By some strange coincidence, a week or so ago, just after hearing that Harvey Weinstein had been arrested and charged with rape, I was listening to an old podcast about the evolution of Times Square, and his name came up in connection to a strip club called the Melody Burlesk, later to be known as the Melody Burlesque.
Weinstein, according to almost every account you’ll find in print or online, launched the entertainment company Mirimax with his brother Bob back in 1979 using the money they’d made in Buffalo, New York, where they produced rock concerts under the name Harvey & Corky Productions, along with a man by the name of Corky Burger. [Harvey Weinstein, who had grown up in Flushing, Queens, had gone to Buffalo to attend the State University of New York at Buffalo.] Wikipedia, for instance, says, “In the late 1970s, using profits from their concert promotion business, the brothers created a small independent film distribution company named Miramax, named after their parents, Miriam and Max. The thing is, that might not be entirely true… at least according The Rialto Report, a website dedicated to the preservation of New York’s “golden age of adult film”… the source quoted in this podcast I was listening to.
While Weinstein may have technically started Miramax in 1979 with money from the concert promotion business, it seems as though the company didn’t really hit its stride until years later, when the now-discraced Hollywood mogul sold a seedy piece of Times Square real estate he’d owned to Holliday Inn for $35,000,000, funneling those funds into his then fledgling entertainment company.
Before we get into that, though, let me go back a little bit, and explain how it was that I came to be reading up on the evolution of Time Square, from vaudeville to porn.
Remember how, the last time I got sick with a cold, I told you how I stayed home and watched The Sunshine Boys? Well, that sent me down a vaudeville rabbit hole, which, at some point, delivered me at the doorstep of Josh Alan Friedman, the former editor of Screw magazine, and brother of artist Drew Friedman, who, coincidentally, just a few weeks ago shared a really lovely story on Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast about how, as kids, he and his brother had spent a day with Groucho Marx. [Their father was author Bruce Jay Friedman, who, among other things, wrote the screenplay for Stir Crazy.] Specifically, I’d started listening to audio recorded by Josh Alan Friedman in and around Time Square during the 70’s and 80’s, especially his interviews with people who had witnessed the transition from vaudeville to burlesque, and, in turn, from burlesque to porn. [Freidman’s book, called Tales of Time Square, had come out in 1988, but he’d just released these taped interviews of is a few years ago in the form of a podcast. The series is called Tales of Time Square: The Tapes.] And it was in an episode of Friedman’s podcast titled “Gentle with the Girls” thad Weinstein’s name had unexpectedly come up… Here’s a short clip.
I know it’s a little thing… this link between Weinstein and the porn theaters and strip clubs of old New York… but I couldn’t help but think, as I was listening to the story of how stripper-turned-businesswoman Madeline “Dominique” Droege would climb onto the young Weinstein’s lap and pay him $16,000 in cash each month for rent, that perhaps there’s something to be learned from this early chapter in Weinstein’s life that might shed some light on how he became the serial abuser we know him as today.
For those of you still wanting more, the following comes from The Rialto Report.
…Of all the theaters, the most legendary was perhaps The Melody Burlesk (sometimes spelt ‘Melody Burlesque’) on Broadway at Forty Eighth. It started out as a last holdout of old school burlesque in 1973, but it soon succumbed to the linked forces of libido and commercialism. Times were changing.
It was the first to introduce audience participation, calling it ‘Mardi Gras’, which allowed dancers to sit naked on customer’s laps for a $1 tip. It was an immediate success; it brought in more customers, and it meant that the club could pay the dancers less. And soon the customers were encouraged to do more than just entertain a dancer in their laps.
In 1983, a scandal erupted. The ownership of the Melody Theater was revealed to include a public figure. A chorus of surprised public officials erupted. But the show must go on – especially when it was this profitable. The Melody became the Harmony and operated in other locations in Manhattan, until it was closed down for good in 1998.
For the last 15 years, the Harmony was owned and run by an ex-dancer, Madeline Droege, known to all as ‘Dominique’. She took the club from the old school cash machine of the 1970s to… the all new cash machine of the 1990s that was attacked by New York mayor of the time, Rudy Giuliani, as being a “corrosive institution”.
In her first full interview, Dominique talks to The Rialto Report about the life that led her to become a dancer, her experience at the Melody and Harmony theaters, the background business deals, the busts, the money, the scandals, the loves, the end, and… Harvey Weinstein too…
The following is a quote from Droege.
“…I had the last year at 48th St. alone after Bob’s passing. Harvey Weinstein was our landlord. Back then he owned the Paradise Arcade which had the first video game machines. He also owned Mama Leone’s restaurant which was down the block.
Harvey was a nice guy but he’d increase our rent as he saw we were doing such good business. I’d pay him the rent in cash each month. When he came to collect, I’d run up to him, give him a big hug, jump in his lap, and fan his face with the $16,000 rent money while he smiled broadly. He always dealt with us directly.
Every year, he’d come in and say, “Do you want to buy the building?” At first he wanted $3,500,000 and I didn’t have that yet. The next year, he came in again and the price had gone up. One year he’d say “Okay, it’s six point eight,” and the price would keep going up.
We were on a month to month contract. Then we heard that he had some really big shot looking for the building and there was a price war. He sold the building for $35,000,000 to Holiday Inn. They’re still there now.
Harvey came over and said, “I sold the building. This is it. You’re out. You got a month to leave.” That was in 1988. He then went on to Miramax with all that money…”
Again, I’m not sure what all of this means. I was just fascinated to learn that Weinstein, in his early years, had owned a building in the old, pre-Disney Times Square that I found so absolutely terrifying in my youth. [My dad worked in New York City starting in about ’78, and he’d take us in a few times a year, just to scare the shit out of us.] It might be that he was completely removed from the mob-connected “house of prostitution” that operated under his roof, but I get the sense that there’s something here worth looking into… As for the old Melody Burlesque Theater being a “house of prostitution,” I took that phrase directly from the charges against Assistant Attorney-General of the State of New York Frederick Cincotti, who was discovered to be the secret owner of the Melody Burlesque Theater at 205 West 48th Street. Mr. Cincotti, according to the charges filed against him, “knowingly advanced and profited from prostitution by managing, supervising, controlling and owning a house of prostitution“… all while being Assistant Attorney-General of the State of New York. And, by the way, it was Cincotti who had a reputation for being “gentle with the girls,” not Weinstein.
[It’s not exactly work-safe, but you can find snapshots taken inside the old Melody here.]