On Feb. 3, 1980, Diana Ross, Andy Warhol, Richard Gere and Yankee superstar Reggie Jackson made a typical trek to Studio 54. But this was one party they would never forget. The revelers had gathered for a celebratory send-off for Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who were going to prison the next day for tax evasion. Ross and Liza Minnelli took the stage to sing, and the festivities lasted until 7 the next morning. Nobody realized at the time that they were also saying goodbye to an era. That all-night bender unofficially marked the end of the decadent disco scene, the "anything goes" '70s and the three-year orgy that was Studio 54, the greatest nightclub of all time.Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the partners who made it all happen"When I go to places now, they try to have one-one-hundredth of the originality or anything of Studio 54," says music publicist Susan Blond, a former Warhol crony who was responsible for bringing stars such as Michael Jackson to 254 W. 54th St. "It was the very best. The others pale in comparison." The outrageous disco lives on in books, documentaries and Hollywood movies like "54," currently playing on video. While many critics said that director Mark Christopher's portrait does not ring true, the film highlights the fact that, 20 years later, the swirling bacchanal and its flamboyant personalities continue to intrigue.Why, in a city famous for internationally renowned clubs, from the Algonquin to the Mudd Club to Max's Kansas City, does Studio 54 capture the imagination like none other? "It was just a great explosion of personal freedom," remembers Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair editor who was editing Warhol's Interview magazine during 54's heyday. "You went there and saw everyone from senators to ambassadors to transvestites to guys in leather. Kids from Brooklyn or Queens or Nassau County got in and they sort of felt as if they were the equals of Cher and Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli and Halston and Calvin Klein and Andy. I always said it was a dictatorship of the door and the democracy on the dance floor."The legend of Studio 54 began with two Syracuse University graduates from Canarsie, Brooklyn: the late Steve Rubell, credited as the true mastermind behind the disco, and Ian Schrager, whose Studio 54 days laid the foundation for what is now his sprawling empire of ultra-chic hotels. Schrager first went into real-estate law. Once an aspiring tennis player, Rubell was the ambitious owner of a chain of fledgling Steak Loft restaurants in the suburbs. Schrager and Rubell's first pre-54 venture was revamping one of Rubell's restaurants in Douglaston, Queens, and rechristening it the Enchanted Gardens. For months they pleaded with party planner Carmen D'Alessio to advise them on how to run their disco, and the initially reluctant D'Alessio eventually agreed. The Enchanted Gardens' theme parties, which included live camels and bartenders dressed as characters from "The Arabian Nights," created such a buzz that even people like Klein and Halston were trekking across the river to see what all the fuss was about. "Singer Grace Jones did her first fashion show at the Enchanted Gardens," D'Alessio says. And it was D'Alessio who first showed the two Brooklynites the then-vacant space on West 54th Street, in a building that had opened in the 1920s as a grand theater and which at that point was an unused CBS-TV studio. In the winter of 1976, Rubell and Schrager bought the building. While construction crews worked around the clock, Rubell and D'Alessio created a buzz about their new place by combing through the city's other nightclubs. D'Alessio snagged exclusive mailing lists from Interview and the Ford Modeling Agency.Al Pacino Music-industry honcho Daniel Glass met Rubell when Rubell was still a disc jockey at Regine's, a precursor to 54. Rubell handed him some free drink tickets. "He said to me, "I'm opening this club. You should come,'" Glass says. "He was a great promoter. He really had us pumped for the opening." On April 24, 1977, the doors were opened. In a foreshadowing of things to come, more than 4,000 people showed up, but only half were allowed in, including Halston, Bianca Jagger, Minnelli, Warhol, Brooke Shields, newlyweds Donald and Ivana Trump, Truman Capote, Margaux Hemingway and Cher. Robin Leach covered the extravaganza for CNN. The club's lighting system was stunning. A humongous cocaine spoon and moon hung from the ceiling. And nearly everyone who worked there was drop-dead gorgeous. Noting the party space's glitzy grandeur, Halston would later declareYoung Madonna with 'beat'poet William S. Burroughsthe club "the greatest disco in the world," and Rubell "an American hero."From day one, the excitement didn't seem to stop. Days after 54 opened, Bianca Jagger rode into the club atop a white stallion. For an Elton John birthday party, the club was filled with baby grand pianos. Soon, velvet ropes were put up outside the door to keep the hoi polloi at bay. Rubell and Schrager had made Studio 54 the kind of place where Diana Ross would ask an unsuspecting young man to dance with her and where an average Joe would actually have the nerve to ask her to dance, too. Minnelli and Ross gave the crowd impromptu performances from the deejay booth. Michael Jackson also gave an unexpected dance show during one of his many visits. Blondie having a drink in 54Doorman Mark Benecke - who had never been to a club before he landed a job at 54 - recalls the power he once had. "It was the greatest time in my life," says Benecke, now managing the ultra-hip Barfly in Los Angeles. "I just knew someone who had the security contract at the place. We walked over