Carol Doda: Topless at the Condor

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  0:02  
The Women of ill repute with your hosts Wendy Mesley. And Maureen Holloway

Maureen Holloway  0:06  
boobs, am I right?

Wendy Mesley  0:10  
Yeah, sure. But could you be a bit more specific?

Maureen Holloway  0:14  
We actually stopped breasts, per se, it's not the bosom, or at least not the cleavage or the sideboob or even the underboob. It's not that.

Wendy Mesley  0:23  
Okay, I think I see where you're going here. It's the Netball

Maureen Holloway  0:27  
it's the nipple that causes all the hysteria historically. And today, you see all these these actresses and models, the gowns that they're wearing. Specially right now we're not wearing the naked dressing, they call it and everything is visible. Everything but the

Wendy Mesley  0:43  
nipple, the nipple. It's true.

Maureen Holloway  0:46  
I don't get it. Men show their nips all the time. Why are women's nipples so sexualized, therefore, so threatening and therefore so powerful?

Wendy Mesley  0:54  
Yeah. And maybe while we're on the topic, why are bigger breasts considered better? I mean, why would bigger breasts having a person with bigger breasts? Does that mean they want to have sex more?

Maureen Holloway  1:04  
I don't get that. I've never understood that either. But it is a popular conception from high school, the girls with a big boobs are more likely to do it. Like honestly, that doesn't make any sense. But if you'd like to see a lot of brass on SDS, including nipples and to maybe understand how they became symbols of social, economic and political upheaval, you should see a documentary called Carol Dota topless at the condor.

Wendy Mesley  1:32  
So Carol Dota. She was an American entertainer, and she was billed as the first public topless dancer in the US while in America, which, of course is the US. She headlined for years at the Condor nightclub in San Francisco. And she was seen as a real pioneer of a second wave. I think it's the second wave right second wave feminism.

Maureen Holloway  1:52  
Yeah, it's you know, what's really interesting snapshot of a time was this was the 60s. And to my mind anyway, it seems so innocent, in some ways, but in other ways, was a lot more progressive than the climate today. likes to talk about.

Wendy Mesley  2:13  
Yeah, well, that's one of the things we want to get into. We don't have Carol Dota anymore. She died a few years ago. Up in here to tell her story. Are the directors of the movie about her Marlon Mackenzie and Jonathan Parker. They're co directors of Carole Dota. Topless at the condor. Hi, guys.

Maureen Holloway  2:33  
Welcome. Hello, are you were UK right out of the gate? I gotta ask you. I saw the opening credits Lars Ulrich, the drummer from Metallica. He's produced this. Yeah,

Speaker 1  2:45  
he's one of the producers and we've been friends for about 12 years. He he really liked a movie I did called Untitled back at that time. And he he's, he sought me out. And he thought I was, you know, 30 years old and living in New York and I was actually living in Metallica's headquarters town of Santa fell, and we became friends. And he's been a big supporter ever since.

Maureen Holloway  3:08  
That's so it's kind of random, but super cool.

Wendy Mesley  3:11  
And you live in North Beach. Right? Is that? Is that why you have such a carol Dota fixation? I want to hear from both of you about, like, why, why did you why did you make this I mean, boobs are great. But there's a bigger story.

Speaker 1  3:25  
Well, we don't live in North Beach, but we've been to North Beach. We're across the Golden Gate Bridge. And we're in county but I knew Carol from 25 years ago, when she retired from dancing. She opened up a lingerie store in a courtyard on Union Street in San Francisco, which is a shopping neighborhood and I worked in the building and I was a budding filmmaker at the time, and I got to know her and we got along well, and she was famous, but I didn't really know her story, and I started researching it and really was struck by she created a career out of such a random confluence of events. She was a cocktail waitress who became a it was like a Go Go dancer on top of old white baby grand piano that was lowered from the ceiling and the Condor club. And right about the same time the Republican convention of 1964 was coming to San Francisco and the club owners were trying to figure out how to get business into the club. And the third event that was random was that Rudi gernreich, a famous fashion designer at the time develop the monokini, which is a bathing suit that has two straps and does not cover the nipples, about nipples.

