The Flivving Niteries

Is it possible for a nightclub to lose money with famed Ecdysiast Sherry Britton stripping to bugle beads and pearls, and an undraped cutie splashing in a giant champagne glass? Answer: Yes, the way the nightclub business is going these nights. As the trade weekly Variety would put it: To get off the nut (i.e., earn back the investment) in a bigtime nitery operation now, a boniface has to do boffo biz seven nights a week, and even then he may wind up flivving. Reason: the top-liners are slugging the spots for too much coin. The latest of the show bizites to feel the pinch are Manhattan's Lou Walters, whose "six-stage, super-Broadway showcase," Cafe de Paris, is deep in the red after only a month's operation, and Brooklyn's Ben Maksik, who last week shut down his cavernous Town & Country Club (TIME, April 7) for the summer, at the same time filed a petition in bankruptcy.

Cafe de Paris opened with a ballyhooed two-hour revue featuring Stripper Britton and starring Shouter Betty Hutton. Boniface Walters (who ran Manhattan's Latin Quarter for years) paid $22,500 a week just for Singer Hutton. For such a blue chip outlay, he needed two full houses every week night and three on weekends, with every one of the 1,000 seats returning as much as $30. The first week he grossed $70,000 and lost $10,000. Says he: "If I'd paid Hutton a normal salary, I could have made $10,000 instead."

Boniface Maksik operated on the theory of low minimum and high capacity (2,000 a show) to get him off the nut. He shelled out as high as $40,000 a week for boffo biz getters like Jerry Lewis, Johnnie Ray, Harry Belafonte, but not all of his headliners paid their way. This season only Lewis and Belafonte were black ink.

Owners are bitter at the stars who made their reputations in clubs and are now biting the hands that fed them. As things stand, the expensive talent gravitates to a few favorite spots in Florida and Las Vegas. So where does the poor boniface put his coin these days? The only blue chips, according to Variety, are the little intimate places and a couple of hotel and club plusheries in each of the really hub metropoli.

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