The Factory

Sammy Davis Jr. wore shiny leather pants-boots, side-zipped leather jacket, open-throated red shirt and a heavy gold medallion on a chain. On the make shift stage and backed by Louis Bellson's orchestra, he socked it to the audience of 485 Hollywood celebrities for a solid forty minutes. "If you don't take it easy, I'm gonna leave!" shouted Joey Bishop from his ringside table. Sammy, sweat glistening on his face, sang and danced even harder. The per formance rated him a standing ovation. Pierre Salinger seemed positively stunned. "The chemistry was fantastic," he marveled, planting a kiss of appre ciation on Sammy's cheek.

The scene was The Factory, that pri vate nightclub just east of Beverly Hills off Santa Monica Boulevard founded by Davis, Salinger, Peter Lawford, Anthony Newley, Paul Newman and four

Los Angeles investors. Last week's freebee was simply Sammy's way of expressing gratitude to the 1,000 members (annual dues: $500, soon to rise to $1,000) who have made the six-month-old Factory the In saloon of the show-business crowd.

Choice Graffiti. From the outside, the club could hardly be plainer. Except for a black awning, a red flag emblazoned with a monkey wrench, and a stream of Rolls-Royces arriving and departing, the grey, two-story building looks no different than it did in World War II, when it was a factory turning out bombsights. Inside, the proletarian theme continues with chicken-wirescreened windows, secondhand tables bought at auction for $5 apiece, and bartenders who are togged out in dungarees and blue denim work shirts.

But first comes the doorman, a 300-lb. bearded ex-bouncer who checks membership cards. Next there is a one-story trip up in a leather-padded freight elevator; then out into the enormous main Factory loft, with its 30-ft.-high steel-trussed ceiling, 54-ft.-long bar, sea of dining tables and minuscule dance floor. Out back is another barroom, with four pool tables (the one covered in red felt is for ladies), barber chairs and church pews for the onlookers and oldtime coin machines to play while waiting. The men's-room graffiti are considered so choice that occasionally the waiters cordon the room off, let the girls dash in for a quick peek.

Soundproof Sanctum. Explaining the social void that The Factory fills, Peter Lawford says: "We needed a place to hang our hats. The Factory has turned out to be a big hatstand with lots of hats; but before we started it, outside of discotheques, there was really no place to go that served good food and stayed open late." As he sees it, The Factory's main achievement has been "melding the dinner jackets and the blue jeans. You dig? No one is embarrassed; nobody cares." Brightening the ambiance no end is the fact that some of Hollywood's prettiest girls (who need not be members) show up in the briefest dresses, and dance the wildest steps. Said one new visitor: "The only thing missing are the beds."

The main impression, however, is one of noise--loud, blasting, unrelenting rock 'n' roll from the Gordian Knot, The Factory's regular weekday band--and familiar faces. Any night the whirling dervishes can include Roz Russell, Barbra Streisand, Sonny and Cher, Dress Designer Jimmy Galanos, Financier Bart Lytton, and Fullback-turned-Actor Jim Brown, who tells friends he feels at home at The Facto ry, proves it by rarely missing an evening. As for The Factory's founders, they have their own soundproof inner sanctum--soon to be opened to the membership at large--which is at present the one place where Factory-goers can converse without shouting.

"The people who dig The Factory are going to dig it forever," says Sammy Davis Jr., who reckons that Los Angeles has room enough for 20 more places like it. His reckoning is contagious. Tony Curtis, a Factory regular, is about to open a private club of his own called The Candy Store, the defunct Romanoff's will soon be reopened as The Jazz Suite, and Brian Morris is moving into town with The Bumble, patterned after his private Ad Lib club in London. Looking farther afield, the directors of The Factory themselves are planning to franchise other clubs in converted warehouses in San Francisco and Honolulu.

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