Michael Overington was another example of how far you could go at Studio 54. What were we thinking?, Steve Rubell and Diana Ross went up to control central, the DJ boothDiana Ross began to sing out over the crowd. Exclusively men, it's unclear if any of them owned a shirt. Fleischman took over Studio 54 in 1978 after the two original owners were arrested for tax evasion, although the club closed its doors for good in 1986. And Studio 54 doorman Marc Benecke as his witness, looking the part above the . Not at all. It wasnt a barroom, it wasnt a discotheque, it was a cultural moment., Okay, yes, incredible how do I get in? The bartenders at McMullens were making $800 or $900 a week, because it was so successful. ", Steve Rubell and Carmen d'Alessio in Norma Kamali coats (1977). This may sound nave, but were people happy back then? I was very young. It was a drug that kept you up and dancing for hours and hours, and made you very chatty. I was trying to get acting work, doing the occasional Off Broadway play. Those people just looked at me and turned and walked away. Opened by Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager in 1977the same year Saturday Night Fever came outthere's never been a club like it since, with . The former editor of Interview, Bob Colacello, said of Studio 54, "Even if you weren't having sex with someone every night, you felt like you could.". Studio 54 defined clubbing, disco, and celebrity in the late 1970s. It was really different. We had him by the ankles. How do Brits feel about King Charles? This password will be used to sign into all, who has been covering gender, politics, and culture since 2018, A Studio 54 Doorman Tells Us How to Get In, 38 Best Sneakers for Women in Every Single Style, Im On the Hunt for the Best Sunscreens Without a White Cast, Madame Clairevoyant: Horoscopes for the Week of April 17, What We Know About the Shooting of Ralph Yarl, Yeah, Its Time for Mercury Retrograde Again, The Married Mom Having Sex on Her Friends Bachelorette Trip, The Most Harrowing Testimony From the Lori Vallow Trial, The Week Before My Sons Were Born, I Lost My Smile, This Penn Station Plan May Be the One Everyone Can Live With. Yeah, I actually told this one guy to go buy this blazer that I had on at Bloomingdales. Thats really what happened. But after three years the party came crashing to a halt. There are varying stories of how Scott Taylor was hired, but New York Magazine says he just showed up on opening night and asked for a job. And its very interesting, I mean, it was fascinating. Once he knew us, we were in." . Chuck Garelick - head of security. For 33 short months the club was the height of cool in Manhattan, with club goers who managed to get past the velvet rope falling into a deluge of drugs and debauchery. Last call for a very wild and open time in New York City, he explains. Actor Alec Baldwin worked for two months as a waiter at Studio 54. Not everyone who worked at Studio 54 was just there to have a good time. It was like a big boxing ring with ropes all around, and you had three or four bodyguards around you, and people would just walk up. Get ready for a busy week, astrologically speaking. Perhaps because, as Taylor put it, "Steve [Rubell] wanted all big, gay, muscle-bound bartenders, and I was, like, this Jewish straight boy from Queens," the owner was unimpressed when he noticed and tried to fire him. New owners took over Studio in 1980. What did you talk about?Nothing! So I was hired, and I was paid $625 a week. Anything wentso much so that, when I asked Halston biographer and Studio 54 regular Steven Gaines for his craziest story about the club, he offered an anecdote so risqu that we cannot print it in full here. I have heard that, yes! Not a subscriber? You got up and you danced, and you might end up dancing with Catherine Deneuve or anybody, but there was a sense that different rules applied. You had a really interesting mix of all different levels of society. I think the Village Voice put it best when they said you cant reheat souffl, and thats basically what the story was at 54. He was able to turn people away with a smile. Marc Benecke, doorman for the disco club, would stand on a stepping stool and select club candidates from the crowd. Scantily clad dancers gyrated on an automated bridge that moved back and forth over the dance floor. Show Schedule. I know youve watched Halston, and Im wondering with Studio 54 showing up in TV and movies a lot these days what do you think of those interpretations?It was a bacchanal in New York in those days. Steve had this passion for Diana. I brought the preppy thing to Studio 54, Marc enjoyed that about me, so we would talk in exaggerated, WASP-y accents. Both Rubell and Schrager were arrested and accused of skimming $2.5 . It was like watching a movie. Hed show up with Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley, and all the models of the day, and I let them all in for free. According to The Independent, he said that he "sometimes" took them up on it. Andy Warhol was one of the few well-known artists in the world [that came to Studio 54]. Now, people used to tip us occasionally on the way out, and my tips often came in cocaine and quaaludes. Considering Studio 54 was a nightclub, and people tend to go to nightclubs to dance, you'd assume the DJs there would be close to royalty. A haven of hedonism, tolerance, glitz and glamor, Studio was very hard to gain entrance to and impossible to ignore, with news of who was there filling the gossip columns daily. Beyond being just the bouncer, he was also the gatekeeper for the "look" of the club, and anyone who didn't fit his definition of what that look was would find themselves at the end of the line. And where it was okay, where it was welcomed. It was a short window of excess, wedged