All Episodes

December 31, 2024 52 mins

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.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
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.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, this is what I'm surprised we didn't tackle shortly
after our disco episode as like a two parter.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is a little surprising, isn't it. But I hadn't
heard of Studio fifty four until you pick this, so
I don't know how that would have been.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
That's funny.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
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.
But later in life I kind of developed an awareness
of it. What do you think about all that?

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I mean, I would have been six years old to nine,
so I probably could have gotten into Studio four.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I was gonna say the same thing. There's some shocking
revelations about this stuff that anybody who knows about Studio
fifty four is probably like, yeah, and that's just how
it was. And on the outside, it's it's just nuts.
It was just such a they called it like the
disco sodom and Gomorrah. It was just a complete bach

(01:21):
and all 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 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 quayludes,
and Mick Jagger's wife Bianca was on a horse once

(01:42):
and it just kept getting like it all was just
kind of melded together, and I kind of felt like
by the time I was done researching this, I get
Studio fifty four.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Yeah, there's a documentary on Netflix that's okay called Studio
fifty four. Yes, from filmmaker Matt I guess tiern Hour.
There was a very bad movie about Studio fifty four,
like a movie movie with Mike Myers in playing Steve Rebel.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
I thought that was the documentary. I was gonna say,
Steve Rubell is like the spinning image of Mike Myers.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
But now I got youa 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.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Oh that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
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.

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah. 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

(03:20):
dancing until the sun came up?

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah? But the thing is, and Olivia helps us with this,
and I think she kind of captured it. The reason
it seems like that studio fifty four 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,

(03:43):
so it didn't stick around long enough to like really
like become passe. And in the very short, like bursting
lifespan that it had less than three years, like thirty
three months, I think it was just it was the
coolest of the cool And when you all that together,
that's how fifty years later, people like us are doing

(04:05):
a podcast on it still. You know what I mean
about a club a club. That's why we're doing a
podcast one of eight thousand disco clubs that were open
between nineteen seventy four and nineteen seventy six alone. That's
how important this club was to that scene.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, I mean, it's on one hand, there's a couple
of ways to look at it. It was it was
a symbol of something more than probably anything. Was the
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, for

(04:45):
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 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,

(05:06):
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 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.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
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 long standing trend of agreeing
with Emily.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Yeah. Well, as we get older, I think I tend
to look at things a little more with like and
I like that, rather than just like, yeah, man, what
a cool party that was?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Exactly for sure, but let's talk about what a cool
party that was.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
Yeah. I guess we should get to the building first,
because it was a historied building. It was located at
two fifty four West fifty fourth Street. It was originally
an opera house in the nineteen twenties and then in
the nineteen forties, kind of through the fifties and into
the sixties and seventies, it was a CBS studio. They

(06:15):
had a sixty four thousand dollars Question and Captain Kangaroo
and What's My Line? And it was called Studio fifty two.
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

(06:35):
in nineteen seventy seven. So the guys that noticed that
studio was sitting empty or this 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.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah, apparently they became like friends for life. Ian Trigger
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

(07:16):
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,

(07:41):
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 came
that this came out of it was it just kind
of I think inserted a little electricity that otherwise wouldn't
have been there. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
So after they graduated, Ian Schrager went to law school
at Saint John's and started practicing. Along the early seventies,
Rebel 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.

Speaker 2 (08:25):
No, they were called steak lofts, right, Like.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Not a bad deal.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, no, that is a pretty good deal. I'm kind
of hungry for it now.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
But he had these steakhouses. He got into a little
financial trouble and his old palse stepped in to help
keep creditors at bay as his attorney. And then by
this point though in the early seventies, they were already
sort of co owners and two different discos, one in
Queen's and one in Boston.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
Yeah, the one in Queen's 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
Queen's one called in Chana Garden. And it was kind
of like the original template for what would become Studio
fifty four. They would throw like theme parties where everybody
would dress up and they would decorate it along with

(09:24):
the theme. Like 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 in Channa Garden is that they
met a man named Jack Douchey or Dushy. Let's go
with Dushy.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Oh, I thought it was dhe is it?

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Oh? Do you s a g y do? Shee? Is
definitely a pronunciation of that. So you say douche Huh?