Maureen Holloway  4:38  
The Press? Yes,

Speaker 1  4:39  
so they bought one for her and the rest is a very strange history.

Maureen Holloway  4:43  
But strictly speaking, she wasn't the first performer to perform topless not even when the I mean, didn't Gypsy Rose lead or Josephine Baker? Did they didn't they appear naked? Or were Was she really the first?

Speaker 2  4:58  
Yeah, there are other are people who had, as he said, I think that they had also performed topless. But the difference here was that it was, it went, it became legal because of Carroll. Like it was something they call the police right away on the first night that she performed. And they said, you know, we're gonna do this thing. Is that okay, and the police actually arrived, and we're there for her very first topless debut. And so right from the beginning, it's kind of different because her story is setting up what unrolled across the nation as something that eventually became legal. And the question of is this obscene or not was debated, you know, in society because of this. And ultimately, they decided, yes, it's okay. You can appear topless in these certain study. So that's kind of what distinguishes her. Yeah, I

Wendy Mesley  5:50  
Googled, who was the first topless dancer in Canada, because we're Canadian. Who was? Well, it was some some no name who hid behind a guitar. So apparently, there were boobs underneath the guitar. And I thought it was very, very Canadian. Gio,

Maureen Holloway  6:07  
who just did that was Kacey Musgraves, she performed on Saturday Night Live naked, but playing the guitar. So it's a time honored tradition. But Carol Dota. This, this whole coincided with civil rights with women's the Women's Liberation Movement. So it was kind of a perfect storm. It

Speaker 1  6:26  
actually pre preceded those events, but they were all kind of percolating at the same time, the free speech movement in Berkeley was 1964. Also when that started, so that definitely was, it was in the air Cultural Revolution was in the air and Carol's Park as a pioneer in the sexual revolutions. Big part of it.

Wendy Mesley  6:48  
Well, we were trying to figure out whether she's a pioneer in a good sense, or a pioneer in a bad sense, like the whole objectification. And you had I think, Marlo, you had a bit of an issue with because she went from a 32 to a 44. She got 44 silicone injections. So is that Marla was a good thing. Like, how do you get your head around? I mean, she she said that the only way I could get into show business was to show my business. And she did.

Speaker 2  7:16  
Yeah, I mean, this is one thing I really appreciate about this documentary, the fact that we're here talking about this today, because I think that's really relevant. And this hasn't gone away. Women are still asking themselves, is this a good thing for myself? Or is this not a good thing? And they're having those debates inside of themselves. And I think ultimately, Carol made the decision, you know, that this was a dream that she had, she wanted to be an entertainer she wanted to be famous. And even though people were telling her your body isn't enough and that is really sad, but ultimately she made this decision for herself and she did kind of turn it around and take a stand and and say I'm gonna make my body the art and I'm going to do this but you're right it is it is a question of in this world, why can she have been celebrated without having to inject herself with liquid silicone at the risk of her health? Why couldn't people have appreciated her body and found it beautiful and desirable as it was? Why did the pressure exist for her to change herself? That's these exists side by side.

Maureen Holloway  8:30  
It's not just Yeah, I mean, this is an issue this is this is a cosmetic surgery is just absolutely burgeoned and exploded. And so really, those issues are as much if not as a bigger deal today about transforming yourself to to commodify yourself, but now silicone is everywhere, it

Wendy Mesley  8:49  
seems.

Speaker 1  8:50  
And I think you know, she she didn't just do it a little bit. Go. She consciously took it to a an extreme and in some ways, it's almost there's an element of of satire there. There's an element of turning the male gaze sort of around in a way by by doing it to such an extreme degree. I don't know. It's sort of it becomes a little bit of a political statement on some level to Yeah,

Maureen Holloway  9:16  
I don't disagree. We interviewed a while back. It's just a lovely woman in every way. Andrea Wareham has written a book called modern horror, and she worked as a prostitute and as a stripper. I think she still does work as a stripper. Wendy? I can't remember.

Wendy Mesley  9:30  
Well, she's kind of famous now. And she's making a movie. So who knows? Yeah.

