Phil Donahue: We're talking about swinging,
two couples who swing. Larry Levenson is here.
He's owner of Plato's Retreat in New York City,
an actual commercial establishment where people can go and swing.
Some of the tenets of swingers
include the separation of-- what they say
is the separation of sex and love.
We promote social intercourse and sexual intercourse.
Whatever you want to do, you can do.
( audience groans )
- Aren't you illegal? - No. No way.
Sex is not illegal anyplace in New York.
But I couldn't open a cathouse, could I?
- Well, that's paid sex. - ( audience groans )
( disco playing )
( crowd rioting )
John Leo: The '70s were a transitional period.
It was when the ethic of the '60s took hold.
Newscaster: 1500 cops are injured.
Woman: People were complaining New York had become a pit of vice.
Anthony Haden-Guest: That contributed to disco
and Plato's also played its part
in suddenly turning things around in New York
and making New York what it was--
the most exciting city in the world.
( disco music continues )
- # you make me feel... # - it was a party town.
1977 in New York was a fabulous year.
Sexuality was in the air.
Haden-Guest: Everybody was immensely curious.
Lots and lots of heteros would go to the gay clubs
just to look at the glory holes.
And lots of people who were not remotely exhibitionistic would go to Plato's.
Swing couples went there to swap.
You try my wife and I'll try your wife.
Forget about the sex. You could wander around. You could actually swim.
You could eat this free third-rate buffet...
which I always considered tempting, but dangerous.
They had dancing. They had a show.
Dan Dorfman: I thought to myself, "this really can't be real.
Maybe I'm watching a dirty movie."
But it was a dirty movie that really came to life.
Friends of mine said that they went there by looking at it on cable television.
I was never in Plato's Retreat.
I have no idea if they in fact took off--
other than clothing.
10 years earlier everyone was rolling around naked
in Woodstock, you know,
and smoking pot and screwing their brains out, you know,
in the meadows.
So this was just an indoor version that was accessible to New Yorkers.
I am Larry's sister. We were five years apart.
We were very very close
and we grew up as best friends.
My parents had a very conventional lifestyle and marriage.
My father was a hard-working man.
He was in the kosher meat business.
Oldest memories of Larry are as a...
smiling young man,
didn't really love the academic pursuits.
When I first met Larry, he had just gotten out of the service.
He had told me that his father had a butcher shop
and he was a wholesale distributer of briskets.
And he would work nights.
And I really feel that some of the times that he said
he was working, he wasn't working.
When he first married Gloria, I don't think any of us thought that it wouldn't last
because we didn't know anybody who had separated or divorced.
I thought he was cheating on me.
Danny Levenson: My dad and my mom got divorced when I was six.
So my dad really wasn't around a lot.
My parents separated when I was very young.
So my first recollection actually is when my dad used to work at McDonald's
and he brought me the hamburglar-- it was a little stuffed hamburglar.
So that's what I used to sleep with-- I used to sleep with a little hamburglar.
All I can remember is through those years,
my mother yelling at my father on the phone, "they're waiting for you.
You didn't show up. You said you were coming."
And of course every business that Larry was in was on the weekends.
So the times when fathers would be with their children,
Larry was either off selling sodas on the beach
or preparing for swingers parties,
wherever they might be held.
I was very surprised when Larry was involved
in that kind of lifestyle.
I really didn't think that it was something that would be his thing to do.
But maybe I just didn't know him that well.
# what's our favorite evening game? #
# night baseball? #
# oh, baby, you're all wet #
# let's swap partners is the name #
# suburban roulette... #
You know what I don't like to see is this thing about you have to be monogamous.
I say nobody's monogamous. And if you make somebody say
that you're fucking monogamous and you're gonna be legitimate,
"I married her. I'm never gonna fuck," I'm a liar.
The swinging movement was very small
and very secret.
We all have jobs and we all pay mortgages.
Just because we consider ourselves swingers,
we're not freaks of nature.
# I love your sister #
# tomorrow night... #
At a swing party, you can go, you can find-- meet other people
that maybe can meet some of your sexual needs
that maybe your spouse can't.
And yet you don't have to go out and cheat.
Swinging is a situation where a man and a woman,
part of their sex life
is to find other couples or other people
that have similar interests,
that they like socially, they like to be with,
but in particular they want to have sex with.
# suburban roulette... #
# suburban roulette! #
The meeting area was usually a bar
that they took over for Friday, Saturday night.
I worked as a waitress and some guys used to come in
and they brought in "screw" magazine and I brought it home
and I showed it to Charlie.
- And that's all it took. - And there were all kinds of ads in it.
- And we started to think about it. - Get interested.
It was interesting.
( Bass music thumping )
It was a place for them to dance,
have a drink, meet each other.
I remember it looked more like a Bar Mitzvah.
# hey, little girl, get your dancing shoes #
# gold satin jacket... #
I don't know anybody's last name in any of these places.
And yet you can go home with them, make love to them,
spend the weekend with them, kiss them goodbye--
"see you next week, John, Mary. Bye-bye."
And that's the end of it and you're best friends for life.
Steve: People would be handing out slips that say,
"okay, there's a party on the east side tonight."
The only problem is when you're stoned,
and I said, "Now I gotta go to Queens?"
# the roller coaster gotta make the most #
# and dance dance dance... #
I met Larry Levenson at a party back in the mid-'70s
in Coney Island, Brooklyn.
And he started arranging some organized swing parties.
He liked the idea
of being able to have that scene out in the open
the way gay bars did.
It was a one-man band at the beginning.
It was just him and Mary and maybe a couple of other people.
Mary made all the phone calls.
Mary did a lot of the footwork.
Mary was actually responsible for putting together
the logo of Plato's.
The backward twos was Mary's idea.
I'm going to ask you one of my favorite indiscreet questions.
How did you and Larry meet? Now come on, the truth now.
Well, I had come with another young man to Plato's
in its first location.
And I fell in love with him on the spot.
# when I get home, babe... #
Dian Hanson: Mary and Larry were swingers
And they started the club together.
And it seemed like a perfect idea
and a way to be close.
So it was a family thing.
# I wanna kiss you all over... #
Reporter: What did he say? Do you remember?
- ( giggles ) - Out with it!
I was on my way to the ladies' room
and he told me to come on in the water.
And I told him I couldn't right then
because I was on my way to the ladies' room.
And he said, "come on in. The water's nice and warm
and that's how it got that way."
That's it, that's Larry-- Mr. Taste.
- You got to know Mary better than me... - Yes.
...Physically and mentally. ( laughs )
That might have been your first female, I think. Really, huh?
- No. - No?
It mushroomed from there.
Got ahold of a hotel--
this hotel basement pool area.
Yeah, so this call came in from somebody--
I don't remember who it is anymore,
some friend or acquaintance and said, "there's this live sex club
where people are having sex in front of everybody."
And I said, "you mean a gay bar?"
and they said, "no no, these are straight people."
# am I dreaming #
# that you're with me? #
- # am I dreaming... # - Steve: Plato's was always
for couples only.
And of course we always invited single ladies.
It was a tacky little place.
And sitting behind there is this guy Larry--
who I later learned is Larry Levenson. He seemed in charge
and he's sitting there in a towel,
and that's it.
One of the best parts of it for me
was that it was relaxed in the sense that people
were coming and not necessarily doing anything.
Not even necessarily taking their clothes off.
