Hit by Hunks of Controversy, Chippendales Makes a Move
Mann’s Chinese Theater, Tail o’ the Pup, Frederick’s of Hollywood--they’re all Los Angeles landmarks of kitsch.
But another member of the list, Chippendales, soon may be off, if, as its owner promises, it uproots itself from its nine-year Westside site and moves out of the city.
The club has a sex discrimination suit pending, has lost its liquor license and may have its fire permit permanently revoked. This Friday, it will relocate temporarily to another area location.
But owner Steve Banerjee is negotiating for a permanent spot outside the city, where he hopes to free himself of the problems with city and state officials that have plagued him since he opened his distinctive club.
Chippendales may be one of the only places in town serving girl drinks: Gin and tonics with a maraschino cherry, strawberry daiquiris topped with a mound of whipped cream.
But then, this is a girl place, where for $20 women can cat call, whistle, ogle, grope and kiss sweaty male hunks in G-strings to their heart’s content. It draws tourists and locals for nights of PG-13-rated thrills.
Will the Show Go On?
Chippendales has confounded skeptics who predicted its revue wouldn’t last as long as disco. Since women’s magazines with nude men never took off, who would have thought there would be a solid market for male strippers?
Banerjee, 40, did. And if he has his way, the show will go on.
His compounded problems did not make him break a sweat on a recent, white-hot day when he wore a tie and an Oxford shirt buttoned to the neck. In his wire-rimmed glasses, the soft-spoken native of Bombay, India, looked more like a Wall Street banker than a nightclub impresario.
“I have had several offers over the last year or so to move to a bigger and better place,” he says.
“The reason I stayed here was that I started here and spent 18 hours a day from 1975 on. So I have an emotional attachment to the place. For financial reasons, it’s a terrible place for us to stay because (the building is so small) we turn away thousands of girls a month.”
Banerjee never has been shy about accusing officials of picking on him in their crackdowns on his club: “It started with the Police Commission the first month we were open.
“They wanted me to close. Their argument was that it was an unethical, lewd and crude show. After a year, they realized that female audiences will not buy the lewd and crude factor. Then they changed their tactics and they came after us on other grounds like we’d be investigated for drugs, prostitution.
“You have to understand what the bottom line is here,” he says. “From day one, they felt that if Chippendales became very profitable and successful, places like this were going to be in every city and every block and that did not happen. And when they realized that we weren’t going to close down, it became a vendetta for them more than anything else.”
‘We’d Be Besieged’
Banerjee hopes to end the battles by moving to another club with its own liquor license on Friday. “I know,” he says, massaging his brow, “that if I go to L.A. city again, the intensification of their harassment would be tremendous. We’d be besieged.”
Fire and alcohol regulators emphatically deny Banerjee’s charges.
“Mr. Banerjee has made frequent allegations in the past, and it is a fallacy that he was being singled out because we felt his club was immoral,” says Batallion Chief Dean Cathey. “All of that is a total fantasy.
“The bottom line is that he has never done anything to correct the situation there. He has risked the safety of those people who are in that building for his own personal gain,” he said, noting that in the last five years, Chippendales has been fined $14,000 and received 36 months of probation for exceeding its 299-person maximum occupancy.
Banerjee has appealed the latest overcrowding charge with the fire commissioners’ board; the case is to be heard Aug. 11.
The decision to revoke the club’s liquor license over a discrimination charge was upheld on appeal last week. The license was confiscated July 28, but the club stayed open without serving liquor.
Since 1976, says Warren Tankersley, district administrator at the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control branch in Inglewood, seven charges have been filed against Chippendales for assorted violations. Fines have been levied and temporary suspensions ordered but the club never has been shut permanently.
No Personal Vendettas
Tankersley, who never has met Banerjee, says the citations are not based on any personal vendetta.
There have been other entanglements. Last year, the club’s parent company, Easebe Enterprises, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. A two-year dispute over racial quotas ended in an agreement to an affirmative action program to hire more black employees and allow black patrons.
And last month, lawyer Gloria Allred sued Chippendales on behalf of two men and a woman, alleging the men were barred from seeing the show.
Banerjee hopes his move also will allow him to finally test ideas he has considered for years, plans to expand his club into a “Disneyland for adults,” women, men and couples.
