Inside Studio 54

by Mark Fleischman

  I hired the Harris Sisters (aka The Screaming Violets) from Studio 54 to run the coat check at Tatou. They performed many times at Tatou to the delight of our crowd. When they received an offer to perform in Australia, I agreed to let them go and run the coatroom long distance, which they did brilliantly.

  I opened Tatou Aspen during Christmas 1991. One of our opening parties was an event hosted by Don Henley of the Eagles, a dinner dance to raise money for his favorite charity, Saving Walden Pond. It was arranged by Dan Klores who I hired specifically to publicize the event, but Couri Hay sent out a press release about major stars attending the party. All of a sudden, TV crews and magazines descended on Aspen during Christmas week. Henley became upset when the snowy mall turned into a frenzied premiere similar to a Hollywood opening, and stars like Barbra Streisand, Cher, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone, Don Johnson, and Melanie Griffith had to run the gauntlet through the snow with lights and cameras blazing. To Henley, the last straw was Robin Leach arriving with his Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous camera crew. Henley, who despised the highly successful television show, blocked the entrance. I finally made a quick deal with Don to let Robin in alone without his crew, as he was my close friend.

  Tatou Aspen’s opening was featured on worldwide TV, and had a major three-page pictorial spread in People titled “Revels Without Pause.” The story featured photographs of Don Johnson and Don Henley with the caption “Two Dons Against Development”; Cher and her half-sister Georganne LaPiere with the caption, “Were tattoos too taboo at Tatou?”; Sly Stallone and then girlfriend, model Jennifer Flavin—dashing but not too fast—past photographers outside Tatou; and ex-Car Ric Ocasek cruising Tatou with model Paulina Porizkova.

  Everything about Tatou Aspen was wonderful until I got into a ski accident and tore all of the ligaments in my knee. I was skiing with Couri Hay, racing through gates on a cloudy, icy day at 4:00 p.m. the day before New Year’s, and I caught a tip on a gate.

  That night, I went to Tatou on crutches, got drunk, and the next morning I went in for surgery. I spent a week at the Aspen Valley Hospital, which was a brand-new facility at the time. After the surgery I was put in a room with a beautiful picture window facing the slopes of Aspen Highlands, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I ended up in a cast for three months and in rehab for another three. Unfortunately, it blew my season at Tatou Aspen because I couldn’t be there to take care of what was a cash business. The Tatou Aspen staff were mostly happy-go-lucky ski bums who didn’t take their jobs seriously and would have been difficult to manage even if I had been in the position to offer more oversight. Management was loose and cash seeped out in a variety of ways. Our chef told me that even the landlord was coming in after hours and taking steaks from our walk-in refrigerator. At the end of the season, I knew it wasn’t going to work, even though we hung on for one more year. Tatou Aspen was not a financial success, but it was an experience. It also gave Tatou Los Angeles, which was in the planning stages, a base for press.

  Once again, I was living the life of a nightclub owner, but this time it was a markedly different experience. I was meeting the crème-de-la-crème of society, wearing three-piece suits and living drug-free. My conversations were relevant, rather than drug-addled babble. I enjoyed people, music, and dancing more than ever. That old feeling of a natural high whenever I was responsible for successfully entertaining a large crowd returned to me, and that was the coolest part of all. Running the business with a lucid mind also brought with it the opportunity to make more money. Tatou was a more challenging business to run than Studio 54 because of the fine dining component—which is a complicated process. At Studio, it was drinks, music, lights, pizazz, and entertaining celebrities with free cocaine. Fine dining is highly competitive, and you’re always concerned about critical reviews of the food and service—I had to be on top of my game for that. Even though we had a maître d,’ I found myself hosting and schmoozing both the early—and late-night crowds, buying complimentary rounds of drinks, delivering welcome appetizers to important guests, making sure people were properly seated; and, more than ever, I enjoyed getting people up and dancing at 10:30 p.m.

  Before Tatou opened, Laurie decided that she wanted to make the move to Connecticut, where she had grown up. It was important to her to raise Hilary outside of New York City. The move happened after our nanny told us an alarming story about how, on several occasions, a vagrant had spotted Hilary and then followed them both down Second Avenue to the United Nations preschool she attended. Hilary was an eye-catching, adorable two-year-old with long, bright red hair. I agreed to the move.