Two of the men...
were wearing no clothes
except for black socks and shoes.
And walking around that way, kinda like that stag-film look.
So I wrote it up.
I played it pretty big.
And a few days later I went there-- went back.
# one thing I feel that I like... #
Plato's was a simple name. It's the only one I could spell actually.
So we used Plato's. Then after that I found out
that Plato's was gay, but it was too late.
The lines were just unbelievable.
I mean we went from, what? 30, 40 couples or people
to 400!
Now you have a lot of people that don't know the old crowd.
There were people that used to come to Plato's
that to most people-- would say were not the most physically appealing,
but they were the nicest people you'd ever want to meet in the world.
They were walking around with the black socks and the shoes,
and this new group were just naked
and much wilder.
People say, "hey, you got a date? You want a night out?" et cetera, et cetera.
"You and your date, you got a date that's sort of on the wild side?"
Personally I think that
with a little encouragement
everybody's on the wild side.
All of a sudden he really was on a runaway tiger--
of sex.
- It was like a big party. - There was literally lines around the block.
Charlie: They were just coming down and in and taking over
and dancing and holding hands,
and hugging. It was a sight.
Freaked me out. I didn't know.
Steve: Plato's was becoming big. We needed a big place.
We needed a special place.
He contacted a couple of good friends of his
which I also knew: Frank Pernice,
Frankie-- he was some sort of caterer.
Frank came home one day and said,
"what a great idea. This has to be fantastic."
About a week or two weeks later,
we met Hy Gordon there.
Could be dangerous.
They were gentlemen. They were the type of people that they didn't have
to throw their weight around, if you understand what I mean.
Why Larry had to hook up with these people--
I can't tell. I don't know.
Frankie used to say that Larry had a grocery store
and he turned it into a supermarket.
Captain John: He ended up renting the Ansonia Hotel.
Charlie: It was actually a gay...
- bathhouse. - ...bathhouse.
In fact Bette Midler sang there.
And what's-his-name.
- The piano player-- Barry Manilow. - Barry Manilow.
# Tootsie roll soul and doodle-white shoes... #
Woman: When I first heard about Plato's,
all my ideas and everything I had heard about Plato's basically was wrong.
I thought that I would walk through the door and trip over
a lot of fucking bodies in the middle of the floor.
And it just doesn't happen that way.
It was a dark door, just a rope outside.
It had a long stairway going down.
And I think the admissions people
were at the top of the stairway.
Walking into Plato's is not necessarily an event in itself.
Just being there is the event.
Plato's Retreat is not a sex club, it's a swing club
for free-thinking free-living adult couples.
It's a club with everything disco, everything included,
with sex available if couples want it.
Bacho: I asked, "what the fuck is it?"
You know? There's like 20 mattresses laid together.
It was a dance floor. Then you had the dance floor in front of me.
Most everyone was walking around naked.
As I said, at first we wrapped our towels around us
when we first walked out, but then when we saw
the atmosphere of everybody very free,
laughing, kissing,
and really without their towels, we figured what the heck.
Bryce Britton: I don't know, it was just kind of like
a bathhouse locker room. But I do think that there was
A lot of, like, coaching going on,
at least with the women and encouragement,
and a feeling of sisterhood like we're all in this together.
There was just lots of lonely people
looking to meet other people.
Sex was part of the game, but it wasn't the whole game.
Nobody made fun of you.
Nobody said, "ugh!" you know?
How you look, how you look disgusting or whatever--
Any inhibitions you had you got over.
And you didn't have them anymore.
# I can see you coming a mile away... #
And you had a jacuzzi.
Al Goldstein: Anyone who went into the jacuzzi was insane
Because I think there was every kind of bacteria. It was chemical warfare.
We played ping-pong. We went swimming.
Abigail: People have a sense of being cleansed in a pool.
This was a naughty pool.
Jacqueline: Guys were floating on the top of the water
And their penises were sticking up and it looked like periscopes.
( laughs )
I had just come from Paris so I was a young photographer,
and kind of a shy girl from Ohio.
So I-- I--
I disrobed...
And I plunge into the pool.
And I'm swimming. I, like, go.
I sort of underwatered the whole length of the pool.
And when I come up, I see all these men standing around the pool
And they're all jerking off.
And their come is, like, coming in an arc
across the pool over my head.
It was just amazing.
That was one of my biggest regrets--
was that I didn't get that picture.
- You go there, right? - Definitely, yes.
- There's a membership fee? How much is it? - Right.
It cost $25 per couple.
Now for that, you get a meal that was fantastic,
like you get at any Bar Mitzvah, a full smorgasbord.
Chicken, ribs, chow mein,
lasagna, meatballs.
- Spaghetti. - No, lasagna.
- Oh, okay. - Potato salad, macaroni.
- Cold cuts. - Coleslaw.
- Cold cuts. - Cold cuts.
- Did I say chicken? - Yeah.
Why are you asking about that horrible food?
Jesus. Which, by the way, Larry thought was wonderful.
Larry really thought that was wonderful.
He was so proud of his buffet.
But the buffet was disgusting.
There was people-- oral sex this and that--
All crazy sex things. So we left there.
I said I want to go to the room and eat my sandwich.
So we went to another room-- I guess the pool table--
and they were having sex on the pool table.
We used to go buy pizza for ourselves
and it was real good pizza and we said to Larry,
- "it would be nice after the food's almost gone"-- - just to break it up.
- About 1:00 in the morning. - When you start running out of food
and people come out of the orgy or they're dancing,
swimming-- you feel like grabbing something.
They're tired of a bologna sandwich.
I said, "Hey, why don't you order 10 pies?"
"Why not?"
- Woman: You weren't hiding, were you? - No.
- Did you meet a nice girl? - No.
Leo: Everything was open except these few black cubicles.
That you could have private sex if you felt embarrassed
to be doing it in front of the Japanese tourists.
Don: You could hear conversations in the room to the right of you,
on the left of you. You'd hear women trying to figure out
who was going to carpool to Hebrew School in the morning.
We spent some very very happy hours
controlling our hysteria
so that people inside wouldn't know that we were listening
to the kind of forced dialogue between people who have just met
in an orgy room.
It was good stuff. I wish I'd recorded some of it.
When Larry showed me into this closed Cubicle
and the woman in there was his wife Mary,
he seemed almost excited to be able to introduce Mary to the press:
"Hi, Mary, how are you? This is John Leo."
And again it was almost the enthusiasm
of a Kiwanis executive showing off his home town.
- Larry: Why repress your desires? - Donahue: What?
- Why repress your desires? - I'd like to be in the Indianapolis 500 too,
but I have the common sense not to engage in it because it's not good for me.
( applause )
And that's just what he said-- "it's not good for everybody."
So for you, it wouldn't be good.
The mattress room was the most intense.
And for people who found Plato's really uncomfortable
in terms of almost morally,
that was the toughest place to go and look.
You would have maybe 200 bodies in there
on a busy night
and just writhing together like a bucket of worms.
# love today, cry tomorrow #
# who's to say #
# life is gay... # - Abigail: "look at that guy's--
he's not really handsome, but look what he's got.
And look what she's got and where is that going?"
It was real and your ears could hear it was real.
Someone-- ( moans )
the breathing and even the smell and the sweat
and the-- ugh.
It exhilarated me and at the same time
it sort of depressed me.
