The iconic film, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, was filmed at 2001 Odyssey in Brooklyn, New York. The floor eventually fell into the hands of Vito Bruno, who purchased it after the night club closed in 2005. … “It’s one of the most recognizable pieces of film memorabilia in history,” Bruno said.
Also How old is John Travolta in Urban Cowboy? The sparks that come from the combative coupling, along with the music that underscores it and the dance-floor moves that frame it, made the movie one of the summer’s top films. It was considered 26-year-old Travolta’s comeback.
Likewise How much did the Saturday Night Fever dance floor sell for? On June 27th, the iconic disco floor from Saturday Night Fever sold for 1.2 million by the auction house, Profiles in History.
Where was the disco in Saturday Night Fever? The dance studio was Phillips Dance Studio in Bensonhurst, the Manero home was a house in Bay Ridge, the paint store was Pearson Paint & Hardware, also in Bay Ridge. Other locations included the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, John J. Carty Park, and the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
Did John Travolta do his own dancing in Grease? But it was 1978’s “Grease” where he first showed off his dancing skills on the big screen — and as it turns out, he choreographed the final musical number. Travolta told Fallon, “So in Grease, they needed a step for that “You’re The One That I Want” at the end, so I said, we used to do the Four Corners.
2001 Odyssey—the small Brooklyn nightclub immortalized by John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever—closed years ago, but fans of the movie can keep the disco spirit alive by purchasing the neon dance floor from the film. As Reuters reports, the pop culture relic will go up for auction in Los Angeles in late June, and is expected to fetch up to $1.5 million.
Profiles in History, an auction house in suburban L.A., will sell the dance floor as part of its upcoming Hollywood Auction, which will run from June 26 to June 28. The illuminated wood-and-Plexiglas floor measures 24 feet by 16 feet, and was custom-built for the 1977 film.
In the mid-2000s, the dance floor was the subject of a nasty legal dispute: Vito Bruno, a former employee of 2001 Odyssey, purchased the fixture at auction for just $6000, but the club’s former owner, Jay Rizzo, wanted more money. He ignored Bruno’s bid, claiming he withdrew the floor from auction before it was placed, and allowed Profiles in History to sell it to an anonymous bidder for a larger sum.
The law ended up being on Rizzo’s side, and he was declared the rightful owner. Now, he’s “decided to share it with the world,” according to Reuters. For more information on the dance floor, visit Profiles in History's website to view their digital auction catalog.
Think of the disco era, and Birmingham, Alabama, probably isn’t the first place that comes to mind. But the city provided a crucial piece of inspiration for Saturday Night Fever, the hit 1977 film that helped make disco a worldwide craze. The illuminated dance floor where John Travolta’s character, Tony Manero, struts, thrusts, and finger-points is directly modeled on one in The Club, a private supper club perched high on Red Mountain overlooking downtown.
“When we were preparing Saturday Night Fever, the production designer, Charles Bailey, and I scouted nearly every disco in the New York City area,” says John Badham, Saturday Night Fever’s director. “And no matter how fancy or weird they were, they all had one thing in common: The floors were worn-out hardwood or even dirty concrete.”
That’s when he remembered The Club in Birmingham, with its circular plexiglass dance floor illuminated from beneath with red, green, blue, and yellow bulbs. According to Cassie McCay, the venue’s member relations manager, the dance floor has been a “definite staple for The Club” since it opened in 1951.
photo: Courtesy of The Club
An exterior view of The Club.
photo: Courtesy of The Club
A recent view of The Club’s dance floor.
“My parents would take us on very special occasions, like my birthday, up to The Club for dinner,” says Badham. His family moved when he was two years old from the United Kingdom to Birmingham, where Badham’s younger sister, Mary—who, incidentally, played Scout in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird—was born. “My mother loved to dance and had made me take lessons, so we would go out onto the beautiful lighted dance floor and have a great time,” he says. “That image stuck with me many years later.”
photo: Courtesy of The Club
A vintage snapshot of The Club’s dance floor, an attraction since the venue’s establishment in 1951.
For Saturday Night Fever, Badham’s team took over a disco in Brooklyn, the 2001 Odyssey, and imported a custom-built version of the The Club’s floor—with a few upgrades. This new disco dazzler flashed in rhythm to the music and was big enough to hold fifty to sixty dancers. Though the floor cost the low-budget film upwards of $15,000, it would pay for itself in spades. Saturday Night Fever enjoyed huge box-office success, helped launch Travolta’s career, and spawned a best-selling soundtrack featuring some of the disco era’s biggest hits.
Next year marks the fortieth anniversary of the blockbuster, which, according to Badham, will be commemorated with a re-release featuring restored footage and deleted scenes. Badham now teaches film and media arts at Chapman University in California, but his movie never fails to take him back to those evenings at The Club. “Every time I watch the film,” he says, “I think of Birmingham with the Vulcan watching over everyone.”
Badham hopes that association works the other way around as well. “Perhaps few of The Club’s patrons who dance here would ever consider themselves to have much in common with disco fever,” he wrote in a letter now hanging inside The Club. “But their dance floor surely does!”