His reference to the Magic Kingdom is no accident. Banerjee idolizes Walt Disney and says of him: “Sometimes, I think if he were alive and I got a chance to speak to him, I could talk him into being a partner. Maybe a silent partner, but I’m sure he would have been thrilled to see it.”
Banerjee was a fourth-generation printer who worked in Canada and Los Angeles. He left India because he yearned to travel. He had never been in a nightclub when he bought a dying rock ‘n’ roll bar in 1975. It eventually became Chippendales.
First he turned the rock club into a disco with jazz- and street-dance performers; in 1979, he alternated an all-male revue with female mud wrestling.
“I wanted to package an all-American, Ivy-league look,” he recalls, “and sell it to the American women. The minute the lady walks in here, she feels it’s something different.”
A Road Company Version
This show since has spawned a road company and Chippendales products, such as calendars, videos and T-shirts. They were developed to defray his legal costs over the years, Banerjee says.
The show itself has evolved. It has gone upscale with better choreography, costumes and writers.
Banerjee persuaded a reluctant director-choreographer Steve Merritt--whose credits include television, Las Vegas and civic light opera--to overhaul the act three years ago.
“I was doing a show in Las Vegas at the Desert Inn, and Steve saw the show there and asked if I was interested,” he said. “I said no. Like everybody else I had pictured women stuffing dollar bills down G-strings, and I thought I was too talented for that.”
Eventually Merritt gave in and revamped the show. He credits the club’s success to the current safe-sex trend, saying, “People need some kind of release. And if it can’t be a physical one, it can be an emotional one. It’s getting into fantasy.”
Banerjee had another explanation for the club’s longevity: “I found the answer when I spoke to women who were 70, 80, 90 years old. They said they were so thrilled to be looking at good-looking guys. They had done it for years but now they could do it out in the open. I realized Chippendales would have worked 50 years ago, and it will work for the next 50 years.”
Even psychologists ponder its success. “It’s almost a sort of legitimate form of pornography--or semi-legitimate,” says Jerald Jellison, a USC psychology professor. “It provides a safe way to indulge your sexual fantasies, and it’s more satisfying than reading a Gothic novel. More of your senses are involved. And it’s less dangerous than picking up Mr. Goodbar.”
If Chippendales represents women’s wild fantasies, for the men who provide them, “dropping trou” on stage is just a job--a second one at that. Most of the dancers intend to be actor-models but a few have other sidelines.
Bernie Tavis, 23, is “Devin” the rock star. He is an aspiring musician in real life. The Pittsburgh native applied as a host, intrigued by the lines of women waiting outside. He eventually was made a dancer and has been with the club for a year.
“It’s a job, basically,” he says, crossing his legs to reveal veined calves. He tosses back his long, inky hair and adds that taking his clothes off, though he would rather not do it, is not tough since he is “basically an exhibitionist.”
“I get to sing my music,” he says. “It’s decent exposure.”
‘Tip ‘n’ Kiss’
What goes through his mind as he grabs dollar bills and kisses women (called in the trade a “tip ‘n’ kiss”)?
“Money,” he says without hesitation. “And I get asked, ‘How can you kiss all the old ladies and the ugly people and stuff?’ and I always compare it to when you were little, and you went over to your grandmother’s house and had to kiss all your relatives and they’d slip you a five or a ten.”
Club Newcomer
Phil Barone plays a chauffeur in the current “Welcome to Your Fantasy” revue. At 29, he is a club newcomer, scouted for its calendar by choreographer Merritt while Barone worked as a cameraman on the “Donahue” show.
Barone has been a cameraman for nine years. He works mostly on sports events, ventures he does not intend to give up for the spotlight, though he notes Chippendales is a nice way to make extra money. The “tip ‘n’ kiss” routine can net him $75 to $125 nightly in the club.
Even Banerjee has a sideline--selling real estate. He admits he has mellowed now that he has a wife and daughter, 3. But he clings to his plan for an adult amusement complex and seems antsy to launch it.
Meantime, he busies himself with favored pastimes, like studying business journals and watching movies 20 or 30 times.
“I like to look at how the script was put together, the lighting, the camera work,” he says. “It helps when I do shows or the calendar, especially watching someone like Steven Spielberg. I also study Giorgio Armani and Calvin Klein so I know what they are doing, what direction they’re going, how they focus, so I have an idea of what I’m going to do.”
