Mary's Club is the oldest strip club in Portland, Oregon, and among the oldest in the United States. In 1954, Roy Keller bought the business from Mary Duerst Hemming, who owned and operated Mary's as a piano bar beginning in the 1930s. Keller initially hired go-go dancers as entertainment during the piano player's breaks, later hiring them full-time because of their popularity. Topless dancers wearing pasties were introduced in 1955. The club also featured comics, musicians, singers and other acts. All-nude dancing began in 1985, after a judicial ruling against City of Portland ordinances banning it in venues which served alcohol.
Former strippers include Courtney Love and Christine Jorgensen, although the club is known for its longtime dancers who are loyal to the family business. Since Keller's death in 2006, Mary's Club has been owned and operated by his daughter Vicki. A Portland institution, it has been included in several strip-club "best of" lists and its neon sign is considered a landmark. The club has appeared in several films, including Bongwater (1997) and Brainsmasher... A Love Story (1993), and has been included in walking tours of the city.
History
Mary's Club, known as "Portland's first topless", is the oldest strip club in Portland. Portland shipyard foreman Roy Keller bought the club in 1954 for about $25,000 from Mary Duerst Hemming, who was awarded the piano bar (which was popular with sailors) in a divorce settlement and operated the business "for more than 20 years" beginning in the 1930s. According to The Seattle Times, Keller initially hired go-go dancers to entertain the crowd during the piano player's breaks. Due to the dancers' popularity, Keller hired them full-time, laid off the piano player and introduced "pasties-clad topless dancers" in 1955. That year, two city-council members advised Keller not to install pinball machines at the club since Portland then had an anti-pinball ordinance which was being contested in court. A Mary's Club team played in the Multnomah League of the Portland Basketball Association during the 1955–56 season with teams sponsored by Interstate Hauling, Kent's Keg, Il Trovatore, Frolic Inn, and the Portland Air Base, among others.
Singers, comics, and piano players performed at the club. A 1958 newspaper advertisement announced its opening act as Tiny Watson, "200 pounds of mirth and merriment", and compared her to Sophie Tucker. The closing performer was George James, "King of the Keyboards". In 1965, an Oregonian article featured topless dancer Bambi Darling, who performed at Mary's Club; she reportedly excelled in discothèque, "shaking and undulating" to the Mashed Potato, the Monkey, the Shotgun, and other dances popular at the time. Keller, said to resemble "a church deacon", praised his dancers and described his customer base as "more refined" than that of the club's pre-1954 era. By March 1966, Darling's "16 torrid acts" shared the bill with reptile-wrestler Bobby Vale and Gigi La France, promoted as the club's answer to James Bond. Tom Waits reportedly sang about the club in "Pasties and a G-String" from his album, Small Change (1976). In 2012, an author wrote that Mary's Club featured "tattooed contortionist entertainers".
Nude dancing at the club began in 1985 after a judge overturned City of Portland ordinances banning it at venues which served alcohol. A lawsuit over pasties and G-strings was brought after Portland annexed land formerly regulated by Multnomah County, which allowed tavern dancers to perform without clothing. A bar forced by the annexation to eliminate its nude dancing successfully sued the city. "As soon as we got the word [about the ruling], we went nude," said a club employee who was quoted in The Oregonian.
According to Willamette Week, Courtney Love (whose autographed picture hangs on a club wall) is a former Mary's Club stripper. Love wrote on the photograph that she "bought my very first guitar here showing my teeny little titties". Although Christine Jorgensen was also featured at the club, dancers tend to be longtime employees loyal to the family-run business. Keller died in 2006 at age 90; Mary's Club is now run by his daughter, Vicki, who remembered that she first worked there as a seven-year-old waitress. Vicki managed the business for twenty-five years before her father's death, and her daughters worked at the club during that period.
According to a 2013 Portland Monthly profile, Mary's Club has a full cocktail bar, more than two dozen varieties of beer and wine, and a menu featuring Mexican cuisine. The club has a one-drink minimum and a small cover charge on Friday and Saturday evenings.