Back in New York, I went through a string of attorneys who failed to expedite the application process with the ABC. The authorities were considering the legal proscription of the premises as a “den of iniquity” that should never be operated again. A year went by while I continued my efforts to secure the license. I was so thoroughly invested in becoming the new owner of Studio 54 that I rarely set foot in my corner office at New Line Cinema, but I did attend the Cannes Film Festival in May 1980, and brought Laurie along with me. We had a nice lunch with Claudia Cohen at a popular beach restaurant where we discussed the future of Studio 54. On our way back to the US, Laurie and I spent a few days in Paris with Carmen D’Alessio, checking out all the hottest Parisian clubs.
By early 1981, friends and acquaintances insisted that the disco era had ended, and that I should give up my relentless pursuit of Studio 54. I remained optimistic, even though I was seeing more and more “DISCO SUCKS” bumper stickers around town, I still believed that I could successfully reopen the club. My friends thought I was insane. Roy Cohn and I continued to have discussions about securing the licenses. He assured me he would work behind the scenes to make it happen. We both knew the ABC wanted Studio 54 closed forever.
I then retained Jerry Kremer, the New York state assemblyman who was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that funded the New York State Liquor Authority. He was mild-mannered, yet very aggressive when it counted. When the ABC and SLA gave him the runaround, Jerry informed Warren Pesetsky, the tough-minded attorney for the State Liquor Authority, that he was prepared to file a lawsuit against the state in Federal Court to enforce my constitutional rights to be considered for a liquor license at Studio 54. That was when their position changed, and the ABC finally processed the application and ultimately approved it.
Then, Billboard magazine reported in the December 13, 1980 issue that the New York ABC had approved a liquor license for me that paved the way for the reopening of the long-shuttered Studio 54. Lawrence Gedda, the CEO of the State Liquor Authority (SLA), was pretty adamant that nothing could be further from the truth about Studio 54 soon reopening, because the SLA’s litigation against Steve and Ian had to be cleared up first, and the pair was still serving time in federal prison. He predicted that litigation in the SLA’s case against Steve and Ian could drag on for some time.
Anything related to discos, especially Studio 54 and its possible reopening, fascinated the press. New York loved Studio 54 and its prolonged closure was considered a major loss. The New York Daily News ran a piece on their People page titled “Behind Bars, He Gets Liquor Nod.” The article went on to say:
Maurice Brahms, once one of the disco kings, is sitting in jail, but the liquor licenses were renewed yesterday for the three spots he owns: Underground, Bond’s International, and New York, New York. It’s the latest maneuvering in the disco scene in which the State Liquor Authority OK’d the renewals pending outcome of charges filed against Brahms by the agency.
Brahms was convicted of skimming profits and dodging taxes, based on information given to the feds by Studio 54 owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager. In return, Steve and Ian had their own profit skimming and tax-evading sentences of 3 ½ years reduced.
But Rubell and Schrager aren’t off the hook. As they serve time in a halfway house, the SLA lawyers are asking a US magistrate to release grand jury evidence of alleged drug sales at 54. And, the state has violations against 54 that block a new liquor license for the disco. The two are prepared to plead “no contest” to all the SLA charges, we learned, so they can clear the last hurdle for the sale of the disco.
By early 1981, Steve and Ian were released from prison and back in New York, living in a halfway house. They settled up with the SLA and I was granted the liquor license. It was finally over. After a year-and-a-half-long battle with government agencies, I had finally won the right to reopen Studio 54, and people all over town were treating me like I was some kind of conquering hero. I hadn’t even opened the doors yet.
As per one of the conditions for granting me the liquor license, I was required to sign a document promising that I would not run a basement operation as part of Studio 54. This, of course, was a direct reference to the famous VIP parties that Steve hosted most nights in the basement, featuring a bowl of cocaine for special guests.
I had no problem signing the agreement—and just for the record, during the years I owned Studio 54, I can honestly say that to my knowledge nothing like that ever took place in the basement. (Well, there was that one time with The Rolling Stones and the Four Tops, but I’ll go into that later.)
