In short
Stuff You Should Know: The Filthy Magic of Studio 54
Episode Summary This episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast explores the legendary nightclub *Studio 54*, a symbol of 1970s excess and the cultural scene of New York City. Hosts Josh and Chuck discuss its rapid rise to fame, the notable personalities who frequented the club, and its eventual downfall.
Key Concepts and Themes
Overview of Studio 54
- Cultural Significance: Studio 54 was not just a nightclub but a cultural phenomenon emblematic of the disco era and the excess of the 1970s.
- Atmosphere: It was characterized by rampant drug use, sexual liberation, and a vibrant nightlife that included celebrities and everyday patrons alike.
Founders and Creation
- Founders: Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, both from Brooklyn, transformed an old CBS studio into the nightclub in just six weeks.
- Inspiration: Their past experience in running other nightclubs helped shape Studio 54’s unique approach to nightlife, which included themed parties and theatrical elements.
The Opening Night
- Date: April 26, 1977, marked the opening of Studio 54, generating massive public interest and long lines.
- Membership Model: The club sold memberships that promised entry, but the process was competitive and selective.
- Party Atmosphere: Guests partied outside while waiting to enter, fueled by drugs, including Quaaludes, which were readily available.
Notable Patrons and Events
- Celebrity Culture: The club attracted a mix of celebrities and everyday people, creating a dynamic atmosphere.
- Key Figures: Regulars included Liza Minnelli, Halston, Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, and others who defined the era.
- Famous Events: Bianca Jagger's 30th birthday party, where she famously rode a horse inside the club, became iconic.
Social Dynamics and Entry Policies
- Doorman’s Role: The head doorman, Mark Benicke, was responsible for curating the crowd, prioritizing style and social dynamics over mere fame.
- Criteria for Entry: The club aimed for a diverse yet visually appealing crowd, leading to a unique social mix.
Decline and Closure
- Legal Troubles: Studio 54's success attracted the attention of tax authorities, leading to a raid in 1978 that uncovered extensive tax evasion and drug-related activities.
- Sentencing: Rubell and Schrager were sentenced to prison for tax evasion, effectively ending the nightclub's reign as a cultural hotspot.
Legacy and Aftermath
- Lasting Impact: Despite its short lifespan (less than three years), Studio 54’s influence on nightlife, culture, and celebrity is still felt today.
- Transition: After serving their sentences, Rubell and Schrager pivoted to the hotel industry, launching the concept of boutique hotels.
Key Takeaways
- Cultural Reflection: Studio 54 exemplifies the hedonistic spirit of the 1970s, serving as a refuge for marginalized communities while also critiquing the superficiality of fame.
- Business Model: The founders’ creative approach to nightlife and marketing played a crucial role in the club's initial success.
- Consequences of Excess: The nightclub's eventual downfall serves as a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of excess and illegal activities in the pursuit of success.
Conclusion The episode captures the allure and chaos of Studio 54, offering insights into a transformative period in nightlife and social culture. It highlights the dual nature of such environments—both as liberating spaces for expression and as sites of moral and legal challenges.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.
0:31aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:55Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Boogie Down Josh, and there's Disco Stew Chuck. And it's just the two of us because Diana Ross Jerry is not here right now. Yeah, this is what I'm surprised we didn't tackle shortly after our disco episode as like a two-parter. It is a little surprising, isn't it? But I hadn't heard of Studio 54 until you picked this, so I don't know how that would have been possible. That's funny. I'm just kidding. I've heard of it. I'm cool, man. I'm hip. even though I guess I was one year old to three years old when it was open. So as it was going on, I wasn't aware of it.
1:35But later in life, I kind of developed an awareness of it. What do you think about all that? I mean, I would have been six years old to nine, so I probably could have gotten into Studio 54. I was going to say the same thing. There's some shocking revelations about this stuff that anybody who knows about Studio 54 is probably like, Like, yeah, that's just how it was. And on the outside, it's just nuts. It was just such a, they called it like the disco Sodom and Gomorrah. It was just a complete bacchanal of like just drugs and sex and like in the club. And it was just absolutely nuts. But as you read about it, it's just the same themes over and over again.
2:18People had sex in the club. Everybody was doing coke in the club. Everybody was on quaaludes. And Mick Jagger's wife, Bianca, was on a horse once. And it just kept getting like it all just kind of melded together. And I kind of felt like by the time I was done researching this, I get Studio 54. Yeah, there's a documentary on Netflix that's OK called Studio 54. Yeah, I saw it. From filmmaker Matt, I guess, Tiernauer. There was a very bad movie about Studio 54, like a movie movie with Mike Myers in his feet playing Steve Rebell. I thought that was the documentary. I was going to say Steve Rebell is like the spinning image of Mike Myers.
3:04But now I got you. No, Mike, it turns out Mike Rebell or I'm sorry, Steve Rebell, Mike Myers, young Billy Joel and Alex Edelman all sort of are the same person. Oh, that's interesting. They all look alike. But it's interesting when I was watching the documentary, Emily was floating through the room here and there and people were just like, oh, my God. And we would just do this and this and this and this. And she finally wandered through and just went, these people sound like idiots. Yeah, it is. It's just basically another example of an apologies. Like this is a pretty blanket statement, but the boomer generation being like we did this and had so much fun and it's the coolest thing that could ever possibly happen.
