The former owner of the legendary Studio 54 Mark Fleischman has died. Flesichman’s former business partner confirmed that the nightlife icon passed away on Wednesday by assisted suicide at Switzerland’s Dignitas Clinic.
Fleischman was known for taking over Studio 54 in 1980, after the club’s original owners were sentenced for tax evasion. He ran the venue until 1986. The illustrious nightclub is best known for its history of celebrity guests and hedonistic debauchery, becoming a key meeting place for artists, high society, and the underground at the height of the disco era. In his 2017 memoir Inside Studio 54, Fleischman reminisced on these times. “Every night, celebrities and stunning women made their way through the crowd, up the stairs to my office to sip champagne and share lines of cocaine using my golden straw or rolled-up $100 bills,” he wrote, “from the very first night we opened, in 1981, I was swept up in a world of celebrities, drugs, power and sex.”
Fleischman, who was 82 at the time of his death, had been suffering from complications due to an undiagnosed neurological disease since 2016. His illness had rendered him incapable of caring for himself, and he told the New York Post in June, “I am taking a gentle way out. It is the easiest way out for me.”