Because it completely kills your notions
about romance.
Like a dance floor, sometimes people are just dancing.
But sometimes there's a groove-- a tribal groove
that people get in
and be in incredible synch and there would be
a lot of energy and it was like that with the mattress room.
I was terrified of the matt room.
( moaning )
And you'd fuck a little and you watch a little and hang out,
fuck a little more.
# danger in the shape of something wild #
# stranger dressed in black, she's a hungry child... #
( heart beating )
( panting )
Dorfman: Bacho the disc jockey, he told me, "you're a reporter, right?"
He says, "watch!" he played the music.
He'd speed up the music and the things would go faster.
He slowed down the music and the things would go slower.
It was unbelievable. You had to be there to see that.
Fast and slow lovemaking.
Ferrato: Ejaculation juices were everywhere.
So I'm sitting on a lot of these wet cushions.
And then on one of these nights I go home
and I start feeling really itchy.
"Oooh, what's that? What is that?"
And then I looked down and I see all these crabs were in there
and I just got a big dose of it.
You know, because that's where crabs breed
is in all those damp, moist...
nether places.
I mean, I just remember a lot of this--
you know, in the mattress room.
# hot child in the city. #
What made you organize--
originate Plato's Retreat,
A place for swinging couples?
- What is the swinging movement? - It's a couples' movement.
Couples that want to be free-thinking,
free-living adult couples.
They don't believe in monogamous relationships.
They would rather get involved with other people
but together with their spouses instead of cheating with them.
# I was born with a smile on my face #
# the whole of my life's been a pantomime... #
Leo: Larry had the pitch and tone of a missionary.
He thought he was the future and he was pulling back the curtain
on something wholesome and happy.
I only actually met him once,
and I was unable to shake his hand
because just before he extended it,
he was doing something with it
that would tend to make you want to stay several yards away.
# born with a smile on my face... #
Hanson: Larry said, "I fall in love with every woman
I have sex with, even if I have sex with 10 women a night."
And Larry could have sex with 10 women a night.
He was phenomenal that way.
He said, "It's always romance,
it's always exciting and I'm always grateful."
# to have your leisure give you pleasure... #
The thing I mostly remember is he had these giant teeth.
He had really huge teeth.
There's a yiddish word-- hamisch-- and that's what he was.
He was like your nicest uncle.
- A Hugh Hefner. - A maitre d'.
Larry was...
no question a trailblazer. He was a pioneer
in his field. Quite the guy.
Whether you were in the business, whether you were rich,
whatever, Larry always had time for you...
especially if you had a great-looking wife.
I think he was lonely. I think he loved attention.
He loved having people around him, you know?
And he loved being, I guess,
you know, the guy with--
the kid with the-- with the baseball bat.
It was his glove, his bat, his ball, you know?
Hi there. It's Larry and Mary again
to tell you about Plato's Retreat,
the first and only couples' club of its kind anywhere.
Yes, there's a full-length swimming pool
and outrageous whirlpool which holds about 30 people at a time,
disco dancing with a live DJ.
I grew up in the upper-middleclass Jewish Catskills
of the Concord Hotel.
I was Miss Concord Hotel at 16.
And it seemed to me that
all of those people had children,
and all those children moved to Long Island,
and Southern Jersey.
And all of them went to Plato's.
# when I wake up #
# in the morning light... #
Ferrato: The crowd at Plato's was conventional.
Abigail: It wasn't filled with my friends,
but it did a great job in some ways because it sort of
liberated Long Island. It liberated New Jersey.
Haden-Guest: I never saw a velvet-rope type situation there.
I don't think there might have been a velvet rope.
I never saw an eager crowd waiting to get in
with bouncers keeping them out.
Everything at Plato's, even the ugly person--
I don't think there were any-- was-- was--
had a certain charm.
- It was a poor man's playboy mansion. - Absolutely.
Matuschka: I actually admire people that are that free
that could go into a place like that and just let it all hang out,
take all their clothes off and walk around--
including those fat people that look like they've got, you know,
double sets of twins in their belly.
I'm amazed that they can do that because even though
I looked a lot different then-- I was skinnier
and I had two breasts-- I couldn't take my clothes off in front of strangers.
I mean, I think it takes a lot of something to be able to do that.
# I'll meet ya in the usual place...#
Dorfman: I thought they had resuscitated the orgy
For the man in the street, which is exactly what they did.
You pay whatever it is-- 20, 25 bucks--
You get in and you can join in an orgy.
Where can you do that in the United States?
You could do it at Plato's.
My friends were very...
you know, backwards.
And I-- I grew away from my friends.
I grew away. I went to the city. I went to bars.
I went up on Second Avenue, First Avenue,
up to Uptown. I wanted to meet a more educated crowd.
I was no boy scout. I was a wild guy,
Very uninhibited. I was a model.
The first time I heard about Plato's Retreat
was I went to Club Med at Martinique with a friend of mine
and this guy was telling me, "Miles, you're gonna love this place.
It's wild. Everyone's having sex all over the place."
My boyfriend was a minister.
and he asked me
to go to Plato's Retreat that night
And we went.
I was a tingling mess of hormones.
I was like-- almost like when you're a teenager.
Miles: As soon as I walked down the stairs,
a little redheaded girl comes up to me,
really pretty, grabs me by the arm
and says, "Come here. Come with me."
Betsy: At first we talked to each other for a little bit.
And, um, you know,
he was obviously more comfortable there than I was.
We go right into a little private room.
You'll love that. We're in Plato's Retreat,
where everyone's having sex all over the place,
there are little rooms called "for the inhibited."
Everybody was so nice to me. Everybody made you feel at home.
I had a chance to...
look around a little bit.
And somewhere in there he disappeared.
And I found myself
with a construction worker from Connecticut.
# at Plato's Retreat #
# you can make your dreams come true #
# fulfill your wildest fantasies #
# we've got them all for you... #
She was nuts, absolutely wild.
She goes, "Oooh, pussy loves cock. Pussy loves cock."
Unbelievable-- a maniac. I said, "this is my kind of place."
# the pleasure and the fun #
# will keep you feeling young #
# it's for you #
# it's for you... #
I was a young good-looking kid, I guess,
and several girls came on to me
and their boyfriends weren't that attractive.
and if you had to go with one-- you had to trade off. ( laughs )
And she yelled at me, she screamed at me,
and I said, "Just do it! Just do it."
You know? And...
we didn't talk much after that.
# the pleasure and the fun #
# will keep you feeling young #
# it's for you #
# it's for you... #
He was a wonderful lover.
And I said to myself, "People who come to Plato's Retreat
must be pretty good lovers," because this man had been.
Um...
# it's for you! #
I wanted to tell the people I grew up with,
like, no, I came from a neighborhood in Queens, New York.
But you couldn't tell-- you couldn't talk about
that kind of thing with guys from the neighborhood because they wouldn't believe you.
To be honest,
it was going out on an edge for me.
It was a very edgy thing to do
to...
you know, spend an evening in Plato's Retreat.
There was this attractive mulatto woman
going down on her man with her ass up in the air.
I sat down
on the mattress next to her and started stroking her.
No opposition, so I--
I guess, you know, stuck my cock in her pussy
and screwed her.
And she didn't even look back. She was too busy blowing her boyfriend.
I hope I'm not being too vulgar.
The minister and I...
did hook up sometime during that evening.
