Mimi later told me that Maurice, who had just gotten out of federal prison, had come to Jerry’s and her apartment pleading with them to reject my offer and remain at The Underground. Maurice had appealed to Jerry, as a former moral crusader and activist, to think long and hard how someone of his ethical character could possibly enter into any business arrangement where the two men (Steve and Ian) who sent him to jail to get lighter sentences for themselves would benefit. No doubt Brahms was influenced by the astounding numbers of guests that had been generated by Rubin in his first foray into the nightclub world; 3,900 people showed up the first night. Perhaps Maurice still remembered the “curse” he had put on me two years earlier, at his opening of Bonds, a club that didn’t last.
Not identifying with Brahms’ battles, Mimi and Jerry moved the party anyway, understanding the much greater charisma of Studio 54. Combining Studio’s magic with the Rubins’ promotional skills allowed us to charge a cover at the door and still generate thousands of dollars of revenue every Wednesday night during the usually “dark” hours from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. The atmosphere during the early hours of the Networking Salons was completely different from late-night Studio. Since it’s impossible to have a business-related conversation amid thundering bass and flashing lights, we turned the house lights down to a warm glow, darkened the dance floor, and toned down the music. People could then hear each other speak. From 5:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. it was DJ Federico Gonzalez on the turntables playing mashups of jazz classics with standards from all of the jazz and blues greats like Lionel Hampton, Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, and Aretha Franklin. My man Leroy Washington would then take over the turntables at 9:00 p.m. and continue on in a mellow mood and then, at 10:00 p.m., he would phase in the dance music and the party began. Two thousand five hundred fans of Jerry Rubin’s Networking Salons packed the house every Wednesday night, and enough of them stayed past 10:00 p.m. to the point that I didn’t need any other promoters for that night. The Business Networking night was a huge success for all involved and attracted cohosts for the events such as The Beach Boys, Allen Ginsberg, and R. J. Reynolds’ tobacco heir Patrick Reynolds, who became famous as an antismoking activist, among others.
One Wednesday night that will always stand out in my mind is when Reggie Jackson of the New York Yankees popped in. The Studio crowd went crazy—chanting “Reggie, Reggie.” He was immediately greeted by model, Lynn Jefferson. As the New York Post reported, Lynn promptly plucked Reggie’s cowboy hat “and wished him well.” Reggie danced and partied all night long with one gorgeous girl after another. There was nothing to suggest that just a few hours earlier the Yankees had lost the final game of the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was New York’s “Mr. October,” Reggie Jackson.
Abbie Hoffman decided he wanted to jump in the party game so he hosted a fundraiser, The River Rat Ball, in an effort to raise money to protect New York’s waterways, a cause very close to his heart and that of his good friend, Pete Seeger. I agreed to do it on a Monday night as I could see it was going to be a star-studded affair. It was a huge success with the help of his good friend, Prakash Mishra, and committee members Meryl Streep, Mia Farrow, Susan Sarandon, and Harry Belafonte. Friends like Carly Simon, Jack Nicholson, Kurtis Blow, Joe Namath, Joni Mitchell, Warren Beatty, Joan Rivers, and others partied into the night. I remember a very mellow scene in my office that night, with a lot of candles, and seated at a small table was Grace Jones and Marianne Faithfull, deep in conversation. Mick Jagger was lounging on the couch with Gwynne Rivers on his lap. Marianne was the sex symbol of the 1960s as well as being the girlfriend of Mick Jagger. They were rock and roll’s “it” couple for several years. Mick and Keith Richards wrote Marianne’s hit “As Tears Go By.” At one point Gwynne whispered to me that she was doing her best to remain “cool” in the presence of such music greats. The party was a huge success financially and in the press.
Chapter Fifteen:
Studio 54…a Way of Life
“Beautiful People Thursday Night Parties” were a favorite night with the modeling agencies.
