Original subtitles

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.

- Aren't you illegal?

- No, no way.

Sex is not illegal any place in New York.

Well, but I couldn't open a cathouse, could I?

- Well, that's paid sex.

- The 70s were a transitional period.

It was when the ethic of the 60s took hold.

1,500 cops are injured.

People were complaining New York

had become a pit of vice.

- 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.

- It was a party town.

- 1977 in New York was a fabulous year.

- Sexuality was in the air.

- 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.

- 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, you know,

everyone was rolling around naked in Woodstock,

you know?

And smoking pot and screwing their brains out

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 hardworking 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 distributor 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.

- 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 Hamburglars,

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:

"I'm waiting for ya, 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.

- You know what I don't like

is this whole thing that you have to be monogamous.

I say that, nobody's monogamous,

and you can't make somebody say

that you're fucking monogamous

and you're gonna 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.

We all pay mortgages.

We're not...

Just because we consider ourselves swingers...

We're not freaks of nature.

- But a swing party, you can go,

you can 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,

a part of their sex life

is to find other couples or other people

that have similar interests,

that they like socially,

that they like to be with,

but, in particular, that they want to have sex with.

- The meeting area, it was usually a bar.

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...

- Get interested.

It was interesting.

- It was a place for them to dance,

have a drink, meet each other,

I remember it looked more like a Bar Mitzvah.

- I don't know anybody's last name in any of these places,

and yet you can go with them,

make love to them,

spend the weekend with them,

kiss them goodbye,

"See ya next week, John, Mary, bye-bye!"

and that's the end of it,

you're best friends for life.

- People would be handing out slips and 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?"

- 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 gonna ask you one of my favorite indiscrete 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.

- 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.

What'd he say?

Do you remember?

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,

"Oh, 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.

That might've 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, no, these are straight people."

- 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.

Kind of 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.

- Plato's was a simple name,

it was the only one I could spell, actually.

So, uh, we used Plato's.

And then after that, I found out that Plato 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, most people would say,

were not the most physically appealing,

but they were the nicest people

you 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.

- It was, you got a date, you wanted a night out,

etcetera, etcetera.

You and your date,

you got a date that was sort of

on the wild side?

Well,

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.

- They were just coming down and in,

and taking over and dancin',

and holding hands and huggin'.

It was a sight.

It freaked me out.

- 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.

- No, 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.

There was.

They were the type of people

that they didn't even 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,

"Larry had a grocery store,

"and he turned it into a supermarket."

He ended up renting the Ansonia Hotel.

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.

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.

- I asked, "What the fuck is it?"

It'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 they 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.

- I don't know,

it was just kind of a bath house locker room,

but I do think that there was a lot of

coaching going on, at least with the women,

and encouragement, and a feeling of sisterhood,

like we're kind of 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's said "Oh!", you know?

How you look, or you look disgusting, or whatever.

Any inhibitions you had you got over.

And you didn't have them anymore.

- You had the jacuzzi.

- Anybody who went in the jacuzzi was insane.

I think there was every kind of bacteria.

It was chemical warfare.

- We played pingpong,

we went swimming.

- People have a sense of being cleansed in a pool.

This was a naughty pool.

- Guys were floating on the top of the water,

and their penises were sticking up,

and it looked like periscopes.

- I had just come from Paris,

so I was a young photographer,

and kind of a shy girl from Ohio.

So, I disrobe,

and I plunge into the pool,

and I'm swimming, I go sort of underwater

the whole length of the pool,

and when I come up,

I see all of these men standing around the pool,

and they're all jerking off.

And their cum 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?

- Yes.

- There's a membership fee?

- Right. - How much is it?

- It costs 25 dollars per couple.

Now, for that, you get a meal that's fantastic.

It could be a Bar Mitzvah.

A full smorgasbord.

- Chicken, ribs, chow mein,

lasagna, meatballs.

- Spaghetti.

- No, lasagne.

- Oh, okay.

- Potato salad, macaroni.

- Cold cuts.

- Cole slaw.

- Cold cuts.

- Cold cuts.

Did I say chicken? - Yeah.

- Why are you askin' 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 all crazy sex things.

So we left there,

I said "I wanna go to my 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 there was really good pizza,

and we said to Larry,

"You know, it'd be nice after the..."

- Just to break it up.

- By one o'clock in the morning...

- You know, you start running out of food,

and people come out of the orgy or the dancin',

swimmin',

you feel like grabbin' somethin'.

The of a bologna sandwich.

I said, "Hey, why not order 10 pies?"

