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‘It Was Like Heaven’: Remembering the Wild Scene at Studio 54
Supermodels, rock stars and 54,000 square feet of disco freedom
VIDEO: Nile Rodgers Shares “Le Freak’s” Origin Story
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Sean McCabe (Jared Soares, Shutterstock)
We Had the Beat
As disco turns 50, AARP looks back at the cultural phenomenon that got us all boogie-oogie-oogieing on the dance floor. Catch up with three hitmakers, check out the amazing fashions and chart disco’s rise, fall and incredible legacy.
One night in 1977, Sandy Linter heard about a new club at 54th Street and Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan and decided to see if she could get in. Linter put on a chic, colorful Fiorucci skirt, inched her way past eager patrons queued outside and found herself inside what felt like paradise. “It was oozing with glamour,” recalls Linter, 78, a renowned makeup artist who worked with the photographers Helmut Newton, Francesco Scavullo and Richard Avedon. “I’d never seen anything like that in my life. I went as often as I could.”
That club, now so legendary as to be synonymous with the disco era, was Studio 54.
For about 33 months, from its April 1977 opening until owners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager closed the club in early 1980 (after pleading guilty to income tax evasion), Studio 54 was a decadent gathering spot for models, rock stars, actors, designers, political figures and other bigwigs and hotshots. So many famous people flocked there, from former first lady Betty Ford to artist Andy Warhol, that the club itself became famous. Doormen behind velvet ropes decided who merited admission and who did not. Those who were spurned sometimes got violent, offered bribes or, in one tragic case, tried to sneak in through an air vent, only to get stuck and die of suffocation while dressed in black tie.
The epicenter of disco glamour and celebrity sightings, New York City’s Studio 54 (pictured here in 1978) had a 54,000-square-foot dance floor and 85-foot-high ceilings.
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Behind those famous velvet ropes
“Studio,” as insiders called it, had a 5,400-square-foot dance floor, 85-foot-high ceilings, strobe lights and a sculpture that depicted the man in the moon doing drugs. Drinks were served by ripped, shirtless waiters, including, briefly, actor Alec Baldwin. On the second-level balcony, you could “get up to whatever,” as singer Grace Jones once said. The third level, even more secluded, was covered in rubber to make it easier to clean.
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“Every night was like New Year’s Eve,” says Joanne Horowitz, 74, who grew up in Roslyn, Long Island. She was working at Universal Pictures as “a lowly secretary” in the publicity department when a friend gave her a glimpse of the club six weeks before it opened. She had access to celebrities through her job and offered to send out 200 invitations to opening night. “I wasn’t happy at Universal, so I looked at it as an opportunity,” she remembers.
Named for its location on West 54th Street in Manhattan, Studio 54 was notoriously difficult to get into.
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Soon, Horowitz was working for the club, tasked with getting famous people to show up. Her pay varied depending on how famous the person was: $250 for singer Michael Jackson, $125 for rocker Alice Cooper, but only $30 for broadcaster Phyllis George. Studio 54 benefited from and accelerated celebrity culture. If Newsweek or Time magazine ran a photo from Studio, Horwitz got an extra $500.
Five nights a week, from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m., Marc Benecke decided who got in and who didn’t. He was a 19-year-old from Brooklyn with no hospitality experience; Rubell taught him how to pick the clientele from the waiting masses, with elitist maxims like “polyester causes cancer.” Rubell instructed him to admit celebrities and models, but also normal people who would add to the club’s vibe. “We were looking for people interested in having a good time and dancing. It was important to have a mixture.”
Now 69, Benecke looks back with chagrin at his former job. “If we weren’t going to let someone in, I might say, ‘I’m sorry, we’re not going to be able to help you this evening.’ We ruined a lot of people’s nights. There’s no way around that.”
(From left) Fashion designer Halston (kissing an unidentified person), Bianca Jagger, Jack Haley Jr. and wife Liza Minnelli, and Andy Warhol celebrate New Year’s Eve at Studio 54 in 1978.
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Horowitz was offered quaaludes and cocaine in exchange for admission, though she declined. People tried to bribe Benecke, too. “The most I was offered was $5,000 and 5 grams of cocaine. It was a lot of money, but I didn’t want to get fired. Also,” he adds with a laugh, “I was stupidly young.”
Inside, people felt safe. “We were all hot and sexy. We were wearing next to nothing, but I was never in danger,” Linter says. “You could have a cigarette, chat and do more drugs. On the top level, I was told people were having sex, but I never saw it.”
Stars look back: guitarist Nile Rodgers and supermodel Cheryl Tiegs
Cheryl Tiegs, 78, one of the first fashion supermodels and the star of a bikini poster that appeared on many a dorm room wall in the late ’70s, was a regular. “I was America’s sweetheart. For a moment, nobody could get enough of me,” she says.
“The music was like the thumping of a heartbeat, which was comforting and wild at the same time,” says supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, photographed at Studio 54 in 1981.
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Tiegs lists the things she loved about Studio. “The music was like the thumping of a heartbeat, which was comforting and wild at the same time. You’d see men kissing on the dance floor. I also loved the camaraderie — I’d run into friends there. If I was with someone who was taking drugs, I might or might not join them.”
“It was like heaven,” says Nile Rodgers, 73, guitarist in the disco band Chic. But he sees Studio 54 as more than just a bacchanal. Rodgers had been a Black Panther, and to him, the club was a sort of political Eden. “There was a term we had: ‘liberated territory,’ a place where people could engage in ideological struggles. Studio 54 was liberated territory to the 50th power,” he says. “You had people of disparate opinions, but there was still so much love in the room.”
Looking back, Tiegs sees Studio 54 as the embodiment of a carefree period that began with the invention of the birth control pill but ended with the AIDS epidemic. “It was a feeling: a feeling of freedom. A feeling of everything being OK. A feeling of no judgment. Those were nice feelings.”
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