ABSTRACT
In 1959, Charles debuted “The Moppettes” at the Echo Club in Miami Beach, Florida. Rio Dante had joined Charles, playing the piano and performing in “The Moppettes” segment of the show. A very clever young man Charles had discovered in Miami Beach created the first “Moppettes.” They were beautifully made, and Charles always referred to them as “the original dolls.” There was a stripper, a Mae West, a Shirley Temple, and a cute, bare-chested, anatomically correct sailor, complete with an anchor tattoo on his muscular upper arm and tight white bell-bottoms with a flap in front. Later, Charles and I created more “Moppettes” at his Hyde Park Suites suite in San Francisco: two singing nuns, a Dolly Parton, a black-leather–clad dominatrix complete with crotch-high, spike-heeled flagellation boots, and a whip. There was a male masochist doll Charles teamed with the dominatrix, a Dracula, Vampira, a circus clown, a Gay Nineties dance-hall girl with red high-button shoes, and a muscular Tarzan wearing only a skimpy loincloth.