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I thought it was, but I actually can't remember now
from the documentary that I watched three hours ago.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Well, let's agree it's definitely not Douchey. 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
bot mitzvah or his son's bar mitzvah at in Channa
Garden and I guess like the cut of Steve and
Ian's jib, and went into business with them as a

(10:21):
silent partner, and he gave them the influx of cash
that they needed to start Studio fifty four.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah, it was about a half a million bucks. It
was kind of a crazy idea at the time, even
though disco techs were big. West fifty fourth Street at
this time was really I guess the best way to
say it is sleazy.

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Is it in your town square.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
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 disco tech like, this is not
the part of town where you want to be doing that.
They did it anyway.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
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 two fifty four West
fifty fourth Street and they got to work on turning
it into a club. They did it in six weeks.

(11:18):
They went from nothing to ready for people to come
in six weeks without a construction license, I.

Speaker 1 (11:26):
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 perscenium arch, and

(11:47):
they had a lighting rigging system. Yeah, that was there
from the TV days and because they sort of got
not blocked, but their rivals in the other discotheques were
basically saying like, hey, don't go work for the guys. Yeah,
if you're a designer or you know someone who would
help them open it. And so they went very smartly
to Broadway and got people who worked in the theater

(12:11):
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.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
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

(12:38):
the main things of Studio fifty four 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
Delecio did. She was a pr sorceress. I saw her
described as and her role essentially was to basically go

(12:59):
around to New York's glitterati and talk about how awesome
this club is going to be. And it worked very well.

Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, for sure. There were other PR people that worked
with them that literally got paid for placing story, placing
stories in the newspaper, Like you get five hundred dollars
if there's a picture of Liza Benelli and Truman Capoti
going into Studio fifty four in the New York Post,
and you get this much if it's in this magazine.

(13:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (13:43):
Right. There was also just a little bit more about
the club, right, I see that it had eighty five
foot ceilings. Is that right?

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Oh? Yeah, it was super super tall.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
That's like a nine story building inside. Yeah, okay, well
I just want to make sure because my brain starts
to boggle, like thirty feet up.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
Well, I mean those big the old theaters in New
York were huge and vast yeah, and still are okay,
So like, that's what you got to remember is this
was a performance theater turned into a nightclub.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Right, I got that. I still don't think I've ever
been in a theater that was eighty five feet up
to the ceiling.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Maybe you should go to Carnegie Hall, my friend.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
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 two thousand people
because when they ran out of room on the floor,
they just start stacking them on top of one another.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
On that eleven thousand 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.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
What how cool? Are you serious?

Speaker 1 (15:09):
It all sounds gross to me.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
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

(15:32):
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 kuludes with virtually no
consequences whatsoever, the.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
Good old days, I guess.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
So you want to take a break.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
Should we take a break?

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Look at us. Yeah, let's do that, and we'll talk
about opening night right after this.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Okay, chuck. So it's opening night six weeks after they
started construction on Tuesday, April twenty sixth, nineteen seventy seven,
aka the most important date in the history of humanity.
According to some of the people who were there, that
hype that Carmen Delecio had been building up was really
paying off. Apparently there was an hour's long wait already,

(16:55):
and it was so long that Frank Sinatra and Warren
Batty were like, this is taking too long. I'm out
of here. That's how long the wait was, Warren Baby.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
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 eighteen thousand people apply to get a membership card.
So here's how it worked. If you just showed up

(17:28):
and you were lucky enough to get in and had
to pay the cover I think they landed on like
ten bucks, even though I saw everything from seven to fourteen.
Ten bucks is around close to fifty bucks a day,
So it wasn't cheap to get in for a cover charge.
But if you bought a membership card for between seventy
five and one hundred and fifty, you were guaranteed. And

(17:48):
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 three dollars reduction
in charge. Eighteen thousand people apply for that card and
only three thousand got it pre opening.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Wow. Pretty nuts.

Speaker 1 (18:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
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 quay ludes.
Apparently coayludes went for like ten cents a pop and
everybody had them at all times. And I was looking

(18:29):
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,
and 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 were also super randy

(18:51):
and it made sex amazing, and you were just relaxed
and like ready to go along with whatever. And everybody
loved ludes and they were super plentiful. So when this
doctor came along and handed out ludes, the pre party
broke out.