Additionally, while writing this memoir I had occasion to reconnect with Henry Eshelman, who is now a publicist in Hollywood, but back in early 1982, he was a director of the Studio 54 mailroom. Recently, over lunch in Beverly Hills, Henry confided in me that every Friday night, a dealer would come by Studio with an ounce of cocaine ordered by the mailroom staff working in the basement. They bought an ounce, instead of individual grams, to get a better price. It was then divided up and distributed, keeping everyone happy while working late into the night and early morning. I was clueless to all of it until that moment, nearly thirty years later. I was so damn lucky not to have been shut down for violating the signed agreement with the ABC.
That said, while I may have promised the ABC that I would not (knowingly) run any sort of basement operation, that agreement did not preclude me from moving the action upstairs into my office. I had no choice. Making cocaine available to our nightly influx of A-list celebrities was simply business as usual. It kept Studio’s name in the papers which guaranteed a line of people waiting to pay to get in. In those days, providing cocaine was expected at all VIP-oriented nightclubs, and my office provided the prerequisite privacy.
Once I obtained the liquor license, the next step was dealing with the State of New York taxing authority and the IRS. They both had tax liens on the Studio 54 premises, and I needed their agreement to reopen the club. As I recall, it was determined somewhat arbitrarily that Steve and Ian owed in excess of $3.5 million in unpaid taxes to the State and Feds, including penalties and interest. A dispute then erupted over which government agency would get paid first and who would get the $500,000 that my investor and I would put up for Studio. The State, always in desperate need of funds, eventually won priority over the IRS.
These negotiations were tense because no one wanted to be accused of cutting any slack to such high-profile convicted felons. At one of these meetings I attempted to break the tension with a note of levity. I arrived at the conference room a little early, laid out six lines of Sweet’N Low made to look like lines of coke, and placed a newspaper over it. Once everyone was sitting around the large conference table and the negotiations began, I lifted the newspaper and Steve and Ian immediately freaked out and ran out of the room. They were both so scared, but the guys from the State and Treasury Departments cracked up.
From the very beginning of my negotiations to buy Studio 54, I knew that I would need a respectable and financially sound partner in this business venture. I approached Stanley Tate, a successful Miami-based businessman and Republican bigwig. He was a frequent fixture at the White House, having once been the national budget director for the Republican Party.
Initially, Stanley may have been enticed by the prospect of being in the middle of all that Studio 54 was famous for, but he ended up working very hard. He commuted to and from Miami and was always on top of the finances. He was a good partner, but we had our differences—actually, we drove each other crazy at times. But in 1981, Stanley jumped at the opportunity to be my partner in Studio 54 and arranged for the necessary $500,000. With his help, I assumed the governmental debt as our purchase price and was able to generate enough revenue during the three years we operated the club to pay off the $3.5 million to the State and Feds, as I’d promised Steve and Ian I would.
More than fifteen months had now passed since Studio 54 lost its liq
uor license. A guy named Mike Stone had been packing the club one night a week without a liquor license, catering to a young black and gay crowd that went crazy over DJ Kenny Carpenter, but the building had seen better days. By this time, Steve and Ian were out on probation and working as my consultants. Ian, who at some point in his life had aspired to be an architect, was in charge of the redecoration and restoration of the facility. We spent a considerable amount of money to restore the magnificence of Studio 54.
The original building at 254 West Fifty-Fourth Street, The Gallo Opera house, was designed by well-known Italian-American architect Eugene De Rosa, built for opera lover Fortune Gallo in 1927. CBS bought the building in 1943 and named it Studio 52, because it was the fifty-second stage set owned by the broadcast network. Over the next thirty years, some of America’s most popular shows, ones that many of us grew up watching with our parents—The $64,000 Question, What’s My Line, Password, and To Tell the Truth—were all shot there. CBS moved out of Studio 52 in 1976.
