Inside Studio 54

by Mark Fleischman

  Mark Fleischman, the new twenty-six-year-old executive director of the old Queens landmark–the Forest Hills Inn–wasn’t born when Big Bill Tilden, General Pershing, Sinclair Lewis, and Peaches Browning were making the name of the famed inn familiar around the world. The youthful Fleischman is a Cornell alumnus, class of ’62, who still looks like an undergraduate, spends a good deal of his time listening to suggestions from those who remember the era when Daddy and Peaches might be seen at the bar with Mayor Jimmy Walker.

  It was a long, complimentary story and gave me the sense I could go on to greater things. I remember feeling very proud—a Jewish Naval Officer taking a sprawling, broken-down, formerly anti-Semitic hotel and relaunching it in the modern era.

  I loved coming up with press-generating ideas, including the creation of a Celebrity Walk in front of the hotel’s sidewalk café. It was a real coup when we got Frank Sinatra to put his handprints into a block of wet cement when he headlined the Forest Hills Music Festival at the nearby tennis stadium. As soon as other celebrities heard about Sinatra’s handprints and signature, they agreed to be included in our Celebrity Walk when they performed. Eventually Barbra Streisand, Trini Lopez, Woody Allen, Buddy Hackett, and a number of others participated. I was also able to get tennis stars playing for the US Championship to participate in our Celebrity Walk, including Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, John Newcombe, and my hero from Spain where I attended summer courses at the University of Madrid, Manuel “Manolo” Santana.

  I tried to concentrate on my studies at the University of Madrid.

  My classes were in Spanish, a language I was still learning.

  From the 1930s through the 1960s, gossip columnists were extremely popular and very powerful in New York. The legendary Walter Winchell led the charge with a few well-placed mentions of the Forest Hills Inn in his column. His items resulted in getting people to drive from Manhattan and all over Long Island to enjoy dinner and dancing in the Windsor Room and drinks at the piano bar in the Three Swans. I continued to cultivate my relationship with the press, staging events and stunts to garner their interest, including the annual “Live Turkey Derby” on Thanksgiving, which made the local New York TV news.

  As the press reported on the goings-on at the Inn, both bars and restaurants became popular with people from all over Long Island and a favorite neighborhood hangout where once a year the local Irish drunks came to festively break chairs over each other’s heads on St. Patrick’s Day. We were also booking three or four weddings and banquets every weekend, although that didn’t always go smoothly. On one occasion, the maître d’, a black man, Bill Nance, a former waiter and valued employee, who had worked at the Inn for thirty years, walked a white bride into the wrong wedding in the old English courtyard garden, shocking everyone. However, a few glitches notwithstanding, the Forest Hills Inn was a hit. It felt good when I overheard my father bragging to his friends about my accomplishments.

  Chapter Four:

  The Candy Store

  A bold Texan named Marion Roberts, who was a frequent guest at the Inn, often invited me to join him on his jaunts into Manhattan. His generosity in including me was probably related to his appreciation for my extending thousands of dollars’ worth of credit to him (which drove my father nuts). As the manager of the comic Pat Henry, who often opened for Frank Sinatra, Marion had currency everywhere we went. Sinatra and his Rat Pack owned the era, and any connection to them was gold. Marion had a gruff voice and a brash personality. Although stocky and not a looker, he wore top-of-the-line silk suits with cowboy boots and cut a figure that you could not miss. Moving through Manhattan with Marion in his chauffeured Cadillac was an exhilarating experience.

  After a little club-hopping, we usually ended up at The Copacabana, which for me was still as exciting as ever. Nothing much had changed since my visits with my parents; it was still the place to be in the mid-1960s. It was located on Sixtieth Street between Fifth and Madison and known for serving great food. It was decorated with tall fake palm trees, wild Brazilian décor, and a kick-ass Latin-themed orchestra. Going to The Copa was still like stepping into another world. The guests were dressed to the nines—men in sharp suits and women in cleavage-baring cocktail dresses. The downstairs main room was filled with movers and shakers, celebrities, and, of course, gorgeous women, mainly in their twenties, dripping with jewelry. People usually had a cigarette or cigar in one hand and a cocktail in the other. No one talked about alcoholism or cancer. The air had an ethereal quality from all the smoke drifting under the spotlights.