It was an evening for models and photographers and parties like the Sports Illustrated Wet T-Shirt Night featuring Ford Model Christie Brinkley. We always invited a combined, gay and straight, crowd from the fashion world. John Blair, the owner of a popular gay gym back then and still a major promoter today, usually arranged those evenings, along with a young David Sarner. Together, they did a superb job of promoting Thursday Nights at Studio. We featured and honored the hottest models from Ford, Zoli, Elite, Wilhelmina, Sue Charney, Click, and some of the up-and-coming modeling agencies. Shelley Tupper booked a party for one of the new agencies in town on a Thursday night and they chose the theme “Girls’ Night Out,” which inspired Shelley to have our design team hang rows and rows of beautiful French lingerie on clothes lines across the main room entrance. The crowd loved it.
The party for Cathy St. George to celebrate her August 1982 centerfold in Playboy was coordinated by Steve Rubell’s former assistant, Myra Sheer, who currently cohosts a retrospective talk show on SiriusXM Studio 54 Radio with Marc Benecke. It was so crowded that Timothy Hutton, who was friends with Cathy, was turned away at the door. That tidbit made Page Six of the New York Post, and the New York Daily News ran photos from the party. Also, Robin Leach conducted a visually captivating interview with Cathy for Entertainment Tonight. People on the dance floor screamed with joy when thousands of pictures of Cathy floated down from overhead.
Cathy also cohosted a “Save The Whales” fundraiser at Studio with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, and she celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of Playboy with a party at Studio 54. She was always very cool—everyone loved her. Cathy recently reminded me of a fun night we shared in New York. We were at a Yankee game with restaurant owner/sports groupie George Martin, who was friends with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and we were invited to sit in the Owners Box. Cathy stood up when spotlighted before the sold-out crowd and got a bigger ovation as a Playboy centerfold than the ballplayers.
One of the most unforgettable nights, for me, was the private party for The King and I. It was a Thursday night and the club was packed. Yul Brynner, Michael Jackson, and all the young children in the cast, entered through the Fifty-Third Street stage door entrance into their private party behind the scrim. The tables were laden with colorful cakes, candies, giant cookies, and huge cupcakes for Michael and the children, and fresh strawberries, cheesecake, and champagne for the rest of us. They were all having a good time stuffing their faces and then Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis walked in. My heart skipped a beat. Could Dean Martin be not too far behind? The children ran to Jerry Lewis—trying to be polite but all talking to him at the same time. I introduced myself to Frank and Jerry, and then Sinatra walked straight to the table with the cheesecake, ignoring Yul Brynner, his longtime friend and golfing buddy who was sitting with superstar Michael Jackson. Frank was hungry. He joked, “I have to take a bite of this cheesecake before I take a bite of my buddy Yul.” Michael just sat there in his Royal Military–style garb—staring. Yes, he was the undisputed “King of Pop,” but tonight he was in the presence of the chairman of the board and film and comedy royalty.
Mary Lou Harris said she’ll never forget the party for The King And I: “It was in the back behind the curtain and security waved me in to give a guest her coat check receipt. Yul Brynner was there and Michael Jackson was seated at his table. Many of the children in the show were in attendance and one of the boys managed to slip past security into John Blair’s gay Thursday Night party. On my way back to the coatroom I saw this small child running around and then he disappeared. I returned to the coatroom and a few minutes later the same little boy ran past the coatroom laughing and giggling. A few minutes later he ran past again, laughing and giggling. And then again and again. Every few minutes he’d run by giggling and laughing to himself. I became concerned and stepped out to see what was going on. He was trailing a guy
in cowboy boots and chaps with no pants on—his ass hanging out. Thank God I got to him before he made his way up to the balcony or Rubber Room. I laughed and then sternly asked, ‘Where is your mother?’ He pointed to the back of the club and I returned him to the private party.”
Frank Sinatra and Jerry Lewis didn’t hang around very long. I was told Frank had a recording session the next day and Jerry was doing work on The King of Comedy. I am all male and I love my women, but I was swooning like a schoolgirl for the rest of the night. Yul Brynner and Michael Jackson hung out in the DJ booth for a while to the delight of the crowd, and then left through the back door.
