The true story of the Chippendales dance troupe is fueled by jealousy and greed,
with chapters including arson, assassins, and dumb business decisions. Keep watching to
learn everything you need to know about the surprisingly dark history of Chippendales.
Chippendales is a uniquely American creation, but the man who founded the business was actually born
outside the United States. Born in India in 1946, Somen "Steve" Banerjee came to this
country like so many others seeking the American Dream. And he worked hard at it, taking a job as
a janitor and working his way up to owning several Mobil gas stations in Los Angeles.
In 1975, Banerjee decided to expand his empire. Along with his business partner Bruce Nahin,
he purchased a local L.A. nightclub and named it Destiny II. He had a dream of
being the owner of a "classy" club, a place he could walk into and feel like a big shot.
But alas, that business decision didn't work out as planned,
as the club failed to become profitable. Nahin and Banerjee tried several desperate gimmicks,
including backgammon games, dinner theater, wrestling nights, and even magic shows.
Nothing worked. But that didn't stop Banerjee, and the final gimmick that he and Nahin tried,
an all-male strip show, launched the club into instant success.
When seeking business advice, it's usually a good idea to avoid people with a high potential
for becoming murderers. But Steve Banerjee failed to heed that advice. As reported by
Los Angeles Magazine, one of the regular customers at Destiny II was a sketchy guy named Paul Snider
who liked to refer to himself as "The Jewish Pimp." He'd gained some fame through his wife,
Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. Snider promoted Stratten, photographing her and launching her
career as a model, but he also abused her terribly, and would kill her and himself in 1980.
But in 1979, Snider and Stratten were instrumental to the launch of
Chippendales. Snider suggested the idea of an all-male strip show to Banerjee,
and Stratten actually came up with the iconic outfit of bow ties and cuffs. The idea hit at a
sweet spot in American cultural history during an era that also featured the women's liberation
movement and the mainstream attention of erotic films. As for the name "Chippendales," that
came from an 18th century furniture designer, as Banerjee thought it evoked "pure class."
Just as it is today, Los Angeles in 1979 was an extremely diverse city. That was one reason it was
an ideal destination for an ambitious immigrant like Steve Banerjee to find success. So you would
be forgiven for thinking that he would want to make his male strip show as diverse as possible.
But when Banerjee launched Chippendales, there were almost no dancers of color.
As reported by Los Angeles Magazine, in the early days of the club,
the dancers that Chippendales hired were almost exclusively white.
Banerjee was obsessed with having a "classy" club, which essentially meant "white." In fact,
Chippendales was a largely white island in the midst of one of the country's most diverse cities,
as white dancers performed for audiences that were also overwhelmingly white. As time went on and the
brand became nationally recognized, Chippendales did hire the occasional Black dancer to perform,
but typically just one at a time, with the main group of dancers still remaining largely white.
The more you learn about the history of Chippendales, the more you realize
that Steve Banerjee wasn't exactly the best businessman. Despite that,
after hitting upon the idea of an all-male strip show, his club did become an enormous success.
Every night, there were lines around the block as hundreds of women would pay a lot
of money to crowd inside and be entertained by the buff and oiled dancers on the stage.
"You get on stage with a thousand women, you know,
you're gonna have fun, like the roars and the craziness, it's a real high."
That kind of success naturally inspired others to try and imitate the Chippendales formula.
When Bannerjee was faced with competing local clubs that sapped some of his business,
he could have upped his game or found ways to innovate. But instead,
he attempted to hire people to burn down at least two competitors: Moody's Disco
in Santa Monica and the Red Onion Restaurant in Marina Del Rey. Both attempts were unsuccessful,
as the competing clubs suffered only minor damage. And as Chippendales' fame grew further,
copycats continued to spring up nationwide, making arson an ineffective, not to mention illegal,
strategy. For his part, Banerjee pleaded guilty when he was indicted for attempted arson.
Nick De Noia was a successful television producer who was hired by Steve Banerjee
in 1981 to class up the dance routines and stage productions at Chippendales.
He would quickly go on to outclass the founder of the business in every way.
As reported by Los Angeles Magazine, he came up with the gimmicks and costumes
that really put the club on the map, including routines based on Frankenstein, superheroes,
and the legendary "Unknown Flasher" who performed wearing a paper hat.
De Noia also convinced Banerjee to sign away lucrative aspects of the business,
allowing De Noia to run an East Coast version of the club and a touring production more or less
independently and to keep most of the profits. De Noia jotted down an agreement on a napkin
that gave him control over the new endeavor and a 50 percent cut of its revenue. Banerjee signed,
but he apparently didn't understand that the language granted De Noia control in perpetuity.
What's more, De Noia eventually started becoming the face of Chippendales. As the brand grew in
fame and value, it was De Noia who showed up on talk shows like Sally Jessy Raphael and Donahue.
Banerjee began to seethe with jealousy, as he felt that his contribution as co-founder was
being forgotten. He also believed that De Noia was taking credit for his idea,
and the media was letting him get away with it.
