STEVE RUBELL

REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER

In the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll in the late 1970s, Steve Rubell and lan Schrager, joint owners of the club Studio 54 in New York City, were called "the first pashas of disco."

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Steven Rubell was the son of a postman who was an avid tennis player and taught his children the game. Later at Syracuse University, Steve was the captain of the tennis team, and there he met Schrager, who became his best friend for life. In 1977 in New York they opened the trendy club Studio 54, which came to symbolize the lack of restraint that characterized the sexual revolution of the pre-AIDS 1960s and 1970s.

Rubell and Schrager made a fortune with Studio 54, but both pleaded guilty when charged with Federal tax evasion, and they served 13 months in prison together. Released in 1981, they formed a real estate consortium that acquired Morgan's, the Royalton, and other luxury hotels in Manhattan. They sold Studio 54 and opened the Palladium, a plush home-away-from-home for such rich and famous table-hoppers as Donald Trump, Bianca Jagger, Halston (see card 20), and Calvin Klein. Rubell was also a good friend of Elizabeth Taylor (see card 104). But the great days of discotheques and all-night partying were over. Rubell said, "In the '80s people are worried about AIDS and are in a mood to stay home."

When Rubell died in July 1989, the fortune he had built after his release from prison was estimated at $100 million. The New York Times said he died of "hepatitis and septic shock," but people who worked with him said sex, drugs, and rock and roll had been lethal for Rubell, and the cause of his death was actually AIDS. Next Card 47: CRAIG RUSSELL: Female Impersonator

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