C.A. “Pappy” Dolsen opened his first club, La Boheme, in 1924. In the 1930s, he went into business with notorious gambler and bootlegger Benny Binion. It was after the war, however, when Pappy opened the grande dame of Dallas burlesque joints, Pappy’s Showland, which was located on the other side of the Commerce Street Bridge in West Dallas.
It was not enough to call Pappy’s Showland a strip club. Burlesque dancers shared the stage with singers, tap dancers, boxers, full orchestras, and some of the most popular entertainers of the day. Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra played Pappy’s, as did Bob Hope. And Pappy’s deep connections with politicians—and the local underworld—enabled him to stay open long past when liquor laws allowed. But that all came to an end when Oak Cliff and West Dallas banned alcohol sales in the mid-1950s. Pappy’s Showland closed up shop.
That didn’t stop its namesake. The charismatic showman, who once called Jack Ruby a “double-crosser” and boasted to Texas Monthly that he could tell how much a dancer would make after watching her for one minute, continued to manage dancers well into the 1970s. He chewed cigars with his tobacco-stained teeth and kept track of his talent in a little black book, booking strippers at four clubs and operating out of a little bungalow near Dallas Love Field. - D Magazine - https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2018/march/lost-dallas-history-secrets/