Compounding Steve Banerjee's jealousy and anger towards Nick De Noia was the fact that he really
wasn't a great businessman, as he mishandled his finances pretty badly. His problems began when
he simply failed to pay his taxes. As the bill for his back taxes swelled, he compounded his
financial problems with other mistakes. Lending the Chippendales name to merchandise was a great
idea, and a project to create a calendar featuring the dancers in steamy poses was a surefire hit.
But Banerjee mishandled the whole thing and wound up with a calendar where every month had
31 days. The reprint cost him $70,000, which is close to $200,000 when adjusted for inflation.
Banerjee also miscalculated when he let his jealousy of Nick De Noia get the better of him.
He became incensed when De Noia began appearing on TV and became celebrated as the genius behind
the club. After De Noia had created a successful East Coast touring version of the show, Banerjee
decided to create a competing West Coast tour. But De Noia sued him because Banerjee had given him
the legal rights to that idea, and the lawsuit devastated Banerjee's finances even further.
When faced with internal disagreements, most business professionals pursue legal
remedies. That is to say, they sue, or they have their lawyers negotiate a settlement.
It's a slow and often frustrating process, but it has the advantage of keeping everyone alive and
out of jail. But when Steve Banerjee decided that he'd been treated badly by his business partner,
he decided to take a decidedly different route for justice: hiring an assassin.
Nick De Noia was a ruthless businessman who basically tricked Banerjee into signing
away control of what would become the most lucrative aspect of his business.
The acrimony eventually led Banerjee to hire a hit man named
Ray in 1987 to kill De Noia. Colon farmed the job out to a local drug addict named Louie,
who posed as a messenger and walked right into De Noia's office and shot him in the face.
"On April 7, 1987, he was gunned down."
And that wasn't the only death that Steve Banerjee was plotting that year.
Back in 1979, he bought the club that would become Chippendales with business partner Bruce Nahin,
and in 1987 Nahin remained a co-owner of the business. After hiring a hitman to kill Nick
De Noia, Banerjee figured that he could take out two problems all at once. So he also planned to
have Nahin killed in order to secure complete control over the Chippendales empire. Nahin
was supposed to travel to New York to meet with De Noia, but he had to make last minute changes
because of an illness in his family. So he never made the trip, which ended up saving his life.
Despite being as incompetent a criminal as he was a businessman,
Steve Banerjee almost got away with hiring someone to kill Nick De Noia. After a year,
the police investigation into the death had gone cold. Hitman Ray Colon had farmed out the job
to a local criminal who posed as a messenger in order to gain access to De Noia's office,
and nobody in De Noia's offices got a good look at the killer, so no progress was made on that front.
Without any suspects or witnesses, the police then tried to figure out what the motive for the murder
had been, but they couldn't find any concrete connection between the killing and Banerjee,
or anyone else. So by 1988 it looked like he'd gotten everything he wanted.
De Noia was out of the picture, and his family sold his interests in Chippendales back to
Banerjee for a relatively paltry $1.3 million. According to K. Scot Macdonald, co-author of
Deadly Dance: The Chippendales Murders, it was actually worth approximately ten times that.
In 1988, Steve Banerjee thought that he'd discovered a new way to succeed in
business in the form of killing people. He'd successfully hired an assassin to kill his
partner Nick De Noia, after all. And not only had the police failed to link him to the death,
but De Noia's family had also sold him their stake in Chippendales at a huge discount.
So it's little wonder that Banerjee thought that this deadly strategy would work again.
Chippendales' success had led to a crop of copycat clubs, and in the early 90s a group
of former dancers banded together with a former MC at the club named Read Scot.
Their idea was to launch a similar show called "Adonis: The Men of Hollywood."
That angered Banerjee, so he hired a hitman named Strawberry to carry out
the deeds by using a cyanide mixture that Banerjee prepared himself.
But Strawberry became nervous and called up an old contact at the Drug Enforcement Agency,
who in turn put him in touch with the FBI. The FBI then staged a sting operation and gathered
enough evidence to charge Banerjee with attempted murder, arson, and racketeering. They even had him
on tape bragging about being able to flee back to India if he ever got into trouble in the U.S.
"At last, they had it all on tape."
Arrested and charged with arson, attempted murder, and other major crimes, Steve Banerjee had one
last move to make as the walls closed in on him. The FBI became aware that he intended
to flee to India if given the opportunity. He knew he was about to lose everything,
so he thought of something clever. He pleaded guilty and then arranged to
have all of his assets, including his stake in Chippendales, transferred to his wife Irene.
But that wasn't the soundest of plans. Irene moved to divorce Banerjee and sell Chippendales,
which would've left him with nothing. And with the FBI arguing against bail, he would
have no chance to escape back to India, where he thought he would be able to marry again and start
over under a new name. His options were running out, and he ultimately chose to end everything.
The day before he was set to be sentenced, he tied his bed sheets into a makeshift noose and
killed himself in his jail cell. The authorities claimed that while Banerjee had been depressed,
they didn't have any reason to believe that he would take his own life.
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).