One night, as we were getting ready to open, I was on my way back into the club after unlocking the front doors when I happened to glance over at the coat room and noticed the Harris Sisters were moving very slowly. They were huddled together, staring at the dollar bills they would use to make change throughout the evening. When they turned their heads or made any movement at all it was just like a movie in slow motion. They had the money so close to their faces—as if they were almost blind and they appeared to be talking to it—giggling and giggling some more and then they started kissing and hugging each other. I thought their behavior very odd but I admired how close-knit they were as a family. I had a lot on my mind and forgot about it until later in the evening when the bartenders started spraying each other with soda guns, full force. It looked like fire sprinklers had gone off—there was club soda everywhere—they were drenched and then they started spraying the customers. One girl grabbed a gun from Scott Baird and then, delighting herself to no end, sprayed herself in the face and then her friend. I was dumbfounded, but the crowd at the main bar next to the dance floor was loving it. We could do no wrong at Studio 54. I looked up at the DJ booth and Leroy appeared normal and then I saw the tech rail crew flying in their underwear. As Jayne Harris recently said, “‘Close your eyes and try this’ was the mantra back then. Sometimes it was exotic food or a pill. That night the entire staff, except for Leroy, had eaten dried hallucinogenic mushrooms. We had all received communion. The managers had no idea what was going on. We were never scolded—just told not to do it again in an office memo.”
To get the early crowd going, DJ Leroy Washington would play moody mellow dance music like “La Vie en Rose” by Grace Jones. Uninhibited exhibitionist dancers in outlandish getups would begin prancing around the club and the dance floor. Occasionally, on nights when people were reluctant to get out on an empty dance floor, I would grab a couple of girls and start the dancing myself. Soon, the club would fill, the cut drop would rise, and the crowd would become a pulsating mass of one with the beat.
From the moment one entered the magnificent mirrored entrance hall, the magic took over. You felt glamorous, young, and beautiful, regardless of your age, style, or level of attractiveness. You were free to do whatever made you happy without fear of judgment. The dance floor was the heart of Studio 54, pumping life into everyone who danced on it. Wealthy danced next to poor, famous next to nobodies, straights next to gays, black and white together. The spotlights flashing on the dance floor made everyone feel like a star and when the red lights took over, chasing each other from one pole to the next with swirling police car lights at the base, it ignited a feeling that something exciting was happening within. Red lights would retreat and strobes pulsed on and off, causing the cast of characters on the stage/dance floor to glow in the dark for a moment, then disappear into the blackness only to reappear moments later when the blue neon reflecting panels were lowered. Fake snow and glitter might rain down from overhead or waist-high smoke might find its way in and around the dancers’ feet as ever-changing scenic props dropped down behind. By then, the bridge, supporting as many as one hundred people partying above the dance floor, swayed while the famous spoon holding lighted cocaine flakes dipped toward the celestial body to carve some coke out of the “moon.” The sheer theatricality of Studio 54 was defining, intoxicating, and liberating. Everyone danced, played, and indulged. We were in the moment. The Studio 54 mantra was, “Tonight is your time, so just do it!”
I too got lost in the music. I was the host and every night was my party; my first priority was always my guests, but later on in the evening after all the coke and Quaaludes and more coke and another Quaalude you could always find me on the dance floor, caught up in the rhythm that was Studio 54. But aside from all the playing around, I worked very hard to make Studio financially viable. I had no choice. As part of my deal to reopen Studio 54, I had agreed to pay the IRS a percentage of our gross, to pay down the back taxes owed by Steve and Ian from their Studio 54 days in the 1970s. Additionally, during my negotiations with them in prison, I had agreed to make monthly payments to Steve and Ian for “non-compete compensation” as part of the purchase price. Then Steve convinced my partner Stanley to pay for their office, their secretary’s salary, and some additional expenses which all seemed doable based upon the operational numbers they presented to my attorney and me when we met with them in prison. But in reality, those numbers were out of whack, putting significant financial pressure on me.
