If the police did drive up, management would flash the lights, indicating women dancing with women should trade partners with the men dancing with men.
Drawing a more professional crowd who couldn’t risk being arrested in a police raid, women gladly paid the $20 yearly membership fee. Joani Presents – Located in North Hollywood at 6413 Lankershim Boulevard, this bar was owned by Joan Hannan, who was most famous for playing the drummer in the all-girl band in the 1959 Marilyn Monroe film “Some Like it Hot.” Attracting many classes of women, the bar was popular throughout the 1960s and 1970s, only closing when Hannan and her partner moved to Humboldt County.Ĭanyon Club – Located in Topanga Canyon between Malibu and Pacific Palisades, this was a private membership club complete with a swimming pool that attracted “women who looked like women” (which today would be known as “lipstick lesbians”). Joani Presents, owned by Joan Hannan, was located in North Hollywood and attracted many classes of women throughout the 1960s and 70s. The laws also prevented Heston from pouring liquor, so the bar had male bartenders. Opened in the mid 1950s, owner Jo Heston had to marry a man in order to buy the bar because laws at that time didn’t allow women to own bars. Star Room – Located between Watts and Gardena in an unincorporated portion of Los Angeles County, this was a “cruising bar” that attracted a more pink-collar clientele (teachers, secretaries, nurses, etc). A 1966 “Barfly” gay guide described the If Club (also known as the If Café) as, “a crowd of butch girls, men in 40s, others from area.” That same guide described the Open Door as having the “same crowd as at If Café.” Sometime in the 1950s, The Open Door opened across the street, catering to a similar crowd. It was a working class, racially mixed bar. If Club – Located at Vermont Avenue and 8 th Street (in what is now Koreatown), this is the earliest known lesbian bar, opening in approximately 1947. Furthermore, the photos show women freely posing, which was rare in a time of police harassment.īelow is a brief history of some of the earliest lesbian bars in the Los Angeles area, gathered from that taping session, Lillian Faderman’s book “Gay L.A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics and Lipstick Lesbians” and other resources at the Mazer. The donation is notable, Brinskele said, because LGBT historians had never heard of the Green Door.
Recently, the archive received a donation of several photographs dated August 1955, taken at a bar called the Green Door on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.
The Mazer is still learning a lot about the bars of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. People interested in reminiscing about lesbian bars from the 1950s to the 1990s should contact the Mazer. The archive hopes to hold another videotaping session this summer. In 1991, the archive videotaped a half-dozen women reminiscing about the early lesbian bars. To buy some protection for the bar and its patrons, lesbian bar owners often paid off police officers, either with cash or sex or both. As a result, people didn’t keep things that might associate them with those bars. Before the Stonewall riots, which are credited as the single most important moment leading to the gay liberation movement, police used to routinely raid gay and lesbian bars. WEHOville consulted with the archive to learn more about some of the early lesbian bars in the area.Īngela Brinskele, the archive’s communication director, said that early records of lesbian bars are sketchy. The June Mazer Lesbian Archives, located at 626 Robertson Blvd., adjacent to West Hollywood Park, maintains an extensive collection of lesbian-related information from across the nation. The Palms may be the only lesbian bar in West Hollywood and the oldest continually operating lesbian bar in the Los Angeles area but it is far from the first lesbian bar in the area. (Photo courtesy of the June Mazer Lesbian Archives) The photo is also notable because the women are freely posing, which was rare during a time of police harassment. Until this photo was donated to the Mazer Lesbian Archives, no LGBT historian had ever heard of the Green Door. An August 1955 photo shows lesbian patrons posing inside the Green Door bar, on Lankershim Blvd.