  Big names played there—Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jr., Sam Cooke, and Harry Belafonte. The Supremes made their debut at the club in 1965, paving the way for The Temptations and Marvin Gaye. We’ve all heard Barry Manilow’s famous song “Copacabana” about Lola, The Copa showgirl. The Copa Girls performed each night and were not only beautiful, they exuded sexuality. They still wore skimpy mink panties, sequined brassieres, exotic-looking plastic fruit-laced turbans, and sky-high heels. Both Joan Collins and Raquel Welch started off as Copa Girls. There was also a crowded, smoke-filled street-level bar upstairs populated by characters that seemed like they were straight out of Guys and Dolls and Goodfellas. The place was owned by Jules Podell, widely known to be connected to the Mafia.

  It had been fifteen years since my first visit to The Copa with my parents. It was just as magical at age twenty-five as it had been at ten and I still felt that pull to own a major nightclub.

  If a single word could define nightlife in Manhattan during that era, it was “swanky,” and I was in the middle of it all. I remember feeling that this was the pinnacle of nightlife, as good as it could ever get. Eventually I became somewhat of a regular at The Copa, as well as at Jilly’s across town, which was owned by Sinatra’s best friend and bodyguard, Jilly Rizzo. I also frequented Jackie Kannon’s Rat Fink Room above the Round Table, owned by Morris Levy, a man with a lot of connections.

  One night at The Copa bar I met a tall, heavyset but dapper man in a shiny silk suit named Larry Mathews. He was a businessman who owned a nightclub on West Fifty-Fifth Street named Disc-Au-Go-Go. Larry was another one of the Sinatra hangers-on and his particular claim to fame was his very successful “Larry Mathews’ 24-Hour Beauty Salon” chain. If a woman wanted a shampoo and set at 5:00 a.m. before an early-morning flight, or a touch-up to her color and manicure before heading out to the clubs at midnight, then Larry Mathews was the go-to guy. His salons were the first twenty-four-hour beauty parlors in the city and they catered to insomniacs, talk show guests, showgirls from The Copacabana and Latin Quarter, and luminaries including former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, author Jacqueline Susann, Marilyn Monroe, and everyday women with special circumstances. He eventually had dozens of salons in New York City, and in the early 1970s expanded his after-hours beauty enterprise nationally with over 125 salons from Miami to Las Vegas to Hollywood.

  Larry and I got to talking one night, and he mentioned that his nightclub had a fully licensed upstairs room that was not being used. He asked me if I had any ideas for it. This was the question I’d been waiting for all of my young life. Ideas? I had them in spades. I was finally going to do a nightclub in Manhattan!

  The space Larry was offering me wasn’t big and luxurious, but I immediately thought of a little hole-in-the-wall club on West Forty-Fifth Street in Manhattan called The Peppermint Lounge that had closed a year or so earlier. Some friends and I had caught the action at The Peppermint Lounge and we had a blast. I was captivated by the waitresses who periodically put down their trays and jumped up on the railings to dance for the crowd: the first ever Go-Go Dancers.

  That nightspot helped to catapult a new dance called The Twist when the house band Joey Dee and The Starliters cut a smash-hit record “The Peppermint Twist” and a photographer captured Russian Prince Serge Obolensky twisting the night away at the club. The next morning the photo was plast
ered on the front pages of newspapers around the world. That picture caused an explosion of interest and the following night, it took barricades and police on horseback to keep the crowds in line. The Peppermint Lounge became a hit and the hip hangout club of the International Jet Set for several years, attracting such regulars as Ava Gardner, Norman Mailer, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Truman Capote, and Jackie Kennedy. It was reported in the news that Jackie O. had a “Peppermint Lounge” temporarily installed at The White House for President Kennedy, as the twist was his favorite dance.

