Venue: Toddle House
Town: Culver City, US

The Toddle House was a night club that operated from approximately 1946 until 1953 in Culver City, California, United States. It featured live music, steak dinners, and what would now be called strippers. The club was allegedly used for prostitution and as a hangout for racketeers. Shortly after the club's liquor license was suspended by the state and operating permit was revoked by the city, the building was gutted by two fires that broke out in different locations within the structure on the same morning. The club opened in approximately 1946. Advertisements placed in the Venice Vanguard in 1946 announced that steak dinners were served from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., that there was no cover charge, and that Haven Johnson "with his funny songs" would be playing piano as part of the "continuous entertainment". In 1951 consumers reported issues with larceny and assault at the Toddle House. Fortnight magazine interviewed Johnny Toscano for a 1951 article entitled "The Los Angeles Bump & Grind Industry - How Wicked Is Burlesque? - Is it Really Harming Anyone?" An advertorial column in the Vanguard in 1952 described Girls A-Poppin as a floor show with a comedian and a "bevy of beauties who really keep things poppin'". In addition to a "variety of potent cocktails" served at the "mirrored bar," the Toddle House offered its patrons "lots of convenient free parking". In August 1953, a series of articles in the Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News suggested that the club was a hangout for bookmakers, racketeers, and pimps, namely Sam Lazes, Jimmy Fratianno, Jimmy Utley, and Sam Farkas, and was co-owned by Phil Tapper, described as a "gambler and bookmaker," and Johnny Toscano, who had a burglary conviction in New York. Moreover, the Daily News suggested that illegal activities at the club were being overlooked by the Culver City Police Department in exchange for payoffs. It was suggested that a city ballot measure designed to increase pay rates for municipal police officers (and thus