Why not?

- You weren't hiding, were you?

- No.

- Did you meet a nice girl?

- No.

- 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.

- You could hear conversations in the room

to the right of you and 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 ya? This is John Leo."

And again, it was almost the enthusiasm

of a Kewaunee's executive

showing off his hometown.

- Why repress your desires? - What?

- Why repress your desires?

- Well, I mean, 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.

- I got 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 the 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.

- Look at that guy.

He's not really handsome,

but look what he's got,

and look what she's got,

and where's that going?

- It was real,

and your ears could hear it was real.

Someone,

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 sync,

and there would be a lot of energy,

and it was like that with the mattress room.

- I was terrified of the mat room.

- You'd fuck a little, and then you'd watch a little,

and then hang out, fuck a little more.

- Bacho, this jockey saw me, he says,

"You're a reporter, right?"

He says, "Watch".

He'd play the music.

He'd speed up the music,

and if it was going faster.

He'd slow down the music,

and things would go slower.

It was unbelievable.

You had to be there to see that.

Fast and slow lovemaking.

- 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.

"Oh, what's that? What is that?"

And then I look 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

in the mattress room.

- What made you organize,

originate,

Plato's Retreat,

a place for swingin' couples?

What is the swinging movement?

- Well, it's a couples' movement.

Couples that want to be free-thinking,

free-living adult couples.

They don't believe in monogamous relationships.

They'd rather

get involved with other people,

but together with their spouses

instead of cheating with them.

Larry had the pitch and the 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.

- 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."

- The thing I most remember is

he had these giant teeth.

He had really huge teeth.

- There's a Yiddish word, heimische,

and that's what he was.

He was like your nicest uncle.

- A Hugh Hefner.

- A mai·tre 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 lookin' 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,

the guy with... the kid 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 an outrageous whirlpool

which holds about 30 people at a time,

disco dancing with a live DJ.

- I grew up in the upper-middle class Jewish Catskills

of the Concord Hotel.

I was Ms. 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.

The crowd at Plato's was...

conventional.

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.

- I never saw a velvet rope type situation.

I don't think there might've 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,

had a certain charm.

- It was a poor man's Playboy Mansion.

- Absolutely.

- 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

double sets of twins in their belly.

I'm amazed that they could 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 thought they had resuscitated the orgy

for the man on the street,

which is exactly what they did.

You pay whatever, it's 20, 25 bucks,

you get in, and you can join in an orgy.

Where can you do that in the United States?

You can do it at Plato's.

- My friends were very... backwards.

And 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, uptown,

I wanted to be in 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 Mid 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.

As soon as I walk 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!"

- First we talked to each other for a little bit,

and 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 everybody's having sex all over the place,

there are little rooms 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.

- She was nuts, absolutely wild.

She goes "Oh, pussy loves cock, pussy loves cock."

Unbelievable. A maniac.

I said, "This is my kind of place!"

- I was a young, good-looking kid, I guess,

and several girls came onto me,

and their boyfriends weren't that attractive,

and if you had to go with one of...

You had to trade off,

and she yelled at me, she screamed at me,

and I said "Just do it! Just do it!"

And we didn't talk much after that.

- 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...

- I wanted to tell the people I grew up with.

Now, 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...

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 guess,

I stuck my cock in her pussy

and screwed her,

and she didn't even look back, you know?

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.

- 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 at Plato's Retreat

that's number six in the country right now.

- I met people years later who said things like,

"Oh, I went 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.

- Robin Leach, who was,

he was there just to look.

- Students met their professors,

guys met their ex-wives, future wives.

- Sammy Davis, Junior, on the dance floor

at Plato's Retreat.

It was a treat.

And tell me, this guy was a big star.

Frank Sinatra, you know.

- Sophia, his wife...

- Sophia, his wife.

- pulled her shirt up.

- Oh, man, how could I forget his name?

He's a writer, he's Hugh Hefner's friend,

he committed suicide.

Jerzy Kosiński?

- Jerzy Kosiński.

- Much of the cast of Saturday Night Live.

- What's his name? Dreyfus. Richard Dreyfus.

He never came down with a lady.

Again, he was invited to stay.

- 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!"

Why did you decide,

in early 1973, to go underground?

- Well, there was no way that I could possibly

get a fair trial.

- 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?"

- This is where I'm working on the new Constitution.

- He said, "No, no, no, I gotta go,

"I gotta go there. I gotta see it.

"I can't miss this."

He comes over after a while and he says,

"Can I tell them who I am?