  But what could I add to the Peppermint Lounge-concept to make it new and fresh? In an instant I thought of Candy Johnson, featured in all of the Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon Beach Party movies as the “Shimmy Girl.” I would call the club The Candy Store, bring in Candy, surround her with hot Go-Go Girls, and make it the wildest live show in Manhattan. Candy, dubbed Miss Perpetual Motion, and her very good-looking and outrageously well-dressed band of seven guys, Mickey, Larry and The Exciters—one of the best bands I have ever heard—had just set attendance records at the 1964 World’s Fair as the Candy Johnson Review. The World’s Fair had recently closed, and Candy and her manager Red Gilson had been staying at The Forest Hills Inn. When I pitched my idea to them, they loved it.

  I opened The Candy Store to a line of people waiting to get in that stretched down West Fifty-Sixth Street for half a block. It was a wild and decadent scene for that time period. I personally auditioned the dancers/Go-Go Girls/waitresses—hand-picking an assortment of beautiful, cute, tall, and short, redheads, blondes, and brunettes—all wearing bikinis, black fishnet stockings, and white leather go-go boots. The Candy Store Girls didn’t have the headdresses of The Copa Girls but they could dance, and dance they did. The guys went wild! The two lead singers, Mickey and Larry, did splits and flips and swung their microphones around like yo-yos. They were a huge draw to the ladies. They rocked out to the hit songs of the day, popularized by Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, The Temptations, Tom Jones, James Brown, Sam & Dave, The Rascals, The Righteous Brothers, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Berry, and Little Richard, to name a few. It was the best live music in the city and the band featured some outrageous choreography including some members of the kick-ass horn section playing upside-down as they hung from their knees on trapezes suspended from the ceiling. Candy sang and shimmied nonstop to wild applause from patrons like Tom Jones, Little Richard, Sam and Dave, and Paul Anka.

  As I took in the scene around me on opening night—the wild colors, sights, and sounds, the sexy girls dancing, the musicians swinging upside down through the air, Candy shaking it for all she was worth, and the room filled with smoke as guests drank cocktail after cocktail—I realized my first foray into the nightclub business was a success. Columnists Earl Wilson and Walter Winchell faithfully reported on it the next day, securing a spot for The Candy Store on “the list” of the Manhattan Night Set at the time.

  However, something else happened on opening night. Larry Mathews called me into a back office to introduce me to his “partners,” nicknamed Joe the Wop, who was the real boss, and Sal, who told me his hobby was raising white doves in his Westchester mansion. Dressed in silk suits and wearing gold chains, they were friendly and congratulated me, toasting my success. However, something about them made me extremely uncomfortable, because Larry, usually the bon vivant, acted so nervous around them. During that period of time the Mafia was at their peak of power and, from what I understand, these two guys controlled the West Side. Larry and his partners were hoping my success would spill over to their downstairs club, but it didn’t. A month or so later, Tony, their squat, tough manager who reminded me of the Joe Pesci character in Casino, sat me down one night and, in his thick Bronx accent, said, “We gotta change da deal.” He informed me that we needed to modify our arrangement and become “real partnas.”

  There was no way I wanted to get any further into bed with the Mob, so I sent my buddy from Great Neck High School, Eric Rosenfeld, who had only recently started practicing law, to Larry’s office to meet the “partnas.” His goal was to remind them about our signed agreement but the meeting didn’t go as planned. Eric got so scared he dropped The Candy Store as a client, explaining, “Mark, they could break our knees!” This was obviously not part of his curriculum at Harvard Law. Although I was nervous, I figured if I showed the Mob respect and never borrowed money from them, they probably wouldn’t hurt me.

  As time went by, I continued to talk to Joe and Sal on my own, making small concessions, and they seemed to take an almost paternal interest in me, even offering me the presidency of a small Las Vegas casino. However, when they continued to pressure me and told me that they wanted to comanage Candy and make her a big star, I had to take a step back, and I decided it just wasn’t worth the risk. I definitely didn’t want to end up like Larry Mathews, owned by the Mob, so I slowly stopped promoting The Candy Store. Business dropped and I told them I couldn’t continue paying Candy and the band. I found Candy and the band a gig in Mallorca, where I knew people from my many trips to Spain, and, after I got her safely out of town and away from the boys, I moved on.

