When exotic dancers reigned in Miami Beach

A blonde Zorita the Snake Dancer at the
Peppermint Lounge c. 1961
Photo & information about it courtesy of Dick Cami

By Jane Feehan

Where tourists flocked, entertainers soon followed. That’s how it was in Miami Beach after World War II. During the 1950s the beach side city became America’s glitzy vacation land—and the place to be for the big names of  radio, the silver screen, television, theater and music: Garry More, Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Durante, Tony Martin, Dick Shawn, Bobby Van, Morey Amsterdam, Duke Ellington, Debbie Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey, Frank Sinatra.

Among the parade of entertainers were the burlesque queens of the day who included Miami Beach in their tours throughout the country. Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr, Evelyn West (with her “treasure chest”), and Tempest Storm joined a list of scantily clad performers who headlined the beach adults-only night clubs. These exotic dancers studied their craft; it was a time when taking off one’s clothes was considered an art.  

Two big-name strippers of the day eventually claimed the Miami area as home: Dorian Dennis, and Zorita the Snake Dancer. Their paths were to cross late in their careers.

Dorian Dennis (known by her family as Rene), was born in Brooklyn to parents who were pharmacists. Dorian set out to follow a similar vocational path; she earned a bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry in a pre-med program at New York University. She wanted to become a doctor but finances forced her into other work. Her first job after college was at the US Army’s Fort Monmouth where she analyzed wire. It didn’t pay much.

Impressed by her beauty, a former show girl suggested she get work in the more lucrative entertainment field. It proved to be good advice. Dorian worked a brief stint as a hat check girl at the Latin Quarter in New York and then at Toots Shor’s. She landed a job as a show girl at Havana Madrid. An agent spotted her and told her if she could learn to walk (she claimed she once walked like an elephant) she could follow in the steps of famed stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. She learned how to walk, dance—and disrobe.

At first Dorian Dennis played rough, noisy clubs, but her career was launched. Soon she was making $1,200 a week (five times as much as a chemist) in shows around the country. She ranked in the top 15 exotic dancers in the nation. Her looks and 40-inch bust earned her regular work in Las Vegas where some joked that she was so well-stacked that card players wouldn’t trust her with a deck.

Dennis became a top draw at Miami Beach revues where she frequently appeared at Place Pigalle, Gaiety Club, Club 23, Copa City Lounge (while Duke Ellington played in the main room), and others. She moved to Miami in 1959 after a union dispute in New York. The move probably changed her plans to learn drama for her theater and movie aspirations.

Zorita knew early in life what she wanted to be.  Born Kathryn Boyd in 1915, she performed her first strip show in Pittsburgh in 1937. She soon included two snakes in her performances. The enterprising 20-year-old, who was occasionally arrested for indecency, took her show to Toledo and Tampa (and probably other cities) before she first visited Miami in 1939.

Zorita was no stranger to publicity. In 1939, she stopped Miami traffic at Flagler Street downtown when she took her Chinese bull snake on a stroll with a leash. More than 1,000 spectators gathered, including the press. The police took both stripper and snake into custody. They charged Zorita with disorderly conduct.

More than a decade later, the snake dancer was regularly performing in Miami at several spots, including the 5 O’clock Club. By the 1960s, she was living permanently in North Bay Village, not far from Miami Beach. The exotic dancer, grabbing an occasional headline in local entertainment news, retired from performing to open her own place, Zorita’s Show Bar on Collins Avenue.

An aging and single Dorian Dennis took a job at Zorita’s in the 1960s. Her last performance was in 1969. In 1970, in her early 40s, Dennis died of cancer at Fort Lauderale’s Broward General Hospital. At the time, she was living on North 13^th Street in Hollywood.

What happened to some of  the other dancers?