"I mean, they just walk away from me,

"I thought you said everybody gets laid here."

And 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?

Yes.

- People like me.

- Well, there's no pressure, there's no obligation,

there's no commitment to do anything at our club,

and I'm positive it's the same way at Larry's club.

- I come for sex,

good conversation,

intellect.

- 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.

They want to be touched, that's fine.

They don't want to be touched,

they're not gonna get touched.

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 just 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?

- 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, 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 saying,

"I'm going in there 'cause I just wanna 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.

- I remember once,

this couple,

I'm sure they'd been thrown out of every swingers' club

in the world 'cause they were so large,

they had to weight 300 pounds each,

and they were jitterbugging.

They were dancing.

They had on their towels.

They had to have double towels around them,

the towels, of course, fell off,

and nobody gave a doo-doo kaka,

but what happened was,

when they stomped,

they were shaking the platters for the DJ

because they weighed so much.

I mean, they were shaking the whole damn floor.

But 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 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.

- Well, the first time I actually went to the club,

the club was closed.

My father used to run holiday parties,

you know, 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.

- Do you mind that your mother comes here.

- No, I don't care.

They had a disco,

and there was a game room there.

- Everything was the same as if it was open,

except there was no nudity, no sex,

it was a bunch of kids.

- And that's when we started understanding

what everything was about.

- Used to be called what?

"King of Swing."

- Yeah, that's right.

He was called King of Swing.

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 day,

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.

- No, it's not.

But I'm saying that...

In a sense, Stanley,

because 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,

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!

- Larry got involved with younger women.

He 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 swingin',

everyone looked at him as "The King".

Literally.

We've got people from Fort Lauderdale,

we've got people from California,

we've got people from Paris, France

coming to Plato's.

They fly in.

We're the eighth wonder of the world.

I think it's different, but I don't think it's.

This is the biggest thing to hit New York City

since the World's Fair.

- And it is. - That's untrue.

- 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 bucks.

Where does a guy get 150,000 dollars?

- He was Colonel Sanders,

and he had to do his little step and fix it routine.

- Is it your view that we're going have Plato's Retreats,

it's going to 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 interviewed.

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.

But it works for them.

Is it for them?

- 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

doing somebody else.

And me sitting and watching?

- You really did see that,

that sometimes what they came out for

hit 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 thought attractive,

I can do it,

and Michael knows about it.

It's like dual infidelity.

- Do you think Larry is faithful to you

out of Plato's Retreat?

For example, is he with other women...

Yes, very definitely.

- How do you know?

- Uh, 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,

but I know this is another judgment,

they feel something's gone wrong here.

- 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 somethin'

can 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.

Uh, 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...

Are you married?

- I was 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 technically, no.

- Technically no, we're not.

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 9pm.

That's of this year, of course.

- When the 34th Street location opened,

it was poppin'.

- This is the mat room.

This is the 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.

- It was located directly across from McDonald's,

and people used to say it had become

the McDonald's of sex.

- I was this normal housewife person,

my husband left,

his girlfriend was having a baby,

and you meet different people,

I was working in the movie theater in the village,

I was selling the tickets to Rocky Horror,

and the first time I went to Plato's,

seeing people like actually doing something in the open,

you just 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.

And she said "Perhaps you'd like to join us".

And I said "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 "Do 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.

I was gonna be president of the PTA.

- What do you want out of your life

that you're not getting from Mary?

- That I'm 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. - Rather than...

- One of his constant refrains

whenever he was interviewed or talking 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.

Swinging is a thing where couples

are in a relationship with each other,

okay,

they have feelings for each other,

as non-swingers do,

but the only difference is that,

when they're with someone else,

it's just sex, there's no feelings.

- 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.

You countenance it?

- I think it's fantastic.

- Mary would be having a lot of men.

You weren't really supposed to have a gang-bang

just out on the main floor,

you were supposed to go somewhere,

and Larry might speak to Mary about it,

and he'd go off, and 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."

- She was losing Larry.

Not just to the lifestyle,

but to one particular woman or another.

- 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 could he get?

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,

well he would start 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,

the chauffeur had Larry kidnapped,

beaten to a pulp,

put in a hospital

in an effort to end it in his favor.

That's what I believe happened.

- I'd 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.

She was older,

and at one point she might've been the queen

but she definitely wasn't now.

- 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...

- Ron.

- to stay away from the wise guys, we don't know.

- Why it happened, we never knew.

- But even then, Larry was running around in a wheelchair

and he was perfectly fine.

He was saying "Oh, 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.

- Not true. I have a charter.

