Stuff You Should Know - The Filthy Magic of Studio 54

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Boogie Down Josh and there's Disco Stu 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.

Oh, that's funny. I'm just kidding. I have. 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. But 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 gonna say the same thing. There's some shocking revelations about this stuff that anybody who knows about Studio 54. I was gonna say the same thing. There's some shocking revelations about this stuff that anybody who knows about Studio 54 is probably 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. People had sex in the club. Everybody was doing coke in the club. Everybody was on Quaaludes and this 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 okay, 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, famous for playing Steve Rebell. I thought that was the documentary. I was going to say Steve Rebell is like the spinning image of Mike Myers, but 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 boomer generation being like we did this and had so much fun and it's the coolest thing that could ever possibly happen. Yeah, I think and it's sort of like it reeked of a documentary on like the, you know, the, what was it, 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. 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. It ended at its peak, so it didn't stick around long enough to really become passe. Because it was short-lived. It ended at its peak, so it didn't stick around long enough to really become passe. And in the very short, bursting lifespan that it had, less than three years, 33 months, I think, 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, 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. It was a symbol of something more than probably anything was a symbol of that era. Yes. 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 for that community to get together in a safe place where they could be themselves. for minorities and for gay people,

for that community to get together in a safe place where they could be themselves. Because like you literally, like the documentary even says, 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.

So 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 seen 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, geez, what an awful group of people. Yeah, 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, well, as we get older, I think I tend to look at things a little more with an eye like that, rather than just like yeah, man What a cool party that was exactly 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 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 and- Oh, Captain Kangaroo.

It was called Studio 52 weirdly 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. So the guys that noticed that studio was sitting empty, or this large theater, I guess, were two guys named Steve Rell 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 Rubel spoke every day for the rest of Steve Rubel'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. I'm not gonna 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 like just the connection that they had.

Like 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. Yeah, so after they graduated, Ian Schrager went to law school at St. John's and started practicing law in 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. But he had these steak houses. 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. Like it was way more than just some club. And it's like, look at the mirrors on the wall and 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 Dushi or Dushy. Let's go with Dushy. Oh, I thought it was Dushy. Is it Dushi 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 Dushy, 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. And 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 discoteques 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, it 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. Oh, I see. 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, you know, sort of a time where you could just get away with stuff until you didn't, kind of under the table style. And 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 and because they sort of got not blocked, but their rivals and 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, like, this 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 like, like 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 DeLessio did. She was a PR sorceress I saw her described as. And 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 and 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. Right. 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, I... It's like, 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 the ceiling, maybe. You should go to Carnegie Hall, my friend.

I'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'd just start stacking them on top of one another. On that 11,000 square foot dance floor. And 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? How 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 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? Should we take a break? Oh, look at us. Yeah, let's do that and we'll talk about opening night right after this. Okay, Chuck, so it's opening night, six weeks after they started construction, on Tuesday, April 26, 1977, aka the most important date in the history of humanity, according to some of the people who were there. That hype that Carmen DeLessio 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. 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.

They 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 this, 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. And 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 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 were 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 doctor came along and handed out lewds, the pre-party broke out. Yeah, the quail-lewds 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 Brooke Shields, right?

No. Okay, 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.

Let'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 Darrell and Darrell from Newhart. You did a Bart, 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 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?

Robin Leach. Robin Leach, the last one? Larry of Darryl and and Darrell from Newhart. And then the actor who played a commercial spokesperson. For Bartles and James. For Bartles and James. Wine coolers. That's pretty good.

It was of a moment, a specific moment in history. Yeah, I mean, 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 you're 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. Okay, or Drew Carey. 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 at 254 West 54th Street. Yeah. cater this party at 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. Then I saw one time apparently the, 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. Oh, so just mountains of drugs, and then fruit juice and soda. Yeah, so it was healthy. 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. But Halston, fashion designer Halston threw Bianca Jagger a 30th birthday party there the Monday after it first opened, and they were like 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? No, I mean that's the legend.

I don't know. I didn't verify it. So this was a really important deal that 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.

But the reason that this was so important, by the way, is 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 folktale in that she claims she sat on it for like two seconds and then got off of it and 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 $100,000. I saw like even on non-party nights that were reserved private parties, they would often spend tens to up to $100,000 just on the themes and decorations and stuff, just for a regular night at Studio 54.

They were just pouring money into this, and they were getting even more out. I 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 and 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. But we're spoiling the story. Oh, sorry, sorry. So, Rebell was the, he 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 a 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, then go home to his family. I saw a picture of the two together. And you can definitely tell Rubell's ready to party. He'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, but 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 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, not having any connections whatsoever. Yeah, 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,

Rebell and the other door people. I think the head doorman's name was Mark Bennecke. 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. Rebell 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. 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. So that was a big part of the mix too. But yeah, it was like who would get along with who. And 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 and that started at the door. And also one of the other things too was Mark Benneke, again 19 years old, the head doorman, he was the highest paid staff member in part, or 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, I'm like, well yeah, I mean, can't you be like, I love this money and I want some more, so I'm gonna take some bribes. But then you think about if he's making enough money that he would not wanna 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. So. 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. So I appreciate it. I didn't want 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, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who at the time,

they were in the group Chic, like La Freak, Say Chic, and that song in particular was actually inspired by Studio 54, right? Yeah, 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, instead of, aw, freak out, it was aw, F off.

