Voyeur – Site of RNC ‘Big Spender’ Scandal – Has Storied Past, Was Home to Rat Pack Strip Joint Pink Pussycat, a 1980s Gay Disco and Later a Venue for Transgender Entertainment

Harry’s plans were shocking at first to Alice Schiller, who had been raised Orthodox. But the financial projections were promising, and she liked the idea of a classy establishment. The Schillers named their new venture the Pink Pussycat.

The Pink Pussycat

Alice Schiller died just three months ago at age 95. Here’s an excerpt about the club from her obituary in the New York Times:

Mrs. Schiller, who by her niece’s account never drank or smoked or swore, had not set out to own a supper club in which performers left the stage vastly lighter than when they came on. But for nearly two decades, from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, she reigned gamely as a doyenne of the diaphanous, owning and operating the Pink Pussycat with her husband, Harry.

Located near the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the club was a popular destination of tourists and locals alike, known for its glittering stage shows and equally glittering celebrity clientele.

It was a favorite watering hole of the Rat Pack, and for good reason. Mrs. Schiller shrewdly gave her dancers stage names like Fran Sinatra, Samya Davis Jr., Deena Martin and Peeler Lawford, and the originals soon showed up to inspect their namesakes.

The club was also internationally famous for its attached institution of higher learning, the Pink Pussycat College of Strip Tease, familiarly called the Navel Academy of the West…

The Pink Pussycat was not the only American strip club to have an adult-education division, but it undoubtedly had the most distinguished faculty: Sally Marr, the noted striptease artist, was for many years its de facto chancellor, provost, dean and sole professor. (Ms. Marr’s son, the comic Lenny Bruce, sometimes appeared on the Pink Pussycat’s stage.)

(This would have been near the end of Bruce’s career. He died of a drug overdose in his home above the Strip, not far from the Pink Pussycat, in August 1966.)

The Schillers became local celebrities who were seen driving around town in their pink cars, a Cadillac and a Rolls-Royce, with bumperstickers that said “Follow Us to the Pink Pussycat.” Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty appointed Alice as an official city hostess.

The Pink Pussycat had a good ride, but by the late 1970s, nude dancing was in and striptease was out. The Schillers, now in their sixties, converted the club to a discotheque called Peanuts.