- In approximately July of 1979,

there'd 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 nonprofit corporation.

- Now, wait a minute, Larry.

What do you mean, a nonprofit?

- Two gentlemen appeared,

nine o'clock in the morning, I'm half asleep,

and they says, "We came here to see the books".

So I gave them the books.

Well, 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 had been cheating their income tax

for three years.

- In one year, I think they claimed only 300 dollars

of taxable income, and paid zero tax.

- Anne 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.

- Yeah?

- And I did, I took the books, they didn't keep them.

They weren't allowed to keep them, I kept them.

But now they know that...

- Wait, so now you got the books back in your hand.

- Yeah.

- Did you call Larry after this?

- When they came in that night I...

You didn't do it until that night?

- No, not til that night. - Okay.

- Hy said to me, "You know, I've covered our tracks here

for three years. Now we're dead".

There's nothing I could say or do,

except that, hey, I'm sorry.

- When they came 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.

Charlie and Anne Grippo.

Welcome! What did you yell, Charlie,

when you were running up here?

- We're coming!

We're coming, and we're gonna get it right

if it takes us all night.

- He went onto a, some kind of quiz show,

in Vegas.

- Las Vegas Gambit. - Las Vegas Gambit.

You're from where? New York City?

On vacation?

- Yes. - Yes.

I don't think we were sitting there, what,

five minutes?

Yeah, just about five minutes we had...

We get two cards and it's Blackjack.

And you get 1,000 dollars.

- And we win 1,200 dollars, or 1,000 dollars,

she jumps up.

- We're gonna send you the tape.

Funny as hell.

- Hysterical.

- Poor baby! You okay?

And I thought to myself,

these guys are runnin' from the mob

and here they are.

You know?

- We got a trip to the Super Bowl.

A washer/dryer.

- And what about the, not a VCR,

a betamax. - Betamax.

- We won a load of stuff.

- Load of stuff.

- There 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 non-profit,

non-for-profit club,

and he truly believed that.

- Larry Levenson wasn't on the stand.

He was on the stage.

Everything was a joke to him, or so is appeared.

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.

- 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.

- 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.

- If you break the law,

there's an old saying in the business,

"If you can't affords the time,

you don't commits the crime".

True.

- Some of you may have ben wondering,

whatever happened to Larry Levenson?

Well he's here in Allenwood,

which is a federal penitentiary.

It's considered a level one prison.

- In the trunk we 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?

- Yeah.

You're okay,

even though you've gone away.

You got into an awful mess,

you just can't fuck with the IRS.

- Plato's without Larry was like

Easter at the Vatican without the Pope.

The Pope had this tracheotomy,

and the Christians are running amok.

- Without Larry, Plato's took a big dive.

It wasn't P lato's anymore.

It wasn't even wholesome anymore, you know?

Because without that benevolent heart behind it,

it was just a tacky swingers' club.

- It required a lot more people to fill the place.

So they had special parties,

sometimes they would have kinky nights.

- I use the pussy propulsion

which is a basis for all space travel.

- Belle de 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.

- He had Foxy Boxing, which was girls

fighting each other.

Okay, stick around, comin' soon.

- 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.

- I remember they had girls up there,

I think they were porno stars,

performing, doing musical feats.

I saw men in the audience

who were masturbating watching.

If my memory serves me correct.

- 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.

- While Larry's in jail,

he did these little weekly announcements

that were really cute.

- What about your job?

Did you say you work in the sewer system?

- Yeah.

- We would set up a tape recorder

that was attached to the telephone.

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, they here.

- 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.

- I got a phone call from a friend of mine, he says

"You're not gonna believe this.

"I just heard on the radio

"that the King of Swing is home from prison".

- 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,

ready to join him, we honor the creator

of Plato's Retreat!

The King of Swing!

- Larry Levenson is 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, a person 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've 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're a little mixed up.

- 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.

Welcome home, Larry!

To 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.

- 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.

Is it gonna be ladies' night every Monday,

do you know?

- Ladies' night six to nine.

At nine o'clock the men come in.

They would have, at Plato's, singles' nights

to introduce people who never swung before.

There'd be stripper after stripper,

and the women are getting wilder and wilder,

then, nine o'clock,

or a couple of hours later,

the men, the single men would be allowed in.

- And these guys were horny fucks.

- And then what he'd do though,

they'd have to have a lot more girls that were hired.

- But you couldn't necessarily separate the prostitutes

from the wives,

because the wives were kinda doing themselves up

like prostitutes, often.

- There's coke everywhere.