Maureen Holloway  9:34  
But she is insistent and we don't necessarily disagree with her. But she was quite insistent that this is empowering for her, and that she's in control and that if anybody is being taken advantage of, it's the man that she either slept with or performed in front of, and she is she doesn't have a pimp. She worked for an escort agency. And I was thinking about her when I was watching Carol Dota and thinking, well, she had these man that sort of like they're the owners, the managers, as filmmakers, did you believe that it was really that pure relationship? Or did you get the sense that she was manipulated, manipulated, was she

Speaker 1  10:14  
she certainly was heavily lobbied and persuaded to, to do the silicone injections, but she also to some extent, just to wear the bathing suit to begin with. That's, that's definitely a part of it. I think. There's another perspective to it from, you know, she really wanted to be in show business. She was a nightclub performer. She wanted to be on stage and singing and dancing. And she was coming from a difficult, you know, home life. She didn't have any support. She didn't have any help. And, you know, this was a time where if you looked in the Help Wanted section of a newspaper, it would say Help Wanted females. And so the jobs were secretaries and store clerks and this kind of thing. So the options were limited. She had to support herself. She started as a cocktail waitress, she she started dancing everywhere. She was going while she's making her cocktail runs clearly, you know, this is a woman who wanted to perform. But yes, once she tucked into all these things by men who were owning the club and her manager, absolutely.

Wendy Mesley  11:21  
Marnell, I found it really sad to read, or to hear about her private life. I mean, her parents divorced when she was so young, and she ended up working very young. And she had maybe a couple of kids that she never talked about. And her whole life It seemed was performing. And she loved the performing. But she was also kind of a sad person was was she not?

Speaker 2  11:42  
Well, she did have a very difficult background, but I wouldn't call her a sad person, she did end up, you know, achieving her her dreams and her goals. Everyone has in their life, sadness, and everyone has, you know, it's the highs and the lows. But I feel like what your question is bringing up for me is, and it kind of dovetails into what we've been talking about is whether or not we as people, would we choose to modify our bodies for our career. Are we doing this from a sense of excitement and joy and, and feeling good about ourselves? Yeah, we want to do this. I love myself, and I totally want to, like, take this to the next level and make myself and artwork, or is it something that we're doing from a place where we, we feel we we don't have the love we need in our life, we feel lack in our life. And I think that was a question I had about Carol, you know, she wasn't treated especially well in her past, how much were her choices influenced by the lack of love she had in her life. But I think that's what's exciting about this story that we can kind of talk about things like this and maybe reflect back in our own lives. How are we making our choices? And how are we navigating the world? And are we doing it from a place of fullness inside of us or not? So I really love these conversations that come up because of her life.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  13:17  
The women of ill repute

Maureen Holloway  13:19  
she was very funny. She was very composed about something I found throughout the documentary that all in all her interviews, she was very sure a while admitting that she was insecure, but very, very composed, very comfortable in her own skin. Some of the other people you found I thought were amazing. Some of the other retired performers, the women were in as well as the academics that you found. This must have taken a lot of research or did one person lead to the other? How did you put together this compendium of experts on toplessness?

Speaker 1  13:52  
Well, there was an aspect of one person leading to another when Marlowe kind of rediscovered this project in in a in my drawer in my office after all these years and really wanted to get into this subject and we decided to do it. It coincided with a book that was written by one of the original club owners, his wife of Bonita Mattioli and her book, three nights at the condor. It's really kind of a biography of her husband, Pete, but it hits on these key events at the Condor club. And so when we met them, their friends or some of these interview subjects, they knew who was still around and, you know, one person led to another person led to another person. And Marla was doing a lot of social media outreach, where we also found people and when we were doing the interviews, stuff came out, you know, we'd start interviewing somebody, we thought, you know, their story was this and then, you know, they were emboldened by the process. And, you know, we found out all kinds of other, you know, fascinating related information about them. So it was, you know, these are people who are in there. 80s and even 90s In some cases, and they were just so happy that here are these people so interested in finding out what their stories were, it was really a kind of a rewarding experience to be kind of rediscovering these, these wonderful people. And they're wonderful storytellers.