3:43Yeah, I think. And it's sort of like it reeked of a documentary on like the, you know, the what was that ill fated, doomed island music festival. Fire festival. Yeah, it was kind of like that where she was just like, these people are idiots. Like, how long can you just sit around and talk about doing cocaine every night and dancing until the sun came up? Yeah. But the thing is, and Livia helps us with this, and I think she kind of captured it. And the reason it seems like that Studio 54 is still just so prominent in just the general cultural consciousness, especially in America, is because it was short-lived.
4:26It ended at its peak, so it didn't stick around long enough to really become passé. And in the very short, bursting lifespan that it had, less than three years, like 33 months, I think. It was just, it was the coolest of the cool. And when you put all that together, that's how 50 years later, people like us are doing a podcast on it still. You know what I mean? About a club. Yeah. A club. That's what we're doing a podcast on. One of 8 ,000 disco clubs that were open between 1974 and 1976 alone. That's how important this club was to that scene. Yeah. I mean, it's on one hand, there's a couple ways to look at it.
5:08It was a symbol of something more than probably anything was a symbol of that era, of that excess and decadence and everything. And on one hand, like my brain goes, yeah, but you know what? This is great because it was these nightclubs were havens for minorities and for gay people to for that community to get together in a safe place where they could be themselves. because like you literally, like the documentary even says, like if you were a transgender person, you were taking your life in your hands walking down the street some nights. You know, you could get just assaulted. You can still get assaulted for that, but especially back then.
5:48So part of my brain goes there and part of it goes to like kind of what Emily said, Just like what a vapid material, just sort of scene based on how you looked and who you knew. And part of it was like, oh, wow, what a cool time. And then part of me was like, jeez, what an awful group of people. Yeah. Okay, good. I'm glad that we pretty much arrived at the same place. And also I find it comforting that I'm following the longstanding trend of agreeing with Emily. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as we get older, I think I tend to look at things a little more with like an eye like that rather than just like, yeah, man, what a cool party that was.
6:31Exactly. For sure. But let's talk about what a cool party that was. Yeah, I guess we should get to the building first because it was a history building. It was located at 254 West 54th Street. It was originally an opera house in the 1920s. And then in the 1940s, kind of through the 50s and into the 60s and 70s, it was a CBS studio. They had a$64 ,000 question and Captain Kangaroo and What's My Line? Oh, Captain Kangaroo. It was called Studio 52, weirdly, at the time. It's so square. But they all eventually moved their operations to Los Angeles with the CBS studios there. in central Hollywood. And it sat there empty in 1977.
7:21So the guys that noticed that studio was sitting empty, or this, you know, large theater, I guess, were two guys named Steve Rebell and Ian Schrager, who were Brooklyn guys from sort of working class to middle class Jewish families who met each other at college at Syracuse. Yeah, apparently they became like friends for life. Ian Schrager said that after they met and became friends, he thinks that he and Steve Rubell spoke every day for the rest of Steve Rubell's life. And Ian Schrager also put it that because they were from Brooklyn, they had something to prove, especially, you know, going to Syracuse with probably some wealthier kids and then coming from working class families.
8:05I'm not going to say they had a chip on their shoulder, but they were like they were hustlers. They were ambitious. They were going to make a life for themselves rather than, you know, just end up joining their dad's firms. because their dads didn't have a firm. One was a postman, and the other one was named Max the Jew, who ran illegal gambling operations. So that kind of drive, and then also just the creativity that those two guys had together, and then also just the connection that they had. This was a genuine partnership that this came out of. It just kind of, I think, inserted a little electricity that otherwise wouldn't have been there.
8:46Yeah, so after they graduated, Ian Schrager went to law school at St. John's and started practicing along the early 70s. Rebell got into the steakhouse business and was apparently opening steakhouses a little too quickly because he overextended himself. Did you see the one ad for one of his restaurants? No, they were called steak lofts, right? Like loft. Well, this one was at least. Steak loft, make love to your stomach. And in the subheading, it said all entrees include soup, salad bar, baked potato, and shrimp. Wow. Not a bad deal. Yeah, no, that is a pretty good deal. I'm kind of hungry for it now.
9:30But he had these steakhouses. He got into a little financial trouble, and his old pal stepped in to help keep creditors at bay as his attorney. And then by this point, though, in the early 70s, they were already sort of co-owners in two different discos, one in Queens and one in Boston. Yeah, the one in Queens is the more important one. They actually gave up their share in the one in Boston so that they could get full ownership of the Queens one called Enchanted Garden. And it was kind of like the original template for what would become Studio 54. They would throw like theme parties where everybody would dress up and they would decorate it along with the theme.
10:09Like it was way more than just some club. And it's like, look at the mirrors on the wall in the disco ball up there. Like this was there was theatrics to it, too. And so the other big thing that happened at Enchanted Garden is that they met a man named Jack Dushy or Dushy. Let's go with Dushy. Oh, I thought it was Dushy. Is it Dushy? D-U-S-H-E-Y. Dushy is definitely a pronunciation of that. So you say dushé, huh? I thought it was, but I actually can't remember now from the documentary that I watched three hours ago. Well, let's agree. It's definitely not dushy, okay? His name was Jack D, and he owned a store in Brooklyn, I think a discount store, and was fairly wealthy.
