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  LIQUOR, LUST, AND THE LAW

  Copyright © 2012 by Aaron Chapman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical— without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 101 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6 Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada (through the Canada Book Fund) and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program) for its publishing activities.

  Cover photograph by Brian Kent/Vancouver Sun

  Back cover photograph (lower right) by Rebecca Blissett

  Book design by Gerilee McBride

  Editing by Susan Safyan

  Photographs courtesy of Danny Filippone and the Penthouse Nightclub, unless otherwise indicated.

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Chapman, Aaron, 1971–

  Liquor, lust, and the law: the story of Vancouver ’s legendary

  Penthouse nightclub / Aaron Chapman.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-489-4

  1. Penthouse (Nightclub)—History. 2. Filippone family.

  3. Nightclubs—British Columbia—Vancouver—History—20th century. 4. Bars (Drinking establishments)—British Columbia— Vancouver—History—20th century. 5. Striptease—British Columbia—Vancouver—History—20th century. 6. Vancouver (B.C.)—Social life and customs—20th century. I. Title.

  TX950.59.C3C53 2012 647.95711’33

  C2012-906362-2

  This book is dedicated to the four brothers—Joe, Ross, Mickey, and Jimmy

  Contents

  Foreword by Danny Filippone

  Prologue

  I. Bella Fortuna

  II. What Does a Guy Have to Do to Get a Drink Around Here?

  III. On with the Show

  IV. Life Is a Cabaret

  V. Dollars and Sex

  VI. Set ’Em Up

  VII. The Show Must Go On

  VIII. Buona Notte

  IX. Changing of the Guard

  X. Seymour Street Serenade

  Acknowledgments

  Endnotes

  References

  Index

  Photo: Byron Barrett, 2012

  Foreword

  I was about seven years old when I first walked into the Penthouse nightclub kitchen. Beyond the far doorway, I could hear music playing and people clapping and cheering. I didn’t understand exactly what it was all about, but I remember thinking, This is where my dad goes to work every night! The door opened, and Dad came into the kitchen from that noisy room. All I could think of was that I wanted to go through that door. I hugged my dad, and the chef in the big white hat asked me if I wanted spaghetti, and I said yes, even though I’d eaten an hour earlier.

  Dad quickly led me through the club and took me to his upstairs office. He offered me some Life Savers candy from a tray full of cigarette packages. My uncle Joe came into the office and asked me if I wanted to see him announce the next dancer on stage—of course, I said yes. This was definitely fun! We walked across the hall into a small room with a spotlight in it. He picked up a microphone and paused to look down at me and smile: “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s show time in the Gold Room!” That’s as far as I got that evening. Uncle Joe took me back to my dad’s office.

  Thirty-two years later, the memories keep coming. People often ask me about what it was like to grow up as a Filippone in Vancouver. Who did I know? Who did I meet? Did my dad personally interview the club’s dancers? Even my teachers in elementary and high school would ask me to stick around after the bell to ask me about the club. Some of them—the most reserved professor types you’d least expect—would discreetly show me their special Penthouse VIP cards. It always made me laugh or smile when someone would bring up the bar.

  Danny Filippone enthusiastically receives the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame award on behalf of the Penthouse Nightclub.

  At the age of eighteen, when most of my friends went to university, I started a busy work schedule: I had three jobs—slinging records at Kelly’s Stereo Mart, punching out tickets at Exhibition Racetrack, and teaching racquetball one night a week—when I jumped on board at the Penthouse as a waiter. This meant I got to work with my uncle Joe for a couple of years before he died, which was great, and I have a lot of good memories of him. Later, when my dad asked me to work full-time at the nightclub, it was just the beginning of my adventure.

  My first year of working in management was the year of Expo 86 and the place was jumping—there was lots of action and my friends were always coming by. I still had much to learn. Suddenly there seemed to be a strip bar on every corner. There were forty-two in Vancouver ’s Lower Mainland in the years after Expo. In the 1980s the popular trend in the exotic nightclub scene was “shower power.” It must have been a good time to be a plumber installing onstage showers in strip bars! We never did that at the Penthouse, even though everyone else seemed to be.

  The height of 1980s style: Penthouse drink menu with showgirl names.

  While the Penthouse remained popular, it was beginning to look like a club still frozen in the 1960s. I tried to bring my own style and energy into the place. Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, I discovered ways of reinventing it, from offering Heritage Vancouver tours to hosting industry parties, opening up to movie location shoots, and participating in gay and lesbian pride festivals. We found ourselves doing it all!

  Vancouver Courier cover story, January 21, 1996.

  During this same period, the other strip bars began shutting down. Retro suddenly became a popular style, and everything old was cool again. The Penthouse, after sixty years of business, was in sync with the times, as it had been when my dad and uncles ran the business. The crowds and excitement during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver reminded us of Expo 86, and there were line-ups to get in to the club once again. In a way, the Penthouse felt re-born.