I was forced to devise new ways to attract cool people to fill the club every night. I couldn’t rely on celebrities and press alone and hope that paying customers would just show up. For one thing, a lot of people were still afraid to go to Studio 54 for fear of being turned away. I had to figure out a way to get the word and invitations out there and into the hands of patrons who would pay the twenty dollars admission, luring them to the club with fun events and celebrity happenings, thus guaranteeing much-needed paid admissions. My Cut Drop Parties were successful, but everything—admission, drinks, hors d’oeuvres—was complimentary. Yes, we got the desired press as a result of all the freebies, but in addition to that, I needed cool-looking people who would pay.
I initiated meetings with key figures, “pied pipers” from different social worlds with contacts in fashion, Broadway, photography, modeling, sports, the Social Register’s young waspy preppies, the up-and-coming offspring of the rich and famous, the Eurotrash crowd, Yuppies, and the gay crowd. During the first few months of 1982, I created different themed evenings with my key figures, whom I dubbed promoters, as the hosts. I peppered celebrities into the mix on some invitations, which attracted patrons who were only too happy to line up outside and pay to get in with a guaranteed admission pay invite. The promoters invited their friends, and the friends of their friends (and so on), and most nights we achieved the number of paid admissions necessary to make the club financially successful.
Phone, mail, and handouts were the only means by which to promote in those days before the Internet. When Studio first opened, all the invitations were mailed and addressed by hand with a broad tip brush in beautiful calligraphy, but times changed, so at Michael Overington’s suggestion, we hired his good friend from high school, Beth Ann Maliner. She took over and managed our massive basement mailroom. Henry Eshelman stayed on as director. After much effort, she was able to convert our guest list to the first TRS-80 desktop computer from Radio Shack, and we no longer had to keep a calligraphist on our payroll. Now, a computer did all the work. Beth Ann was Michael’s right arm; he referred to her as his “lieutenant.” She executed invitation design with graphic designer John Sex, purchased the mailing machines (postage, sealing, stuffing etc.), hired all the kids in the mailroom, maintained our mailing list of many tens of thousands of names, sourced supplies and props, and helped coordinate the hundreds of details involved in producing the level of events we were known for at Studio 54. One night the entire wall space of Studio would be painted white and the next night—hot pink or black. The details were endless. Beth Ann also assisted Sunday Night promoter Michael Fesco in coordinating the details involved in his parties as well.
To some promoters I paid money, while others did it for free drinks and front door privileges. Some were willing to work in return for backstairs privileges and occasional invitations into my office with guest celebrities, affording them bragging rights. Others ended up making a good living, getting a cut of the front door receipts for thousands of guests. Some of the first people to become promoters with me at Studio continue in that capacity at other clubs to this day. Most nightclubs now rely on promoters.
Initially when I took over Studio, come midnight, I moved around the big square bar as quickly as possible, ordering drinks on the house for VIPs, regulars, and attractive women. After a few months, Stanley, who loved budgets and controls, tried to rein in what he viewed as “Mark’s extravagance with free drinks” and created a system using drink tickets. However,
once all the promoters became aware of the new system, chaos ensued. They were all over me and Stanley to give them fists full of drink tickets for the guest hosts to share with their friends, reasoning it was the guest hosts who attracted the much-needed paying guests. Drink tickets soon became the norm in the industry, as did creating themes for each night of the week.
Monday night was set aside for paid, catered events to generate as much revenue as possible. Our catering department targeted Fortune 500 companies and the crème de la crème of New York charities. Steve and Ian had no time for charity events, according to Marc Benecke in an interview with Cathy St. George on The Marc and Myra Show. Marc responded to a comment made about Studio 54 doing so many charitable events under my reign: “[Under Steve and Ian] we were much too self-absorbed to do charity events.” Well, under my reign we needed the charity events. Stanley and I were operating Studio on a very different business model. We were paying Studio 54’s taxes on revenue we generated and paying off Steve and Ian’s back taxes to the IRS, so we didn’t have the mounds of cash they had in the late 1970s.
