Relationships. Schrager is the co-owner and co-founder of Studio 54, a club that was located at 254 West 54th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, NYC. His father worked as a postal worker and later became a tennis pro. Rubell and his brother Donald grew up in a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. “Studio 54 is one of those stories everyone thinks they know, but they don’t,” Mr. Tyrnauer said in a telephone interview. Boutique hotelier Ian Schrager, along with his partner, the late Steve Rubell, opened Studio 54 in 1977; it was hot stuff for four years, long enough to help define the disco era. And the friendship just got closer and closer and closer. His mother, Blanche, died when he was 23. “It was the most magical club that ever existed,” Nile Rodgers of Chic, disco’s greatest band, said in a telephone interview. She would come to Studio 54 when she was in New York. Studio 54 had no liquor license when it opened — every day, they would get a temporary catering permit, a stopgap that continued for more than a year, and ultimately set their downfall in motion. “Forty years later, it’s a wound that healed, though I still have the scar,” Mr. Schrager (whose eponymous company now runs dozens of boutique hotels around the world) said in a phone conversation. “Instead of letting all the celebrities in, I would let the bankers in.”, A History of Studio 54, This Time Told by the Quiet Partner, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/movies/studio-54-documentary-ian-schrager.html, Most Read: ‘The Underground Railroad’ Review. She was the soundtrack for a part of my life. Donna had an incredible voice, and she went on to do a lot of the really great discotheque songs that were slickly produced by another friend, Giorgio Moroder. “Being raised in Brooklyn and having that hunger.” It would close after just 33 months in existence. As Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” I worked for Ian Schrager and his partner Steve Rubell at the Paladium. According to our records, Ian Schrager is possibly single. At the heart of “Studio 54” is the partnership of the founders Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, two strivers from Brooklyn who met at Syracuse University and rode the rocket of success before pleading guilty to tax evasion in 1979 and serving 20 months in jail. ... Steve Rubell, in the criminal case that ended in January 1980 — to represent him. “Studio 54” documents the frantic efforts required for Mr. Rubell and Mr. Schrager to create the glamorous, liberating club of their dreams in an abandoned former opera house turned television studio on crime-ridden West 54th Street. People like Donna Summer are bigger than life and we feel we’ve lost something when those people pass. “What distinguishes the product is the magic, the alchemy that happens when you put it together.”, He said, though, that if he were creating Studio 54 again, he would take a different approach to the door policy. STEVE RUBELL DIES AT 45 ... such as Liza Minnelli and Madonna during his 25 years of business dealings with college buddy and longtime partner Ian Schrager. While at Syracuse, he was a member and eventual president of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity. He added that Mr. Schrager didn’t even know that Mr. Rubell — with whom he opened the Palladium nightclub and created the boutique hotel category after they got out of jail — was gay until very near his death from complications of AIDS in 1989. I felt much the same way when Andy Warhol died. In 1985, Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager converted Palladium into a nightclub. Schrager’s friend, Donna Summer, was the queen of that era. The masterminds behind Studio 54 were Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, college roommates at Syracuse University who got into the nightclub business after their first venture, a chain of steak restaurants, failed to flourish. “It reminded me that this time is so near and yet so far away.”, Mr. Schrager believes there were two defining events for his generation — Woodstock and Studio 54 — and he invokes Walt Disney and Steve Jobs as kindred creative spirits. Ian said: ”In 1977, we opened Studio 54 in Manhattan. Rubell attended Wingate High School and was also an avid tennis player, but decided against playing professionally. Ian Schrager, recognized today as a successful hotelier and real estate developer, first came into the spotlight in the late 1970s with the glamorous New York club Studio 54. They didn’t have a building permit when they started construction, which was completed in six weeks. During the hourlong discussion, Schrager was candid about his Studio 54 days and his friendship with longtime business partner Steve Rubell. The timing is haunting — Studio was open for 33 months, from April 1977 to January 1980. “There was a real backlash against Studio, a groundswell of resentment,” Mr. Schrager said. It was through this fraternity that he met fellow brother Steve Rubell, wit… At one point in the new documentary “Studio 54,” Michael Jackson wanders into a television interview that the club’s co-owner Steve Rubell is doing. It’s indicative of a culture of secrets that Mr. Tyrnauer said characterized the time. Mr. Rubell and Mr. Schrager were sentenced to three and a half years, but their time was cut in half after they gave information about the finances of other discos. I didn’t know she was ill. They operated Studio 54, which was without doubt the greatest club of all time. A film by Matt Tyrnauer. First of all, her music emerged first in the gay clubs. She was really the star that helped kick it off. The two Brooklynites revolutionized the nightclub scene, transforming what was … As Schrager tells it in his 2015 book Ian Schrager - Works, “We were dating the same girl, and from the way we went about competing for her, we came to respect and like each other. As the film shows, though, that sense of freedom came with a cost. STUDIO 54. While Mr. Schrager was working on a photo book chronicling the Studio 54 years, he approached Mr. Tyrnauer with the idea of a documentary. Ian Schrager kept jail time a secret from kids after fall of Studio 54 By Oli Coleman. She became a born-again Christian at some point. Steve Rubell, left, and Ian Schrager at the club in 1978. Born on 19th July, 1946 in New York, New York, USA, he is famous for Co-owned Studio 54 with Steve Rubell. She was a stylish woman. Meeting in 1964 at Syracuse University, Rubell was a history major, with Schrager studying economics. But it’s like being shaken into reality when someone like that passes. The iconic Ian Schrager joined editor in chief Stacy Shoemaker Rauen for a fireside chat during HD ‘s second annual Elevate conference held in October in New York. These innovations have become standards and continue to be imitated throughout the world.

His keen instincts for the mood and feel of popular culture were honed during the 70s and 80s, when he and his late business partner, Steve Rubell, created the legendary and groundbreaking Studio 54 and Palladium nightclubs. But between the extroverted Mr. Rubell’s cultivation of celebrities and the studious Mr. Schrager’s sense of style and theatricality, they set out to create the perfect party every night. “The phenomenon is very different from perception — which is sex, drugs, disco, mountains of cocaine, Liza Minnelli, period. In the movie, Mr. Schrager seems more ashamed of this action than of his own crimes, indicating how much it would have disappointed his father — who, we find out, was “Max the Jew,” an associate of the crime kingpin Meyer Lansky. At Studio 54, Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell hosted outrageous parties, welcomed fabulous celebrities — and courted a lot of controversy. That 1980 date was also the beginning of the H.I.V./AIDS era, with the first cases surfacing about that time.”. My office called, saying my phone was ringing off the hook. Close to 25 years since he turned his back on the famous, but infamous Studio 54 nightclub, Ian Schrager, who with his latest business partner Steve Rubell lived the … Along with his Steve Rubell, Ian Schrager was the mastermind behind Studio 54. Studio 54. “It’s where you come when you want to escape. The film is able to explore the inner workings of the club, and this friendship, because, for the first time, Mr. Schrager speaks at length about his Studio 54 experiences. Kamali helped her style and her wardrobe and helped with the first cases surfacing about that I. Rubell hosted outrageous parties, welcomed fabulous celebrities — and courted a lot controversy! Schrager kept jail time a secret from kids after fall of Studio 54 days and his with. 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