Friday night was an expanded preppy event that became known as “Second Generation Night,” so called because it was often frequented by the offspring of major celebrities. Regulars included Maria Burton, daughter of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; Cecilia and Anthony Peck, children of Oscar-winning actor Gregory Peck of To Kill A Mockingbird; Ben Stiller and his sister, Amy, children of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara; Gwynne Rivers, daughter of artist Larry Rivers; Victoria Leacock, daughter of late film director Richard Leacock; Frazer Pennebaker, son of D. A. Pennebaker the celebrated documentary filmmaker who helped make the “cinéma vérité” style of filmmaking popular; Rip Torn’s son Tony; Mario Van Peebles, son of actor, director, writer, and composer Melvin Van Peebles; Amy Lumet, daughter of Sidney Lumet and granddaughter of actress/singer Lena Horne; and actor Francesco Quinn of Platoon and The Young and The Restless, son of the Oscar-winning actor Anthony Quinn from Viva Zapata! In October 1983, People ran a story with a picture of many of these young partygoers titled “At This Studio 54 Bash The Right Names To Drop Belong To The Parents.” One of our most successful Friday Night Preppy parties was produced by second-generation member Gwynne Rivers: “A Night of Polo—Celebrating the Piaget Cup.” Gwynne did a great job. She contacted the ten most social people at Brown University, put their names on the invitation, and made them part of the committee to promote the event. She rented polo mallets and our interior design team decorated the main bar in a polo theme. We were packed. Girls showed up hoping to meet a boy from Brown and the guys showed up for the girls—and a whole lot of fun.
Marc Benecke, who had started as our doorman, came to me early in 1982 and made it clear that he was no longer comfortable in the front door position. He was a valued employee and so he switched gears and moved into promoting. He helped me organize some of the preppy crowd for Tuesday and Friday nights. He did that very successfully for several years and in the process became a celebrity himself, this time inviting people to the door rather than sending them away. Despite his reputation among some who had been turned away by him, Marc was a decent, charming, good-looking, and intelligent guy. He was always on time, never had a drug problem, went to the gym every day, and always looked great outside the door to “54.”
One Friday night, we celebrated Shelley Tupper’s birthday. It drew a large preppy crowd of hardcore partiers. The invitation said, “Please Join Rick James and Chuck Zito of the Hells Angels in Celebration of Shelley Tupper’s Twenty-First Birthday.” The club was packed because, black or white, all the kids loved Rick James and his album Street Songs. They went wild, packing the dance floor, whenever Leroy played “Super Freak” and “Give It To Me Baby.”
In the words of Shelley Tupper:
I was not going to have a typical coming out party…my twenty-first Birthday Celebration was going to be wild. At twenty-one I wasn’t on the track my parents would have liked. The only thing waspy about me was my upbringing but I still wanted my parents, especially my Dad, to think I was doing something with my life. The fact that I worked at Studio 54 might have been cool to me and my friends but it was totally unacceptable to my parents. They were constantly asking what my plan was and why didn’t I consider getting a job on Wall Street. My Dad would say ‘You’d be a fantastic broker.’ ‘But I’m bad at math,’ would be my reply and it went on like that over and over. But for me, I was living the high-life. Popular doesn’t begin to describe it. Here I am working in the world’s most famous nightclub where everyone wanted to be my best friend, mess with my hair, dress me up, do their drugs, and sleep with me! What twenty-one-year-old at the time wouldn’t think that was cool?
My big entrance at my party was on the Bridge. Two shirtless, hot-bodied bus boys are at one end of the Bridge with a HUGE heart shaped pink birthday cake and I am at the other end, wearing a fancy sparkly designer dress by Pinky and Diane, feeling pretty cool in the spotlight of it all. On either side of me are two Hells Angels who escort me to the middle of the Bridge where my good buddy Rick James is singing Happy Birthday. Below the bridge, on the dance floor looking up, were all my friends, and my very waspy parents. I will never forget the look on the faces of everyone below, all smiling–EXCEPT my parents. They had a look of utter disbelief on their faces. My poor southern-belle mother was probably thinking “this is our precious daughter’s coming of age party?