  Chapter Five:

  I’ll Take Manhattan

  There was nothing more stylish and hip than New York City in the 1960s. It was the center of the universe and after The Candy Store, I knew that I belonged in Manhattan, not in Queens. It was a heady time to be young, single, and successful in Manhattan, so I moved to an outrageous bachelor pad right in the middle of it all on Thirty-Eighth Street between Madison and Park Avenues. It was a one-bedroom with high ceilings, carved moldings, columns, a working marble fireplace in the living room, and an elevated mirrored dining area off to the side—a real knockout. It had previously been the formal grand room of a Delano-designed mansion. It was a great spot for entertaining.

  At night, the city had a special quality to it. Trader Vic’s at the Plaza Hotel was often one of my first stops in the evening. It felt like a spot off the beach somewhere in exotic Bali with the thatched roof over the bar, spears, carved masks, and an enormous dugout canoe from Marlon Brando’s film Mutiny on the Bounty. My dates loved the deadly rum-laden Scorpions, a guaranteed aphrodisiac, served with a fresh gardenia floating on top. It was one of Johnny Carson’s favorite places to hang out after hosting The Tonight Show. I always left by the Central Park South door, loving the sight of the twinkling lights in the windows of residences surrounding Central Park. If I was in an uptown mood, I’d take my date by the hand and we’d walk one block east to the lively-celebrity-laden Playboy Club on Fifty-Ninth Street, have a few drinks by the fire, and hear some good jazz. It was five floors of Manhattan-chic.

  Or, if after leaving Trader Vic’s I felt like something more Bohemian, I’d hail a cab and we’d head downtown, taking in the blaring overhead neon of Times Square as it cast its unflattering light on the sleazy street below where prostitutes, panhandlers, and tourists mingled. Down in Greenwich Village there were so many small clubs filled with cigarette and pot smoke and the most amazing live music anywhere. One night my date and I went to see Howlin’ Wolf at Cafe au Go Go; we were having a drink and smoking a joint when out of nowhere, The Chambers Brothers got up and jammed with The Wolf. Sometimes we’d head to Little Italy to stuff our faces at Umberto’s Clam House where “Crazy Joe” Gallo would be gunned down years later. If we felt like dancing we’d head over to Trude Heller’s nightclub. Francis Grasso, mentor to many DJs of the early 1970s, worked there not as a DJ, but as a dancer. He danced twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off—all night long. “It was the hardest twenty dollars I ever made in my life,” he later said about the experience.

  And then the pill coupled with Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 book Sex and the Single Girl created the perfect storm for what lay ahead—the sexual revolution. The book sold two million copies its first three weeks on the shelves of America’s bookstores. It challenged the very core of the American family
. The author encouraged women to become financially independent, experience fun with sex before settling down to marriage and children, and perhaps even opt out of marriage altogether. The pill gave women a choice. It was liberating, radical, and many will argue that it was the beginning of the end of the family as we had always known it. But until that mindset took hold, I was stuck with the reality that most “nice” girls still wouldn’t go all the way. They were saving “it” for Mr. Right and marriage. The girls I could have sex with somehow didn’t really interest me for more than one or two evenings. And then I met Susan.

  She was twenty-five to my twenty-seven, Jewish, and already a law school graduate with an impressive job. She dressed in tight miniskirts, which were all the rage in 1967, and fitted tops that accentuated her small waist. She was just as smart as I was, maybe smarter. We made a great couple. I could immediately see the possibilities of a serious relationship with Susan.

  We kissed on the first date, and she encouraged me to run my hands all over her hot little body and get a good feel on the second date, but the events following date number three proved to be a problem. Susan was far more experienced sexually than I was and I liked that, but at the same time I felt intimidated, thinking I might not please her. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution, and Susan seemed to be really enjoying her sexual freedom. I knew that she’d made it with other guys.