The Misadventures of Anita "Batgirl" Ventura

It is inaccurate to call Anita Ventura a stripper.  If anything she was a dancer, but even that was only meant to be the first of many titles.  She harbored dreams loftier than disrobing on the rickety stages of smoky, seedy burlesque houses.  Her ambitions were, and had always been, to cavort her way into Hollywood, or Broadway, or at least New York’s world-famous Latin Quarter nightclub.  Dance should have been her ticket to the big time.  It is with some irony that this ability of hers is the absolute last thing anyone remembers.  Mostly they remember her beautiful body.  If not that, they remember all the unsightly scandal.  Scandals.  Plural.

from The Los Angeles Mirror, June 24, 1958

Anita’s public life began in the summer of 1958, at The Near ‘N’ Far on Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles, far from her hometown of Philadelphia.  Her previous incarnation as a high school dropout, then as a typist at General Electric, had proven unfulfilling and cumbersome.  Initially modeling seemed a possible career alternative to her menial clerical drudgery, but her robust proportions (38-26-38) were reportedly too gratuitous for fashion.

Too busty for fashion modeling? That sounds like a matter of opinion!

Eager to escape the monotony of middle-class life, Anita hoofed it to sunny California, determined to win fame and fortune.  She was an East Coast girl with movie star dreams, possessing one particular ability that differentiated her.  This talent she had, something with crossover potential, a gimmick that would sustain her entertainment career for decades, a skill that couldn’t be duplicated by just any ol’ stripteaser, that ace up her sleeve was the art of the belly dance.

Anita in costume, from The New York Daily News, November 14, 1965.

Unfortunately there exists today no video evidence of Anita’s exotic dance routines.  One can only gauge her abilities based on the company she kept.  While in their pasties and g-strings her ecdysiast counterparts pranced to the slurred beats and blurts of half-soused amateur ensembles, Anita dazzled and delighted to the celebrated sounds of the era’s hippest music makers, at the swankest of lounges, the poshest of dinner clubs, and the most elegant of concert halls.  In her two decade long career, Anita shared the marquee with musicians such as doo-wop groups The Cashmeres, The Capris, Ray Colt and the Enchanters, The Earls, and The Toppers; R&B legends The Cardinals, Sammy Ambrose, Johnny Thunder, and Billy Stewart; British vocal quartet The Southlanders, Italian tenor Giovanni Malatesta, Jazz vocalist Alfredo Villoldo, and pioneering transgender performer Christine Jorgensen.  Sufficient to say, Anita kept some pretty good company.

Anita was an opening act for Christine Jorgensen, America's trailblazing transgender entertainer,
from The Cincinnati Post, October 17, 1959.

This is not to say that Anita was above appearing in a strip club, far from it.  One of the most important aspects of being a professional entertainer is appreciating the value of a dollar.  A gig is a gig, especially if that gig pays the asking price, and money spends the same no matter where it came from or what one did to earn it.  Her versatility in accepting venues was a great asset.  Being able to seamlessly transition between burlesque houses and more socially acceptable venues greatly sustained her career and bolstered her fan base. 

Anita was talented from any angle, even from behind!

Anita’s overwhelming list of professional associations is not just evidence of her skill and popularity, but also a testament to her dedication and passion.  Clearly this was a person who wanted to be successful, and was willing to work hard to achieve her desires.  The demands of her career path meant doing things like traveling across the country all year long; performing in Atlanta one week, then Miami for a six month extended gig, then Detroit, Cincinnati, back to Atlanta, and so on.  Such professional migrations were not made by someone lackadaisically earning a living.  These were the actions of a person determined to drink deeply from the cool, exclusive waters of fame.  In the first days of January 1960, she got her first earnest taste of celebrity.  Unfortunately the flavor was not as sweet as one might have hoped.

from The Miami Herald, March 30, 1959.

While working the Silk Stocking Review at Club 23 in Miami Beach, Anita met Jose Rene Ruiz Martinez, known casually as Rene, professionally as “Tun Tun.”  Originally from Tampico, Mexico, Rene was an incredibly versatile performer: an uproarious comedian, an elegant vocalist, and an energetic dancer. He could imitate Elvis on the guitar or Liberace on the piano, or play the drums or bongos just to show off.  He had a part in the Broadway musical “Saratoga,” and had starred in at least twenty-eight feature films in Mexico.  If that weren’t enough, people said he had the handsome face of Ed Sullivan.  This multi-faceted man was the literal embodiment of Anita’s ambitions, the personifications of her hopes and dreams.  By her own account she fell for Rene after their first meeting.  What wasn’t to love?