Speaker 1 (19:08):
Yeah, the quaalan 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.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
I get that impression for sure.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
All Right, So people are showing up. You mentioned you
mentioned Brookshields, right, No, okay, Well Brookshields was there. She
was eleven 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.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
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, Daryl and Darryl from Newhart.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
You did a bart You did it impression of a
bottled drink of the.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
Remember the two guys who were like the spokesmen who
were supposedly Bartles and James.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
And you did both.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
No, one of them didn't speak. The other one, okay,
the shorter, more roton one with classes he spoke. I
have no recollection of what he sounded like, but I
would do those impressions.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
I love it. So you did what was the first one,
Robin Leech, Robin Leech. The last one, uh, Larry of, Larry,
Caryl and Darryl from Newhart. And then the actor who
played a commercial spokesperson.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
For Bartle's and James for bartle Wine Coolers.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Yeah, it was a of a of a moment, a
specific moment in history.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah. I mean I was doing Life, Wolfman, Jack and
John Travolta back then, so I was also at the time.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
I got a John Travolta, I've heard your Travolta.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
Let's hear it?

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Why you so wee it? Yeah, there you go, And
it's not actually John Travolta. I'm doing Dana Carrey doing
John Travolta.

Speaker 1 (20:59):
Dana Carvey day in a Carvey Okay, that's Ordrew Garrett show.
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,

(21:21):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:32):
Yeah, I guess pretty smart. Based on the name of
Broadway Catering Corporation. They'd be like, oh, okay, here's your
catering license to go cater this party at two fifty
four West fifty fourth Street. Yeah. And the fact that
they did it every day. Whose job was it to
go by and get that permit every single day? That's

(21:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Oh so just just mountains of drugs and then fruit
juice and soda.

Speaker 2 (22:14):
Yeah, so it was healthy all right.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
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 you know, fifty
to two one hundred thousand dollars party, which at the
time is I mean, it's a lot of money now,
but back then I was a ton of money.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
But Halston fashion designer Halston through Bianca Jaggar Jaggar a
thirtieth 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.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Is it true that he approached them on the Monday
that he wanted the party to be held.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
I mean, that's the legend. I don't know. I didn't
verify it.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
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,

(23:19):
was because the coverage of this party was it just
went everywhere, and this was like where the people who
hadn't yet heard of Studio fifty four heard of it.
So Halston helped put this thing on the map with
that party.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
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 fifty four
because she's a big animal rights activist now and she
really wanted that cleared up, So we would be remiss

(23:55):
if we didn't say that that's a folk tale 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 nightclubs.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
But there was definitely a horse at her birthday party
at Studio fifty four.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
Yes, there are photos and she admits it.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
So one of the other things, too, is you said
like some of these parties would cost fifty to one
hundred 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 one hundred thousand
dollars just on like the themes and decorations and stuff,

(24:37):
just for a regular night at Studio fifty four. Like
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

(24:59):
garbage back sometimes around the club.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, but I think if you have enough to fill
a garbage bag, by definition, that's a lot, you know.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Oh no, I wouldn't say it was a ton of money.
I'm just saying it was all in an effort to obfuscate.
But gotcha, we're spoiling the story.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Oh sorry, Sorry, So.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Rebel was 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. Yeah, where 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

(25:46):
go there for a little while then go home to
his family.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
I saw a picture of the two together. You can
definitely tell Rubel'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 Srigger is dressed like Ron Burgundy,
I should say Ron Burgundy dress dressed like Ian Schrager.

(26:09):
I guess really, but I mean just that same foggy
London town gentleman look with like the blazer and the
turtle net. Yeah and all that. He looks cool for sure,
but he also looks like, yeah, I can see him
going home early.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
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
he's one of the main, you know, interviewees in the dock.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
So yeah. So you said that Rubel 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

(27:00):
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 fifty four.
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

(27:23):
essentially and not having any connections whatsoever.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, I mean that was ninety percent of the crowd.
Where just people. Because in a room of two thousand people,
let's say ten to twelve 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

(27:49):
same was Mark Bennicky. He was nineteen years old, which
is crazy 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. Rebel
famously said a year ago, I wouldn't have even let
myself in. And this is another one of those things
where of two minds, Like on one hand, he was like,

(28:11):
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, and 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.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
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, And then the dorman kind of
developed their own shorthand too, Like if you looked like
you were like a midnight cowboy type and you might

(28:47):
go beat up some of the gay patrons inside, you
weren't getting past the dorman. 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
Bennicky again nineteen years old, the head dormant. He was
the highest paid staff member, in part, I guess entirely

(29:11):
so that he wouldn't take bribes to let people in
at the door.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Which I'm sure he never did.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Well, the thing is is, I was thinking about that.
I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, Kit, you would 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,

(29:38):
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?