But I don't remember when.
- Which is telling. - Larry: Phil?
Yeah-- yes, Larry Levenson, Plato's Retreat.
I can speak for Plato's
and we get about 50% new couples every night.
We have disco dancing-- in fact we have a song
about Plato's Retreat that's number six in the country right now.
Abigail: I met people years later who said things like,
"oh, I went in there. I went to Plato's."
I went to Plato's, you know? It became part of the memoir.
You know? That was exciting in itself.
We had judges, lawyers, police--
- Senators. - Senators.
Ferrato: Robin Leach who was...
He was there just to look.
Students met their professors,
guys met their ex-wives,
future wives.
Sammy Davis, JR. on the dance floor
at Plato's Retreat, it was a treat.
They'd tell me this guy was a big star--
Frank Sinatra's friend, you know.
- Althea, his wife... - Althea, his wife.
...pulled her shirt up.
Oh, man, how could I forget his name?
He's a writer-- Hugh Hefner's friend,
he committed suicide...
Jerzy Kosinski.
Much of the cast of "Saturday Night Live."
What's his name? Dreyf-- Richard Dreyfuss.
He never came down with a lady.
Again he was invited to stay.
Hanson: Dan Pastorini was having a big year
with the Houston Oilers. And the men recognize him.
And the men started, "It's Dan Pastorini! It's Dan Pastorini!"
And just immediately grabbing their wives
and just-- you know,
"fuck Dan Pastorini!"
Reporter: Why did you decide in early 1973
to go underground?
There was no way that I could possibly get a fair trial.
Smith: Abbie Hoffman was underground,
running from the FBI, basically.
And one of these times I got a phone call from him saying, "I'm in town.
And I've been reading all about Plato's
in your column in the 'Voice' and I want to go to Plato's Retreat."
And I said, "are you out of your mind?"
( slurring ) This is where we're working on the new constitution.
- ( giggles ) - Smith: And he said, "no no no, I gotta go. I gotta go.
I gotta go there. I gotta see it.
I can't miss this."
He comes over after awhile and he says,
"Can't I tell them who I am? I mean, they-- they--
they just walk away from me. I thought you said everybody gets laid here."
I said, "go ahead, but I think it's really dangerous."
Abbie was one of the first people
that I knew that couldn't get laid at Plato's.
I probably wouldn't have gone as many times as I did,
but friends from California kept asking me
to walk them in.
I was wondering, do you get a lot of curiosity seekers,
people that just like to go and watch?
- Man: Yes, voyeurs, definitely. - Like me.
Yes, there's no pressure, there's no obligation
and no commitment to do anything at our club.
And I'm positive it's the same way at Larry's club.
Woman: I come for...
sex, good conversation,
intellect.
Michael: The only rule, actually, in the entire club was no.
If somebody said no, that was it.
But if they allowed it, anything went.
Females first. They set the rule.
If they want to be touched, that's fine.
They don't want to be touched, they're not gonna be touched.
If she wants to walk around with her top off...
she walks around with her top off. That was it.
I think at Plato's it was kind of interesting that women
were really in a position to be assertive,
to approach men for sex,
to kind of try out a lot of the things
that we had been on the receiving end of.
It was yummy. Why let them have all the pleasure?
Why even pretend that you didn't feel good about it
and you didn't have a good time when you were sexually involved?
Dodson: The whole thing with Plato's is
that you would walk into this space,
and whether or not you had sex with anyone was really not the point.
The point was is that everybody there
was willing to be nude,
available maybe for sex
and open.
Sex with another man is a fantasy of mine.
I'm someone else. It's an ego trip.
I think that's exactly what it is. It's an ego trip
having some other man, other than my husband, telling me "you're beautiful.
You're good in bed." all this, you know?
It's really a fantasy for me.
And it also felt like you had a secret,
that you had a secret world
that most of the people who were either going to work
or just going about their business in the city
that they didn't know what you had experienced.
Again, it's not just sex. It's not going in there
and say, "I'm going in there 'cause I just want to grab somebody
and I wanna..."
Can I say certain words? Okay.
"...get laid."
I was a social worker in 1978.
But I had good evenings after my social work.
# oh, how happy #
# you have made me #
# oh, how happy #
# you have made me #
# I have kissed your lips #
# a thousand times... #
Van Peebles: I remember once, this couple--
I'm sure they've been thrown out of every swingers club in the world
because they were so large. They had to weigh 300 lbs each.
And they were jitterbugging. They were dancing.
They had on their towels. They had to have double towels
around them. And the towels, of course, fell off.
And then nobody gave a doo-doo-caca.
But what happened was-- it was when they stomped,
they were shaking the-- the-- the--
the Platters for the DJ because they weighed so much.
I mean, they were shaking the whole damn floor.
But it was-- nobody cared.
It was really very very nice.
This was Larry Levenson's castle.
Plato's Retreat was the way that Larry could
embrace everybody and-- and--
exude his generosity, his bounty.
Family togetherness today at a place called Plato's Retreat.
This afternoon the owner held an open house there for children.
In most cases it was a family affair at Plato's today...
Michael Levenson: The first time I actually went
to the club, the club was closed.
My father used to run, like, holiday parties--
Memorial Day, Labor Day.
He would actually rent the big bus, have it parked at my high school.
I would invite 40 of my best friends.
- Woman: Do you mind that your mother comes here? - No, I don't care.
He had a disco and there was a game room there.
Everything was the same as if it was open, except there was no nudity
or no sex. It was a bunch of kids.
That's when we started understanding
what everything was about.
He used to be called-- what? King of Swing.
Yeah, that's right. He was called King of Swing.
# at Plato's Retreat... #
Larry, let us into your heart a minute.
A lot of people are saying Larry Levenson,
a lot of people say sleaze.
I heard the President's speech the other night. He talked about truth,
service, sacrifice, the American dream.
And then we see in this country a disintegration of the American family--
That's what you're really telling us. That's what Plato's Retreat
- is about-- or monogamy is dead. - Oh no.
- Man: No! - Siegel: I'm saying that--
Mary: This is a preservation in a sense, Stanley.
Don't you realize how many men say
"I'm going out with the boys tonight,"
- And they cheat and they lie? - The question is
why aren't you in jail?
We're here at the New York Aquarium now.
- ( laughing ) - Watching orca Shamu do his thing.
Larry, you know, I've never really gotten a chance to talk to you.
Why don't you play with my ass and tell me your philosophy of life?
Whoo!
- Oh my god, he's doing it. - Bacho: Larry got involved with younger women,
wanted to hang out with these women that took him for his money--
the money he didn't have
and the drugs he did have.
Larry was boring because he thought
his whole world was sex.
His world was genitalia.
Again, he never read a book.
He never had a thought. It was all about him as a legend.
He really thought that when it came to swinging
he was-- everyone looked at him as "The King" literally.
We got people from Fort Lauderdale. We got people from California.
We got people from Paris, France, coming to Plato's. They fly in.
We're the eighth wonder of the world. Okay?
I think it's different, but I don't think it's immoral.
This is the biggest thing to hit New York city since the World's Fair.
And it is.
Dorfman: The interesting thing about Larry was
The guy was getting social security checks.
He didn't have any money,
yet he was able to borrow $150,000.
Where does a guy get $150,000?
Goldstein: He was Colonel Sanders
and he had to do his little step--
Step-and-fix-it routine.
