I have to warn my readers that my column is a little on the racy side this week. Parental discretion is advised.

"Hundreds of arrests. No convictions." It would make a good title for a book, I think, but the author has already written one. It’s called "What Do You Say to a Naked Waiter?" The author is Jack Cione.

I spent some time with Cione recently. He was very entertaining. At 85, Cione has retained his charm, wit and good looks.

Cione owned as many as 14 nightclubs at one point. His first was Forbidden City, which preceded the Ward Warehouse. He later owned the Showbar on Hotel Street, French Quarter, Dipper Lounge, the Bunny Room, and Backstage Lounge in Waikiki.

Cione brought in such entertainers as Judy Garland, Mamie Van Doren, Lenny Bruce and Wayne Newton.

Cione is proud of hiring some of the top black entertainers in the business, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey and Della Reese. "I paid them well, too," Cione says, "up to $20,000 a week."

Cione saw the advent of hostess bars in the early 1970s and decided the era of big-name stars putting on shows was ending. The audience wanted something new.

"Sophie Tucker told me there weren’t 52 entertainers you could book for a week each," Cione recalls. "You gotta have a gimmick."

Birth control pills had just come out in 1965, and a sexual revolution was getting underway. Young people were "letting it all hang out." Nudity was the angle Cione settled on. He was the first to bring in topless dancers, nude waiters, bottomless shoeshine girls and nude musicals.

Cione was most famous for his naked-waiters show that ran at the Dunes club, near the airport, for three years. It came about by accident.

"I had a topless lunch show for men in 1971, but many of them brought their secretaries or wives. One day, a secretary asked me why we didn’t have anything for women. I told her if she could bring 50 ladies to lunch someday, we’d put on a show for them. I thought I’d never hear from her again.

"A few weeks later she called me and said she had a party of 50 secured for the coming week. That presented a problem. I had no male waiters or dancers.

"Then I thought, I have some North Shore male tenants who were behind in their rent. They preferred surfing to working. Maybe they’d perform in exchange for their back rent. They agreed.

"By the time the show happened, 125 women came. They got up on the stage in shorts and tank tops. One by one they dropped their pants. The audience went nuts. The women stayed all afternoon. The bar bills were enormous.

"The phone began ringing with women who wanted to come in again with their friends. I scheduled it again for the following Friday, and almost immediately it was sold out. We could seat 400.

"Every Friday soon became every day of the week. United Press International did a story on it, and reporters started calling from all over. I guess it was the first of its kind in the world.

"I was contacted by nearly 100 newspapers, magazines, radio stations and TV shows. I was on the ‘Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,’ ‘The Tom Snyder Show’ and others." Cione became a celebrity, and the Dunes was raking in a small fortune.

Cione opened a second location at Beachwalk and Kalakaua and sold franchises in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

"There were no laws against nude entertainment back then," Cione recalls. "They were all written for me. The vice squad would come and arrest me, but I would call the TV news stations first. It was great publicity. I was arrested hundreds of times and never convicted."

The show was sold out for three years. "It captured a new, untapped market that was long overdue, and with the help of women’s lib and burn-the-bra protests, naked waiters became an overnight sensation."

Fads come and go, and pretty soon the women lost interest. "Many people today ask why I am not producing nude shows anymore. A nude show today is like trying to sell an old Chubby Checker twist record or a new hula hoop."

Today, Cione and his wife live at Arcadia. He puts on an annual extravaganza with 70- and 80-year-old singers and dancers from there in elaborate costumes.

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Bob Sigall teaches marketing and management at HPU and is a business consultant with Creative-1. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com.