10:53And he threw either, depending on who you ask, his daughter's bat mitzvah or his son's bar mitzvah at Enchanted Garden. and I guess liked the cut of Steve and Ian's jib, and went into business with them as a silent partner, and he gave them the influx of cash that they needed to start Studio 54. Yeah, it was about a half a million bucks. It was kind of a crazy idea at the time, even though discotheques were big. West 54th Street at this time was really, I guess the best way to say it is sleazy. Is it near Times Square? Yeah, I mean, that's all sort of in that theater district. But at the time, it was just it was dirty.
11:33It was dangerous. People thought, like, if you're trying to open a high end discotheque, like this is not the part of town where you want to be doing that. But they did it anyway. Wow. Yeah. They formed a company called Broadway Catering Corporation, which will make a little more sense in a little while. and they leased that building at 254 West 54th Street and they got to work on turning it into a club. They did it in six weeks. They went from nothing to ready for people to come in six weeks without a construction license, I think. Yeah, and they just kind of got to work. It was sort of a time where you could just get away with stuff until you didn't, kind of under-the-table style.
12:21And that's what they did. You said they started with nothing, but not quite because the theater was, it was an old theater, so they had a stage and they had a proscenium arch and they had a lighting rigging system that was there from the TV days because they sort of got, not blocked, but their rivals in the other discotheques were basically saying, like, hey, don't go work for these guys. if you're a designer or someone who would help them open it. And so they went very smartly to Broadway and got people who worked in the theater to come in. And they were like, this place has got all the bones and this lighting rig's already set up.
12:59This is not going to be too hard. No, they had a lot to work with, in other words. So they hired one guy, a guy named Richard Long, who actually was the sole veteran of the club scene, of setting up clubs. He had set up the sound systems for most of the gay discos in New York. So he knew what he was doing. And that certainly came in handy because, I mean, one of the main things of Studio 54 was the music, right? Like in the dancing to the music. So to have a pro creating the sound system was a big one. And then you also cannot overlook the role that Carmen D 'Alessio did. She was a PR sorceress, I saw her described as.
13:40and her role essentially was to basically go around to New York's Glitterati and talk about how awesome this club is going to be. And it worked very well. Yeah, for sure. There were other PR people that worked with them that literally got paid for placing stories in the newspaper. Like you get$500 if there's a picture of Liza Minnelli and Truman Capote going into Studio 54 in the New York Post, and you get this much if it's in this magazine. And that was, you know, it was a pretty smart way to do it. It was incentivizing these PR people to get the, you know, the biggest stars of the time very publicly through usually the front door, but sometimes they would slip in through the stage door.
14:28Right. There was also just a little bit more about the club, right? I see that it had 85-foot ceilings. Is that right? Oh, yeah, it was super, super tall. That's like a nine-story building inside. Yeah. Okay, well, I just want to make sure because my brain starts to boggle like 30 feet up. Well, I mean, those big old theaters in New York were huge and vast and still are. Okay. So that's what you got to remember is this was a performance theater turned into a nightclub. Right, I got that. I still don't think I've ever been in a theater that was 85 feet up to the ceiling. Maybe. You should go to Carnegie Hall, my friend.
15:12I'm a bad judge of height and distance and all that, too. But so I guess it makes sense then that it could hold a capacity of 2 ,000 people because when they ran out of room on the floor, they just start stacking them on top of one another. On that 11 ,000 square foot dance floor. And, you know, while there was a scene happening anyway, a lot of it was really about the dancing there. There was a mezzanine lounge on the second story, a second story bar, and a balcony that kind of looked down upon the whole thing where you could go up and drink and do mountains of cocaine and have public sex. What?
15:50How cool. Are you serious? It all sounds gross to me. I mean, it was gross. At one point, they retrofitted the second floor balcony, like the, I guess the whole area around it with like wash off rubber coating. Gross. It is gross. The whole thing's gross. Yes. And it was fairly gross. But I saw it. I saw it described as this. These people were living in the age after the invention of the pill before the onset of AIDS. So they could just have public sex and do mounds of cocaine and take tons of Quaaludes with virtually no consequences whatsoever. The good old days. I guess so. You want to take a break?
16:41Should we take a break? Oh, look at us. Yeah, let's do that. And we'll talk about opening night right after this.
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18:20Okay, Chuck, so it's opening night, six weeks after they started construction. On Tuesday, April 26, 1977, a.k.a. the most important date in the history of humanity, according to some of the people who were there. That hype that Carmen D 'Alessio had been building up was really paying off. Apparently, there was an hours-long wait already, and it was so long that Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty were like, this is taking too long. I'm out of here. That's how long the wait was. Warren Beatty. Yeah, they, I mean, the pre-hype was there in full because, well, because of the PR push for one. But also because they were selling memberships before it opened.
19:06They had 18 ,000 people apply to get a membership card. So here's how it worked. If you just showed up and you were lucky enough to get in and had to pay the cover, I think they landed on like$10, even though I saw everything from$7 to$14. $10 is around close to$50 today, so it wasn't cheap to get in for a cover charge. But if you bought a membership card for between$75 and$150, you were guaranteed, and that's in scare quotes because nothing was really guaranteed as far as entry goes there. but you were supposedly guaranteed entry but you had to pay with a$3 reduction in charge 18 ,000 people applied for that card and only 3 ,000 got it pre-opening Wow, pretty nuts Yeah So one of the other legends or stories about opening night is that wait was so long that they just basically broke out into a party on the sidewalk outside of the club thanks in large part to a doctor who came by with a bunch of quaaludes Apparently, Quaaludes went for like 10 cents a pop, and everybody had them at all times.