Maureen Holloway  15:17  
They are they're well spoken and, and, and funny, rueful in some ways, but it was a real pleasure to meet these people through your film,

Wendy Mesley  15:26  
we were trying to figure out whether the world is more permissive or less permissive than it was in 1964. Because, you know, I went to New York way after 1964 and saw you know, the the greasy guys looking through the peoples and then that doesn't exist anymore. And it just seems like in your filament in the 60s that there may have been some objectification going on to your point Marlo. But but it was it was open, it was burlesque it was so so is it more permissive now? Or are we more offended now?

Speaker 1  16:03  
You know, I don't think that goes in a straight line. Not related to this subject, necessarily. But I can just remember San Francisco in the late 70s. I mean, we'd go to the ballpark, we'd be smoking pot in the stands, you know, and everything was like, okay, but then things changed, you know, and 10 years later, you know, Whoa, boy, you can't do that, you know, so it's like, it ebbs and flows about that type of thing. When the topless started when Carol started dancing, this all had an air of innocent fun to it. And, you know, the arc of our story covering this kind of 20, roughly 20 year period, the porn industry came in the film industry came in, in the 70s, things got darker, the drugs got harder, the people got harder. And you know, you've got this rise and fall of this kind of urban scene, which really, I think was replicated. I don't know about Canada, but it was certainly replicated in most big American cities.

Maureen Holloway  17:03  
I think you're absolutely right. Even the word pornography didn't seem to apply to the first half of your documentary, it seemed more of a sort of performative time. I mean, sir, certainly, there's a sexual aspect to it. But it wasn't until till the sleaze aspect came in. And I wouldn't even go so far as to say once the internet went, what did somebody say the internet is for kittens and porn, in that it's isolated people. Now you don't go out to a sex club. There was a time. I mean, before our time, but yeah, this is what it was a time we'd go to the Playboy Club, you'd go there'd be naked women and men would have cocktails. And I'm not saying that was it was that was a good time. But now your sexual exposure is done by yourself in front of your laptop. And it's it seems kind of sad. Neither one is perfect. No, certainly not this one. But it does seem a lot more isolated. Anyway, that's my observation.

Speaker 2  17:56  
I think it's not related to time as well. But it's that we're more tribal. Now. We're in groups. So there are certain groups that are very permissive. And they're, you know, there are certain groups that are more conservative, and we have many, many more groups, we don't seem to have this, like, collective imagination that we had in the 60s is just people have, because of partly because of the internet, we have like just radically different tribes. And we all have different opinions and whether this is good or bad. I mean, that's for individuals to judge, but that's kind of more what I'm feeling in terms of permissiveness.

Wendy Mesley  18:39  
I wonder, too, about boobs getting back to boobs, and the whole topless thing, like our boobs going out, like we've seen so many, I mean, we've saw light in your film, some plastic and some some big ones and some normal sized ones. Well, not that big is not normal. But our boobs out now what will go to you first? boobs

Unknown Speaker  19:03  
out. Wow. Yeah, well, it was

Wendy Mesley  19:09  
our big boobs less important.

Maureen Holloway  19:11  
Just to corroborate what Wendy saying when they weren't readily available. I mean, I think of boys that I grew up with it would look at the catalog the lingerie the bras and go, you know, use that is there a pornography? Is there less interest in breast simply because they're readily available to be seen?

Speaker 1  19:29  
I don't feel my interest in breasts has waned much.

Maureen Holloway  19:34  
Even after I'm making this movie, but you

Speaker 1  19:36  
know this thing about size, it's like to be under the impression that men prefer very, very large boobs is that's not true. I mean, some men do and some men some you know, there's no you know, these these boundaries are really pretty pretty fluid especially in in modern, modern I'm so I don't know, I don't think boobs have have gone out from what I've been able to glean from the internet.

Wendy Mesley  20:08  
Well, normally she got, what 44 injections to be a 44. So she obviously thought and there were a number of women in in the audience, but it was mostly men who were going, Wow, look at those.