Right. 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, oh, okay. So they did. And it became like, I'm sure they played 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. Yeah.

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 is 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, and 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 Rubell. 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. Yeah, Henry Winkler. 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 gonna make it in either. And there was a story where I think Mark Bennecke was not going to let this one dude in because he looked exactly like that. And Steve Rubel 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. So there was like a lot of desperation to get in, like you said, the damned looking in on Paradise. Some 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 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 it'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. And 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 that 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 wanna take a break?

Yeah, let's take our second break and we'll be back with Act Three. Stuff you should know All 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 from, 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, 1000%. I mean, I may sleep until seven here and there,

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 I could do that. Oh yeah, like when you didn't feel like just total butt like the next day afterward, you know? So 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, it was a murderers' row, a who's who of 70s famous cool people who were there. Apparently Devine, the very famous, was Devine trans or was Devine considered a cross dresser

or is that just what they called Devine back in the day before we called people trans? I mean, I think Devine went by the tag of drag queen back then probably, but I'm not really sure about these days. Is 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. 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. 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. Yeah, and I saw the sort of the heartbeat of that crowd, like the real regulars, because you know Mick Jagger and Elton John and Robert De Niro, like everyone who was anyone would pop in there. But like the heartbeat of the regulars were Liza Minnelli, Halston, Bianca Jagger, and Andy Warhol. And I think Truman Capote was like the fifth of that foursome.

He seems to have been about as regular as any of them. Grace Jones was a big one too. 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. I can totally see that. Yeah, she just sort of, it's like, all right, Grace, 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, or not documentary, but that Halston miniseries. But I think they kind of didn't do her justice from what I read. 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? She was a, well I think she was an attorney, or former attorney, and a widow who just like, this lady loved to dance. And in the documentary they were like, at first the doorman, Beniki, was like,

no, man, wait, this isn't, it's gonna be like a, what do you call it, like a gimmick if we start letting people like this in. And he said Revelle 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 1970's 77, so she looked like 110.

She did. And she would dance all night. She was called Disco Sally for a reason. 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. Yeah, I bet it kept her young and alive and also killed her somehow at the same time. Exactly. Yeah, well put. Uh, I guess we could go over some of these parties. We mentioned that they would, you know, throw these huge, huge private parties.

And they did everything from throw a country-western party 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.

At all. And you know, like, probably some bad stuff is happening to them, too, let alone just being scared. Yeah, yeah, don't take your goat to a cocaine disco. That's not just a t-shirt, that's an epitaph. What else, Liz Taylor had a big birthday party there with the Rockettes, among other things.

Yep, Valentino did, and then they had, Halloween apparently was like the big night Where just if you were a normal person and you had a really great costume there was a good chance you were gonna get in The better the costume that the better your chances And like one year they did 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. Like, 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 Halloween. I imagine in 1978 and 79, City of 54, it was crazy. Yeah. You mean I walked all over New York once from basically Wall Street over to Green

Point and just spent the whole day doing that. And it just had such a totally different vibe than it normally does. It 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. OK, 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 the, basically anybody who wasn't famous, right? Well, anybody from New Jersey.

Oh, I gotcha. One of the outer boroughs. I gotcha. Cause you came in via bridge and tunnel. Oh, I get it now. What about the end? Cause again, this thing was like a bright, shining, meteoric star that lasted less than three years.

And it went down hard too. Like it wasn't like, this has been fun, let's shut the thing down. Like the government came in and said, you're gonna shut the thing down essentially. Yeah, Steve Rubell 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, it's like it's not because Steve Rubell 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. And this guy was like, you know, if they were like, businesses skimmed 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. That'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. And 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 the prosecutor said that he had it with him. So either way, lots of cocaine, lots of cash, lots of skimming off the top. They 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 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. There were a lot of 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 Alexis, huh? Yeah, if anybody should have, sure. I mean, who? Even Liza? I don't know, Halston though. All 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 white 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 and forming on other discos and their skimming and they got out after but a year. Yeah. 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 standup 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. 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 Schreger and Rubell off to prison, so they just burned the place down, basically, one more night. And 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. 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 you know Schrager did for a long time. Mm-hmm I feel like it's time for boutique hotels to be reinvented as something else. Don't you?

Yeah, but what is it even just not part of a 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, 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 and everything's outfitted in like copper fixtures. 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. 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 Pleiadium nightclub. That was their last foray into the nightclub business to sort of partially help finance their hotel aspirations.

And very sadly, Steve Rubell died of complications from AIDS in 1989. And that left Ian Trigger 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 and 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. And 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. I'm going to call this 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. And 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

or 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. And 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 the role of you 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. We 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 stuffpodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.