there three days before it opened and I happened to be introduced to Steve Rubell. I was taking some courses at Hunter College at the time, and he goes, "What are you doing for the summer?' and I said, "Nothing.' And he said, "How would you like to work here?' I had no idea what it was to become." It was the strict and unexplainable door policy that made the scene thrive, though some veterans also credit the ubiquitous sex and drug use. "It was many clubs within a club," says Glass, who became a 54 regular. "There were many sets and class structures there. There was Steve's clique. There was the gay fashion scene. There was the drug scene. There was always a certain amount of "street' that they let in.Little people are served dinner by a little person/waiter! Mark was very good about knowing the right balance of street and rich people." But even the strictest door policy couldn't keep out the law. In December 1978, after Rubell publicly bragged one too many times about how much the club was taking in, federal agents armed with guns and a search warrant raided the premises.What they found were cooked books and bags full of cash in ceiling panels. Prosecutors claimed Rubell and Schrager had hoarded more than $400,000 that should have been given to the IRS. Despite hiring heavyweight attorney Roy Cohn to defend them, Schrager and Rubell were sentenced to 3 years in federal prison and fined $20,000 each for tax evasion on Jan. 18, 1980. Even though Rubell claimed he was running 54 from behind bars, his prison stay marked the beginning of the end. After agreeing to rat on other crooked club owners, Rubell and Schrager got reduced sentences. The final two-month leg of their prison stint was spent at a halfway house with an 11 p.m. curfew. On Nov. 28, 1980, Rubell and Schrager sold 54 to Mark Fleischman for $4.75 million. The club lasted for a few more years, but it was never the same.Rubell, Halston, and Margaux HemingwayAnd though many nightlife impresarios have tried, nobody has ever been able to re-create the decadent spirit of the last disco. Before Rubell died of AIDS in 1986 at age 45, he tried to rebuild his empire, but he was never again as powerful as he once had been. He and Schrager bought and renovated the Executive Hotel on Madison Avenue and reopened it as Morgans. Later, Rubell started the Palladium, the East 14th Street nightclub that was razed recently to make way for an NYU dormitory. Now, almost 20 years since the day Rubell and Schrager let go of their once-thriving disco (sometimes called the "den of thieves"), Schrager is a hotel mogul with a wife and kids, 254 W. 54th St. is an empty shell available for private parties and the legend of Studio 54 can be had for the price of a movie ticket. When the movie's Rubell returns to the disco after being freed from jail, he announces to the clubbers, "I guess I wanted to welcome you all back. To say, "This time, I hope it does last forever.'" The disco didn't, but the legend surely has.
Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the partners who made it all happen"When I go to places now, they try to have one-one-hundredth of the originality or anything of Studio 54," says music publicist Susan Blond, a former Warhol crony who was responsible for bringing stars such as Michael Jackson to 254 W. 54th St. "It was the very best. The others pale in comparison." The outrageous disco lives on in books, documentaries and Hollywood movies like "54," currently playing on video. While many critics said that director Mark Christopher's portrait does not ring true, the film highlights the fact that, 20 years later, the swirling bacchanal and its flamboyant personalities continue to intrigue.
Why, in a city famous for internationally renowned clubs, from the Algonquin to the Mudd Club to Max's Kansas City, does Studio 54 capture the imagination like none other? "It was just a great explosion of personal freedom," remembers Bob Colacello, a Vanity Fair editor who was editing Warhol's Interview magazine during 54's heyday. "You went there and saw everyone from senators to ambassadors to transvestites to guys in leather. Kids from Brooklyn or Queens or Nassau County got in and they sort of felt as if they were the equals of Cher and Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli and Halston and Calvin Klein and Andy. I always said it was a dictatorship of the door and the democracy on the dance floor."
The legend of Studio 54 began with two Syracuse University graduates from Canarsie, Brooklyn: the late Steve Rubell, credited as the true mastermind behind the disco, and Ian Schrager, whose Studio 54 days laid the foundation for what is now his sprawling empire of ultra-chic hotels. Schrager first went into real-estate law. Once an aspiring tennis player, Rubell was the ambitious owner of a chain of fledgling Steak Loft restaurants in the suburbs. Schrager and Rubell's first pre-54 venture was revamping one of Rubell's restaurants in Douglaston, Queens, and rechristening it the Enchanted Gardens. For months they pleaded with party planner Carmen D'Alessio to advise them on how to run their disco, and the initially reluctant D'Alessio eventually agreed.
The Enchanted Gardens' theme parties, which included live camels and bartenders dressed as characters from "The Arabian Nights," created such a buzz that even people like Klein and Halston were trekking across the river to see what all the fuss was about. "Singer Grace Jones did her first fashion show at the Enchanted Gardens," D'Alessio says. And it was D'Alessio who first showed the two Brooklynites the then-vacant space on West 54th Street, in a building that had opened in the 1920s as a grand theater and which at that point was an unused CBS-TV studio.