Maureen Holloway  20:23  
But you know, we should qualify to that at the time. And I thought this was really interesting that breast augmentation basically came from the Japanese who were using industrial silicone, and it was just injected directly into your, to your breast. And not so much with with Carol, but one of her colleagues had autist a horror story about that. Now,

Wendy Mesley  20:47  
when she tried to breastfeed, right, it was awful.

Speaker 2  20:49  
They had them injected directly into their breast to they hadn't yet come into the time period where they were putting them into the silicone into the bags. But yeah, Judy Mamu tells that story of having, I don't know how much I should tell, or, or should I leave it for people to watch the movie, but she had some severe repercussions from her choices to enlarge her breasts for her career. But Carol also did too. I mean, if I don't know how graphic we want to get, but they harden up. And I mean, she was five feet too, and she had these very large breasts that had hardened. That's, that's a severe, very difficult to deal with, I think your entire life. So that is a sad part that her choice. It was just something she had to deal with.

Maureen Holloway  21:43  
Just to add to that, and I did did appreciate the mention that, you know, people don't want to see old boobs. And that's true today, as well as any time and so it really puts a limit on your career, no matter whether they're big or small. It's just you had to wish she was 40 I think when she stopped performing, which actually was pretty long in the tooth for that profession.

Speaker 1  22:04  
Yeah, she was probably about mid 40s. I think yeah.

Maureen Holloway  22:09  
Now well, what's indecent

Wendy Mesley  22:11  
exposure? Now? Because, you know, I just wrote a rather silly piece about the guy and soldiers dancing around half naked. And yeah, and we're seeing we're seeing male nudity. And so are we shocked by anything anymore? Or are we too shocked? I don't know.

Speaker 1  22:29  
Nudity still seems to be quite provocative. And having made this film, it's kind of shocking that it is I mean, you're asking about, like, our breasts out,

Maureen Holloway  22:40  
going out. It's,

Speaker 1  22:42  
it's it's like some things never get old. I think you're, you know, the proliferation of women and I suppose men as well on the internet, who are, you know, trying on clothes and dressing rooms, and, you know, exposing their bodies seems to be, you know, a whole, like, almost cottage industry on its own.

Maureen Holloway  23:05  
It's funny, it's we haven't lost her childlike sense of wonder when it comes to seeing people bear naked. I guess that's a good thing.

Wendy Mesley  23:14  
What's there stuff that you couldn't put in the movie? Because I, I guess I'm trying to figure out there were, there was her story. And there were people who wanted to talk about it. But it also gets into sort of the, should you have injections, should you do silicone, here's what happened, blah, blah, blah. So were there big debates in your household that that you had to figure out how to place it in the movie or not. I mean, we

Speaker 2  23:42  
definitely talked about how long to linger on shots, when to cut short if we include a shot of a needle is that too much. And one of the moments that didn't come up was someone who we interviewed was saying that Carol was getting her breasts enlarged, and at some point, she was just right. And we happen to hit a rough cut of her edit, have an image of Carol when she was just right. And so then the team had a talk about that, because there is no just right. Exactly. Everything is just right. And how did that image get there? We weren't really thinking and so we took that image out and we I think we just put something that had nothing to do with a filmmaker judging, just just right. So we had conversations that were really important like that. That's just one of them.

Speaker 1  24:35  
Yeah, and I can remember in one of the archival shots of there was you know, three, during during the full, full nude period, you know, the cameraman was just like zeroing right in on, you know, a woman's crotch and it was just like, oh my god, we can't like put this in the movie. That's ridiculous. So yeah,

Maureen Holloway  24:58  
that's That's right. What did you I mentioned that that that was a really surprising tidbit that you could perform naked but you had to wear a G string with a little Merkin like a little pubic wig, which is the most ridiculous for down there, yeah.

Wendy Mesley  25:16  
It's like maybe only as far down there. Yeah,

Maureen Holloway  25:20  
I know. I know. People are funny or thing. But you're

Unknown Speaker  25:23  
Merkin over a year.

