Whether you’re a brother or whether you’re a mother, You’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive. Feel the city breakin’ and everybody shakin’, And we’re stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive….
New York- The Brooklyn dance floor that made a gyrating John Travolta the disco king is headed for the auction block.The flashing, multicolored floor that the “Saturday Night Fever” star strutted across in a tight white suit has been saved from a doomed Brooklyn nightclub.
And the relic is exciting memorabilia collectors around the world, who are expected to start a bidding war with offers of more than $80,000 for the piece of movie history.
“We’re getting international interest from all sorts of people,” said Brian Chanes, director of sales at California-based Profiles in History, the Hollywood-memorabilia company handling the sale.
“We have interest from private collectors who want the dance floor for themselves, and from club owners who know the commercial value of having the floor made famous in ‘Saturday Night Fever.'”
The dance floor that helped to fuel the ’70s disco craze goes up for auction on April 1, with bids expected both in a live sale and on the Internet’s eBay site.
The 1977 movie earned Travolta an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Tony Manero, a 19-year-old Brooklyn paint-store clerk whose mundane existence is forgotten when he takes to the dance floor every Saturday.
The floor, which has more than 300 colored, flashing lights under a Perspex surface, had been a fixture in the 2001 Odyssey nightclub since the movie was made.
The club, renamed Spectrum in 1987, closed last week after being sold to a real estate investment company.
But owner Jay Rizzo saved the floor.
“I had to,” he said. “Over the years, we’ve had thousands of people who come here just to see it. It is incredibly popular with tourists – particularly from Europe.
“It has literally been the heartbeat of this club.”
* The dance floor measures 24 feet by 16 feet and includes 304 colored light bulbs. * “Saturday Night Fever” made $142.5 million in the U.S. * The movie’s soundtrack has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. * The album won the Album of the Year Grammy in 1978.