What It Was Really Like Being A Go-Go Dancer In The 1960s

The revolutionary dance clubs of the 1960s were perhaps most hilariously summed up by The Saturday Evening Post's Norman Poirier. He was writing in the heyday of the Swingin' Sixties, and in 1965, observed that the club scene was "a noisy national madness that the anthropologists of the 21st century will find difficulty in explaining." Clearly, he had no idea what was in store.

At the time, the free-style, high-energy dancing to this new music called rock 'n roll presented something of a challenge for the old guard. Dancing had long been a dignified, serious affair, and with the release of Chubby Checker's "The Twist," as Bob Dylan said, "The times, they are a-changin'."

Go-go dancing is a little unusual when it comes to history, because it's generally agreed exactly when it became an American thing and who came up with the idea of scantily-clad dancers twisting the night away... usually on raised platforms or in cages. After a police officer-turned-nightclub owner named Elmer Valentine opened a joint called Whisky a Go Go, he first made a practical decision: Suspend the DJ booth from the ceiling, to make the most of limited floor space. From there, he hit upon the idea of a female DJ, ultimately ordering a cigarette girl named Patty Brockhurst into the booth. When she started dancing along to the music she was playing, the rest is history — and a new type of entertainer was born. So, what was the view like from up in the rafters?

While early go-go dancers were able to experience the dance floor — and their views from above it — as a liberating experience that women simply hadn't had before, it wasn't long before the whole thing soured. After just a few years, the idea was co-opted by the powers-that-be and turned into a way to attract male audiences, viewers, clients, club-goers, and patrons. Scantily-clad go-go dancers became a hallmark of the era's popular music and variety shows: Stripped of personality and intellect, they were often reduced to a sexist, objectified joke made on behalf of male hosts.

Meanwhile, go-go dancing branched off into a few very different areas, perhaps best described as "PG" and "X." A 1973 piece in The New York Times pinpointed the moment that it happened, when "a thin-chested cocktail waitress from the Napa Valley was persuaded by an immensely fat press agent named Davey Rosenberg to take off her clothing above the waist and dance at a go-go joint." That waitress was Carol Doda, and she effectively bridged the gap between the family-friendly dancers that appeared on televisions across the nation and more adult clubs.

Her topless performances at the Condor didn't just catch the eye of tourists, but it also got the attention of the police. They raided the place, and it led to an obscenity trial. The outcome of the trial found her innocent, led to the legalization of topless dancing, and the blurring of lines between stripping and go-go dancing.

"Hollywood a Go Go" was one of the era's many musical variety shows, and it ran between 1964 and 1966. Along with some of the top music acts of the time, it featured the Gazzarri Dancers, named for the club where core members De De Mollner and Mimi Machu were discovered (pictured, in 1973). Mollner and Machu were in every episode, and when Mollner spoke with the blog Holy Go-Go Boots, Batman!, she said that while there were a few other long-timers, "We went through a lot of people. That's how it is: ... There were always girls coming and going, who never clicked, so we just had a little clique of our own."

Mollner said that perhaps surprisingly, showrunners gave little thought to the dancers. There was no one telling them what to wear or how to dance, so they needed to take that all on themselves. "It's so interesting when I think of it now. We really did whatever we wanted. It was amazing... No one was promoting us on that show at all. These days, of course, we'd have our own line of clothing but then, we had nothing."

That came with a caveat, though. Mollner explained that she and Machu found themselves running the troupe of a half-dozen dancers, for better or worse. Girls they liked were in, but if there were conflicts or disagreements, the problem girls were out and there was always someone waiting to take their place.

It's no secret that drugs — particularly psychedelics like LSD — helped shape the culture of the 1960s in a big way. The widely accepted, oft-told story is that John Lennon and George Harrison were the first to try it when they — along with their wives — had their drinks spiked by so-called friends. According to what Gazzari go-go dancer De De Mollner told Holy Go-Go Boots, Batman!, she'd actually gotten there first.

Mollner claimed that she'd been on acid when she met The Beatles (and had been under the influence when she filmed some episodes of "Hollywood a Go Go." Lennon, she said, had wanted to try some. "So I went back and gave it to him," she said. "I never talked to him again but I know he took it. Ringo became one of my neighbors later, but he wasn't even involved in this. That's all I can tell you..."

That's certainly a tantalizing bit of rock history, but not all go-go dancers have such iconic memories of drug use. In 2015, the Los Angeles Times reported on the death of 68-year-old June Fairchild. She had been a well-known go-go dancer in LA who tried to transition into movies, but it didn't work: Drug and alcohol use torpedoed her career, and she was quoted as describing herself as "an angel in a snake pit." After struggles maintaining sobriety and several attempts at rehab, she ended up living on the city's Skid Row and died of liver cancer.

De De Mollner, a go-go dancer on "Hollywood a Go Go," told the blog "Holy Go-Go Boots, Batman!" that she was always thrilled when she would get comments from people who understood what it was they were doing: "I've had people who watched the show and saw us dancing, they say, 'We just feel the energy.' And that to me is so great, because that's all it was. It was so real, it was so unconscious." Conflict, however, was inevitable.

Johnny Rivers (pictured) was the resident artist at Whisky a Go Go in the early days, and in an interview with Vanity Fair, he made it clear that he didn't appreciate the dancers. In fact, he put his foot down about it: "I said, 'When I'm playing, I want people to listen to my music. I don't want any sideshows." And he wasn't the only performer to clash with the girls.

In 2016, Robby Krieger spoke with People around the release of some early Doors' tracks. They were recorded at a nearby club called London Fog, and Krieger said although it was less of a dance club than nearby venues, they still had a single go-go dancer named Rhonda Lane. Others would occasionally be hired for the night, and he said that one had the misfortune to try to dance during Doors' classic, "The End": "She was getting more p****d off as it went along. And at the end, she went, 'Never play that song again when I'm dancing!'"

While go-go dancing may have captured the fun, liberated spirit of the 1960s, there was something else brewing in the decade, too — and a surprising number of dancers have spoken about how they ended up crossing paths with Charles Manson. Manson famously saw himself as an often- and wrongly-rejected musician, so it kind of makes sense that he would frequent all the hottest clubs in his area. That included Whisky a Go Go — and according to former manager Mario Maglieri, he kicked Manson out of the club after a call from his secretary, who was worried about this really strange dude.

He told Vanity Fair, and when he told Manson to get the heck out, "He looked at me and says, 'I can have you killed.' And I f*****g grabbed him. ... I should strangled that son of a b****."

Gazzarri dancer De De Mollner told "Holy Go-Go Boots, Batman!" that she was friends with the owner of the house where Sharon Tate and her friends would ultimately die: After the killings took place, she said that she and her fellow dancer, Mimi Machu, tried screaming at their house to see if anyone would show up to see what was going on. "No one came. ... We were terrified, because these were our friends that had been killed, and we had no idea who'd done it." Toni Basil, too, told Today that she had known Sharon Tate, and when she worked on "Once a Time in Hollywood," it was an eerie step back in time.