Thanks for the mammaries: Stripper Carol Doda, who jiggled into history as first topless dancer in US, dies at 78

Legendary San Francisco stripper Carol Doda, whose act helped introduce topless entertainment to the United States more than 50 years ago, has died at age 78.

Doda died Monday in the city from complications of kidney failure, friend Ron Minolla disclosed Wednesday.

Doda first went topless in 1964 at the Condor Club — a move that changed every nightspot on busy Broadway in San Francisco. Topless performers soon started appearing in clubs across the US.

During its heyday in the early 1970s, the street in North Beach buzzed with more than two dozen clubs where carnival-like barkers beckoned passers-by to watch bare-breasted dancers. The era spanned some 20 years.

Doda later had an acting role in Head, a 1968 film featuring the Monkees, and was profiled in Tom Wolfe's book The Pump House Gang.

“When the (beatniks) were handing the torch to the hippies, a girl named Carol Doda changed the world from a pole at the corner of Columbus Avenue and Broadway,” her friend Lee Housekeeper said.

Doda, known for her augmented bust, rode onto stage atop a piano on an elevator platform, debuting her act the same day President Lyndon B. Johnson drew half-a-million people in a visit to San Francisco.