Donahue: Is it your view we're gonna have Plato's Retreats--
it's gonna be part of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, too someday?
Within the next three months there will be four more Plato's Retreats around the country.
Larry started to believe the bullshit.
I bullshit all the time when I'm interviewing.
Larry did too, but Larry exaggerated the importance.
I always argued, "It's just fucking."
What is fucking? It's friction.
You believe in a free society?
A free society where people can just have a good time
and enjoy themselves the way they want to, without hurting anybody else.
It's a devastating therapy.
- Larry: But it works for them. - Man: Is it for them?
Hanson: I saw a fight between a couple there at Plato's once
where the husband had found out
that his wife had mended the pants
for a man who was there.
And in fact they'd had sex many times,
but it was this little personal touch that showed affection
that made the husband insane.
I could never bring somebody special, somebody I cared about there.
I couldn't handle my wife or my girlfriend being with somebody else.
And me sitting and watching?
You really did see that sometimes
that what they came out for bit them in the behind.
They got more than what they really bargained for.
If I wanted to have an affair with a man or sleep with a man
that I felt attractive, I can do it.
And Michael knows about it.
It's like dual infidelity.
Interviewer: Do you think Larry is faithful to you out of Plato's Retreat?
For example, is he with other women, do you think?
- Yes, very definitely. - How do you know?
- I don't have time. - Trust.
I believe Mary...
Always had feelings for Larry.
I think her whole life was wrapped around him,
wrapped around the lifestyle.
Most people look at Plato's as the new sexual lifestyle
of the 21st century.
Honestly what most people feel--
I know this is another judgment--
they feel something's gone wrong here.
Mary: Well, maybe something has.
Maybe every marriage in this country has a little something wrong with it.
She knew the people. She knew the crowd.
And I think, like anything else,
too much of something
could freak you out.
There was no Mary room. There was no...
fancy room where Mary could sit up there and be queen
and men would come and court her.
They seemed to have a respectful relationship for a time.
I don't have much more to add about that.
No, I don't remember much more-- same.
- Are you married? - No, uh...
- We were-- I was-- - Are you married?
--in strictly monogamous relationships.
- In a sense-- - You don't hear me.
--In a sense, David, we are married
because I intend to spend the rest of my life with Larry
whether he likes it or not, but, uh...
- But technically no? - Technically no, we're not.
Man: What is the address of the new Plato's
and what is the opening date?
The grand opening will be December 5th, on a Friday night at 9:00 P.M.
That's of this year, of course.
When the 34th street location opened,
it was hopping.
Larry: This is the matt room.
This is a place where you get 20, 30 couples in here at one time.
You must be undressed to come in here. It's a beautiful sight.
Veronica Vera: It was located directly across from McDonald's.
And people used to say it had become the McDonald's of sex.
Nina: I was this normal housewife person.
My husband left, his girlfriend was having a baby.
And you meet different people. I was working at the movie theater in the village.
I was selling the tickets to "Rocky Horror."
And the first time I went to Plato's, it seemed people--
like actually doing something in the open,
you just-- you don't believe what you saw.
Because it was like turning a page in a magazine
and you're sitting there
and then you make up your mind.
You know, you're either into it or you're not.
And I was into it.
One time I was standing there by the ladies' room
in the back and a young girl came up to me,
and she said to me, "are you outrageous?"
And I said, "yes, I am." and with that I put my hand on her breast.
She said, "perhaps you'd like to join us?"
I said, "oh, thank you very much"
and I was invited to go in this room with seven other ladies.
Another time I was there with a young gentleman
and he knew this couple:
The lady was Chinese, the husband was a white gentleman.
And he said to me, "You want to do something with them?
The husband doesn't do anything. He just sits in the corner.
We could be with the lady, the three of us."
And I said okay.
And the husband just sat there in the corner.
Like touching his wife's shoulder,
but not joining in.
( camera clicks )
I was going to be President of the P.T.A.
What do you want out of your life that you're not getting from Mary?
That I am not getting from Mary? There is no man in the world
that can say that his woman gives him
every need that he has-- that there is to have.
I want as much as I can possibly have in this lifetime.
And that's what I'm doing. I'm enjoying myself,
I'm happy and that's the bottom line.
Smith: One of his constant refrains whenever he was interviewed
or talked to anybody was
swinging and Plato's will not save a bad marriage.
It's something extra you do in a great marriage for fun.
As swinging was explained to me by him when I was a kid
was: There is no jealousy.
You know? Swinging is a thing where couples are
in a relationship with each other.
Okay? They have feelings for each other
as if non-swingers do.
But the only difference is
that when they're with someone else,
it's just sex. There's no feelings.
Ferrato: I never saw him going around with Mary.
I never saw them having sex with other couples.
It was always Larry.
Do you have relationships with other men there?
- Occasionally, yes. - Does he know about it?
Yes.
- Do you countenance it? - I think it's fantastic.
Hanson: Mary would be having a lot of men.
You weren't really supposed to have a gangbang just out on the main floor.
You were supposed to go somewhere, and Larry might speak to Mary about it,
and then he'd go off and-- ohhh-- you know,
and say, "Mary's upset."
We'd say, "Mary doesn't look upset. Mary looks like she's having a good time."
"No, Mary's upset."
Vance: She was losing Larry,
not just to the lifestyle, but to one particular woman or another.
Do you really believe that you can make love to a person one time
and fall in love with them? I don't think it can happen.
I really don't. I've never seen it happen.
He was there just to have sex.
The whole thing was how many women he could get.
Vance: She wasn't having it and I don't blame her.
So she went on with this affair with the chauffeur.
Mary and Larry were-- were--
He was starting to tell her to stay home,
and the chauffeur knew both of them
because he used to drive both of them to Plato's.
It ended badly.
They wanted to kill each other.
The chauffeur was in love with Mary.
Larry was in love with Mary.
Mary was in love with the chauffeur-- it was this big nasty triangle.
- Larry would send Mary home with Ron. - Yeah.
So maybe one thing led to another.
I think in the end
he...
The chauffeur had Larry
kidnapped, beaten to a pulp,
sent-- put in the hospital
in an effort to end it in his favor.
That's what I believe happened.
- I never seen a guy that was beat-- - So beat up.
- I mean-- - His face was like out to here.
I think Larry Levenson wound up in the hospital
in Queens stemming from this conflict
between him, Mary and the chauffeur.
After the kidnapping, Mary came by the club a couple of times.
You know, she seemed basically out of it.
You know, she was older and at one point she might have been the queen,
but she definitely wasn't now.
( crowd cheering )
( couple laughing )
Vance: She almost wound up on the street.
She was institutionalized, I believe,
at Bellevue for a while
and she did have a breakdown.
She was really a nice woman. Nice lady.
Maybe they made up that story that it was this guy
- to stay away from the wiseguys. - Ron.
We don't know.
Why it happened, we never knew.
But even then Larry was running around, like, in a wheelchair
and he was perfectly fine. He was saying, "Aw, it's nothing."
I'll be fine. I'll be walking." and he was.
He was, like, smiling through it all.
Plato's Retreat is an unlicensed club
- for swinging couples, right? - Larry: We have a charter.
In approximately July of 1979,
there had been some newspaper article
wherein Larry Levenson had
stated and boasted that,
"We don't pay taxes for Plato's Retreat Inc."
We are definitely a non-profit corporation.