Speaker 1  25:28  
Some of those had to be trimmed to I remember like our managers telling the story about having to just do the Taylor was too embarrassed. He had to do it himself is getting there and TriMet

Maureen Holloway  25:39  
you've, you've made a lovely movie. Yeah, lovely film. It's, she's quite a character. But what I loved about it was just capturing a time. So a time and a place. So So evocatively, it was a real joy to watch. Yeah,

Wendy Mesley  25:52  
the footage was amazing. Just just seeing what it was like back in the 60s. I mean, we were babies, maybe. But yeah, it was. It was pretty amazing to see the footage. So well done.

Maureen Holloway  26:03  
Yes. Thank you, Carol. Dota. Topless at the at the condors. Great title isn't it? Does get your attention. And it is opening why it is they say are opening in major cities. And I think it's going to stream if you do have the particulars.

Speaker 2  26:18  
Yeah, it opens on March 29. And select theaters in Canada, and then expands to more cities there on April 5.

Maureen Holloway  26:26  
Okay. Well, congratulations. And thank you for spending time with us.

Unknown Speaker  26:30  
Thanks very much. Thank you. Bye.

Wendy Mesley  26:33  
So Maureen, is it bad that I said the boobs are out because they're never gonna be?

Maureen Holloway  26:42  
I liked Jonathan's response. Well, as far as I'm concerned, I've never lost. It kind of reminds me of you know, gynecologist. They go? I mean, I that's a perpetual question. Do you lose interest when it's work, work work. But apparently not. Incorporated? Answer is? No, no, never. So I have never been to a strip show or a sex club or anything like that. Except once. I know, it's not that I issue it. I just or it just never went.

Wendy Mesley  27:13  
Well, I want it was always work related. So tell me about your episode.

Maureen Holloway  27:20  
So I was in San Francisco and I was in a on Broadway exact same place. And it was the 80s. And I was with my boyfriend at the time. This was the boyfriend I have now. And he said, let's go let's go to a set. And they were they weren't burlesque he was let's go to a sec show. And I'm like, huh, and we headed down Broadway. And they it was more of the sleazy type of where people are out. What do you call them? Barker's? Whatever. They're, they're they're trying to get you into the club and bring people

Wendy Mesley  27:47  
in saying that there's naked ladies.

Maureen Holloway  27:50  
Ladies, yeah. So come on, come on, come on, come on. And so and you pick one random. And so this guy or girl can't remember, took us into this club pulled back a curtain and it's pitch black. And and they lead us all the way down all the way down to the dark to the front of the stage where somebody was on stage performing. And I was extremely self conscious. Like anybody could care that I was there. But we're sitting there. And the guy comes to take our order, and it's a two drink minimum. So we have to order for drinks and my boyfriend said well, how much are they? And he said 30 bucks a drink. And you got to realize this isn't the 80s So that was $120 and he said we're out of here because he was a cheap mofo

Wendy Mesley  28:34  
so he wasn't into the Buddha

Maureen Holloway  28:36  
we did well, he was he she didn't want to pay 20 bucks American for for juice glasses full of beer and, and so he grabbed my hand and we went, we left and they, you know, they made it as difficult as possible to leave the club. But that was my that was my exciting time. And a sex club in San Francisco. For all I know, could have been Carol Dota.

Wendy Mesley  28:54  
Well, it could have been Oh, no. It could have been so she she died in 2015. And it was kind of sad at the end because she kept performing until the end was Yeah, cool. Yeah. Was she

Maureen Holloway  29:04  
saying to she stopped stripping and she started singing She wasn't a bad performer. But she went out with Frank Sinatra as well. I forgot to ask about that.

Wendy Mesley  29:13  
I know. According to the movie, she had the hots for Frank Sinatra and would sneak out the back. And there was a special staircase that was built to for writing mobsters or girlfriends. Or whatever. Yeah, it was another time. But yeah,

Maureen Holloway  29:33  
Carol Dota topless at the Condor and it's opening wide as they say and it probably come to a streamer. It's really interesting to see especially if you like boobs of all sizes. All day long.

Mary Anne Ivison (Voiceover)  29:47  
Women of ill repute was written and produced by Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley. With the help from the team at the sound off media company and producer yet Val graver.