  Once Tatou opened, I worked late almost every night, and I could only join my family in Connecticut on Saturdays and Sundays. As time went by, Laurie settled in as a stay-at-home mom with a social life in Connecticut, and once again I was living the life of a nightclub owner. We ultimately separated. I took Hilary with me on weekends. We spent our days together enjoying the Central Park Zoo and the Museum of Natural History, and then in the evening I would drop her off with my mother on East Fifty-Seventh Street on my way to Tatou. My mother was thrilled to have this precious time with Hilary. She absolutely adored her. Somehow we made the situation work. Laurie and I loved Hilary so much we made certain the separation was as painless as possible for her. It gave me great pleasure to buy and renovate a house for Laurie and Hilary in Westport, Connecticut, ensuring a home for them in a community they loved and would feel rooted in. Then, a few years later, Laurie married Judd Burstein, a very successful attorney from a well-known New York family of lawyers and judges. Finally, Hilary had a full-time father figure in her life who would be there for her, and that was comforting to me.

  Chapter Thirty-Two:

  Tatou in La La Land

  Then, Mimi Leonard walked back into my life. I had had a crush on Mimi when she was dating Jerry Rubin while I was at New Line Cinema in the late 1970s. Jerry was one of the New Line Presentation speakers, and I would see Mimi from time to time at the office. Mimi and Jerry married in 1977. In 1981, Mimi and Jerry worked for me at Studio 54, successfully promoting their Yuppie Networking Night which continued for several years. During those years, I was so out of my mind, I hardly noticed her. Then a few years later, in 1987, the Rubins and I discussed opening a “networking” oriented restaurant, and again I felt the spark. But then Jerry and Mimi moved to Los Angeles and we lost contact until one very busy night at Tatou in 1991 when the doorman/security sent word that, “Mimi Leonard and her sisters are outside at the ropes.”

  Mimi was born in Georgia but spent most of her life in New York City, graduating summa cum laude from Columbia University. She was, and is, an energetic, intelligent, beautiful, kind, and impressive woman. She is the daughter of the charming Southern Belle, Emma Jean “EJ” Clifton, who comes from a good old Southern family, and author and educator George Burr Leonard, who wrote extensively about education and human potential. He was president emeritus of the Esalen Institute, former editor of Look magazine, a former US Army Air Corps pilot in WWII, and holds a fifth-degree black belt in Aikido. He also developed the Leonard Energy Training (LET) practice for centering the mind, body, and spirit, and, coincidentally, was a regular speaker at Rancho La Puerta years earlier. So you could argue that Mimi’s strength, intelligence, and drive were genetic.

  I went outside and greeted Mimi, who looked ravishing, together with her two beautiful, blonde half-sisters. I led them through the crowd to the upstairs VIP room and got them drinks. I vividly remember that moment; I was really happy to see her, especially when she confided that she and Jerry had separated. She now had an apartment in New York where she lived with her two young children, Juliet and Adam. She was the same ebullient, charming woman I remembered from years back, and now available. Coincidentally, earlier that week, our creative director at Tatou New York, Susan Ainsworth, had informed me she was moving to Miami. When Mimi, whom I knew as a very successful nightclub marketer, asked me
for a job, I hired her on the spot.

  About nine months after Mimi had been living in New York and working as our creative director at Tatou, we coincidentally each made plans to visit LA on the same weekend. I was going to check out a restaurant space. Mimi had just recently given me three months’ notice as creative director and was going to Los Angeles to look for a rental home. As part of their divorce agreement, Jerry had gotten co-custody of the children and wanted Mimi to move to Beverly Hills, where he was living. Since we were both going to be in LA at the same time, I invited her to join me with Bob and Eva Shaye at New Line Cinema’s Premiere of the film The Player in Hollywood.