Speaker 1 (29:44):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:53):
Well, I was just looking for any flaws in that plan,
and I actually found it was fairly fool proof. So
I appreciated it. Wanted to spotlight it here on stuff
I should know.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
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 was the Fonds, but he wasn't some cool
guy in real life. They didn't want him in there.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
No, No, he wasn't super cool. Supposedly super nice, but
also not super cool. Two other guys didn't get in,
now Rogers and Bernard Edwards, who at the time they
were in the group chic like the freak say Chic,
and that song in particular was actually inspired by Studio
fifty four.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
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 sort of awe freak out.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
It was a f off, right, And then they're like, guys,
you can make so much more money with the song
if you just changed that to freak and they're like, oh, okay,
So they did, and it became like, I'm sure they
that song inside Studio fifty four 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

(31:08):
all the same disco hits that you would hear on
the radio. It was just again an eleven thousand square
foot dance floor with tons of cocaine on it.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, if they did have some criteria as far as
like not necessarily the person at the 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

(31:38):
kinds of designations people had. There were the No Goods,
which they designated as GN on the sheet instead of MNG.
They had regular guests who were pay guests who could
get in but they had to pay the whatever ten bucks.
They had the comps list, who were the freebies, and
then the nfus, which were the no f ups. And

(32:00):
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 Rebel.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
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
in the studio fifty four no matter what. Like that
wasn't just some schmo, like this is somebody who was
specifically targeted to not be allowed.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
In maybe Famous Squares or Narcs competition or something.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
Winkler. Yeah, So there was also a 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. And there was a story where I think
Mark Binecki was not going to let this one dude

(32:55):
in because he looked exactly like that. And then Steve
Reubell was like, no, he can, he can come in.
It's very gibb from the be G.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
Yeah, looking the park. They used to say polyester melts
under the lights. So Rebel would chide people and say
go home and put on a cotton shirt. And then
one guy, and this is from a nineteen seventy eight
New York Times piece, said the dormant told me to
go home and read Freud's essay on rejection.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
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. 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

(33:42):
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 fifty four. There were some other ones too, right.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
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 him in there. And then,
and this is confirmed, that was a gentleman who was
dressed in a tuxedo tried to sneak through an air
vent and was discovered dead.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Isn't that nuts? They didn't know that there was somebody
in there until they started to smell the de composition. Yeah,
so that there's apparently I didn't see it. A Netflix
special on Halston, the designer who figures Big into.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
This does a show.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Yeah, yeah, and I guess that made it into it too.
But they changed the man to a woman for some reason.

Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah, who played Halston in that? I meant to look
that up.

Speaker 2 (34:45):
Tommy Lee Jones. I think, oh, oh wow, do you
want to take a break.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, we'll take our second break and we'll be back
with Act three. All right. So I don't know if

(35:26):
we mentioned it, Yeah, I think I did that. It
was closed on Monday. It was open Tuesday through Sunday
from they opened at ten pm, they closed at six
am ish or whenever the party was over.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Really, those are basically the times that I'm asleep.

Speaker 1 (35:40):
Yeah, one thousand percent. Yeah, I mean I may sleep
until seven.

Speaker 2 (35:45):
Here and there.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yeah, but the days of staying out all night are
long in my past.

Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, I'm so Henry Winkler.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, I mean it was fun a little bit back
in the day.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
But oh yeah, do that like when you didn't feel
like just total, but like the next day after, you know, So, yeah,
it used to be fun for sure.

Speaker 1 (36:03):
Speaking of total, But 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 his studio
fifty four couch oh on back that. Yeah, he's bloodshot eyes.
He looks like he's, you know, been through it.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
So yeah, there's a there was a it was a
murderer's row. Who's who of seventy's famous cool people who
were there? Apparently divine, the very famous would it was
divine trans or was divine considered a cross stutter? Is
that just what they called divine back in the day
before we called people trains?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
I mean, I think Divine went by the tag of
drag queen back then. Probably, but I'm not I'm not
really sure about these days.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Okay, Divine still with this, I don't think so. I
don't think you can live that fast and hard and
still be around this many years later.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
Yeah, that'd probably be a good episode, actually.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Divine for sure. Yeah. For those of you who don't
know who Divin, she was a star almost amused to
John Waters and was in a bunch of John Waters
movies and I think eight Dog Poop in one of them.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Uh, yeah, that was in Pink Flamingos. Yeah, Pink Flamingos,
I think.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
Yeah, 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 fifty four so much
that he basically was like he's sicked the entire staff
of Interview magazine on it, and started basically covering Studio
fifty four relentlessly in his magazine.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, 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
like the heartbeat of the regulars were Liza Minelli, Halston,
Beyond Jagger, and Andy Warhol. And I think Truman Capoti

(38:04):
was like the fifth. Yeah, he's that for someome.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
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 dormens
said that she arrived naked so many times it became boring.
I can totally see that.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah, she just sort of it's like, all right, Grace, right,
maybe put on clothes, that would be the thing.

