This thread is bringing me back.
Growing up in RI in the 60s there were pizza joints and good pizza restaurants and then there was just pizza from department and convenience stores. Of course, there was also Caserta's, which was thick crust (not as thick as what we now call Sicilian, but it was considered Sicilian by the Sicilians).
What my folks considered to be good pizza, from a pizza restaurant, was deckled black. I guess that's what you call "leopard." Blacked all around the crust like some of the Connecticut specimens shown here was called burned, which was a special order. The Contis in our neighborhood who ran a restaurant, and my Grandfather's restaurant clients, all claimed you couldn't cook a pizza without a high heat oven. Most of them used gas pizza ovens, but they cranked.
Then when the first energy crisis hit in the 70s the crusts stopped being blackened. People were eating out less, the restaurants couldn't afford to keep those ovens cranking on high all the time, and it was more to the kids' tastes like Caserta's.
Those blackened crusts remind me of an earlier day. I know I didn't like them as a child, but I'll bet they'd taste pretty good to me now.