  A couple of years ago my wife and I were doing some routine cleaning of the old Penthouse office when I discovered a hole in the wall—it was almost like a secret hollow compartment—that had been hidden behind an old photocopier. I telephoned my dad to ask him if he knew anything about it. He had no idea, but told me that anything I found in there we’d split fifty-fifty!

  Inside, we found dozens and dozens of photographs from the club’s heyday, classic snapshots taken inside the Penthouse and vintage photos of Seymour Street that Uncle Joe had hidden away for safekeeping. I recognized some of the pictures—many I’d seen in the background of other photographs of the club, and I thought they were now lost. We framed many of them and hung them back up in the bar.

  At 4:15 on the morning of November 30, 2011, I got the phone call that you never want to get as a business owner. It was my manager, who lived next door to the Penthouse. When he said the word “fire,” I raced down

  to the club with my heart pounding. I knew no one was in the building, so there was no one in jeopardy, but I wondered if this would be my last drive to the Penthouse. Would everything I’d done for the last thirty years just be gone? There was no one to talk to, and a million things were swirling around in my head.

  When I
arrived it looked like a scene from a movie; fire trucks, police cars, and reporters were all swarming around. The fire department eventually told me that, while there was significant damage, the building itself could be saved. So too could our huge collection of photographs—including the newly discovered ones.

  We’ve always been proud of the history of the Penthouse, and I’ve wanted to do this book for many years. Both my father and uncle Joe had thought about making a book at one point, and they’d even begun to collect their notes together, but were always too busy to get very far. My mother too began to sketch out a book of her own stories about what it was like becoming part of the family, the ups and downs, and what it was like raising a new generation of Filippones. Other people as well had approached our family over the years, wanting to write a book, but they never seemed to have the right angle or want to tell the story as a whole.

  I met author Aaron Chapman when he started to write an article about the Penthouse for the Vancouver Courier that celebrated the sixty-year anniversary since we’d been in business. Dad got to read an early version of it before he passed away. Both my dad and I agreed it was the best and most accurate article that had ever been written about the Penthouse. This, and the timely discovery of the once-lost photographs, reignited our idea about a book. I promised my dad I would see it become a reality.

  Danny and his father Ross.

  The fact that the photographs—and most of all the Penthouse itself—was saved in the 2011 fire further motivated me. I wanted to see a book that told the full history of the Penthouse, one that would detail the highs and lows and the laughs and the tears over the years. I wanted a book that would not only feature our amazing collection of photographs but also tell some of the stories behind them—many of which are here in print for the very first time. The year 2013 will mark the 100th birthday of my uncle Joe. I wonder what he’d think of Vancouver if he could see it now? One thing’s for sure—I know he’d be doing somersaults if he could see the Penthouse still thriving on Seymour Street, where it’s always been. And I’d like to think that he and the rest of his brothers are lighting up their cigars and smiling down on the whole affair and are as pleased to see this book as I am.

  On behalf of the Filippone family, I would like to give a heartfelt thank-you to all of the wonderful customers, friends, and colleagues we’ve met along the way. A bar is just an empty building without people in it, and none of this would have been possible without you. Thank you for all these wonderful years and memories. Enjoy!

  Danny Filippone

  August 2012

  Prologue

  After the fire at the Penthouse Nightclub was put out, the joke on the street was, “While everybody knew the exotic dancers there were hot—they didn’t know they’d burn the place down.”

  The Penthouse on the night of the fire, November 30, 2011. Film capture: Chris Anka, CBC Vancouver.

  But when Vancouver ’s Fire and Rescue Services arrived on the scene on November 30, 2011, nobody was laughing. Thick grey-black smoke bellowed into the air, and wild orange flames roared from the back of the legendary nightclub. It was a clear, chilly night—not a drop of Vancouver ’s famous autumn rain to dampen the fire’s rage. Crews from five nearby fire halls—forty firefighters and two battalion chiefs in total—were dispatched to the 1000 block of Seymour Street at 4:21 a.m. When Charles Mulder, a firefighter who was driving one of the trucks, rushed to the scene, the cluster of neighbourhood cars parked on the street forced him to steer sharply at Nelson Street onto Seymour and whip-shot a newspaper box on the corner, sending it flying, but soon enough he and the other firefighters were able to set up their hoses and ladders in front of the club. Battalion Chief Randy Hebenton was immediately concerned that the blaze would spread beyond the Penthouse to the very old residential house next door—one of the last of its kind downtown—or even potentially jump a short back- alleyway to other buildings on the block.

  Hebenton, a thirty-five-year veteran of the department and one of its most senior tactics officers, was, luckily, one of the best men in the city to battle the blaze. Born and raised in East Vancouver and possessing a resemblance to craggy actor Richard Widmark, the fifty-seven-year-old firefighting veteran teaches strategies and tactics to other fire departments around the province, but it was perhaps his experience with the Penthouse itself that may have saved the building that night.