Speaker 2 (38:34):
There was also a woman named Disco Sally Right who
just was a legend. She was. She also appeared in
that Halston document or not documentary, but that Halston mini series.
But they I think they kind of didn't do her
justice from what I read. Oh really, yeah, so what
about her?

Speaker 1 (38:51):
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 Benicky was like, no, man, wait,
this isn't it's going to be like a what do
you call it, like a gimmick if we start letting

(39:13):
people like this in, And he said. Rebel was adamant
and just said no, she's exactly who you want in
this place.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Yeah, I think we left out a really key thing.
She was seventy seven and looked like nineteen seventy seventy seven,
so she looked like one hundred and ten. She did,
and she would dance all night. She was 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

(39:40):
some coke, and then we'd get right back out on
the dance floor. And she became, actually from her stint
at Studio fifty four, a fixture on the New York
night life scene for a long time to come.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Yeah. I bet it kept her young and alive and
also killed her somehow at the same time.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Exactly.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
Yeah, well, put, 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 for Dolly Parton with
more live animals goats and sheep and pigs and stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, god knows what happened to those sheep.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, I don't like the animal stuff in there, Like
nothing good is happening to those animals.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
No for sure, and you know, like probably some bad
stuff is happening to him too, let alone to just
being scared.

Speaker 1 (40:26):
Yeah, yeah, don't take your goat to a cocaine disco.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
That's a that's a not just a T shirt, that's
an epitaph.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
What else? Liz Taylor had a big birthday party there
with the Rockets, among other things.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeap Valentino did. And then they they had like 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 going to get in.
The better of the costume, the better your chances. Yeah,
And like one year they did Hieronymous theme, which would

(41:02):
have just been awesome. And I think that kind of
shows like just kind of the coolness of the people involved, Like, yeah,
you know, they didn't go with something trendy they went
with like a really dark, bizarre, weird like Painter Hoheronymous
Bosha's stuff is really cool And I didn't see what
all they did with it, but from what I read

(41:24):
about it, it seems like it was pretty bizarre. So pretty
cool Halloween party if you ask me.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah, New York has always fun to Halloween. Imagine in
nineteen seventy eight and seventy nine. It's audio fifty four.
It was crazy.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
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
like such a totally different vibe than it normally does.
It was cool, cool day. When was this, oh, twenty
ten maybe something like that, because she went as a Snuggie.

Speaker 1 (41:57):
I think, oh on Halloween, Okay, I got you.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Yeah Halloween, Halloween.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yeah, I've had a couple of fun Halloween to New
York back and when I was living in Jersey, that
was the Bridge and Tunnel guy.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah, that's what they called the basically anybody who wasn't famous.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Right, well, anybody from New Jersey gotcha. One of the
outer boroughs got you because you came in via bridge
in tunnel.

Speaker 2 (42:21):
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, and it went down hard too,
Like it wasn't like, ah, this has been fun. Let's
shut the thing down, like the government came in and said,
you're gonna shut the thing down.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
Essentially, Yeah, Steve bra Bell was very mouthe 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
and the documentary who prosecuted the case was like, it's
not because Steve bra Bell was mouthy. He said, we
had a confident informant on the inside that told us

(43:03):
about the fact that they were skimming eighty percent of
the money. And this guy was like, you know, if
they were like business is skim back then with this
kind of business, like skim twenty percent, and they would
have gotten away with it. He said, they got greedy
and were literally skimming like eighty percent off the books
and keeping very very very detailed records about their skimming.

(43:24):
So it was all there, and they had an informant
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.

Speaker 2 (43:36):
It was heronymous Bosh, it might have been. So in
nineteen seventy eight December nineteen seventy eight, the place got raided,
apparently with thirty 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

(43:59):
Uncooked book, 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 celab or somebody they wanted

(44:20):
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 Schreeger and then as a little cherry
on top, on top of the pile, there were five
ounces of cocaine. So he walks in with thirty IRS

(44:42):
agents raiding the place with that on him, and they're like,
why don't you put that down and come over here.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
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. They
would change the cash register tape midway through the night

(45:10):
to have another set of books that were on the
up and up. But they would eventually hire famous scumbag
attorney Roy Kohane 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 disdain

(45:34):
and retribution from the state. Smarter the city.