 What made this pairing noteworthy was Anita stood at 5’8”. Rene was a dwarf, standing at 3’9.” 

from The Tennessean, January 8, 1960.

While attending a party at Chateau Madrid in New Jersey, Anita was approached about her tantalizing engagement by reporter Earl Wilson.  “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?” he claimed to have asked her.  “Tun Tun’s small but he looks big to me,” she reportedly flung back at him. 

Wilson included his interaction with Anita in his syndicated column “It Happened Last Night…”  The story ran in papers all across the country, sometimes accompanied by headlines like “Tall Stripper Engaged to Midget Dancer.”  Jokes and judgments rained down upon the couple from all directions.  If the intention of this betrothal had been for publicity (there’s no evidence it was) it worked in the worst possible way, especially for Anita.  The engagement would be called off fourteen days after the story was published.

 Again though, it needs to be reiterated, Anita Ventura was a dancer, not a stripper.

Add "Apartment Wrestling" to Anita's lengthy catalogue of skills.

The months following her failed engagement saw a heartbroken, humiliated Anita taking time off from touring and settling in the New York area, which would become her home base for a number of years.  It was most likely during this period that she moonlighted as a figure model.  As has already been established, Anita was a professional, and a gig is a gig, even if that gig involved occasional fetish modeling.  A little BDSM cosplay never hurt anyone.

Anita and friend, all tied up with no place to go.

Anita worked her dancing gigs too though, and she worked them hard, regularly appearing at swinging joints throughout New York and New Jersey like the Music Lounge, Jockey Club, Diarles Lounge, Brightwater Club, and Stage Door.  Mike Zappia, proprietor of “Zappia’s” in Newark, said that the mere mention of Ventura’s name caused his establishment to bulge at the seams with eager patrons.

from The Star Ledger, April 8, 1966.

Anita was personally and professionally rebounding while rediscovering success, but not so much that she could afford to be choosey about gigs.  This is how she found herself unexpectedly dancing for a police party at The Long Island Hofbrau in Queens, late one November night in 1965.  Anita’s friend Mary Rooney, known professionally as “The Million Dollar Baby,” had been hired as entertainment for the retirement party of a police sergeant.  

"Million Dollar Baby" Mary Rooney, from The New York Daily News, November 14, 1965.

Rooney’s performance would be a reward for the attendees: a crowd of between 150-300 law enforcement officers who had weathered the obligatory, longwinded commemorative speeches beforehand.  Anita’s presence was only meant to keep Mary company, but the M.D.B.’s exhibition left the rowdy officers hungry for more.  Word got around that Anita was a belly dancer, and that she might be coaxed to perform should her standard $100 appearance fee be satisfied.  The hat was passed around the house, but only $75 could be raised (the cheapskates.)  Gracious, flattered, Anita extended a first responders discount and changed into costume.

What do you mean they want a discount??

That night Anita danced with all the allure and vigor befitting of her reputation, and while the literal bar full of cops sat captivated at her feet a thief snuck through the building.  Unnoticed, he broke into the dressing room set aside for the performers, burgled, and left as unnoticed as he had entered.  In his possession he now had $20 from Mary, and from Anita a pair of black silk panties, embroidered with red bows, valued at $25; larceny most foul, committed under the oblivious noses of New York’s finest.

Adding insult to injury, Anita and Mary had to wait until the next morning to file a formal complaint.  At the police station an industrious United Press International reporter got wind of the situation, and found that Mary was more than eager to impart a few juicy details.  “Anita had to go home in her costume panties and I had to borrow cab fare,” she complained.  “You’d think that a working girl would be safe with all those cops around.”  

This quote, along with the accompanying article, was picked up by papers all along the East Coast, and would incite a departmental police investigation into the conduct of the party’s organizers.  Lamentably, the multi-state exposure failed to assist in solving the crime.  The thief was never brought to justice, and Anita’s panties were lost forever.  As one reporter of the New York Daily News put it: “One suspects, after viewing Miss Ventura close-up, that the thief did not steal her panties out of a desire for crass gain but rather has them hanging on the wall of his den, in a suitable frame.”