20:16And I was looking up what it was like to take Ludes, as they were called. And apparently, there's not really any drug you can compare it to today. They were their own thing. They were a sedative, but they also had all sorts of other weird effects. Like I saw it described like you'd sit on a couch, and you weren't sitting on the couch. You were melting into the couch. But then at the same time, you're also super randy and it made sex amazing and you were just relaxed and like ready to go along with whatever. And everybody loved lewds and they were super plentiful. So when this this doctor came along and handed out lewds, the pre party.
20:54Broke out. Yeah, the quailant thing is weird because there were people in the documentary saying like nobody was ever on a downer in that place and it was all uppers. And so, I don't know. It's just very strange. Maybe it went well with cocaine and alcohol. I get that impression for sure. All right. So people are showing up. You mentioned you mentioned Brooke Shields, right? No. OK. Well, Brooke Shields is there. She was 11 years old. That's my opening joke there. And she was taken there by Robin Leach, who would later go on to host Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. I used to do a great Robin Leach.
21:31Let's hear it. No. In retrospect, it wasn't great at all, but at the time I thought it was pretty great. I also did a good Bartles and James impression. And then my other one was Larry of Larry, Daryl and Daryl from New Heart. You did an impression of a bottled drink? Remember the two guys who were like the spokesmen who were supposedly Bartles and James? And you did both? No, one of them didn't speak. The other one was the shorter, more rotund one with glasses. as he spoke. I have no recollection of what he sounded like, but I would do those impressions. I love it. So you did, what was the first one?
22:09Robin Leach. Robin Leach, the last one. Larry of Larry, Daryl and Daryl from New Heart. And then the actor who played a commercial spokesperson. Four bottles and James. Four bottles and James. Wine coolers. That's pretty good. Yeah. It was of a moment, a specific moment in history. Yeah, I mean, And I was doing like Wolfman Jack and John Travolta back then. So I was also at the time. I got a John Travolta. You ready? I've heard your Travolta. Let's hear it. Why are you so weird? Yeah, there you go. And it's not actually John Travolta. I'm doing Dana Carey doing John Travolta. Dana Carvey? Dana Carvey.
22:49Okay. Let's just move on, shall we? All right. So we mentioned that they were called the Broadway Catering Corporation, and that would make sense later. And that moment comes right now, everybody, because they didn't have a liquor license, permanent liquor license, that is. So every day, if you're like a catering company in New York or I guess a lot of other towns, you can get a temporary like one-day liquor permit to do your catered event, and they did that every single day for a year. Yeah, I guess based on the name, Broadway Catering Corporation, they'd be like, oh, okay, here's your catering license to go cater this party.
23:29At 254 West 54th Street. Yeah, the fact that they did it every day. Whose job was it to go by and get that permit every single day? That's just so crazy. And I saw one time, apparently, whatever agency issued those got wise to it, and they denied them once. So at least one night, there was nothing but fruit juice and sodas, but guests were invited to drink as much of it as they liked for free. So just mountains of drugs and then fruit juice and soda. Yeah, so it was healthy. All right. The Monday after it opened, I think they were usually closed on Mondays, but they would have special parties on the Mondays, which became a very big thing there, like renting the place out for like a$50 ,000 to$100 ,000 party, which at the time is, I mean, it's a lot of money now, but back then it was a ton of money.
24:22But Halston, fashion designer Halston, through Bianca Jagger's 30th birthday party there the Monday after it first opened, and they were basically kind of putting it together up until the minute that the doors opened. Is it true that he approached them on the Monday that he wanted the party to be held? I mean, that's the legend. I don't know. I didn't verify it. So this was a really important deal. It was very smart of them to take his money and throw this party. This was the one where Bianca Jagger rode a white horse around, I guess in a circle, essentially in the club. And then I'm sure somebody gave the horse some cocaine and everybody thought it was hilarious.
25:04But the reason that this was so important, by the way, was because the coverage of this party, it just went everywhere. And this was like where the people who hadn't yet heard of Studio 54 heard of it. So Halston helped put this thing on the map with that party. Yeah, for sure. And just five, six, seven years ago, Bianca Jagger very forcefully wanted to make it clear that she did not ride a horse around Studio 54 because she's a big animal rights activist now. And she really wanted that cleared up. So we would be remiss if we didn't say that that's a folk tale and that she claims she sat on it for like two seconds and then got off of it.
25:53And she makes a distinction between that and riding a horse around a nightclub. But there was definitely a horse at her birthday party at Studio 54. Yes, there are photos and she admits it. So one of the other things, too, is you said like some of these parties would cost 50 to 100 thousand dollars. I saw like even on non like party nights like that were like reserved private parties. They would often spend tens to up to$100 ,000 just on like the themes and decorations and stuff just for a regular night at Studio 54. Like they were just pouring money into this and they were getting even more out.
26:33I would be really interested to know what their return on investment was because they just they put so much money into this place and they seem to have made buckets of it so much so that, as we'll see, they would keep the cash in garbage bags sometimes around the club. Yeah. I mean, that's not because there was so much of it. It was because they didn't want the bank and the IRS to find out about it. Yeah. But I think if you have enough to fill a garbage bag, by definition, that's a lot, you know? Oh, no. I wasn't saying it was a ton of money. I'm just saying it was all in an effort to obfuscate.
