When I was a kid, I heard mention of the Beverly Hills Supper Club on a few occasions. My grandmother mentioned it one time when she said she’d wished that she could have gone there to see Liberace. My dad talked about it a lot, too. I had no idea why this place kept coming up in conversation; it was a nightclub in southern California.
Except that it wasn’t.
The Beverly Hills Supper Club was an uber-elegant nightclub in Southgate KY, up near Cincinnati. A high-end establishment, it would attract massive names like Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, and Frank Sinatra, among others. Well, you saw my mention of Liberace. And when I learned more about it, I was shocked my grandmother had said what she said. That’s because during its 1920s-through-1950s heyday, it was what she would have called a “den of iniquity.”
The Beverly Hills Supper Club
Depending on the source, the club opened in either 1927 or sometime in the 1930s. But because of Prohibition, secret activities like, well, drinking (obviously) and gambling in back rooms were common but hush-hush activities. When Prohibition came to an end, the Beverly Hills Supper Club skyrocketed in popularity and attendance. The 1940s and the 1950s were when the big names started to come. Thankfully, the Kentucky Historical Society has preserved some treasures from the supper club.
The Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire
The nightclub closed in 1961 and reopened under new ownership in 1969, but that didn’t last long. Under new ownership again by 1970, renovations were ruined in a fire, but owner Richard Shilling acted fast and got them replaced, making the Beverly Hills Supper Club a showplace once again in northern Kentucky. That was until May 28th, 1977 when the establishment’s popularity proved to be its undoing. That night, anywhere from 2,000 to 2,800 guests packed themselves into the club only to be told from the stage that a fire had broken out in one of the room’s. Soon, the electricity was gone and panicked patrons tried to shove themselves through the door…