The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night

Studio 54 was the quintessential midtown Manhattan nightspot of the 1970s and early '80s, where the gay and straight worlds intersected; where celebs and wannabes crowded in to disco, drug and who knows what else; in front of which people waited for hours in hopes of being admitted (two women arrived naked on horseback as Lady Godivas; the horses were let in, but the women weren't). Haden-Guest, a regular writer for New York magazine and Vanity Fair, reports on his beloved ""Nightworld""--the life of New York clubs--with an enthusiasm that assumes we all were swept away by disco-mania. The most compelling part of this chronicle concerns the rise and fall of Steve Rubell, the boy from Queens, and the club he created that drew the rich and famous from all over the globe. Rubell and his partner, Ian Schrager, were eventually sentenced to three years in jail for tax evasion. Haden-Guest, who's prone to exaggeration, calls their trial the media culture's version of ""Moscow's Show Trials of the Stalin era."" Some readers will find the gossip, name-dropping and dirt-dishing delicious; others will wonder what all the fuss is about. This will be of most interest, darling, to followers of Liz, Liza, Bianca and Roy Frowick, aka Halston. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)