27:07Gotcha. But we're spoiling the story. Oh, sorry, sorry. So Rebel was the guy who was, I guess, sort of the host of the whole thing. He loved being out there. He loved hobnobbing with people. It was his biggest sort of dream in life to be a part of that crowd. Oh, yeah? Whereas Schrager was kind of like, he was the guy behind the scenes. seemed like, I mean, they were both smart guys, but he was definitely more of the brains behind the operation that would go there for a little while than go home to his family. I saw a picture of the two together. You can definitely tell Rubel's ready to party.
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27:41He's wearing his famous padded coat, like his kind of down coat that he wore because he could hide tons and tons of coke in it. And then Ian Schrager is dressed like Ron Burgundy. I should say Ron Burgundy dressed like Ian Schrager, I guess, really. But, I mean, just that same foggy London town gentleman look with, like, the blazer and the turtleneck and all that. He looks cool, for sure. But he also looks like, yeah, I could see him going home early. Yeah, well, and the good thing about the documentary is he's still with us. And it was sort of the first time he had talked much about it because he's, again, just sort of famously averse to attention.
28:20But he's he's one of the main, you know, interviewees in the doc. So, yeah. So you said that Rubell was the host so much so that sometimes he would stand out front and say who could come in and who couldn't. And he was doing that because he put it that he was casting a play. So, like, the characters that he would pick out would all kind of come together and gel in a certain way inside to to make the greatest possible party. from the greatest mix of people. And one of the really important things about that is you didn't have to be famous to get in to Studio 54. You could just be a cool disco club kid who had a cool look and was clearly a cool kid, and you could get in, like, just from being you, essentially, and not having any connections whatsoever.
29:14Yeah, I mean, that was 90 % of the crowd were just people because in a room of 2 ,000 people, let's say 10 to 12 celebrities getting all the attention. That's a lot of other regular folks out there, but they still had to get in. In order to get in, they had to pass whatever sort of secret test, Rebel and the other door people. I think the head doorman's name was Mark Beneke. He was 19 years old, which is crazy. The head doorman, right? Yeah, but he was a good-looking guy, and he had never done anything like that, and they were like, well, you're handsome, so you should be able to judge other people on their looks.
29:50Rebel famously said, a year ago, I wouldn't have even let myself in. And this is another one of those things of two minds. Like, on one hand, he was like, you don't have to have money to get in. You can be gay, straight, black, white, Hispanic. Like, he didn't judge people on that. So I'm like, oh, that's pretty cool. But he's like, I'm really just judging you on how you look. Yeah. And if you seem to be cool. Yeah. He said that it couldn't be too gay. It couldn't be too straight. It needed to be very, very, very bisexual. Yeah. So that was a big part of the mix, too. But, yeah, it was like who would get along with who.
30:27And then the doorman kind of developed their own shorthand, too. Like, if you looked like you were like a midnight cowboy type and you might go beat up some of the gay patrons inside, you weren't getting past the doorman. That was a big one right there. Like you said, it was a safe place for gay and trans people that started at the door. And also one of the other things, too, was Mark Beneke, again, 19 years old, the head doorman, he was the highest paid staff member in part, I guess, entirely so that he wouldn't take bribes to let people in at the door. Which I'm sure he never did. Well, the thing is, is I was thinking about that.
31:06I'm like, well, yeah. I mean, can't you be like, I love this money and I want some more. So I'm going to take some bribes. But then you think about if he's making enough money that he would not want to lose that job, then it would keep him honest in and of itself, I think, not just like he doesn't need the money. You know what I mean? Yeah. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What was funny about that? Did I just explain the obvious? Is that what I was doing? No, I think it's funny that you sat around and thought about whether or not he would take money or not because he had enough money. Well, I was just looking for any flaws in that plan, and I actually found it was fairly foolproof.
31:46So I appreciated it and wanted to spotlight it here on Stuff You Should Know. So Henry Winkler didn't get in. Some of the Kennedy kids didn't get in. There were a lot of people who didn't get in that were even famous because, you know, Henry Winkler's the Fonz, but he wasn't some cool guy in real life. They didn't want him in there. No, no. He wasn't super cool. Supposedly super nice, but also not super cool. Two other guys didn't get in, Niall Rogers and Bernard Edwards, who at the time, they were in the group Chic, like Le Freak, Say Chic. And that song in particular was actually inspired by Studio 54, right?
32:26Yeah, supposedly when they didn't get in, because Grace Jones did not leave their name on the list, they wrote that song, but it was to freak out. It was all F off. And then they're like, guys, you can make so much more money with the song if you just change that to freak. And they're like, OK, so they did. And it became like, I'm sure they play that song inside Studio 54 all the time. because one of the things that's worth mentioning too is as cool as this place was, like you would hear essentially all the same disco hits that you would hear on the radio. It was just, again, an 11 ,000 square foot dance floor with tons of cocaine on it.
33:05Yeah. If they did have some criteria as far as like not necessarily the person on the street that they would look in, which one commentator from the time described as it was like the damned looking into paradise, like all these people on the street, like trying to look through the blacked out doors when they would open. But they had a list of like, you know, what kinds of designations people had. There were the no goods, which they designated as GN on the sheet instead of NG. They had regular guests who were pay guests who could get in, but they had to pay the whatever, 10 bucks. They had the comps list who were the freebies and then the NFUs, which were the no F-ups.
