Disaster In Beverly Hills

When I first mention the area code of 90210, can you tell me where it is? Most people can simply because of the show Beverly Hills 90210. Sorry Jason Priestley and Shannen Doherty, but this story isn’t about you, this time at least.  How about zip code 41071? Well, this blog post is about the other Beverly Hills, which was found in Southgate, Kentucky, and the disaster that happened there that should have been prevented simply if people decided to act quicker than they did.

If I told you that humans are social creatures and our ingrained sense is to stick together in a group for greater protection, to many would not be surprising, but it’s this sense that can lead us into trouble if not careful.

This is best shown in a study that was conducted by IB Latane and John Darley in the 1960s, where a room was filled with smoke over a period of time to see how people would react as a group and being by themselves. Can you guess what the results were? Well, let me cut to the chase.

It seems that if you are in a room by yourself and it starts filling with smoke, at some point, you will get up and notify someone of the issue. If you are in a group of three to five people, most likely you will sit there and wait for someone else to be the first to make a decision. When I said smoke-filled room, I mean to the point where you couldn’t see the other side of the room from where your sitting, and still the group all just sat there and waited for someone else to take the initiative. This should be a case where you probably should think for yourself and react. In the case mentioned above, this was simply an experiment but would this happen in real life? The answer is yes, and the rest of this blog will fill you in on all the bad details.

The date was May 28, 1977, and it seemed that everyone was very excited; well, I know that I was because it was the day after my birthday, but everyone in the Cincinnati area was thrilled because John Davidson was coming to town. Now I know what many of you are thinking. Who the hell is John Davidson?

Well, let me fill you in on why this man was really big in 1977. Quite simply, he did it all; he sang and recorded 12 albums in the ’60s and ’70s, with the song “The Time of My Life” being his biggest success, reaching number 19 on the Billboard charts. He was on TV with the Carol Burnett Show, Hollywood Squares; That’s Incredible, just to name a few, and he was also in movies like The Happiest Millionaire,  Concorde Airport 79, and Edward Scissorhands. In his downtime, he also did comedy and the occasional Broadway show like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s, “State Fair.” Let’s just say this guy had some serious clout as a performer, and when he came to your town, everyone wanted a ticket to see him.

The venue for that night’s performance was called The Beverly Hills Supper Club, which was located in Southgate, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati. From 1971 until 1977, this was a venue unlike any other outside of Vegas.

The Beverly Hills was part Las Vegas and part Hollywood, and to a broad Cincinnati demographic, it was simply all enticing. The venue drew acts like Frankie Valli, Phyllis Diller, Redd Foxx, John Davidson, James Brown, the Righteous Brothers, and Rich Little, to name a few.

The setting was aggressively opulent. It made people’s mouths drop open while somehow not making their eyes roll at the carefully planned excess. Brocaded gold walls stood out royally against striking maroon partitions. The chandeliers were fabulous, always gleaming and without a speck of dust. A grand spiral staircase with an indoor waterfall amazed many along with a lushly manicured courtyard which beckoned as soon as you drove up.

The food was widely acclaimed to be superb. The flagship entrée was a massive prime rib, and it was all very affordable.

“Whether you were the wealthiest person from Indian Hills or someone much lower on the economic scale, the Beverly Hills had a magic touch that made everyone feel extremely important,” said Ken Paul, who was Southgate’s 29-year-old mayor in 1977.

Entertainment entrepreneur Richard Schilling and his family, from neighboring Newport, had developed the Beverly into an architecturally confusing complex of 54,000 square feet, with 19 rooms on two floors. It was The Place to go not only for a show but also for weddings, awards banquets, and all manner of special events. By 1977, it was considered less than prudent to count on having a big event at Beverly Hills with about a two year’s notice.

But you could also just stroll into the bar, with no notice at all. Who knew, you might catch Redd Foxx or a Rich Little doling out laugh lines for free.  On the night of May 28, 1977, John Davidson was scheduled to perform before a  sellout house when the unimaginable happened.

The pre-acts for that night’s performance were getting the crowd ready for a festive night of entertainment, food, and drink. This event was the place to be, but something was happening at the other end of the building that the public wasn’t aware of at that point. A small fire had broken out in a  closet at the other end of the Beverly Hills Supper Club, and at first, many thought that it would be contained without alarming the large group at the other end of the building.

There were two other events being held at the Beverly Hills that night, one event for the Cincinnati Choral Union and one for the Afghan Hound Club of America. Those were at the top of the spiral staircase when Fran Oaks, one of the waitresses, went up and told Wayne Dammert, the supervisor overseeing those events, that there was a fire that had spread to the Zebra room located directly below them. Wayne then looked down and saw a large amount of smoke and opened one of the exit doors and felt a tremendous amount of heat; and knew that he didn’t have much time and proceeded to get everyone out of the upper sections of the Beverly Hills venue.

