Exactly 45 years ago, on April 26, 1977, at the intersection of 54th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, the legendary Studio 54 club opened in New York City and forever changed people’s perception of nightlife and real entertainment.
It was a separate fictional world where no rules were enforced. What else do you need to know about it? Let’s talk!
Studio founders Jan Schrager and Steve Rubell. They turned the building of the old theater into the trendiest disco in New York.
The repair took about a year, and more than 700 thousand dollars were spent on the whole preparation. The money needed to create the club was given by their third partner, Jack Dushi, who later became the financial director of the Studio. For help, he asked Steve and Jan to give him 50% of the net profit. They agreed on this.
Jan and Steve bet everything for this club and they didn’t lose. So many guests came to the opening of the club that it was necessary to take out all the guards in order to somehow disperse the crowd. Of the 5,000 personally sent invitations, not all went in. By the way, even Donald Trump and his wife Ivana were at the first party. After the opening everyone started talking about this place. Studio 54 was on the front page of the New York Post. No other club has been written like this.
“I remember going there on opening day. There were mirrors everywhere and carpets on the floor. It was like a big runway,” recalls Sandy Linter, makeup artist and Gia Karanja’s ex-girlfriend. The interior of the club was truly magnificent: theater balconies, a stage, silver fabric-covered sofas, a diamond-studded bar, and incredible lighting effects for the time.
Meanwhile, the landscape changed for each batch. The cost of preparation and holding reached 40-50 thousand dollars. “I felt like you were going somewhere new every night,” says former model Kevin Haley. One of the most memorable parties was the performances of Grace Jones.
In the presentation of the Warm Leatherette album, it was raised to the ceiling and slowly lowered in the light of the spotlights. And it was time to kneel during the performance of the song, The Studio whipped its guests with a whip until they fell to their knees. In honor of Valentino’s birthday, the club has created a real circus arena.
Not everyone was lucky enough to get there. From the very beginning, the club became famous for harsh face control. To pass, people changed their looks, wardrobe and dressed like last time. There was even a case where a girl undressed in front of the entire crowd (and was allowed in) to get in.
Each day the concierge received a guest list with notes of who was free, who was paid, and with whom you could not “break” (speaking of the main stars of that era).
“The only criterion we don’t look at is money,” Steve says in an interview. And that was true. The studio has attracted a wide variety of people, from Harlem and Bronx street teens to transgender people and movie stars, but it’s all combined with a strong inner freedom and desire to party all night.
-
Photo: Central Press/Getty Images -
Photo: Central Press/Getty Images -
Photo: Central Press/Getty Images
It wasn’t just a disco, it was a lifestyle full of freedom, revolution, sex and illegal substances. You could see star regulars there almost every weekend: Mick and Bianca Jagger, Cher, Elton John, Elizabeth Taylor, Diana Ross, Andy Warhol, Gia Carangi and even Michael Jackson.
The latter said in an interview that people come there to escape reality. It was a place of absolute freedom. The guests of the “Studio” were not afraid to be themselves and felt safe from all kinds of prejudices and condemnations of the society.
But all good things come to an end sooner or later. In this case, it’s early. A year and a half after opening, in December 1978, a series of checks arrived at the studio by tax officials. The club found banned substances and documents proving that their owners were evading taxes. Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell were charged with fraud and sentenced to three and a half years in prison (although the term was eventually reduced to 13 months).
Their farewells to prison took place, of course, at Studio 54. Everyone showed up for the farewell party on February 4, 1980: from Richard Gere to Sylvester Stallone (he was the one who got the last drink at the bar, according to legend).
Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli performed on stage, and Steve Rubell appeared in the image of Frank Sinatra and sang the song My Way. About two thousand people gathered at the club that evening. They were all crying and having fun at the same time, and Steve shouted: “I love you! I don’t know what to do without Studio 54!”
It was this party that ended the three years of insanity that had become the symbol of the ’70s. By the time the club owners were released from prison, the disco boom had passed. There were disco crappy signs everywhere, a kind of attack on Studio 54. And the AIDS epidemic, which took the lives of many people, including Steve Rubell, took over the whole world.
However, one way or another, “Studio 54″ has forever gone down in history as the epicenter of the disco frenzy and freedom that everyone dreams of. “The studio was not just a nightclub, it was a social experiment. That’s why this never happened and never will be.”
Source: People Talk