33:47And by that they mean like you can't screw this one up. They're very important. You have to get them in and get them straight to Steve Rebell. Yeah. Did you see how or who was on the GN list then? Like who did you have to tick off or what did you have to do to have your name like on a list that you were not allowed into Studio 54 no matter what? Like that wasn't just some schmo. Like this was somebody who was specifically targeted to not be allowed in. Maybe famous squares or narcs or competition or something. Henry Winkler, yeah. So there was also just kind of a general rule. Like if somebody showed up looking like disco stew or just like a cartoonish version of a cool disco person, they probably weren't going to make it in either.
34:37And there was a story where I think Mark Benecki was not going to let this one dude in because he looked exactly like that. And then Steve Rebell was like, no, he can come in. That's Barry Gibb from the Bee Gees. Yeah. Look in the park. They used to say polyester melts under the lights. So Rebell would chide people and say, go home and put on a cotton shirt. And then one guy, and this is from a 1978 New York Times piece, said, the doorman told me to go home and read Freud's essay on rejection. Wow. Wow. That's pretty great. Yeah. So there was like a lot of desperation to get in. Like you said, the damned looking in on paradise.
35:18Some people were like, I'm not going to be the damned any longer. I'm going to use this gun I have under my coat to make the doorman let me in. I did not see that that was successful. I don't see how it would be. It wouldn't be like, oh, you've got a gun on me. Sure. Go ahead. Go in with your gun. I don't know how that played out, but that's just kind of like the little thumbnail anecdotes that are completely surrounding Studio 54. There were some other ones too, right? Yeah, there were reports of people climbing down ropes from other buildings into the courtyard that had secret maps of the subway system supposedly to get them in there.
35:56And then, and this is confirmed, there was a gentleman who was dressed in a tuxedo, tried to sneak through an air vent, and was discovered dead. Isn't that nuts? They didn't know that there was somebody in there until they started to smell the decomposition. Yeah. So there's apparently, I didn't see it, a Netflix special on Halston, the designer, who figures big into this. Does a show, yeah. Yeah. And I guess that made it into it, too, but they changed the man to a woman for some reason. Yeah. Who played Halston in that? I meant to look that up. Tommy Lee Jones, I think. Oh, wow. Do you want to take a break?
36:39Yeah, let's take our second break and we'll be back with Act 3.
36:52What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.
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38:14All right. So I don't know if we mentioned it. Yeah, I think I did, that it was closed on Monday. It was open Tuesday through Sunday. They opened at 10 p.m. They closed at 6 a.m.-ish or whenever the party was over, really. Those are basically the times that I'm asleep. Yeah, a thousand percent. I mean, I may sleep until seven here and there. Yeah. But the days of staying out all night are long in my past. Yeah. I'm so Henry Winkler. Yeah. I mean, it was fun a little bit back in the day, but. Oh, yeah. You can't do that. Like when you didn't feel like just total butt like the next day afterward, you know.
38:51So, yeah, it used to be fun for sure. Speaking of total butt, if you want to see a picture of Tennessee Williams looking. Really out of his mind, there's a fun picture of Tennessee Williams in a Studio 54 couch. Oh, I want to see that. Yeah, he's bloodshot eyes. He looks like he's, you know, been through it. So, yeah, there was a murder's row, a who's who of 70s famous cool people who were there. Apparently Divine, the very famous. Was Divine trans or was Divine considered a cross-dresser? Is that just what they called Divine back in the day before we called people trans? I mean, I think Divine went by the tag of drag queen back then probably, but I'm not really sure about these days.
39:37Is Divine still with us? I don't think so. I don't think you can live that fast and hard and still be around this many years later. Yeah, that'd probably be a good episode actually. Divine, for sure. Yeah. For those of you who don't know who Divine is, she was a star, almost a muse to John Waters and was in a bunch of John Waters movies and I think ate dog poop in one of them. Yeah, that was in Pink Flamingos. Yeah, Pink Flamingos, I think. But yeah, we'll do an episode on Divine, even though we just gave away the twist. Right. Andy Warhol was a big one there. In fact, he brought his whole factory crew and loved Studio 54 so much that he basically was like he sicked the entire staff of Interview Magazine on it and started basically covering Studio 54 relentlessly in his magazine.
40:30Yeah. And I saw that the sort of the heartbeat of that crowd, like the real regulars, because, you know, Mick Jagger and, you know, Elton John and Robert De Niro, like everyone who was anyone would pop in there. but uh it like the heartbeat of the regulars were liza minnelli halston uh bianca jagger and andy warhol and i think truman capote was like the fifth yeah of that foursome he seems to have been about as regular as any of them grace jones was a big one too oh yeah i don't know if she was super into that circle she seems to have been kind of a lone wolf in a lot of ways But one of the doormen said that she arrived naked so many times it became boring.
41:13I can totally see that. Yeah. She just sort of, it's like, all right, Grace. Right. Maybe put on clothes. That would be the big thing. There was also a woman named Disco Sally, right, who just was a legend. She also appeared in that Halston documentary, or not documentary, but that Halston miniseries. But I think they kind of didn't do her justice from what I read. Oh, really? Yeah. So what about her? Well, I think she was an attorney or a former attorney and a widow who just like, this lady loved to dance. And in the documentary, they were like, at first, the doorman, Benicky, was like, no, man, wait, this isn't.