Maybe this time just leave your panties on, Anita. Why tempt fate?

So once again, from sea to shining sea, Anita’s name and picture were splashed in an unflattering light.  She almost certainly wasn’t the first exotic dancer to have her underwear swiped, but she may have been the first one to have details about the event covered by the press.  One wonders what effect, if any, all this news coverage had on Anita’s personal life.  She once told reporter John Vergara, “My mother is a wonderful woman from the old Italian school who wouldn’t be at all happy if she knew what I was doing for a living.”  At this point, Anita having now been so boisterously featured in the national spotlight on two separate occasions, one has to wonder how it could not have been known.  Was Anita’s mother living under a rock?

from The New York Daily News, November 14, 1965.

Anita might have avoided this second foray into infamy had it not been for Mary Rooney and her big mouth.  Rooney, who grew up in a New York convent school, seemed to have a knack for creating drama.  She had originally intended to work in night clubs only as a hostess, but was convinced to transition into stripping on her very first night.  “I never had a dancing lesson in my life but this woman convinced me that exotic dancing would be easy.  Within three days, I opened as a stripper in her place.  I never planned it that way.  I answered an ad and before I knew it I was taking my clothes off to music.”  Still a practicing Catholic, Mary did consult a priest about her career choice, and was supposedly told she could continue performing so long as she was convinced there was nothing morally wrong with provocatively undressing for fervent spectators.

"Million Dollar Baby" Mary Rooney, from The New York Daily News, October 28, 1965.

The morality of Mary’s profession would be tested one chilly night in November, 1966.  Inspired by the topless entertainment fad and resulting business boom that was being enjoyed in San Francisco, The Crystal Room on East 54^th Street in Manhattan had decided to deploy topless waitresses in their establishment.  The legality of this choice was murky under New York laws, but the financial rewards were too tempting to be ignored.  That night Ruby Diamond, the official first topless waitress in New York City, ventured out to serve her eager patrons, followed closely by none other than Mary Rooney, Anita’s troublemaking friend.  It is important to clarify that, in this instance, “topless” did not mean completely bare breasted.  All parties involved wore pasties over their nipples.  In no way was The Big Apple prepared for nudity more radical than that.  At this point in time, had there been exposed nipples, there might also have been riots in the streets.

Ruby Diamond, NYC's first topless waitress, serves up a stiff one, from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

On this enchanted evening both Ruby and Mary were arrested for indecent exposure.  They were transported to the police station and booked with much fanfare.  Mug shots were captured, fingerprints recorded, and Officer Anne Neville forced Ruby Diamond to peel off her pasties so they could be used as state’s evidence against the accused.  The club’s owner, the entertainment manager, and one other employee were also cited on different charges. 

Ruby Diamond (L) and Mary Rooney (R) sit alongside a law enforcement officer (C) on their way to the slammer,
from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

Unfortunately for authorities, word about New York’s first topless burlesque house quickly spread through the city.  The following night The Crystal Room found itself drowning in business.  Hordes of people descended upon the dinky establishment, more than could possibly be served in a single night.  Crowds of turned-away patrons clustered outside the front entrance, congregating by the club’s short front window, glaring enviously upon those lucky enough to have been admitted inside.  Teenage boys perched on the roofs of parked cars out front, straining to steal a fleeting glimpse of an exposed breast.  

Patrons outside The Crystal Room, from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

Frantic for help in satiating the influx of demand, The Crystal Club recruited serving help from its performers, most notably from our beloved Anita, who had been dancing there since August.  Though she had absolutely no experience in waiting tables she agreed to help.  As we’ve established, a gig is a gig and Anita was a professional, but little did she realize that in volunteering to work she would unintentionally alter New York City forever.

An advertisement for Anita Ventura at The Crystal Room, three months prior to the topless waitress scandal,
from The Daily News, August 25, 1966.