As small fires tend to do, they consume and become bigger and bigger, and to the staff amazement, the fire starts moving toward the Cabaret Room where the crowd was waiting for John Davidson to perform.  An assistant waiter named Walter Bailey, who was 18 years old, was talking to his supervisor and was discussing how overcrowded it was. They still had 20 or 30 people still waiting to get in and be seated for the show. Then a waitress came up to Walter and asked him where the owners were. She leaned into his ear, and she whispers, “There’s a fire in the Zebra Room.” Then she was gone. Walter thought she was surely exaggerating, but he ran down there, and when he started to open the doors, he noticed some smoke coming out at the top and then down the center between the doors. He decided not to open the doors any wider. To Walter, there seemed to be pressure building behind the closed doors and he didn’t want to open them. (This reminds me of the scene in Backdraft, and we know how that ends up. If not, go see this movie, but let me say it wasn’t good.)  To Walter, it seemed like a major fire, possibly the whole room. At that point he walked down to the main bar, and in there it was normal. People were sitting at the bar and around tables. Walter then ran to the entry and yelled, “Everyone out, there’s a fire!” When he did that, the people at the barstools pushed away from there perches, and people at the tables started standing up. So he turned again fairly quickly and ran back to the Cabaret Room.” Walter again went up to his supervisor and stated that they needed to clear the room because of the approaching fire. Walter said that his supervisor looked down the hallway and didn’t see anything and briefly walked away.  The supervisor said, “Watch my line for me.” After a couple of minutes,  he was seen heading toward the Cabaret Room service bar. Walter was thinking, “He’s gonna check that exit and make an announcement.” Meanwhile, Walter had gotten the people from his line outside into the garden area. He told them to stay there and headed back to the Cabaret Room. He was expecting the crowd to start coming out, but still nothing. He’s standing at the curtain (at the entrance), looking at the show going on, and getting really anxious. “They’re not clearing the room. They haven’t made an announcement. This can’t happen. This room has got to be cleared.”

Walter Bailey was in a tough spot. The assistant waiter had encountered evidence of a serious fire some distance from the Cabaret Room, and he felt strong but wasn’t genuinely positive that unsuspecting patrons of the night’s main show were soon to be in mortal danger. A superior had reacted to his warning with indecision. Though fearing he might be about to cost himself his job, the 18-year-old took what proved to be hailed as the most life-saving decision of the night.

The young Walter Bailey simply walked up to the stage and interrupted the comedians performing. Walter was shocked when one of the comedians looked at him and gave him the microphone. He then proceeded to say, “I’d like everyone’s attention. If you look to your right, you’ll see an exit. If you look behind you, you’ll see another exit. And in the left corner, you’ll see another one. We need everyone to leave the building. There’s a fire in the building.” Then he simply walked off the stage and out of the room to see where the fire was, but thought that people would start evacuating the room.  

Whether it was confusion, people not believing what was being said, or many thinking that this was a part of the act, the Cabaret Room’s exiting didn’t happen fast enough. Many people were reported to have just sat at their tables, waiting for John Davidson to take the stage. Some people were overheard supposedly to have said that they paid good money for these seats and they weren’t going anywhere. I’m sure that many thought about exiting the building, but then reconsidered when they saw others just sitting at their tables waiting for the show to start. Unfortunately, the show they were about to see will go down in the record books for the worst man-made disaster in Cincinnati’s history.

With the entire room being jam-packed and having people working the event, around 2800 people were inside the building at the time of the announcement. You can see where this is going; with only three exits to escape from and an extremely overcrowded room, the makings of a disaster were set in motion. Never mind that the building didn’t have smoke alarms or a sprinkler system to suppress the fire back then. This disaster would have happened at some point if it didn’t occur on May 28, 1977. You can only imagine the panic that set in, when all the lights suddenly shut off due to the fire, and smoke started rolling in the room-filling it entirely in minutes.  

165 people died at the Beverly Hills Supper Club that night, and the cause was never fully explained. Many guessed that it started simply because of faulty wiring, but then you have some stories being told that it was arson set by Mafia types who had been rebuffed in bids to regain control of the club. Either way it was a disaster that could have been avoided. These allegations were never substantiated by any officials during the subsequent investigation. 

In the aftermath, the things we do know are, Walter Bailey was a hero for doing what he did, to at least give some a fighting chance of getting out of the Cabaret Room. It’s agreed across the board that overcrowding, inadequate numbers of exits, convoluted paths to those exits, lack of firewalls, and highly flammable interior components led to the historic death toll.

The room was supposed to sit around 1200, and we know that this number was well above this mark. The lack of fire detection caused many city councils to rewrite fire codes all over the United States. In closing for this blog-post, you must always be aware of your situation and what actions you would take in case of different scenarios and most importantly, think for yourself and sometimes go against the grain of what everyone else is doing, and if your room starts filling with smoke, get the hell out of there.

 This is the official Acorn blog stance, now go enjoy yourself and have a mask ready along with clean underwear just in case anything happens to you.  Have a great week and we will talk again soon.