In 1977, the theater found its calling as Studio 54. Eugene De Rosa left us with endless beautiful details to explore. The grandness of the stately entry hall once again dazzled all who entered, with the unforgettable crystal chandelier updated with a touch of lasers. The stage, previously used for TV productions, became Studio 54’s dance floor. The balcony, where the live audience once sat for the TV shows, remained untouched, providing an escape from the center of attention below and a darkened place for illicit activities of all kinds.
Chapter Ten:
The Lights Go On
at Studio 54
One afternoon, a few days before opening, Steve, Ian, and I were running around the club finalizing all the last minute details when James Brady, the legendary gossip columnist and founder of The New York Post’s Page Six column, strolled in, naturally quite curious about the renovations—as all of New York was. The ABC had insisted that Steve and Ian could have no involvement in the club at all, so had they been spotted in the club, an item would’ve surely landed in the press. When Steve and Ian spotted Brady, Steve quickly hid behind some props and Ian ran out the back door.
Steve was quoted in an article by Marie Brenner, “I can’t give interviews. Interviews and publicity are not important to me right now. You have to believe me. I don’t want to do anything that’s not by the book. I still consider myself incarcerated. I don’t want to look arrogant; I’m just trying not to make waves.”
In the beginning, however, Steve did advise me on how to handle the PR, having done so from 1977 to 1979. He knew all the right people, how to hire the best publicists and when to use promotional gimmicks. At first, I almost always agreed with Steve, because he was usually correct. The one time we disagreed was when he learned that Marie Brenner, whom I was friends with before Studio 54, asked me if she could write a cover story about opening night for New York magazine. Steve was emphatically against any piece involving Marie, saying, “Did you see what she wrote about us after we got out of prison? Forget it.”
I discussed Steve’s concerns with Marie, and she promised a fair and honest story. Steve didn’t buy it, and, despite his haranguing, I let her hang out with me for one week prior to the opening, as well as in my office on opening night itself. The story made the cover of the magazine and was helpful in reestablishing us as the place to be and be seen. Marie even quoted my father in the article, referring to him in a sweet way after she witnessed him asking me why we were spending so much money on giant fans. “What do you need wind for?” he said, thinking I was “spending recklessly as usual”—not understanding that a storm of fake snow created by the wind from the giant fans was another visual, in addition to the extraordinary light show and other special effects used to entertain the crowd.
Carmen D’Alessio had persuaded me to host a private VIP party a few hours prior to the Studio 54 opening night party at my newly built penthouse apartment at the Executive Hotel. I heard that my penthouse was so crowded that, according to Carmen, at one point Robert De Niro and his friend locked themselves in my candlelit master bathroom to chill next to the large Jacuzzi filled with ice and champagne. I say “I heard” because I was at Studio, so taken up with the last-minute chaos at hand prior to the actual opening night party that I never made it back home to greet my guests. My father and brother were there, and by the end of the evening, after observing all that took place, they were both convinced that I was completely out of my mind to want to get involved with such craziness.
The theme for the opening was “incandescence.” More than five thousand invitations had gone out in the form of a small light bulb in a box imprinted with “You are invited to the relighting of Studio 54.” On September 15, 1981 New Yorkers were so psyched for the opening of their beloved Studio 54 that more than ten thousand people showed up, plus reporters from just about every major news outlet. Inside, the crowd was masterfully controlled by Chuck Garelick and his security force. At one point in the crush of the evening, Chuck was blindsided and pushed up against a wall to the beat of “Devil’s Gun,” but Chuck, in a split second, instinctively determined the action was inadvertent. Allowing ego to rule could have turned the party into an all-out brawl. He was the consummate man in the skills of security, keeping it all safe and fun for everyone. Outside was a different story—it felt like a riot. The fire department had to close down the entire block on Fifty-Fourth Street, which prevented me from leaving to host the party at my penthouse. Many celebrities snuck in the back door—some couldn’t get in at all, including Mary Tyler Moore. The scene surrounding the club was best described in Women’s Wear Daily as:
Outside, sheer pandemonium reigned all night as entrepreneur Mark Fleischman reopened Studio 54 with an all-out bash…
…declaring Studio once again the center of Manhattan nightlife.