Business was brisk that evening, brisk like a frosty breeze on an exposed bosom, but then so again was the response from New York police.  For the second consecutive night officers descended upon The Crystal Room.  Reporters trailed in their stead, vultures circling their next not-quite-dead-yet meal.  Neither group could have possibly anticipated what awaited them inside the club.  Darting about therein, scrambling from table to boisterous table, rushed a masked figure, curvaceous and mysterious.  Her high-heeled knee-high black boots clinked as she walked, her golden utility belt swished against her ample hips, her bare breasts heaved gently, nipples concealed by insignia that was… by God, they were bat-shaped pasties!  Who was this uncaped crusader?!  All had expected to find Anita Ventura.  None could have possibly anticipated Anita Batgirl.

from The Corvallis Gazette, November 11, 1966.

What had possessed Anita to don such unorthodox attire? She would eventually confess it was nothing more than a publicity stunt gone wild.  Four months prior, The Courier Post had reported that Anita wore a “batman costume” to a cocktail party at the Hotel Prince George in New York.  If merely wearing a bat-cowl could get one’s name in the paper, imagine what would happen if one wore the same costume whilst one’s breasts were exposed!

Well, Anita got all the publicity she could handle and more.  The scandal and accompanying photo was again widely distributed, coupled with headlines like “Zowie! N.Y. Batgirl Topless,” “Nightclub Business Booms as Batgirl Dons Pasties,” and “New York Police Flap Wings over Topless Anita Batgirl.”  If Anita’s old school Italian mother didn’t know about her day job before she surely did now.  Or maybe the disguise worked and Anita had been able to maintain her secret identity.  Only Batgirl knows for sure.

Anita Batgirl, from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

This entire situation might seem preposterous in contemporary times, but not as preposterous as the criminal charges levied against the employees of The Crystal Room.  The accused were subject to nineteen administrative code violations.  Four topless waitresses, Anita included, faced up to a year in jail should they be convicted of “putting on a display offensive to public decency.”  The Crystal Room Seven had their day in court on January 12, 1967.  It was The People Vs. Anita Batgirl.  At stake was the right for waitresses to work sans top in The City That Never Sleeps.  The fate of the entire East Coast topless entertainment industry hung in the balance.  “They’ll come here in hordes if we lose,” lamented one unidentified cop.

Owner of The Crystal Room Mary DiSalvo (L) with Anita Ventura (R), from the New York Daily News,  January 12, 1967.

On that day a panel of three judges, headed by Judge Herman Weinkrantz, entertained arguments from both prosecutor Gino Galiana and defense attorney Melvin Thaler.  The state called seven witnesses, including Officer Neville.  Her testimony was riveting:

“And then what did you do?” asked prosecutor Gaviana.

“I seized her pasties,” said the policewoman.

“Do you have them with you?”

She produced two objects, each less than two inches in diameter.

City Judge Herman Weinkrantz examined them.

“How were they affixed?” he inquired.

“With adhesive on the back.”

“How did you take them off?” he inquired further.

“She took them off.  Very carefully.”

“Let the record show,” said the prosecution, “that the people have introduced as exhibits in evidence two black, cone-shaped objects euphemistically characterized as pasties.”

Ruby Diamond is all smiles at her own trial, from The New York Daily News, January 12, 1967.

Patrolman Joseph Torba provided expert testimony about Ruby Diamond, New York’s first official topless waitress:

“She wore a short black skirt and was nude from the waist up except for pasties,” he said.

“How long were you there?” asked prosecutor Galiana.

“I observed her for two hours,” said Torba.

 At what distance did it become unlawful for a woman’s naked breast to be near a patron?  On this subject the lawyers held vigorous debate:

“How close did her breasts come to the customers?” prosecutor Galiana asked Torba.

The defense objected. “What part of the customer do you mean?”

“The head,” said Galiana.

Officer Torba stated the waitress’ breasts had been six to eight inches from customers.  The prosecution requested the officer reenact the ratio of head-to-breast proximity, to which the defense again objected.

Judge Weinkrantz settled the matter, stating “The court is old enough to know that waitresses have breasts and that they hang down when they lean over.”

"Million Dollar Baby" Mary Rooney struts her stuff at The Crystal Room, from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

At the end of proceedings, the defense closed by passionately stating, “The waitresses merely served food and drink and did not perform, did not sing or dance or move their bodies in any manner but that of serving the diners,” adding, “The female breast has never been found to be a ‘private part’ as defined in the New York statute dealing with indecent exposure.”  The prosecutors retorted, “The appearance of a woman with pasties on her breasts walking down Fifth Avenue would certainly bring about swift action by the police, and the people would want action taken.”