41:59It's going to be like a, what do you call it? Like a gimmick if we start letting people like this in. And he said Ravel was adamant and just said, no, she's exactly who we want in this place. Yeah, I think we left out a really key thing. She was 77 and looked like 1970s 77. So she looked like 110. She did. And she would dance all night. She was called Disco Sally for a reason. Like she would get there and she would just start dancing for hours. And apparently she would stop to go pee and to do some coke and then would get right back out on the dance floor. And she became actually from her stint at Studio 54 a fixture on the New York nightlife scene for a long time to come.
42:43Yeah, I bet it kept her young and alive and also killed her somehow at the same time. Exactly. Yeah, well put. I guess we could go over some of these parties. We mentioned that they would throw these huge, huge private parties. And they did everything from throw a country western party for Dolly Parton with more live animals, goats and sheep and pigs and stuff. Yeah, God knows what happened to those sheep. Yeah, I don't like the animal stuff in there. Like, nothing good is happening to those animals. No, for sure. And you know, like, probably some bad stuff is happening to them, too, let alone just being scared.
43:16Yeah. Yeah, don't take your goat to a cocaine disco. that's a that's a not just a t-shirt that's an epitaph uh what else liz taylor had a big birthday party there with the rockets among other things yep valentino did um and then they they had like halloween apparently was like the big night where um just if you were a normal person and you had a really great costume there was a good chance you were going to get in um the better the costume the better your chances. And like one year they did a Hieronymus Bosch theme, which would have just been awesome. And I think that kind of shows like just kind of the coolness of the people involved.
44:00Like, you know, they didn't go with something trendy. They went with like a really dark, bizarre, weird, like painter. Hieronymus Bosch's stuff is really cool. And I didn't see what all they did with it, But from what I read about it, it seems like it was pretty bizarre. So pretty cool Halloween party, if you ask me. Yeah, New York is always fun at Halloween. I imagine in 1978 and 79, Studio 54, it was crazy. Yeah. Yumi and I walked all over New York once from basically Wall Street over to Greenpoint and just spent the whole day doing that. And it just had like such a totally different vibe than it normally does.
44:39It was a cool, cool day. When was this? Oh, 2010 maybe, something like that, because she went as a Snuggie, I think. Oh, on Halloween. Okay, I got you. Yeah, Halloween. Halloween. Yeah, I had a couple of fun Halloweens in New York back when I was living in Jersey. I was the bridge and tunnel guy. Yeah, that's what they called basically anybody who wasn't famous, right? Well, anybody from New Jersey. Oh, I got you. Or I guess one of the outer boroughs. I got you. Because you came in via bridge and tunnel. Oh, I get it now. What about the end? Because, again, this thing was like a bright, shining, meteoric star that lasted less than three years.
45:21And it went down hard, too. Like, it wasn't like a, eh, this has been fun. Let's shut the thing down. Like, the government came in and said, you're going to shut the thing down, essentially. Yeah, Steve Rebell was very mouthy about how much money they were making. in the paper. He was quoted as saying only the mafia does better. Not smart to be sure, but at least according to the prosecutor in the documentary who prosecuted the case was like, it's not because Steve Rebell was mouthy. He said, we had a confidential informant on the inside that told us about the fact that they were skimming 80 % of the money.
45:58And this guy was like, you know, if they were like businesses skim back then with this kind of business, like skim 20 % and they would have gotten away with it. He said they got greedy and were literally skimming like 80 % off the books and keeping very, very, very detailed records about their skimming. So it was all there and they had to inform it, kind of tell them where everything was hidden and where the books were. And I tried and tried to see if I could find anything about like who that might have been and I came up completely empty. It was Hieronymus Bosch. It might have been. So in 1978, December 1978, the place got raided, apparently with 30 agents.
46:37That's a big raid. And I guess as they were searching the place, Schrager showed up, was like, hey, what's going on, everybody? And he was carrying with him their cooked books, or I guess the uncooked books, which is even worse, that in detail, meticulously detailed, all the money they were stealing. And one of the other things that it showed is that all the cocaine, because like they weren't selling cocaine necessarily. I'm sure like if you were a nobody who got in, they weren't just giving you free cocaine. You could buy it. But if you were like a celeb or somebody they wanted to keep happy, they gave you as much free cocaine as you possibly wanted.
47:15And they would expense that. All the cocaine they bought, they expensed it whenever they actually did pay taxes. So all of this was basically being carried in by Schrager. and then as a little cherry on top, on top of the pile, there were five ounces of cocaine. So he walks in with 30 IRS agents raiding the place with that on him, and they're like, why don't you put that down and come over here? Yeah, he disputes in the documentary that it was on him. He was like, this was stuff that they collected from around the club, but, you know, the prosecutor said that he had it with him. So either way, lots of cocaine, lots of cash, lots of skimming off the top.
47:57They would change the cash register tape midway through the night to have another set of books that were on the up and up. But they would eventually hire famous scumbag attorney Roy Cohn to come in and defend them. And he very poorly gave them the advice of like, hey, flip over a bunch of tables and stuff and make it look like worse than it is. and let's get these pictures out there. And that just bought more, you know, disdain and retribution from the state. Yeah, smart. Or the city, I guess. There was one little point that I thought was kind of sad. During this raid, the IRS agents supposedly found a room.