in just before the AIDS epidemic took hold. Absolutely. He said he had to explain to Valentino why he was doing it that way. She sent out some invites, and opening night saw big names like Cher, Henry Winkler, JFK Jr., and Warren Beatty show up. Club founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager provided premium guests with premium cocaine and spent up to $100,000 on a single nights party decor. Realizing you really could pay for publicity like that, the job of celebrity wrangler was born. There was a lot of media, especially on nights when there were parties, like when Dolly Parton showed up we had decorated the inside of the club like a barnyard, there were animals, bales of hay. Yes, very much so. How did you do that? The actor, artist, and certified beefcake chats with, Filming a geopolitical epic in Europe for seven months was the last thing on the. The most exciting night for me was when Michael Jackson showed up, right after his album Off the Wall came out. . In 2021 alone, it reared its glittery . And people felt incredibly comfortable therebecause we did the selection process at the door. But I think people were happy. The original Studio 54 closed in 1980 after just three years as party central. Rubell had the waiters dressed up like Pilgrims and he was serving turkey, recalled Warhol in his published diaries. - Studio 54: Night Magic is curated and designed by Matthew Yokobosky, Senior Curator of Fashion and Material Culture, Brooklyn Museum and runs March 13 to July 5, 2020. People see you as arrogant, whereas for me it was more of a self-defense mechanism. Beyond being just the bouncer, he was also the gatekeeper for the "look" of the club, and anyone who didn't fit his . How exactly the music at a disco could interfere when it's literally called "disco" is unclear. "I'm the most important person to talk to." According to the modest Peruvian, she brought . The two men were very good friends, despite being incredibly different personalities. No. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. New York was very, very loose at the time. Robin Platzer/Twin Images . He gave us nicknames: his was Biff, and my nickname was Bunky. Doorman Mark Benecke was charged with deciding on the chosen ones. After Studio 54, Mr. Fleischman opened Tatou, a New York music club and restaurant, then established other branches in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Tokyo and Aspen, Colo. From the 1990s to about 2007 . Perhaps not surprisingly, Siano only lasted four months at Studio 54, but Kaczor stuck it out for three years. Steve wanted a salad of people, is what I keep reading.A lot of wealthy people were there and a lot of celebrities, but there were a lot of kids who were busboys at restaurants in the Village who had a great look. But no one ever came with anybody other than themselves and whomever they were with. People functioned that way. The fall of Rome, let me tell you. The photographer said he only experienced that type of energy at Andy Warhol's studio, the Factory, which the photographer frequented in the 1970s. In most cases, there was no serious hiring process, and many employees had no relevant experience or, indeed, any experience whatsoever before they were tasked with running the world's most amazing club. A visitor watches an archive photo of Grace Jones performing on display at the Studio 54: Night Magic exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum during the media preview March 11, 2020. It caught the eye of FX guy Ryan Murphy, who plans to spotlight its demise in the next season of American Crime Story. The city's glitterati would come through to see and be seen if they could get through the door, that is. In the movie 70s Fever, live footage inside Studio 54 depicts this old lady who liked to get freaky along with the scene's major players like Studio 54 Doorman Mark Benecke and club co-owner Steve . According to Disco, Drugs & Decadence: The Rise and Fall of America's Premier Discotheque, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell had known each other since they were college students and had been in business before Studio 54, including as co-owners of another New York City nightclub called Enchanted Garden. If somebody came up and they were really drunk and acting obnoxious, no they wouldnt get in. It was pretty awesome. People would slip me vials of coke, you know, people who were regulars. I grew up in the West Village, in the late fifties and sixties, when this area . As OZY reports, they, too, appeared in a Montaug-managed revue, although there appears to be no footage of this on the internet. Studio 54 is a Broadway theater and a former disco nightclub at 254 West 54th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Knowing his time was coming to an end and not wanting to die suffering, the former bouncer invited some of his closest friends to his apartment, including Madonna, who joined by telephone (viaNew York Magazine). Nevertheless, they were "treated like s***." However, the notorious New York City nightclub encountered a fair share of obstacles while party-goers ravaged the dance floor . Join Vanity Fair to receive full access to VF.com and the complete online archive now. For a nightclub that only lasted a few years and closed more than four decades ago, the strength of Studio 54's sustained cultural influence astonishes me. Or Myra Scheer, who went from clubgoer to the owners' right-hand woman. Studio 54 was the hottest party spot in the world, defining the disco era in all its ecstasy and excess. It was a haven of illicit sex, illegal drug use, and the wildest parties the city had ever seen. You met amazing people you knew that you were at the epicenter of something really remarkable. 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