Our catering department was brilliantly managed by Shay Knuth, who was intelligent and beautiful enough to be featured in Playboy four times. Shay lived around the corner from Studio 54 and brought her buddy Pepe, a huge red Chow Chow, to the office every day. They were a sight walking across the dance floor during daytime meetings with prospective clients and on a few occasions Pepe could be seen prancing around at early evening events.
If on a Monday night we didn’t have a catering booking, I might stage a special evening around a personal cause or specific celebrity, provided the occasion or celebrity was important enough. That was the case on the evening I agreed to host the famous—or shall I say infamous—singing debut of Elite model (the “world’s first supermodel”) Janice Dickinson, who recently claimed to have been drugged and taken advantage of by Bill Cosby. You’ve probably heard how Barbra Streisand gets crazy when the acoustics aren’t perfect and the sound people aren’t getting it just right, as well she should, given her extraordinary talent and attention to detail. Well, Janice fancied herself another Streisand. I did my best to accommodate her insane demands. Janice was beautiful, but she was also eccentric, which was on display as she was preparing for her big singing debut.
The best-looking crowd in town had shown up to see Janice, but after her first few songs, the guests started talking amongst themselves. People at Studio wanted to be the show, not watch one, unless of course the show was The Temptations or Lou Reed. At the end of her performance, I arranged for white rose petals to fall from the rigging. It was a terrific party. Janice’s entire family was there to watch her. But it was obvious to everyone there, including Janice, that she had lost the attention of the room and she felt humiliated. Her sister Debbie, also a successful model, got on my case, demanding to know why this or that wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t thrilled about the dressing-down, as great effort went into the staging, but I understood that she was protecting her sister.
Other Monday night parties I personally hosted included debutante Cornelia Guest’s twenty-first birthday party. (Back in the 1980s she was known as “The Deb of the Decade.” New York magazine named her the ultimate Deb of all time in 2010.) That night, we transformed the dance floor into a winter scene depicting a European Alpine village, complete with authentic-looking shops that served local French, German, and Italian Alpine fare for a casual buffet dinner. The party was hosted by Cornelia’s mother, C. Z. Guest, the doyen of New York society, renowned for her “April in Paris Ball.” C. Z. invited a diverse A-list crowd, including Estee Lauder of Lauder Cosmetics, super agent Irving “Swifty” Lazar, renowned fashion designer Oscar de la Renta, Diana Ross, Bianca Jagger, then up-and-coming fashion designer Carolina Herrera, plus an assortment of A-list European and American royalty. Even some members of the Kennedy family, who didn’t frequent Studio after having been mistakenly turned away from the front door years earlier by Marc Benecke, were there. After dinner, as The New York Times reported, I climbed onto the bridge, suspended high above the dancers, and, together with Millie Kaiserman, ex-wife of fashion designer Bill Kaiserman, belted out a rousing rendition of “Hit the Road, Jack.” Everyone began to dance; the Alpine Village disappeared high into the rigging and fake snow fell over the crowd and blanketed the dance floor as Stevie Wonder sang “Happy Birthday” to Cornelia. Cornelia described it as “magical.”
Because of C. Z. Guest and the caliber of the guests that night, we received an enormous amount of press in the society pages, including a major story in The New York Times—which almost never covers events at nightclubs—and another story with a picture captioned “Cornelia and Mom C. Z. at last night’s Birthday Bash at Studio 54” by the New York Post’s Eugenia Sheppard, titled “Birthday Guests Galore.”
Tuesday night was always a chic, waspy, preppy social night organized by a number of my assistants. After the first year, Baird Jones, an eccentric, well-connected social organizer who at the time covered the New York night scene for Page Six in the New York Post, joined the Tuesday night mix. He brought in some of my favorite people: George Plimpton, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, and my good friend and traveling companion, the French beauty Countess Antonia de Portago, who performed at Studio with her band “Antonia and the Operators,” dressed as Marie Antoinette.