48:37There were a lot of, like, secret rooms, like VIP rooms. But this one was so secret and so VIP that, according to Andy Warhol, Halston hadn't even been told about it. And when he found out about it, it hurt his feelings. and I'm with him. I can totally understand that. He dropped so much cash there. And then don't forget that first birthday party that they hosted that he threw for Bianca Jagger put Studio 54 on the map and they didn't tell him about the most secret room. I feel bad for Halston. He should have had all access, huh? Yeah, if anybody should have, sure. Even Liza? I don't know. Definitely Halston, though.
49:16All right. So Jack D., the silent partner who invested to begin with was indicted along with them in a grand jury in June of 79 that did not stop the club. They were still upgrading it and building new things. That's when that wipe clean rubber came in. They pleaded guilty in 79 of November 79 to tax evasion with Jack D testifying against them. The two guys were sentenced to three and a half years, went to prison together, thankfully, and paid a guy for a year of protection while they sold out their competition and turned state's evidence against them in forming on other discos and their skimming, and they got out after but a year.
50:01Yeah. Never trust a disco owner. Yeah, I think Schrager felt bad about it. He was like, you know, my dad, he was in the gambling business and all this, but he was like Max the Jew was a stand-up guy, and like he would, he was gone. And I'm glad because he would have been ashamed of me for being a rat. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah. So the last, they closed down. You said the club kept going, but at least for this moment, it closed down on February 4th, 1980 with a sayonara party, farewell party. When, yeah, I think that's what they call them. When they sent Schrager and Rubell off to prison. So they just burned the place down basically one more night.
50:43And those two, they each served a year. Did you say that, I think? Yeah. And after they got out, I guess they were in touch in prison, and they decided to get into the hotel business. And they started the boutique hotel trend, apparently, starting in 1984 with a hotel they opened as Morgan's. Yeah, they sold the studio space to a guy named Mark Fleischman. And he was a hotel guy, so they took over one of his hotels, rebranded it as this new concept of boutique hotels. And that's what Schrager did for a long time. I feel like it's time for boutique hotels to be reinvented as something else, don't you?
51:29Yeah, but what is it even? Just not part of a big chain or some of them are even parts of big chains? No, they've become very formulaic. I mean, like funky art in the rooms that are supposed to kind of feel like your house, but just remind you that you're not home. Sometimes there's record players. There's like a super cool bar where people not staying at the hotel come, usually on the rooftop. And then there's the invariable restaurant, the house restaurant that is new American cuisine every single time. All of the same stuff on the menus. And we're talking boutique hotels in totally different cities with totally different owners.
52:08And everything's outfitted in like copper fixtures. Yeah, copper. You know what I'm talking about. Oh, I totally know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's a formula now. I mean, it's been around for 40 years. I think we need something new. What's the new thing? There isn't. Because I've already. I'm calling for it. Oh, okay. I got you. I thought you had an idea or something. I was like, man, let's talk after we hang up here. No, I'm the kind of person right now that has no ideas, just criticism. I got you. So they also opened a Palladium nightclub. That was their last foray into the nightclub business to sort of partially help finance their hotel aspirations.
52:44And very sadly, Steve Rebell died of complications from AIDS in 1989. And that left Ian Traeger alone and very sad because that was his bestie. Yeah, it really was. Ian Schrager just kind of, he had this thing hanging over him, this felony conviction. Even when they opened the Palladium, they couldn't be owners on paper because they weren't allowed to hold a liquor license. And in 2017, he was pardoned by President Obama on, I think, one of his last days for the tax evasion conviction. And that meant a lot to Ian Schrager. I read an interview with him from after that, and he seemed to really appreciate that.
53:26And he seemed to have kind of been the kind of guy who maybe deserved a pardon all this time later. Yeah. He's like, does this mean I can stop paying protection to that guy from prison? You got anything else? I got nothing else. Well, that means, of course, everybody, since neither one of us have anything else. And it's time for listener mail.
53:51I'm going to call this a cool email, an addendum. Hey, guys, the episode on widowhood just popped up. You mentioned federal elected officials and how often the widow is appointed. It's quite common in my state of Kentucky in the past for the widow of a sheriff who dies in office, line of duty or not, to be appointed to that office, mainly because the sheriff's personal estate is wrapped up in his office. So letting her finish out the term gives him time to figure out if his tax books balance. Wow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. If they don't, the estate will owe more to the county. There have been several notable widow sheriffs in my state, one being the first documented one, Mary Roach, who served from 22 to 27 after her husband was murdered in office.
54:37And she was a real sheriff, went out with her deputies at work even. The other was a woman named Sheriff Florence Thompson, who took over after her husband died in 36. She oversaw the last public execution by hanging. was apparently the first and probably last woman to be in that role in the United States just three months after she took office. I wonder if this is what the sitcom She's the Sheriff was based on. Maybe. That's, by the way, from Sean Heron, attorney at law, Louisville. Thanks a lot, Sean from Louisville. That was a great email. I definitely not heard that. Yeah. So thanks a lot.
55:18We love addendums and cool emails, especially when they're combined. And if you want to send us a cool email, you can send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
55:47What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
56:27This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.
From the publisher
Studio 54 was a nightclub, but really much more than that. It became a symbol of the times as much as anything else in the 1970s. Strap on your platform heels and get down.
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