Before the night was over, I greeted many of the regulars, including Andy Warhol, Calvin Klein—accompanied by sixteen-year-old Brooke Shields, Cher, Liza Minnelli, Halston, Barry Diller and his future wife, Diane von Fürstenberg, David Geffen, and just about everyone else who made the night scene in New York, as well as Cary Grant, Lauren Hutton, Jack Nicholson, Ryan O’Neal and Farrah Fawcett, Gloria Vanderbilt, Paul Simon, John Belushi, and Gina Lollobrigida.
The scene inside Studio 54 on opening night was best described by Marie Brenner’s New York magazine cover story, “Can Studio 54 Be Born Again?” It said:
The first one in was a Greek named Eustaithiou, and for some reason, he had chosen to wait hours in the rain, as had hundreds of others, to keep his place along with the granite-faced men in tuxedos and the almost nude man spray-painted bronze, the garment center models and the mime waving the Punch and Judy mask. They were all frantic to be a part of the event, pushing and shoving rather cheerfully at first, as if they actually expected to have a good time. But these were the early ones, the ones who were socially insecure. The camera crews kept coming out to tape them, as if they, too were somehow news: Desperation Returns. Studio 54 Open Again.
The mobs, the desperation, the potential danger. That was what they had missed. That was the fun. Marc the doorman was back, too. Marc is a powerful man at Studio 54; it is Marc who determines who is in, who is out. And so, as Good Morning America covered him, he positively glowed.
It takes a certain mentality to covet this type of position. You have to understand about power and guarding the bunker, of course, but you also have to be egalitarian enough to let in a mix. You have to know that the crowd that comes early is merely the filler, the boys who will strip off their shirts and keep dancing; you don’t exclude the kids who have taken the train in from Queens. Not when they’re paying $25 a head on opening night. You just let in any bald transvestite who happens to have on a skirt. The back door is something else. The back door is for the special friends, the comp list and the celebrities. That group never pays a thing.
But for an hour or two on opening night, the back door was closed. Nobody could
get in and nobody could get out. A bus full of the owner’s friends had to circle the block. The limousines were backed up, and the rich people on West Fifty-Third Street were screaming too. “Marc, Marc, Marc”—they all knew to call him Marc—“let us in!” The sublime irony is that now, at Studio 54, there are two Marks with power. The other one, Mark Fleischman, owns the joint.
He was inside, walking around in the crush, looking somewhat numb, but still in control, just not sure of how he was going to cram anybody else in. And there was a problem: although thousands were there, sweating and dancing, crushed together having a wonderful time, nobody was there yet. Not Halston or Andy, not the promised Lauren Bacall or Christopher Reeve. Just minor celebs like Uzie and Julie Budd. It was too early for the truly famous, and the Fire Department was telling the manager “Nobody else comes in.”
And so many wanted in. They could feel that floor pulsing, even on the street, and they wanted it, wanted to be a part of the decibel level, so deafeningly high that all feelings would be annihilated. All you had to do was move past the bar up to the balcony, to check out the gold-and-scarlet light poles from the Steve and Ian days pumping over the dancers as if nothing had ever changed.
The idea was to make the transition between the old and the new somewhat fuzzy.
Days before the opening, 40 people work all night long. They are cheerful. A Busby Berkeley show comes to mind. The floor is waxed at 3:00 a.m. The sprinklers are installed. The new neon around the Steve and Ian chandelier “to make the link between the old and the new” is in place, Steve and Ian are being helpful. If they want to see their payment—some $4 million in notes—they had better be very helpful. Mark is ordering caviar for the members of the press. He’s calm enough to turn his attention to his own party for 200 winged Portuguese—the mainstays of a Studio 54—who are flying in for the evening.
Inside Studio 54 Page 9