  It was a star-studded evening with Nick Nolte, Faye Dunaway, Harry and Shari Belafonte, Whoopi Goldberg, and Burt Reynolds; plus the picture’s star, Tim Robbins, and many other movie stars. We went to producer Keith Addis’ home in the Hollywood Hills for an after-party in honor of the director, Robert Altman, who was presented with a huge marijuana “stalk.” Lighted pipes packed with exceptional weed were passed around to the guests. I hadn’t smoked marijuana for a number of years, and after a few tokes I became very relaxed, content, and felt that familiar sense of enlightenment envelop me. We were sitting on a plush leather sofa next to a large stone fireplace. When I looked at Mimi, I had a sense that she was my “it” girl, my one true love, and we were destined to be partners in life. I leaned over and kissed her, our eyes met, and we both knew.

  Back in New York the following week, my heart was pounding when we went out on what would be our first real date. We went to dinner, then returned to my apartment, and I remember saying something to the effect that we should “take it slow.” But we didn’t. We made love and I understood the attraction I’d felt for Mimi over the years. I couldn’t stop kissing her. I wanted to hold her forever. This was true lovemaking and very different from the hundreds of mindless sexual encounters I’d had over the years. This time it was with a woman I couldn’t get enough of. I was falling in love and loving every minute of it.

  On our next date, Mimi shared her feeling that a real relationship needs to be monogamous. When I mulled that over, I came to the sober and comforting realization that Mimi could be my everything. My world was a better place when she was in it. Mimi commanded my attention and respect from the very beginning—even back to the Studio 54 and New Line Cinema days, when she was working with Jerry. She had left her impression on me. A strong, self-assured woman can be an aphrodisiac of lasting potency. I was very comfortable that she was only nine years younger than me rather than someone of a different generation; we both had an affinity for and working with celebrities and promotions in the nightclub business, had children of the same age, a mutual respect and fondness for our mothers and fathers, and we had great sex.

  She was a smart, literate, very attractive blonde shiksa who liked Jewish guys. We were a winning combination. The pieces fit together perfectly, without struggle. Mimi loved me as much as I loved her, which enabled us to develop the relationship that has lasted for over twenty-five years.

  I had to tell Laurie about Mimi, because our daughter Hilary often went on playdates with Mimi’s children, Adam and Juliet. Laurie had always liked Mimi, who had a summer home in Westport, Connecticut, not far from where Laurie and Hilary lived. We’d go up and spend the weekend at Mimi’s house with the three kids in tow. Sometimes Mimi and I would be “playing” upstairs, while the kids were playing downstairs with Mimi’s Mary Poppins-like nanny, Anavi. Hilary, at five, was just six months older than Juliet and two years older than Adam; she was able to keep Mimi’s kids thoroughly entertained, as Anavi supervised. The kids had no idea what was going on upstairs, and Mimi and I enjoyed some stolen moments of adult time.

  Then, my friend Grace Robbins, the ex-wife of Harold Robbins, author of The Carpetbaggers, found the perfect location for Tatou on Beverly Drive, smack dab in the middle of Beverly Hills. It was perfect. It was a large, fully equipped out-of-business restaurant with two well-appointed kitchens, thirty-foot-high ceilings, four marble restrooms, and an upstairs space with twenty-foot-high ceilings. One of my Japanese investors, Shin Konishi, put up half the money for the kitchen equipment and became a partner.

  I set about putting a team together that included Mimi, who by then had moved to Los Angeles. I also offered a modest partnership interest to Rudolf Piper, the tall, blond, well-known German nightclub entrepreneur who managed numerous clubs in New York, including Danceteria, The Tunnel, and Palladium. In return, he helped me to develop and operate the upstairs nightclub. Rudolf and Mimi held auditions and put together a fabulous and great-looking staff comprised, as is usually the case in Los Angeles, mostly of out-of-work actors and actresses. Our Tatou New York chef/partner, Desi Szonntagh, moved to LA and staffed the kitchen.

  A key ingredient, once again, was David Rockwell, whose design fulfilled my vision of recreating the elegant Los Angeles supper club of the 1930s, the Cocoanut Grove, in the restaurant space. The upstairs space became a hedonistic red plush discotheque accented by a lot of gold leaf. Downstairs, Tatou Beverly Hills was breathtaking, with plush brocade booths, a stage with an elegant red velvet curtain, gilded mirrors, and cream drapes embroidered with gold fleurs-de-lis. Fabricated metal palms with oversized faded green fronds arched overhead, accented by hanging lighted coconuts. Subtly colored LED lights buried in the tree trunks along with a billowy-tented ceiling, that slowly changed color from white to pink to blue, created a magical atmosphere. I had found a grand theatre chandelier at an auction in Connecticut and shipped it to LA to hang as a centerpiece in the main dining room. The design blew everyone away.