Once the singing and the cake presentation were over I made it down to the VIP area. So there we are, all the cool people and me, Queen of the Night, the Hells Angels, Rick James, and my parents. The party is heating up and I’m trying to take it all in but I keep seeing my parents out of the corner of my eye. My mother is bopping gently to the disco beat and my father is seething. This guy goes up to my Dad, and I can hear him slurring his words and he says ‘Shelleeeey is reaallleeey special—I really mean it.’ My Dad looked like he was about to throw up his dinner. When the guy turned around to talk to me I saw why….his nostrils were rimmed in white powder.
It wasn’t long before my parents had enough. But before they left my Dad walked over to me, got in real close to hug me goodbye and whispered ‘this was a great party Shelley, when are you going to get a real job?’”
Saturday nights were usually jammed with returning people from some of the previous nights’ groups, plus good-looking out-of-towners and some of the cooler young people from the boroughs. I liked Saturday nights, they were unpredictable, especially if we had an after-party booked for the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live.
I remember one Saturday night, soon after our grand opening. Studio was so crowded that the only place you could move was on the dance floor. Word had gotten out that the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live, and musical guest Rod Stewart, would be at Studio 54 on October 3, the first show of the new season. Studio had been closed for so long and New Yorkers just wanted to get a glimpse of Belushi, Aykroyd, Gilda, Eddie, Bill Murray, and some of the other characters we adored so much. But after an intense week of organized chaos before the live broadcast every Saturday night, the cast preferred to keep to themselves and just relax. The Rubber Room was the perfect spot for the SNL “after-parties.” The SNL cast enjoyed dodging the crowd of fans waiting for them at the front door, choosing instead to go around to the back of the building and climb the ladder to the fire escape and then another five flights up to the fifth-floor balcony entrance door where security was waiting to let them in. One night at an SNL party in the Rubber Room, John Belushi complained to me that he was hot and needed some air. He bolted and left by the back door to the fire escape. He showed up in my office a few minutes later and took over the scene dominating the room with his antics…until Rick James walked in with two absolutely gorgeous black girls and threw a bag of white powder down on my desk and announced, “I’m Rick James…say hello to my bitches…LET’S PARTY.” John was speechless.
The Rubber Room was the perfect place to host parties for people who preferred a more laid-back atmosphere than the one downstairs in the Main Room. Shelley became friends with Jo and Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones and arranged a birthday celebration for Jo and friends. Jo requested that her guests enter by the fire escape and make the five-story climb on the outside of the building dressed in skimpy dresses in the freezing cold of March. It was cool, sexy, and scary. Jo loved carousels, so Shelley arranged for a cake that looked ex
actly like the beautiful carousel in Central Park. Jo loved it.
Sunday night became a dedicated gay night hosted by the legendary Michael Fesco, and the club was always jam-packed with gorgeous gay boys. Michael did his own thing and didn’t need me, so I tried to take Sunday nights off to decompress, but if Peter Allen or someone special was performing, then I was as excited as everyone else to be there. Celebrities, male and female, gay and straight, showed up unannounced without fanfare wearing jeans and tees, preferring the Sunday night gay crowd and music that made you want to dance your tits off. Michael appeared on Broadway for fourteen years in various productions then turned to producing and brought Patti LaBelle to Broadway. He was the first to present Tea Dance at his club, The Ice Palace in Cherry Grove, and later at Flamingo, his club in Manhattan. He also created “Black Party,” inspired by New York’s West Side leather bars. Michael orchestrated and managed every project he took on flawlessly, recently saying, “Give a Queen a staple gun and some fabric and the job gets done.”
On Michael’s opening night at Studio 54, 3,700 men waited on a line that extended two city blocks. His Sunday nights would be considered off the hook had you never been to a gay club before. The offerings at Studio 54 were tame compared to The Anvil, MineShaft, or The Toilet. The gay crowd has their look and signifiers. Back then it was Levi’s 501 jeans, white sleeveless T-shirts, flannel shirts, Converse or Adidas sneakers, and brown leather bomber jackets with sheepskin collars. They had an ingenious way of communicating their sexual preferences. If a gay man wore a blue handkerchief in his right hip pocket, it meant he was into the passive role during sexual intercourse, the left pocket meant he took the active role of the male. The same went for keys on a chain or earrings. The placement of these items, when worn in the straight community, would signify absolutely nothing.
Inside Studio 54 Page 14