 Ultimately the panel of judges ruled that the state did not prove its case against The Crystal Room.  “The artfulness of the female is a matter of record and of history of which the court takes note without either condemning or praising it,” said Judge Weinkrantz, followed immediately by a statement of personal condemnation against the defendants for being vulgar and against public decency.  In his ruling he begrudgingly recommend City Code be amended to place topless waitresses in the same category as burlesque performers.

All parties acquitted! From L to R: Anita Ventura, Ruby Diamond, Marilyn DiSalvo, Florence Mayer, and Mary Rooney,
from The New York Daily News, January 13, 1967.

After the vindicating verdict Anita and her comrades, dubbed by the press as “the Fulsome Foursome” or a “quartet of topless pioneers,” gathered outside the courtroom.  They playfully posed for a number of pictures, smiling, flashing the victory sign, giddy in their triumphant moment.  Throughout the ordeal the press had insisted on referring to the women as “topless waitresses,” which was a label offense to all, especially Anita.  As has been established, Anita was not a stripper, and she certainly wasn’t a waitress. “I’ve been working as a dancer.  I wish people would remember that I make my living as a dancer,” she would tell the New York Daily News.

 For the final time, Anita was a dancer.  Get it right, people!

Business is booming at The Crystal Room, from The New York Daily News, April 9, 1967.

Two months later, New York City Council voted 27-5 to ban topless waitresses in the city.  The State Liquor Authority also revoked the liquor license for The Crystal Room.  These actions were too little, too late.  By April of 1967, The Crystal Room had hired twelve more waitresses.  To circumvent the City’s new topless codes they served customers while wearing loose, translucent scarves over their pastied breasts.  Patrons of The Crystal Room brought their own booze from home, adding it discretely to the free mixers provided by the club. The cat was out of the bag and so were the boobs.  New York City would never not be topless again.   Anita Batgirl had prevailed. 

The Crystal Room's new normal: a topless waitress in a transparent "cover up" takes the order of a customer as he mixes
a drink using his own brown-bagged booze, from The New York Daily New, April 9, 1967.

But what would become of Anita, our bare-breasted heroine, whose actions had inadvertently, radically reshaped the laws of America’s biggest city?  It seems that her close call with incarceration, and the subsequent news frenzy it incited, was once again cause for a professional pause. 

Anita Ventura cools off in a fountain while behind her a New York Postal Service strike rages on,
from The Sacramento Bee, March 21, 1970.

Somewhere along the line it had been lost that dancing was meant to bring Anita fame and fortune.  She hadn’t found fame, only notoriety, and if she had found fortune why was she prancing around looking like some fanboy’s wildest sex fantasy?  Anita wanted to be featured in movies or performing on Broadway, not to be the butt of widespread jokes.  Perhaps at this point in her life she wondered how being a topless Batgirl would help achieve that dream? Was that dream even worth achieving?  That she was only billed one other time as “The Original Bat Girl Anita Ventura” may speak on this, at Mussari’s Sun Valley Restaurant in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in September 1968.  For the remainder of her career she would perform only under her true name.

from The Standard Speaker, September 21, 1968.

Anita would continue performing for another twelve years, and those years would mercifully be uneventful.  Sometimes she would be booked as a belly dancer at a dinner theater, other times she would bare it all at full nude review strip clubs. Her last recorded showing was on August 30, 1979, at Harlow’s in good ol’ New York City, direct from an extended stay in Las Vegas, twenty-one years after her earliest appearances in California.  What becomes of her after that is unknown.

from The New York Daily News, August 30, 1979.

It is unfortunate that Anita wasn’t able to achieve the level of success to which she had aspired.  Hopefully she found consolation in the many fascinating, unbelievable experiences from her colorful career.  Few in her profession reached such levels of infamy, and fewer still were able to shake to its core the foundations of law and order just by what they chose to wear (or what not to wear.) 

Ventura means "luck" in Latin. And how lucky we were!

Whatever became of her, wherever she wound up, however she lived the remainder of her incredible life, hopefully she found ample time to dance.