In the winter of 1976, Rubell and Schrager bought the building. While construction crews worked around the clock, Rubell and D'Alessio created a buzz about their new place by combing through the city's other nightclubs. D'Alessio snagged exclusive mailing lists from Interview and the Ford Modeling Agency.Al Pacino
Music-industry honcho Daniel Glass met Rubell when Rubell was still a disc jockey at Regine's, a precursor to 54. Rubell handed him some free drink tickets. "He said to me, "I'm opening this club. You should come,'" Glass says. "He was a great promoter. He really had us pumped for the opening."
On April 24, 1977, the doors were opened. In a foreshadowing of things to come, more than 4,000 people showed up, but only half were allowed in, including Halston, Bianca Jagger, Minnelli, Warhol, Brooke Shields, newlyweds Donald and Ivana Trump, Truman Capote, Margaux Hemingway and Cher. Robin Leach covered the extravaganza for CNN. The club's lighting system was stunning. A humongous cocaine spoon and moon hung from the ceiling. And nearly everyone who worked there was drop-dead gorgeous. Noting the party space's glitzy grandeur, Halston would later declareYoung Madonna with 'beat'poet William S. Burroughsthe club "the greatest disco in the world," and Rubell "an American hero."
From day one, the excitement didn't seem to stop. Days after 54 opened, Bianca Jagger rode into the club atop a white stallion. For an Elton John birthday party, the club was filled with baby grand pianos. Soon, velvet ropes were put up outside the door to keep the hoi polloi at bay. Rubell and Schrager had made Studio 54 the kind of place where Diana Ross would ask an unsuspecting young man to dance with her and where an average Joe would actually have the nerve to ask her to dance, too. Minnelli and Ross gave the crowd impromptu performances from the deejay booth. Michael Jackson also gave an unexpected dance show during one of his many visits.
Blondie having a drink in 54Doorman Mark Benecke - who had never been to a club before he landed a job at 54 - recalls the power he once had. "It was the greatest time in my life," says Benecke, now managing the ultra-hip Barfly in Los Angeles. "I just knew someone who had the security contract at the place. We walked over there three days before it opened and I happened to be introduced to Steve Rubell. I was taking some courses at Hunter College at the time, and he goes, "What are you doing for the summer?' and I said, "Nothing.' And he said, "How would you like to work here?' I had no idea what it was to become." It was the strict and unexplainable door policy that made the scene thrive, though some veterans also credit the ubiquitous sex and drug use.
"It was many clubs within a club," says Glass, who became a 54 regular. "There were many sets and class structures there. There was Steve's clique. There was the gay fashion scene. There was the drug scene. There was always a certain amount of "street' that they let in.Little people are served dinner by a little person/waiter! Mark was very good about knowing the right balance of street and rich people." But even the strictest door policy couldn't keep out the law. In December 1978, after Rubell publicly bragged one too many times about how much the club was taking in, federal agents armed with guns and a search warrant raided the premises.
What they found were cooked books and bags full of cash in ceiling panels. Prosecutors claimed Rubell and Schrager had hoarded more than $400,000 that should have been given to the IRS. Despite hiring heavyweight attorney Roy Cohn to defend them, Schrager and Rubell were sentenced to 3 years in federal prison and fined $20,000 each for tax evasion on Jan. 18, 1980. Even though Rubell claimed he was running 54 from behind bars, his prison stay marked the beginning of the end. After agreeing to rat on other crooked club owners, Rubell and Schrager got reduced sentences. The final two-month leg of their prison stint was spent at a halfway house with an 11 p.m. curfew.
On Nov. 28, 1980, Rubell and Schrager sold 54 to Mark Fleischman for $4.75 million. The club lasted for a few more years, but it was never the same.Rubell, Halston, and Margaux Hemingway
And though many nightlife impresarios have tried, nobody has ever been able to re-create the decadent spirit of the last disco. Before Rubell died of AIDS in 1986 at age 45, he tried to rebuild his empire, but he was never again as powerful as he once had been. He and Schrager bought and renovated the Executive Hotel on Madison Avenue and reopened it as Morgans.
Later, Rubell started the Palladium, the East 14th Street nightclub that was razed recently to make way for an NYU dormitory. Now, almost 20 years since the day Rubell and Schrager let go of their once-thriving disco (sometimes called the "den of thieves"), Schrager is a hotel mogul with a wife and kids, 254 W. 54th St. is an empty shell available for private parties and the legend of Studio 54 can be had for the price of a movie ticket. When the movie's Rubell returns to the disco after being freed from jail, he announces to the clubbers, "I guess I wanted to welcome you all back. To say, "This time, I hope it does last forever.'" The disco didn't, but the legend surely has.
