Miami strip club king Leroy Griffith has died at 94. Burlesque was in his blood
You may not know Leroy Griffith’s name. But you may have passed his theaters.
And what went inside those theaters titillated or enraged some people: burlesque, porn flicks, live strip shows.
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Griffith, known as the adult theater king in South Florida, died last week. He was 94.
Griffith “died peacefully” at his home in Miami on Oct. 3, his family said. Although his career in burlesque, adult films and theater of all genres spans back to the 1940s, he is best known for owning Club Madonna in Miami Beach and the Pussycat Theater in Miami.
And for keeping city elected officials, police and administrators busy trying to stop him.
“Through seven decades, Griffith outlasted the administrations of 17 Miami Beach mayors and 16 city managers — not to mention countless legal efforts, ordinances, and other means intended to stop and stymie him,” his family said in his obituary submitted to the Miami Herald.
He fought constant battles with city officials over what went on at Club Madonna on Washington Avenue, including allowing customers to bring their own booze to get around a city ordinance prohibiting fully nude entertainment with liquor sales.
He also was briefly shut down after cops discovered a trafficked 13-year-old girl performing nude for customers in 2013.
Griffith has always maintained that he never knew the girl was dancing there, saying he was out of town on a cruise when it happened. He also told the Miami Herald at the time that his manager was also out of town. Griffith and management were never charged, and the three men accused of trafficking the runaway girl — and stealing her tips — were arrested.
His legal battles weren’t only at Club Madonna.
The Pussycat on Biscayne Boulevard near 79th Street in Miami was raided by police 18 times between 1978 and 1987. He eventually lost the business over $55,000 in disputed civil judgments. The theater was auctioned off on the Miami-Dade County courthouse steps.
The highest bid was $10,200. The bidder was Griffith — and he got his theater back.
“With that, he bought out the judgments for less than 20% of what the county said he owed and also recovered his equipment,” his family said in the obituary.
Read more Miami strip club king Leroy Griffith has died at 94. Burlesque was in his blood
He also fought with Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez in 1985 over porn movies shown at Griffith’s Atlas Theater. And he successfully sued the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office over an indecency charge for showing the 1979 adult movie “Three Ripening Cherries.”
Griffith was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, in 1932, the second of three children of Stella and Floyd Griffith. According to his biography, he was born into the business that became his life’s work. As well as being a concrete block manufacturer, his father also managed the local theater.
Griffith began selling candy at burlesque shows in St. Louis when he was 17. After his discharge from the U.S. Army at 25, he managed his first theater, the Garden in Detroit. This led to him running burlesque theaters in Ohio and Wisconsin, his family said.
Noticing how popular and lucrative adult movies could be, Griffith began acquiring theaters that were going out of business. He converted them into X-rated film houses. He went on to own theaters in Maryland, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York and Washington, D.C..
He visited Miami Beach in 1961 and bought the Variety Theater, reopening it as the Paris Follies, which put on burlesque shows. Griffith went on to open theaters throughout Florida, from Key West to Jacksonville.
“As a freshly married man starting a family, he settled in Miami in the early 1960s, which remained his base of operation for the rest of his life,” his family wrote.
One of those theaters, the Roxy, was converted to Club Madonna in 1994.
Despite his high-profile and controversial work life, Griffith’s home life was surprisingly tame, his family said. When he called it a day at Club Madonna in recent years, he went for walks with his dog around his gated neighborhood and spent time with his wife, Linda, and the couple’s cats, his family said.
“He enjoyed intimate card games with close friends, lunches at Joe’s Stone Crab and the 11th Street Diner in South Beach, dinners out with his wife and friends, outings to casinos, cruises to the Bahamas and Bermuda, and late night meals at his favorite Denny’s at Biscayne and 36th in Miami on his way home from the club,” the family wrote in his obituary.
Griffith is survived by his wife, Linda; his former wife, Juanita Gilreath; his children Charles Griffith, Cash Griffith, Kimberly Vandergriff and Vanessa Philman; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
His family said that under his wishes, his body was donated to the University of Miami for medical research and education.
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