00:00Okay, guys, used to be paradise.
00:03It was an explosion, a complete immersion.
00:07I never thought there would be a place for me to be myself.
00:10Studio!
00:11Anybody who tells you that they were there in the 70s and remembers it wasn't there.
00:16You were in the middle of a group of the most beautiful men you'd ever seen.
00:21You could feel the energy move throughout the whole room.
00:24When you crossed over into the threshold of the dance floor was a kind of alternative reality.
00:30Everybody is rockin' Hollywood!
00:33That was really my entrance into life.
00:36I was wide-eyed.
00:37It was Hollywood.
00:38The bidding night.
00:39You had 1,500 people.
00:41And the turntable would jump.
00:43I said to Scott, call RCA.
00:45Get someone down here to fix that damn turntable.
00:48Scott was an eye doctor, and this is how it goes.
00:51Ma, I'm closing my practice in Boston.
00:53I'm gonna open up a gay disco in Los Angeles.
00:57Click.
00:58It was not uncommon to put whatever cocaine they had, and we would just take from the pile
01:03as it went along, and went back to serving drugs.
01:06My, or serving drugs, serving drinks.
01:09It was so new in all ways.
01:11I mean, the music and the dance floor, and we could hear the sound, and the boom, boom,
01:14boom, and in the back lot with the stage.
01:17Courier for Holland!
01:18And all of a sudden, I looked over, and I see Cary Grant walk through the doors.
01:22Oh my God, it's Cary Grant!
01:25I remember seeing Betty Davis.
01:27To see Rock Hudson, I thought, wow.
01:29This whole place was packed with celebrities.
01:31And all that jazz.
01:33Knowing that Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire and all of these great stars were coming through
01:39this dance hall just made me laugh.
01:43Women had to have three pieces of ID.
01:45Open-toed shoes were not allowed.
01:47There was discrimination against Blacks.
01:49Protests began almost immediately.
01:52These protests were broad range.
01:54The fact that they made the decision to bring me with them the night of the fundraiser, if
01:59something's going to happen and the place is going to get blown up, at least we're all
02:03there together.
02:06He's gone, he's gone, he's gone.
02:07That's so-and-so, he's gone.
02:09It's just shocking.
02:10Like within a week, if you went on vacation and you took a trip, you'd come back to find
02:14out who had died.
02:15I see all of these people that I used to dance with at the clubs.
02:20This is 30 years later, and I still get very emotional about it.
02:23Not only did you lose people who were, um, not, um, they're so horrible, you know?
02:33So it's a proposal now to actually tear the building down.
02:37That is what instigated this event.
02:39We're going to remember our experiences at Studio One.
02:42Once the show started, the magic happened.
02:44West Hollywood lost 10,000 people, and their spirits are still here because this was the
02:51place where they were happiest.
03:08God bless Studio One forever.
03:12You started this fire now in my soul.
03:15Now can't you see it burning out of control?
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