Speaker 2 (45:37):
I guess there was one little point that I thought
was kind of sad. During this raid, the IRS agent
supposedly found a room. There 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.

(46:00):
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 fifty
four on the map, and they didn't tell him about
the most secret room. I feel bad for Halston.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
He should have had all access.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Huh. Yeah, if anybody should have, sure, I mean even Liza,
I don't know. Definitely Halston though. All right.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
So Jack de the silent partner who invested to begin with,
was indicted along with them in a grand jury in
June of seventy nine. 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 seventy nine of November seventy nine to tax evasion,

(46:46):
with Jack de 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 hold out their competition and turned state's
evidence against them in forming on other discos and they're skimming.

(47:08):
And they got out after but a year.

Speaker 2 (47:10):
Yeah, never trust a disco owner.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah. I think Schreeger 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.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
Yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 1 (47:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
So the last they closed down, you said the club
kept going, but at least for this moment. It closed
down on February fourth, nineteen eighty with a Cyinara party
farewell party when yeah, I think that's what they call
him when they sent Schreger and Rubel off to prison,
So he just burned the place down, basically one more

(47:52):
night and those two they each served a year. Did
you say that, I think yeah. And as 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 in starting in
nineteen eighty four with a hotel they opened as Morgan's.

Speaker 1 (48:13):
Yeah, they sold the studio space to a god named
Mark Fleischmann. 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, Schreger
did for a long time.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
I feel like it's time for boutique hotels to be
reinvented as something else, don't you.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Yeah, but what is it even just not part of
a big chain or some of them are even parts
of big chain.

Speaker 2 (48:42):
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 like a super cool
bar where people not staying at the hotel com usually
on the roof. And then there's the invariable restaurant, the

(49:05):
house restaurant that is new American cuisine every single time,
all of the same stuff on the menus and we're
talking tic hotels in totally different cities with totally different owners,
and everything's outfitted in like copper fixtures. You know what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Oh, I totally know you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Yeah, it's a formula now. I mean, it's been around
for forty years. I think we need something new.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
What's the new thing there is?

Speaker 2 (49:30):
I've already I'm calling for it.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Oh okay, I gotcha. I thought you had an idea
or something. I was like, man, let's talk after we
hang up here.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
No, I'm the kind of person right now who has
no ideas, just criticism.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
I got youa. So, they also opened a Pladium nightclub
that was their last foray into the nightclub business, to
sort of partially help finance their hotel aspirations. And very sadly,
Steve re Bell died of complications from AIDS in nineteen
eight eighty nine, and that left Ian Trigger alone and

(50:03):
very sad because that was his bestie.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, it really was Ian Trigger 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 twenty seventeen he was pardoned by President Obama
and I think one of his last days for the
text of Asian conviction, and that meant a lot to

(50:28):
Ian trigger. I read an interview with him from after that,
and he seemed to like really appreciate that, and he
seemed to have kind of been the kind of guy
who maybe deserved a pardon all this time.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Later, Yeah, he's like, can does this mean I can
stop paying protection to that guy from prison?

Speaker 2 (50:47):
You got anything else?

Speaker 1 (50:48):
I got nothing else?

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Well, that means, of course everybody, since neither one of
us have anything else. And it's time for listener mayl.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
I'm going to call this cool email and 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

(51:22):
up in his office, so letting her finish out the
term give some 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 widowed sheriffs or widow sheriffs in my state,
one being the first documented one, Mary Roach, who served

(51:42):
from twenty two to twenty seven 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 thirty six. She oversaw the last
public execution by hanging. Was apparently the first and probably
last woman to be in the role of you to

(52:05):
be in that role in the United States. Just three
months after she took office.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
I wonder if this is what the sitcom She's the
Sheriff was based on.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Maybe that's by the way, from Sean Herron, attorney at
Law Louisville.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
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 Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff You Should Know News

Advertise With Us

Follow Us On

Hosts And Creators

Chuck Bryant

Chuck Bryant

Josh Clark

Josh Clark

Show Links

AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSS

Popular Podcasts

Dateline NBC

Dateline NBC

Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

The Bobby Bones Show

The Bobby Bones Show

Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2025 iHeartMedia, Inc.