- Now wait a minute, Larry. What do you mean a non-profit? - I'm telling you.
Annie: Two gentlemen appeared
9:00 in the morning. I'm half asleep.
And they says, "We came here to see the books."
So I gave them the books.
I didn't know they were from the Internal Revenue.
And they find out they got a gold mine in front of them,
that these people have been cheating their income tax
for three years.
In one year I think they claimed only $300
of taxable income and paid zero tax.
Davidson: Ann Grippo reentered the business room.
She looked over our shoulder and was peering intently.
She just blurted out voluntarily,
"we're dead."
I tried to take the books away from them.
- ( laughs ) Yeah? - And I did, I took the books.
They didn't keep them. They weren't allowed to keep them.
- Correct. - I took them.
- But now they know that they have-- - Wait.
- So now you got the books back in your hand. - Yeah.
- Did you call Larry? - When they came in that night I told them what happened.
- You didn't do nothing till that night? - No, till that night.
Hy said to me, "You know, I covered our tracks here for three years.
Now we're dead."
There was nothing I could say or do
except that, "hey, I'm sorry."
When they came home that night, they packed their bags and they were gone.
They were so terrified that they were gonna get whacked.
I didn't hear from them again--
It's funny. I laugh because
when I saw them again it was on TV.
Host: Come on up here, Grippos.
Charlie and Ann Grippo.
Welcome. What did you yell, Charlie, when you were running up here?
- We're coming! - We're coming and we'll get it right
if it takes us all night.
He went onto some kind of quiz show in Vegas.
Both: "Las Vegas Gambit."
- You're from where? - New York City.
- On vacation? - Yes.
Charlie: I don't think we're sitting there five minutes.
Yeah, just about five minutes we heard--
We get two cards and it's blackjack.
- And you get $1,000. - And we win $1200.
Or $1,000. She jumps up...
( cheers )
We're gonna send you the tape. Funny as hell.
Hysterical.
My baby. Okay? Awww.
Baby, baby.
( laughing ) And I thought to myself,
"these guys are running from the mob and here they are
advertising who they--"
- We got a trip to the Super Bowl. - A washer-dryer.
And what about the V.C-- not a V.C.R., that--
- A Betamax. - The Betamax.
- We won a load of stuff. - A load of stuff.
It was a trial. On trial was Larry,
Hy, Frank,
the accountant.
Larry took the stand and tried to explain
the circumstances.
He believed that he was in a-- a non-profit,
not-for-profit club and that he truly believed that.
Larry Levenson wasn't on the stand.
He was on the stage.
Everything was a joke to him, or so it appeared.
Sudler: I think the jury, as I recall, was laughing at him.
The trial was completed. The jury deliberated
for approximately five or six hours, I believe.
And came back with guilty verdicts.
Larry Levenson, Frank Pernice, Hy Gordon received eight years plus a fine.
I think an eight-year jail sentence at that time
for this type of a tax evasion was something of a record.
Goldstein: What fucked him up was he was stealing cash.
And he did the dumbest thing of all.
If any of you ever do cash or have your own company,
you don't do it in front of employees,
'cause the guy who's working for you or the gal who's working for you,
you're gonna fire them or yell at them and they're gonna bring you down.
A lot of cash--
just like Studio 54!
I don't believe he was stealing money,
I don't believe that he was creating books that--
didn't exist. I mean--
Double books? Larry was being King of Swing.
The demeanor at the defense table changed.
All of a sudden there was silence upon the announcement of the verdict.
There was no more affable, class-clown Larry Levenson.
It was total silence.
Breitbart: If you break the law, there's an old saying in the business:
"If ya can't affords the time, ya don't commits the crime."
True.
# happiness, happiness #
# the greatest gift that I possess #
# I thank the lord that I've been blessed... #
Some of you may have been wondering whatever happened to Larry Levenson?
He's here in Allenwood, which is a federal penitentiary.
It's considered a level-one prison.
In the trunk we'd have clothes, suitcases,
golf clubs, a tennis racket.
We thought it was a place where you basically just--
you hung out but you couldn't leave.
The lack of sex-- very rarely discussed or anything.
Everybody takes care of that situation by themselves, you know?
We were in constant communication.
- And he never complained about it, right? - Right.
# the greatest gift that I possess #
Woman: "Larry Levenson, you're okay,
even though you've gone away.
You got into an awful mess.
You just can't fuck with the I.R.S."
Goldstein: Plato's without Larry was like Easter
at the Vatican without the Pope.
The Pope had this tracheotomy and the Christians are running amok.
Gillis: Without Larry, Plato's took a big dive.
And it wasn't Plato's anymore. It wasn't--
it wasn't even wholesome anymore.
You know? Because without that benevolent heart behind it,
it was just a tacky swingers club, you know?
Vera: It required a lot more people to fill the place.
So they had special parties-- sometimes they would have kinky nights.
I, uh, use the... Uh, the Pussy Propulsion
which is the basis for all space travel.
Man: Belle du jour presents an S&M costume ball
and dinner party. Do they have to be in costume?
Not necessarily, but it would be fun.
I'm here every Tuesday and it starts at 8:15.
And I fulfill all their fantasies
in S&M...
and all erotic fantasies.
Sounds good to me.
I'm Danny the wonder pony. I give women pony rides.
I dance in a fashion that makes them
look and feel like they're riding a pony,
Except to the music.
And if you've ever watched a woman ride a horse, it's very erotic.
( crowd shouting )
He had foxy boxing, which was girls fighting each other.
Okay, stick around. Next match coming soon.
Lincoln: The amusing part of that is in between each round
the girls would throw up in a bucket.
There were brothers and sisters.
Those things weren't as taboo as they are now.
# if you like what we're doing when we're doing what we're doing #
# come on, clap your hands #
# if you like what we're doing when we're doing what we're doing #
# hey-yyyy! #
Stewart: I remember they had girls up there--
I think they were porno stars-- performing,
doing musical feats.
# party party #
# party party... #
Stewart: And there were men in the audience
who were masturbating--
if my memory serves me correct.
Man: Don't you, on certain levels,
feel that swinging sort of has shot its load?
That it's a tired phenomena that dates back more to the '60s and '70s?
- And for the '80s nobody really gives a shit? - No, on the contrary.
I think swinging is just now really coming into its own.
Jeremy: While Larry was in jail he did these little
weekly announcements that were really cute.
What about your job?
- Did you say you worked in the sewer system? - Yeah.
We would set up a tape recorder
that was attached to the telephone.
( laughs ) He wants to be heard
from prison or no.
- What do you do? - I test the...
The garbage, what? Do you eat it?
Yeah, the waste and everything. No, the amoeba eats it.
He had senators there with him. He had judges there with him.
He had lawyers there with him. It was not a terrible place to be.
When that water goes into the river, you can actually drink it.
# happiness! #
I got a phone call from a friend of mine who says, "you're not going to believe this.
I just heard on the radio that the King of Swing
is home from prison."
Man: I just want to say now, ladies and gentlemen,
that I am more than proud to present
for the first time back here in 32 months,
the man responsible for creating Plato's Retreat,
ladies and gentlemen, the owner, the creator
of Plato's Retreat, the King of Swing,
Mr. Larry Levenson. Come right out, gang.
Man #2: Okay, Larry Levenson, skinnier, his dick is bigger.