• Ever the entrepreneur, Zorita decided to sell pornographic bed sheets in 1975.  She reportedly died in Florida in 2001.
• Lili St. Cyr (Willis Marie Van Schaack) died in 1999 at 80 in Los Angeles.
• Blaze Starr, born in 1932 (Fannie Belle Fleming), was once the controversial lover of Louisiana Gov. Earl Long.  Starr died June, 2015 in West Virginia. Her final years were spent as a gemologist in Maryland.
• Tempest Storm (Annie Blanch Banks), born in 1928 retired at 67. She performed in Miami at a place on Biscayne Boulevard as late as the 1970s. In 2006, she appeared at the Miss Exotic World Pageant. Tempest Storm lived in Las Vegas until her death April, 2021. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her and her former husband, Herb Jeffries, in 1972 at a banquet in San Francisco.

Eleven exotic dancers, including most of those mentioned here, performed in director Irving Klaw’s 1956 documentary Buxom Beautease.  Perhaps he knew the curtain would soon close on the burlesque queen era, an era tightly woven into the history of Miami Beach. 

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

Pittsburgh Press, Apr. 4, 1937

Miami News, Feb. 22, 1939

Times Daily, Nov. 16, 1958

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1959

Miami News, Dec. 21, 1959

Miami News, Apr 23, 1960

Miami News, July 24, 1964

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1970

Miami News, Sept. 4, 1975

Tags: Miami Beach strippers, Miami Beach entertainers, Dorian Dennis, Zorita the Snake Dancer, film researcher, burlesque in Miami Beach, Miami Beach history

Dick Cami and Convulsion at Miami's Peppermint Lounge: the Twist, HullyGully, Mashed Potato and ...

By Jane Feehan

Note : Richard "Dick Cami" Camillucci, Jr.,  quoted below, died July 28, 2020 at  age 86.

One of Miami’s hottest night spots in the early 1960s was the Peppermint Lounge, a place where old and young, rich and famous danced their nights away to the latest gyrating crazes, including the one that launched the club, the Twist.

Ernest Evans, known forever after as Chubby Checker, recorded Hank Ballard’s rhythm and blues tune, The Twist, in 1959. The record did not sell well so Checker went on tour across the nation to sing the tune and demonstrate a dance that went with it. Some say he lost 30 pounds in just three weeks of performing. The tune – and the dance—finally caught on 14 months later as a fad that swept the world.

It proved to be a draw at the Peppermint Lounge on West 45^th Street in New York where people waited in line to get through its doors. The popularity of the club spawned a few others, including the Peppermint Lounge on the 79^th Street Causeway in Miami.

The Miami club opened Dec. 1, 1961 at the former site of Colonel Jim's. The Miami News reported Lee Ratner and Morris Levy of Roulette Records were its backers but according to Dick Cami (in his mid 20s at the time), he ran the place. Cami was repotedly married to the daughter of New York mobster Johnny “Futto” Biello.

An impressive roster of big name entertainers played at the Miami club.

"Major rock and roll acts worked at the Peppermint Lounge like the Coasters, Jerry Lee Lewis, Conway Twitty ... and more," said Cami.

Miami’s Peppermint Lounge, with its mirrored ceilings and fenced-in dance floor attracted locals, tourists—and the famous. Nat King Cole asked Cami if he could play the piano there a few nights to get the feel of the rock ‘n roll thing his daughter Natalie liked so much. He was at the piano when singer Sam Cooke, who recorded his own top-of-the-chart tune, Twistin' the Night Away, came in one evening. The Beatles visited Cami's place to pay homage to rock n' roll—the inspiration for their music—three times when they

Lenny Bruce, frequent visitor.
Domita Jo on his left, photo courtesy of Dick Cami

were in the area to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Politicos ventured fearlessly into the club to be part of the action. Gov. Grant Sawyer of Nevada was at a Governors Conference in Miami when he found the Peppermint Lounge. He visited the club each night with his wife; a large crowd gathered as the governor climbed the dance floor fence and twisted the night away.

And the Twist kept raging “round and round” Miami, Miami Beach and the rest of the country. “How long will the Twist epidemic last?” asked columnist Herb Kelly as he listed all the Miami Beach hotel lounges bowing to the fad. “It’s spreading so fast nobody knows.”  Gray-haired matrons were shaking their hips on the same dance floor with green-haired girls and bearded young men, “all shaking like there was no one else in the world, not even their partner,” mused Cami.