And everybody used it to stay awake,

to keep going,

for this, that, and the other thing,

feel better, stay up, keep going, don't stop.

We're gonna have fun.

- Prostitution was the tail that wagged the dog,

for I believe, 40% to 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.

- 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.

She wanted money from me.

And I just didn't have it.

And 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 the water they had going in there.

It was moving towards that point in the 80s

when sex was terrifying.

AIDS reduces the number of helper cells

in the blood.

Therefore, the body has no way of either detecting

or attacking certain infections.

- 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.

- The people who cared about their lives

stopped going to sex clubs,

and so you got a more hardcore,

self-destructive group of people.

- Now, 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 contracted 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.

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 was brought up by state of New York Dr. Axelrod.

Let me finish. Let me finish.

Sir, let me finish.

- 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.

The St. Mark's Bath House

was shut down after undercover inspectors

reported that they had observed 49 acts

of high-risk sexual activity

involving more than 80 people.

- 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.

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.

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 the place down,

this is the kind of evidence that would hold up in court.

- Larry had signs posted,

and he had his security, they're walking around,

actually telling people,

"Wait 'til 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.

You can have sexual intercourse legally

on Plato's premises.

Hello?

- Some of the inspectors were so...

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 were fighting the city.

Yeah, I want to talk to the fat guy

on the right.

- Well, there's two fat guys here. Which one?

On the right?

Go ahead, fat guy.

What do you have to say?

That you suck.

Well, you're a moron.

- Good evening. Plato's Retreat is the latest casualty

in New York's war on dangerous sex.

Inspectors would come in,

and they described what to us seemed

like prostitution activities.

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 premises,

and I always said we never will.

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. - Hi.

Is it still closed,

or what are they doing at this point?

- At Plato's you mean, sir? - Yeah, sorry.

- Plato's Retreat is now open.

- The places reopened,

and we sent 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 Years' Eve, poof.

We get closed for good.

- Tonight the city closed Plato's Retreat,

a notorious heterosexual sex club on Manhattan's west side.

- 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 gonna be closing you down",

they just game on New Year's Eve,

and I think that was to spank them.

- Larry's really, really upset, he's almost

holding back tears, you could see it,

'cause now he knows that the city just crippled them

and that he may, he's looking at the future, he goes

"I can't stay open, Ron.

"The money I made from New Year's Eve was gonna

"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, if 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've had a little help.

- It was a different era then,

with everything that was going on.

A place like that,

it wasn't gonna last anyway.

- A lot of people...

just 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 Auld Lang...

Auld 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.

- And 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.

He was the original prototype swinger.

That was his life.

That was why he started the club.

And basically that club ended because of that narcissism.

You start believing it, and you think you can do no wrong,

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, like "Larry, you're sweating like a pig,

"it doesn't look like you're having fun".

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 engaged last week...

- Mazel Tov.

- to a beautiful young lady.

- Mazel Tov. - Yeah.

I'm very happy. - And she's a 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 hailed the 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.

And 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 stay grounded.

And I think my dad was never grounded.

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

that felt that.

I was the king.

- One day, he invited us to Brooklyn to see his house,

and he lived out of the basement because

the brick building, he rented upstairs and the two floors,

and I was shocked the way he lives down in the basement

with cats and everything.

It... my mind, how can you live in a basement?

And 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,

and I just said, 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,

and 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.

How even the lights are still here,

or how the disco light's over there,

the sprinkler system is there.

There's our fan, still up there, to this day.

Whatever Frankie built is still there, so...

amazing.

- One thing about getting older

is that you don't want to look back and say

"Wow, 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,

that period was very special.

- It was the same routine every night,

but different bodies.

Different sizes.

Tall, short...

It was a sight to see, every night.

- 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.

- 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 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 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 let a different kind of life.

I 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.

It was good for me. It was good for me.

It was great for me.

- Is Larry still around, by the way?

You guys talking to Larry?

I've spoken to him.

He passed away in '99.

- He passed away?

Yeah.

- He was only about 50.

62.

- Wow.

- I tried to hide the fact that Larry Levenson

was my brother.

After all my neighbors,

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 gettin' down,

In various stages.

A big deal.

What do you expect?

Where do you think babies come from?

I wouldn't just take my clothes off

and just walk around like that.

Have I done anything there?

I really can't talk about that.

- 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 gonna 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...

Ah ah ah!

- But now we got a new life.

- But...

- No, hold 'em.

- Oh yeah, our poker life.

Now we can't wait to get back to Vegas in December.

- Go ahead, what else?