Here he is, Larry, back from 32 months of homosexuality.
What's it like to be here at the place, the dream you created?
You know, the person who doesn't know how to answer you.
- You're such a slob. - We're here with his lovely mother Renee.
Renee, how do you feel that your son broke out of prison and is here at Plato's today?
I should have expected something like this from you, Al. I'm not the least bit surprised.
It's not true you called the parole board and said, "keep the bastard"?
No, you did that, honey. You were a little mixed up.
# and you try to show #
# your love for me. #
Larry: I'm thrilled to no end right now
as I look around and see you friendly faces,
faces of old friends and soon-to-be new friends.
To you members that frequent Plato's,
our club is much more than a sexual haven.
We are the closest thing to a family here.
I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna make this club better than ever,
and we're gonna have more fun than ever and it's just gonna be beautiful.
Larry, we welcome you back and congratulations
on completing the 32-month Allenwood diet.
Everything hits a peak, so there was a peak for sexuality.
There was a peak for disco.
# karma karma karma karma karma chameleon... #
The club was in a decline and so was Larry.
Were we distressed about it?
Yes.
Come down and fulfill your most fantastic fantasies
and stimulate your wildest dreams.
# oh yes, it's ladies' night #
# and the feeling's right... #
Man: Is it going to be ladies' night every Monday, do you know?
Ladies' night, 6:00-9:00; then 9:00 the men come in.
Vera: They would have at Plato's singles nights
to kind of introduce people who never swung before.
# oh yes, it's ladies' night #
# oh, what a night, oh, what a night... #
Vera: There'd be stripper after stripper
and the women are getting wilder and wilder.
Then 9:00, or a couple of hours later,
the men-- the single men would be allowed in.
And these guys were horny fucks.
Then what they'd do though, they'd have to have a lot more girls
that would be like girls that would be hired.
Hanson: But you couldn't necessarily separate
the prostitutes from the wives
because the wives were kind of doing themselves up
like prostitutes often.
There was coke everywhere.
And everybody used it to stay awake,
to keep going, for this, that and the other thing,
to feel better.
Stay up, keep going,
Don't stop.
I'm gonna have fun.
Goldstein: Prostitution was the tail that wagged the dog.
Because I believe 40%-50% of the girls there
every night, with their, quote, date,
were hookers. And I know that to be a fact
because the hookers advertised in "screw."
Stewart: I remember I met an African-American woman
and we went into the back and we went into one of the rooms
and the next thing she stuck her hand out and she wanted money from me.
And I just didn't have it, you know?
She said, "Well, I'm sorry."
There was just this-- a sense of impending doom.
But I don't know how much we talked about it.
It lost the warmth.
And that wasn't, I think, just the steam
rising off of all that water they had going in there.
It was moving towards that point in the '80s
when sex was terrifying.
( "Dream Weaver" playing )
# I've just closed my eyes again... #
Narrator: AIDS reduces the number of helper cells in the blood.
Therefore the body has no way of either detecting
or attacking certain infections.
# driver, take away my worries of today... #
When AIDS first hit, nobody even knew what it was yet.
No one quite knew how it was transmitted.
- No one knew how to have safe sex. - # dream Weaver #
# I believe you can get me through the night... #
The people who cared about their lives stopped going to sex clubs.
And so you got a more hardcore, self-destructive
- group of people. - # Dream Weaver. #
All this talk about AIDS, aren't you worried about it?
Being with so many different men?
Larry, I've never heard of a woman that has contacted AIDS
through sexual intercourse.
I went from one extreme to the other,
saying "this is not something you get a shot for,
or take a pill for. This is your life.
- And you need to rethink your priorities in life." - ( heart beating )
And I say god was kind and I was spared.
Some other people were not that lucky.
That 73% of the AIDS cases are in homosexuals,
this is put out by the State of New York, Dr. Axelrod.
- ( man ranting on phone ) - Wait, let me-- let me finish.
Sir-- sir, let me finish.
Danny: It was like a ghost town. For about 30 days,
it was like nobody.
Everybody was just scared. They didn't even know
if you could get it mouth to mouth.
Reporter: The St. Marks Bathhouse was shut down
after undercover inspectors reported that they had observed
49 acts of high-risk sexual activity
involving more than 80 people.
Ronald Reagan: Only medical science
can ever truly defeat AIDS.
I think that Koch, who I admired,
wanted to bust down on the gay clubs.
To make things even, he busted down on Plato's.
Man on phone: They said that AIDS did go through Plato's Retreat.
No, they came down and interviewed me.
And that's all they did.
And we found out since that with the smell of chlorine
in the air at Plato's Retreat,
the AIDS virus does not have a chance.
It just happens to be a factual thing.
Doron Gopstein: One of the key parts of the effort would be
to collect evidence, which if it was necessary,
if it became necessary to seek to close a place down,
this is the kind of evidence that would hold up in court.
Larry had signs posted.
And he has his security that are walking around actually telling people,
"Wait till this little thing is over with. But right now,
we can't allow anal sex, we can't allow oral sex on a guy."
The law prohibits anal sex and fellatio.
- Excuse me? - You can have sexual intercourse
legally on Plato's premises.
Hello?
Some of the inspectors were so...
uh, overwhelmed--
distressed by what they saw
that they needed actually counseling
and counseling was provided.
"Government of the people, for the people
and by the people should not perish from this earth."
Now Mr. Koch is trying to tell me that the people
have nothing to do with government.
It's like a war. You're fighting the city.
Man on phone: I want to talk to the fat guy on the right.
There are two fat guys here. Which one?
On the right? Go ahead, fat guy.
- What do you have to say? - Do you suck?
Oh, you're a moron.
Good evening. Plato's Retreat is the latest casualty
in New York's war on dangerous sex.
Gopstein: Inspectors would come in and they described what to us
seemed like prostitution activities.
Reporter: In its prime, thousands of heterosexual couples
flocked to Plato's Retreat.
But the party came to a halt at the well-known nightclub.
Minutes before its scheduled opening,
city officials closed the venue on charges of prostitution.
The city knows as everybody else knows
we never allowed prostitution on our premises,
and I always say that we never will.
Gopstein: So we went in there
and the judge signed the preliminary injunction.
It went to an appellate court and the appellate court
changed the temporary closing order.
- Hello, you're on the air. - Yeah, hi.
Um, can you tell me what the status of the club is right now?
And, um... is it still closed or what are they doing at this point?
- At Plato's, you mean, sir? - Yes, sir.
Plato's Retreat is now open.
( feedback squeals )
The place is reopened and we send inspectors in there again.
And within a short period of time, the inspectors are coming back
and they're saying, "forget about prostitution now.
We're seeing high-risk sexual activities."
Starting tonight for the next year,
all profits made by Plato's Retreat,
will be donated to AIDS research.
Two weeks later, New Year's Eve, boof!
We get closed for good.
Tonight the city closed Plato's Retreat, that notorious
heterosexual sex club on Manhattan's West Side.
Larry: Plato's Retreat is more than just a club.
It's an institution. It's a monument to sexual freedom.
And they set us back 50 years.
Plato's was then closed on December 31st.
And actually, it never reopened after that.
I remember driving up at 7:30 and seeing the door padlocked
with the police tape on it.
And...
there was no notice, no nothing.
They didn't tell anyone that we're going to be closing you down.
They just came on New Year's Eve.
I think it was to spank them.