  We held a successful soft opening during the 1991 holiday season booked with private Christmas parties. The parties included events for New Line Cinema, a party for Michael Douglas’s production company, and a number of other high-profile entertainment industry entities. These were well-received with great food and live music alternating with the best DJs playing popular dance music. The A-list invitees at these parties ate it up. On New Year’s Eve, Nikki Haskell, my friend from Studio 54 who grew up in Beverly Hills, cohosted our official opening with Charles Evans. Charles was founder of the very successful fashion label Evan-Picone Apparel, and brother of legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans. Tatou became the talk of the town. The atmosphere, food, sophisticated blues bands, and the striking upstairs late-night dance club were a delight to the Hollywood crowd.

  Within a week, word of mouth spread and we were overwhelmed with calls for dinner reservations in the downstairs supper club. People were waiting up to three weeks to get a table—A-List celebrities were accommodated immediately. There were lines to get into the late-night upstairs club four to five nights per week. I decided early on that—just like at the original Cocoanut Grove in LA and Tatou New York—patrons should be properly dressed. However, before opening, many friends and acquaintances were advising me that Los Angeles was not like New York, and a dress code wouldn’t work. I considered this for a few weeks but just before opening I placed a brass plaque by the front door that read: “Jackets Required.” To handle what could be a delicate issue at the front door with the dress code, I hired two young, beautiful, smart, and savvy women as my door people. One of them was Christa Miller, who went on to star on The Drew Carey Show and Scrubs. They dressed in stylish, tailored pant suits and Mimi and I carefully instructed them on the dress code and who should and shouldn’t get in. It turned off a few people, but most patrons loved it, creating the feeling that every night was a special occasion.

  We were definitely thinking outside the box when we transformed some vacant space into an art gallery that doubled as a living room and cocktail lounge. An old friend from my Studio 54 days, Tony Curtis, provided the art and furnishings. Painting was a lifelong passion for him. When I first came to Los Angeles we bumped into each other while hanging out at Alan Finkelstein and Jack Nicholson’s restaurant, Monkey Bar, and renewed our friendship. He looked much better n
ow than during his Studio days and was very excited about opening The Tony Curtis Gallery at our new posh restaurant. He was a fine artist. In 2005, “The Red Table” by Tony Curtis was accepted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

  Fabio, the actor/model/author best known for his long flowing hair and six-foot-three perfectly-chiseled body, was a regular at Tatou, holding court, enjoying the attention of all the women. I watched them literally trip over themselves and walk directly into the nearest table once they spotted Fabio. He had that effect on women.

  The people attracted to Tatou were mainly in the entertainment industry, and they felt entitled to a higher level of service, which was less common amongst VIPs in Manhattan. They were accustomed to private chefs and considered it a badge of honor as well as their right and privilege to order “off the menu.” They ordered anything they felt like eating at that moment and told the waiter to bring it. I remember record producer Richard Perry was part of a scenario that was a royal pain in the ass. He ordered pasta puttanesca, which wasn’t on the menu, and he ordered it at a really busy time. It went like this: “Hmmmm, you know what I’d really love? Al dente pappardelle puttanesca. Please prepare it with very ripe, young olives and only fresh plum tomatoes,” he said.

  Everyone knows about Richard Perry’s work with The Pointer Sisters, Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, Carly Simon, Art Garfunkel, Diana Ross, and Donna Summer, but Richard Perry produced Rock, Rhythm & Blues, a brilliant album with Rick James in the lead on a remake of The Drifters hit “This Magic Moment” and I loved it…so I let him bust my balls.

  We followed his directions and soon we began to unofficially call it Pasta a la Perry.

  On busy nights, the orders off the menu would cause our chef Desi to freak out, and I’d have to calm him down on the phone, sometimes from three thousand miles away if I happened to be at Tatou New York.