The Twist was invented by chiropractors, quipped comedian Bob Hope.  “The whole world’s sacroiliac is going to be out in about three days.”

Actually it took a bit longer than three days.

Things began to slow down about a year later. That’s why the Peppermint Lounge started featuring a dance revue, the “Crazy Crazes,” a history of dance fads. Four dancers—two male, two female—and singer Regina Rae highlighted the show presenting dance crazes from the 1920s to the Twist.

Other dances caught on at the Peppermint Lounge as they had elsewhere in the U.S.: the Hully Gully, the Mashed Potato, the Fly, Bird, Dog, Frug, Slop, and the Continental. The Legends provided the music at the Miami lounge for all the crazes and so did a band from Jamaica, Freddie Scott’s Blues Busters. Their claim to fame was blending calypso and rock ‘n roll, known then by another name.

"We were the first to bring Ska, the precursor of Reggae, to America, " reminisced Cami.

Lights went out on the dance floor by 1964 or early 1965. In late ’64, Cami sold the lounge to Joe Camperlengo of Fort Lauderdale; Camperlengo owned the 4 o’Clock Club in that city. The Peppermint Lounge reopened shortly after the sale and soon became the Inner Circle. By 1965, the place was razed to make way for a new steak house.

Lucky for South Florida, Dick Cami remained but moved on to other endeavors in the area. He said he opened Applause, a nightclub at the Omni Center in Miami. Some reported that he wanted to go into construction but he (and later with his two sons) became the driving force behind several restaurants: Cami’s Seashells in Dade and Broward counties; Grumpy Dick’s in Plantation, Crabby Dick’s in Key West, and Islamorada Fish House in Dania. 

The restaurant closest to Cami's heart was his Top of the Home in Hollywood, FL. For 26 years  it stood acclaimed for its fine Continental dining, outstanding wine selection, and stunning panoramic vista of Broward County. His popular lounge featured two singing bartenders and piano player Sonny Gambino. 

Today, Cami no longer owns a restaurant but with a wealth of experience accumulated over the years he serves as chief operating officer of food and beverage for Excelsior Hospitality Management International, a consulting and asset management company. 

There is more to Cami's past —and present—than the restaurant biz.

He said he stepped into the boxing world for a time, managing a few fighters who the late, great Angelo Dundee trained at his Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach.

Cami also mentioned he manages affairs for his friend, Sandi Lansky*, daughter of reputed mobster, gambling kingpin and former Miami resident, Meyer Lansky. Cami has served as advisor during the compilation of her memoirs by William Stadium. The book, Daughter of the King, was released March, 2014.

The former restaurateur said he is currently in discussions with Fox about a TV pilot series, The Twist, and has teamed up with a former colleague to produce an animated musical feature, The Dog Show, a story about a mutt who wins the Westminster Dog Show.   

Cami lives in Oregon today but memories of those sizzling Miami Beach days and the jumping Peppermint Lounge nights loom large. I wonder if he ever asked anyone to do the Twist.                       

*  Sandra Lansky, daughter of Meyer Lansky wrote a memoir, Daughter of the King, in 2014.

Copyright ©2013, 2014, 2024. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan

Sources:

Miami News, Dec. 5, 1961

Miami News, Nov. 29, 1961

Miami News, Aug. 17, 1962

Miami News, Nov. 27, 1962

Miami News, Aug. 7, 1963

Miami News, Oct. 8, 1964

Miami News, Sept. 19, 1965

Beaver County Times, Aug. 19, 1964

Lakeland Ledger, Feb. 29,1988

Reading Eagle, May 20, 1965

Rome News-Tribune, Mar. 14, 1972

Richard "Dick Cami" Camillucci, Jr.

Tags: Miami history, Miami dance clubs, Peppermint Lounge, the Twist, Chubby Checker, Sandi Lansky, Meyer Lansky,Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian