, about 25 miles northeast of Sacramento. 

The bar, which featured beer, food, pool tables and topless (and sometimes bottomless) barmaids is believed to have closed on or around the March 1976 death of owner Leonard Glancy. It was located at 9346 Greenback Lane, in a drab Orangevale shopping plaza.

Sacramento County Sheriff "Big" John Misterly actively sought to reign in the 1960s counterculture movement and tasked detectives with making regular check at the region's adult-themed bars.

On July 27, 1969, dancers Susanne Marie Haines, 22, and Sheila Brandenson,  were arrested after performing fully nude. Owner Leonard Glancy was taken in as well. Topless had been the acceptable practice. Presiding over the trial was Sacramento Superior Court Judge Earl Warren, Jr., who happens to be the son of former California Governor and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. Warren still resides in the Sacramento area.

The trial made national headlines after Warren agreed to a defense motion to temporarily move the proceeding to the club and allow the jury to see the offending performance. On Sept. 17, Haines attempted to replicate the dance for which was was arrested. She danced to "Suzy Q," and songs by the Byrds and Jimi Hendrix under dim lights with psychedelic art projected on the walls. On Sept. 22, noted San Francisco topless performer Carol Doda also performed for the jury.

The dancers and Glancy were acquitted Oct. 2, 1969, by the 10-man, two-woman jury, but that was far from the end of the legal fight over nude dancing.

On Oct. 21, Sacramento County enacted an ordinance prohibiting topless and bottomless dancing, and topless waitresses.

Glancy and Haines challenged the constitutionality of the ordinance.

During the legal fight, Glancy turned to various other means to keep his business going, including offering patrons a closed-circuit broadcast of on-site strip performances and putting dancers in see-through panties.

The result of the case, which was combined with other challenges from similar laws, is California’s current practice of not allowing alcohol at fully-nude strip clubs based health code rules.

On May 12, 1970, Glancy was arrested in the shooting of a patron in the parking lot. Glancy claimed it was in defense.

Shortly after her indecency acquittal, Haines left the Pink Pussy Kat. To further her career as striptease performer and capitalize on her notoriety, she began touring gentlemen's clubs across the country as a featured performer. In 1971, she won the title of Miss Nude Cosmos, often known by its more legally dubious name, Miss Nude Universe. During her time on the road, doing a week or more stints at strip clubs, she was arrested more than a dozen times for performing bottomless. By her account, these dances -- and her arrests -- were part publicity stunt, part legitimate act of free expression.

Death records indicate Glancy died in March of 1976.

It’s unclear when the club closed.  

In 1978, Haines, under her married name Susanne Haines Register wrote, “Take It All Off,” an autobiography that followed her path from Mormon schoolgirl to “dope-smoking” dancer and on to her eventual self-described “salvation.”