  Three firemen in front of the Penthouse. Film capture: Chris Anka, CBC Vancouver.

  “When I was about nineteen or twenty years old, I’d go in for a beer and watch the show,” he chuckles. “I hung out there a bit with some other firefighters. I hadn’t been there for twenty-five years, and the building’s gone through a lot of additions and renovations. But I used to date a couple of the dancers back in the day, and got invited to their dressing rooms a few times. So I was, well, let’s put it this way, familiar with that part of the building.”

  Hebenton explains:

  Because I knew the spaces in the back, I knew there was a strong potential for the fire to spread. Had the fire started in the showroom downstairs—which is a big area with a lot of oxygen—there would have been no stopping the fire; it would have quickly gotten out of control, and I doubt we could have saved the building. The boys did an excellent job of confining it to that small back room, and so we saved the structure. While there was considerable smoke damage, the building was still standing. There was certainly a feeling of accomplishment, as there always is when it goes like that.

  While causes ranging from arson to faulty wiring in the 1940s-era building were considered, the subsequent investigation proved inconclusive; all that could be determined was that it started in the dancers’ change room at the rear of the building. In the end, the most likely suspect was a burning cigarette that had been discarded in the trash.

  The fire was first reported to emergency services by a passing Vancouver Police Department patrol car. And the idea that the VPD alerted fire crews to save the infamous Penthouse from burning down to an ash heap may have sent the ghosts of a few former vice- squad inspectors, who’d spent their whole careers investigating the nightclub, spinning in their graves.

  Vancouver Province, December 1, 2011

  For days afterward, the Penthouse fire was one of the top stories on local radio and television newscasts, and every report referred to the nightclub as “legendary” and “historic.” For people who’d never been to the Penthouse, the media’s use of these words made it clear that, from its after-hours speakeasy days to its place as one of Vancouver ’s top show lounges, the club was visited by many celebrities, including big-name Hollywood actors and actresses. Legendary musicians and performers, including Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra, entertained crowds from the club’s stage or at private parties held in mysterious upper floors and back rooms. Colourful stories told of police raids for illegal alcohol, a notorious murder investigation, and the club’s association with one of the most sensational trials the city had ever seen. Every report mentioned the Filippone family, who had operated the nightclub for more than sixty years and through two generations.

  Online responses to the news stories varied from the humorous—“I bet the firefighters didn’t take long to get there!”—to those who hoped the business would soon be back on its feet—“The Penthouse deserves a historic [recognition] in Vancouver”—to the contrarily unimpressed—“We actually call a strip club historic!?” Others were more blunt: “[They] should have let it burn … clean up the area.”[1] Opinions had always been divided about the controversial club.

  The Penthouse legend does not begin with the flashing emergency lights of Vancouver fire engines flooding onto Seymour street, or the flashing lights of those of the VPD patrol cars that repeatedly screeched up to the building since 1947, but with the story of an Italian family’s immigration to Canada in the 1920s.

  I. Bella Fortuna

  The Filippone family traces its roots from San Nicola da Crissa in the Calabria area in southern
Italy. The toe in the “boot” of the country, today Calabria is one of the most popular regions for tourism in the country and has a large export market for its incomparable olives and olive oil, meats and cheeses. But in the early part of the twentieth century, Calabria was a poor province that shackled its citizens with near-feudal laws, making it difficult for farmers to own land. Leaving their homeland and starting elsewhere seemed to be the only choice for many southern Italians, and in the 1890s a wave of emigration from Italy began.

  Maria Rosa and Giuseppe Filippone in the late 1920s

  By 1915, five million Italians had left their country.[2] The majority of these emigrants were from Il Mezzogiorno, the name for the southern provinces of the country such as Calabria. They settled in other parts of Europe and as far away as Australia, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, and Canada. Giuseppe and Maria Rosa Filippone were probably typical of the thousands of new citizens who arrived in Canada in 1921. Giuseppe, a coal miner in Italy, joined hundreds of other new immigrants attracted to Vancouver Island by the promise of work in coal baron Robert Dunsmuir’s mines. Filled with workers from around the world, the mines echoed with the accents of Italians, Finns, Scots, Welsh, and “Geordies” from the Tyneside region of Newcastle. All would have been heard talking and shouting orders at the colliery.

  Giuseppe arrived first and settled into the small mining town of Extension, near Nanaimo, British Columbia. Maria Rosa followed a few months later with their young son Joseph (who had come into the world, appropriately enough, after a New Year’s Eve party on January 1, 1913). In Extension, Joe began to contribute to the family’s income as a garment worker, making six dollars a week. He was the first member of his family to learn English, and it became his job to greet neighbours to the home, receive deliveries for the family, or talk to passersby; this may have taught Joe the “welcoming skills” that were of such great use to him later in life as the host of a club.