Larry's really really upset. He's almost holding back tears.
You could see it. Because now he knows that the city just crippled him
and he's looking at the future. He goes, "I can't stay open, Ron.
The money I made from New Year's Eve was going to keep me going with rent."
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Everything fell apart: All the connections,
the phone calls-- everything stopped.
We have no meeting ground anymore.
We have no home for the family anymore.
So everybody takes off to different areas.
Everybody goes back to real life.
From what I could see, most clubs in Manhattan
lasted a few years. They'd be really hot,
maybe six, eight, 10 years and then they'd close down.
And people were on to the new club.
I think Plato's kind of died a natural death actually.
It might have had a little help.
It was a different era then with everything that was going on.
A place like that... It wasn't going to last anyway.
A lot of people...
Just couldn't-- don't like the lifestyle
so they put it down,
like our mayors and our governors.
But meanwhile they're the ones in here.
It was like, "We should all sing 'Old Lang Sone'--"
"Old Lang..."
- Man: "Syne." - Whatever. "--'Old Lang whatever.'"
After the club closed
I think that's when it took him over completely.
I think that's when Larry really
fell into hard times--
No finances.
Tonight we're talking with Larry Levenson.
Larry was the owner of Plato's Retreat.
Plato's Retreat was the largest swing club in New York.
Goldstein: He was the original prototype swinger.
That was his life. That was why he started the club.
And basically the club ended because of that narcissism.
You start believing it and you think you can do no wrong
and you're gonna beat the system.
Larry was depressed. And I'd visit him in his apartment in Brooklyn
and he'd be doing crack cocaine.
And he's sweating-- "Larry, you're sweating like a pig.
It doesn't look like you're having fun."
He goes, "trust me. It's a nice feeling and it takes away the pain."
He went to parents without partners and he was enjoying that
and meeting lots of different people.
And he did meet Marilyn there.
- I just got engaged last week. - Mazel tov.
- A beautiful young lady, yeah. - Mazel tov.
- Yeah, I'm very happy. - And she's sweet woman.
She is wonderful. And the whole point is
what do I want to do with my life?
Don't know how long it was good.
I do remember one incident where he asked me to go to the house
and pick up a check.
He got divorced again, so now...
now he's back to being single and he's back in Brooklyn again.
Remember he was driving a cab?
He was driving a cab, I remember that.
# I still get that same old feeling #
# tearing at this heart of mine... #
Nina: I hailed a yellow cab. I got in.
and sometimes I have a habit of looking at the hack license.
When my dad had the club, he had all the friends.
Everybody wanted to hang out with him.
Then when he didn't have the club, they were gone.
I saw the name Larry Levenson.
And I kept saying, "Larry Levenson, Larry Levenson?
That's the man who owned Plato's."
You have to pick and choose who your friends are.
And you have to stay grounded. I think my dad was never grounded.
Larry: I thought that we were a great family.
And I really believed, truly,
that we were a community.
But I guess I was mistaken.
It was me... ( laughs )
that felt that.
I was the king.
One day he invited us to Brooklyn to see his house.
And he lived down in the basement because...
The brick building, he rented upstairs--
I guess the two floors.
And I was shocked the way he lives down in the basement with cats and everything.
It both-- my mind-- how could he live in a basement?
Then he took us out for a nice lobster dinner.
He had just gone through heart surgery.
He was in the hospital. We were living down here.
He had had a heart attack. He was in the intensive care unit.
I brought some flowers for his nurses.
He seemed in good spirits.
When I heard that Larry Levenson
died from a heart attack and that he'd become a cab driver
I just thought, "wow, that was just so hard to reconcile
that the king of Plato's Retreat
Could end up like a broken-down old hack."
I just remember getting a phone call that Larry's passed away.
I was pretty miserable for quite a while. It was one of the ones that really hurt.
When Larry started Plato's,
We were still in that period where
sex wasn't just sex and pleasure,
it was also about kind of revolution,
a breaking with the past.
I think the only difference between Larry and many men in our society
and culture is that Larry didn't hesitate to talk about it
and tell the truth about it, how he actually felt.
I wonder how many men
hide how they really feel about sex.
Or how many men would have the courage to say
"I want to do them all"?
Every time I drive by the club, even to this day,
I still feel the magic.
Look at it, the lights are still here.
Oh, there's disco lights over there.
The sprinkler system was here.
There's our fan, still up there to this day.
Whatever Frankie built, it's still there.
So... amazing.
Dodson: One thing about getting older
is that you don't want to look back and say
"Wow, really I'm sorry I didn't do that.
I really am sorry I missed that.
I really am sorry I didn't take advantage of that."
I'm an old lady with no regrets,
because I'll tell you:
Those-- that period was very special.
It was the same routine every night but different bodies.
Different sizes.
Tall, short--
It was, you know, a sight to see...
Every night.
- ( camera clicks ) - Breitbart: Somehow whenever anybody
discusses Plato's Retreat, they do it with a smile on their face.
If anybody was there, they're happy.
If anybody wasn't there, they're only sorry
that they didn't get an opportunity to go there and see it.
( camera clicks )
Karen: It was very exciting to a lot of people.
And when we finally caught up with it,
we were amused by it as well.
I'm-- I'm really glad I went.
I'm glad to have the experience of having gone.
Just as I'm glad that I got to the top
of the World Trade Center once.
Even to today people say things to me:
"I knew your father. I remember your father."
Okay, some people, they have no memories.
They had a boring normal...
Let's say everyday-straight kind of life.
I've led a different kind of life. I've had that life
and my life changed...
By going to Plato's...
by getting into open sex.
These are things that you never thought you would ever do in life.
You didn't even think about it.
So a lot of people, they don't have those memories.
I have those memories. I can see the faces in front of me now.
Nina: It was good for me.
it was good for me.
It was great for me.
Is Larry still around, by the way?
- Are you guys talking to Larry? - Man: He passed away in '99.
- He passed away? - Yeah.
- He was only about 50. - 62.
Wow.
( pop music playing )
# oh, how happy #
# you have made me #
# oh, how happy #
# you have made me #
# I have kissed your lips #
# a thousand times #
# and more times than I can count #
# I have called you mine #
# you have stood... #
Karen: I tried to hide the fact
That Larry Levenson was my brother.
after all, my name was Karen Posner.
It wasn't too difficult, I thought, to keep it a secret.
But of course everybody knew because of the car showing up at the house
and Larry marching into all of our backyard barbecues.
I saw people getting down
in various stages. Big deal.
What did you expect? Where do you expect babies come from?
I wouldn't just take my clothes off and just walk around like that.
You know? Have I done anything there?
I really can't talk about that... if I've ever done anything there.
What is the difference between parsley and pussy?
He says, "What is the difference?" I says,
"Well, who eats parsley?"
One of Larry's ideas
was that he seriously believed
that he could have sex with every single woman
in New York and I was going to help him do it.
What do you say to something like that?
We laugh.
That's what keeps a marriage going sometimes
is laughter.
I mean he makes me laugh, I make him laugh.
- And now we have a new life. - Uh uh uh!
Yeah, but now we got a new life.
- But uh uh uh. - No, home.
Oh yeah. Our poker life.
Now we can't wait to get back to Vegas in December.
Go ahead. What else?
#...Made me #
# you have made me #
# you have made me. #
( instrumental music playing )
Subtitles by LeapinLar