page_title: Leroy Griffith
section_title: vs. The City of Miami Beach
hierarchical_section_title: Leroy Griffith / Controversies / vs. The City of Miami Beach
caption_attribution_description: English: Club Madonna proprietor Leroy C. Griffith addresses the Miami Beach City Commission, Sept. 9, 2009
context_page_description: Leroy Charles Griffith is an American theater and nightclub proprietor, former Broadway theater producer, and film producer. He has owned, leased, or operated more than 70 adult entertainment theaters across the United States, dating from the burlesque era of the 1950s to present day nightclubs. During burlesque's heyday, he was a prolific producer of live stage shows featuring showgirls, strippers, comedians, and other stars of the era.
  His business endeavors in the adult entertainment industry have, for decades, put him at odds with restrictive municipalities, and he has taken legal action, often successfully, to be able to operate his establishments.
context_section_description: In late 1989, after the cities of Fort Lauderdale and North Miami Beach outlawed alcohol in establishments featuring nude entertainers, Miami Beach officials—led by Mayor Alex Daoud—feared strip club operators would gravitate to their city and that Miami Beach "would be overrun with sex-mad drunken men and immoral, naked women."
  The imminent debut of the Gold Club, whose owners had intended to introduce nudity and alcohol in their new building on 5th Street, spurred the City Commission to pass local legislation prohibiting such a mix.
  Griffith announced that if the Gold Club was allowed to open with liquor and nudity, he would move his hard-core films from the Gayety Theater (then known as Deja Vu) to the Roxy, which then was showing second-run movies for general audiences.  In turn, he would convert the Gayety into an upscale nude bar to compete with the Gold Club.
  Daoud said, "We don't have to sit idly by and watch [adult clubs] open up.  It would be detrimental to the growth of our city that has been developing so nicely."
  The city passed an ordinance in January 1990 prohibiting not only nudity and alcohol sharing the same room, but also banning any nudity near schools and churches.  The Gold Club did open with nude dancers, but soon folded under the handicap of the no-liquor policy.
  Griffith, meanwhile, successfully changed the Gayety into the all-nude, alcohol-free Deja Vu (without local competition), and turned the Roxy into an adult theater, Club Madonna.  Daoud was removed from office a year later after being implicated on unrelated corruption charges for which he was later convicted and imprisoned. Griffith and Daoud have since become close friends.
  Since the early 2000s, Griffith has been involved in legal disputes with the City of Miami Beach over its 1989/1990 ordinances banning the sale of alcohol in any establishment featuring nudity.  He sued several city officials in federal court, alleging they conspired to deny him a fair hearing before the City Commission after he sued the wife of one commissioner for libel, slander, and defamation after she waged a campaign against him, claiming, among other things, that he was a tax cheat.
caption: Confronting Miami Beach city commissioners in 2009 on the city's ban of alcohol in nightclubs featuring nudity.
exif: {}