During the three and a half years that I was at the helm of Studio 54, there were many promoters who contributed to its success, including Bill Jarema, the Beaver Brothers, and numerous others. Occasionally Junior International Club events organized by French promoters Ludovic Autet and Marc Biron were added to the mix, bringing in several hundred young wannabe European counts and countesses who hoped to meet a prince or two. On occasion, Prince Albert of Monaco and other lesser-known royalty acted as honored guests to attract that crowd.
One memorable Tuesday event was the opening of the new Prince Egon von Fürstenberg Boutique on Madison Avenue. We hosted a lavish party, complete with a sit-down dinner of roast pheasant and Fürstenberg beer, for 150 guests during the early part of the evening. We transformed the dance floor into a Hapsburgian dining palace, which we dressed up with heraldic banners carrying the von Fürstenberg crest, plus statues and elaborate floral arrangements. To add to the ambience, we arranged for ten Hungarian violinists to play during dinner. On cue, the tech crew made the night’s set disappear and the dance floor opened up for a raucous party featuring two thousand revelers. No detail was spared that evening—except for one. Someone miscounted, leaving us with fewer chairs than needed for dinner. Fortunately, the guests took it all in stride, and in the spirit of the evening turned the potentially disastrous mishap into an impromptu game of musical chairs that everyone enjoyed. All except Egon’s estranged wife Diane, who spent most of the evening nibbling on her escort’s ear and commenting,“I don’t understand who the guests are. I thought someone was a waiter and it was Egon’s store manager,” as reported in the Eye of Women’s Wear Daily.
We also hosted a birthday party for Kathy Hilton, a beautiful young woman making a name for herself in New York society as the wife of hotel heir Rick Hilton. The press loved her then, and again years later as the mother of Nicky and Paris Hilton.
Wednesday night was a Business Networking/Wall Street night hosted by antiwar activist Jerry Rubin and his wife Mimi. Mimi’s sister Burr Leonard assisted with all the promotional work necessary to make an event like theirs so successful. It was at one of these Business Networking Nights in New York that Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune coined the term “Yuppie,” which was a play on words from Jerry’s “YIPPIE” (Youth International Party) days with cohort Abbie Hoffman back in 1968.
Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman first gained national notoriety in 1966 as antiwar activists when they were called to Washington, DC to testify at the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) and while doing so caused a commotion when Jerry appeared wearing a Revolutionary War costume and Abbie showed u
p dressed as Santa Claus. In 1968 the Vietnam War was at its peak and the city of Chicago was hosting The Democratic National Convention where Senator Hubert Humphrey was nominated as the Democrat’s Presidential Nominee. Ten thousand protesters arrived in the city for a peaceful protest against the war and were met by a very paranoid Mayor Richard M. Daley and his twenty-three thousand Chicago Police Officers and National Guard. A riot broke out. Mayor Daley blamed Jerry, Abbie, Tom Hayden (who became a California Senator and married Jane Fonda), Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, John Froines, and Lee Weiner; they were then tried as the Chicago Seven. Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers was tried separately.
When told they were being arrested for conspiracy, Abbie responded, “Conspiracy? We couldn’t agree on lunch.” During the trial, Jerry and Abbie made the most of every opportunity to taunt Judge Hoffman (no relation to Abbie). They entered his courtroom wearing black judicial robes and when Judge Hoffman ordered them to remove them, they did so—only to reveal Chicago Police uniforms underneath. They were revolutionaries, pranksters, activists, and absolutely brilliant at working the media.
In 1980, Jerry Rubin began hosting “Networking Salons” at his apartment. He would invite people and “their two most interesting friends” to network and exchange business cards. Those were the days when it was impolite to ask people what they did for a living, and this newer kind of “networking” was considered at once both tasteless and fun. The parties caught on and were written up in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Maurice Brahms, the owner of The Underground, a large, struggling nightclub, invited Jerry and Mimi to host their Networking event at his new venue. I knew Jerry and Mimi through the Speakers Division at New Line Cinema and I immediately contacted Jerry when I heard about the big turnout at The Underground that February, about six months after I opened Studio.
Inside Studio 54 Page 13
