Published: November 02, 2009 01:12 pm      

Ex-stripper, Jack Ruby reunited in mural

DALLAS (AP) — After Jack Ruby made a huge splash by killing Lee Harvey Oswald on live television, Joyce Gordon became a ripple.

Gordon, a green-eyed redhead who was 20, worked as a stripper at Ruby’s Carousel Club on Commerce Street in downtown Dallas. Now, at 66, she is thought to be the last living woman who danced at Ruby’s club during that period in November 1963.

“I did what I did,” she said last week. “No sense regretting what you’ve done. I had no education and I had to have a way to support my child, and that was the way I did it.”

This month marks the 46th anniversary of one of the most dramatic episodes in American history. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, Oswald was arrested for his murder, and Ruby shot and killed him on Nov. 24.

Entrepreneurs and artists are still paying homage to the characters who played major and minor roles in the massive investigations of Oswald and Ruby. Gordon, who went by the stage name Joy Dale, became one of those characters.

Gordon has appeared in a few assassination documentaries over the years but, for the most part, has kept a low profile.

Randy Redmond, a colorful Dallas businessman, is putting a little gloss on her golden years. He is immortalizing Gordon, Ruby and two other Carousel Club strippers on a mural in back of his building at 2616 Commerce in lDeep Ellum. Redmond rents the building for parties, and the mural adorns the entrance to a faux speakeasy in the alley.

Gordon, her youth restored with waterproof paint, is portrayed sitting on the hood of a police car with the Dallas skyline in the background.

“My daughters think it’s kinda cool,” she said.

Gordon was born in Sulphur Springs in 1943 and was raised in Oak Cliff. She had a 12-year career as stripper Joy Dale.

In the early ’60s, strip joints were a far cry from the so-called gentleman’s clubs of today, where the dancers usually appear topless and perform “lap dances” for tips. When you think of Joy Dale, think of a bouffant hairdo, ankle-length black gown and long black gloves a la Gypsy Rose Lee.

The music was provided by a live band. And the show often included comedians or ventriloquists or singers.

Gordon and her 3-year-old daughter, Cynthia, were riding a city bus to a doctor’s appointment at Parkland Memorial Hospital on Nov. 22, 1963. Several weeks earlier, Cynthia had almost lost an eye in a freak accident. She needed a checkup.

“We got to the corner of Houston and Commerce (near Dealey Plaza) and a motorcycle policeman stopped the bus and got on and looked around,” Gordon recalled. “Word of what happened had gotten out and people were screaming and crying.”

By the time the bus arrived at Parkland, Gordon said, doctors had pronounced President Kennedy dead. After the eye appointment, she and Cynthia took the bus to the Carousel Club, a second-floor walkup across from the Adolphus Hotel.

It would be the last time she ever spoke to Jack Ruby.

“We got there and he was hysterical,” she said. She said Ruby promised to shoot the person who killed Kennedy and she told the FBI.

When she and Cynthia got on the bus to go home, Ruby was getting his shoes shined, tears rolling down his cheeks as he stroked his pet dachshund, Sheba. The president had been dead about three hours.

Two days later, on Sunday morning, Ruby made history when police tried to move Oswald from the police station’s lockup to the county jail. He stepped forward with a Colt .38 snub-nose and killed Oswald on live television.

Gordon and her boyfriend were at home in Oak Cliff when they heard the news on the radio. She went crazy, she said.

Gordon, who was pregnant with her second daughter, danced for another month at the Carousel Club. Ruby was in jail for killing Oswald. His trusty bartender was left to run the club. Ruby was convicted of murder and faced life in prison. He died of cancer in 1967.

Ruby was a nice guy, Gordon recalled. Sure, once in a while he might beat up a customer who needed it, but he was considerate, too. Ruby was going to let her work as a hostess at the club during her pregnancy and said he would buy her some flashy maternity clothes.

“I guess I saw too much of the good side of Jack,” she said.

To this day, some conspiracy theorists believe the Mafia and the CIA conspired to kill Kennedy and that they used Oswald as a patsy. Some believe Ruby was in the Mafia and that his bosses ordered him to shoot Oswald to cover up their involvement in the assassination.

Gordon doesn’t buy those theories. Ruby was just an eccentric who lost his head, a busybody who wanted to be at the center of things in Dallas, she said.

“He reminded me of a little old lady in a small town who wanted to know everything going on,” she said. “If there was a Mafia in Dallas, I didn’t know about it.”