When you hear of Chippendales, your mind might initially stray to a pair of anthropomorphic chipmunks, from the live-action-comedy series, and homonym – Chip ’n Dale.
But even if a pair of walking, talking chipmunks isn’t your first guess, it's unlikely that you’d associate it with an all-male, Las Vegas-based, stripping dance troupe packed with over-oiled, hunky men.
However, it is even more unlikely that you think of its crime-rich and bloody origin story, all stemming from an Indian entrepreneur, Somen “Steve” Banerjee.
Welcome to Chippendales, a limited series on Hulu, being streamed on Hotstar in India, chronicles the wild and violent past of the Chippendales and its founder – Bombay-born Somen “Steve” Banerjee, played by Pakistani-American actor Kumail Nanjiani.
But the revolutionary all-male revue’s story is a tale of almost-naked male strippers, jealousy, crime and murder, stranger than anything Hollywood could have come up with.
*Enter Somen Banerjee*
Welcome to Chippendales introduces ambitious Somen Banerjee, an Indian immigrant who moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s, with his mind set on building his great American dream.
He worked for toy manufacturer Mattel and operated a Mobil gas station in Southern California, but eventually made an extremely calculated step (as seen in the show), to buy a failing nightclub called Round Robin and turn it into a classy backgammon club.
On a similar note, having Kumail Nanjiani play the role of Banerjee, physically, seems to be an extremely calculated step. A Bengali, Banerjee was built heavy, while Nanjiani’s face, like the rest of him, is chiselled.
And the actor does his best to emulate Somen, even during the more villainous caveats of the show. Moreover, Nanjiani had no clue that he was playing the villain for the show. Despite auditioning, reading the script and filing the entire series, Nanjiani realised Banerjee’s flaws after he watched a cut of the final episodes.
In the show, Banerjee tosses aside his gas station uniform, dons an expensive new suit, shiny new shoes as she locks eyes with a Hugh Hefner poster on the wall, transforming himself from the traditional Somen Banerjee to the newly rebuilt chic Steve Banerjee.
He renamed the club Destiny II, falsely implying that the disco was the sequel to another flourishing club (as Nanjiani explained in the first episode of Welcome to Chippendales).
Predictably, the mildly clever trick failed and the experienced meagre footfall, at best. But what was his solution? To say the least, some out of the box experiences for his guests. To say more, various gimmicks to stand out from a shady, seedy and starry Hollywood ecosystem.
Somen tried to lure in customers using magic shows, dinner theatre, Oyster eating contests and went as far as introducing female mud wrestling, but even then, the large crowds they had dreamed of would continue to elude them.
When everything failed, Banerjee had another idea, one that would end up making sure that his club stood out like a sore thumb.
When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Hire Male Strippers
There is no clear idea of where Somen got the idea for introducing male strippers. Some say he simply coped it from an existing club in LA’s Redondo beach, while others say it came from club promoter and pimp, Paul Snider.
“Paul Snider had seen some gay male review and thought it would be kind of like hammy and fun to do this for women,” Natalia Petrzela, a history professor, told Vice. “And he brought the idea to Banerjee and that’s how it began.”
The club was renamed Chippendales, in honour of the wooden furniture style inside the club, which took inspiration from the styles of English cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale.
It created an environment where classically handsome, well-built men perform striptease routines to sassy 70s pop music, exclusively for women. The shtick worked, and “Steve” Banerjee built an empire that still exists today.
“It was the first time ever where something was completely geared to the ladies,” former Chippendales associate producer Candace Mayeron, told 20/20. “We built an environment for women to let it all hang out.”
According to The New York Post, there were “lines around the block” as soon as doors for the show opened and Banerjee proved to be a natural at marketing, taking up a pro-feminist approach.
All That’s Interesting claimed that he told the LA Times that Chippendales was “enhancing the cause of women’s lib, by providing a place where women can go and look at men.”
Subsequently, Paul Snider’s wife, Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten, suggested that the shirtless dancers at Chippendales are styled with bow tie collars and cuffs as acknowledgment to the Playboy bunnies.
A former creative director of Playboy claimed that the credit for Stratten’s style choices lies with the magazine's founder Hugh Hefner.
“Hefner gave the greatest gift to Steve Banerjee by allowing him to take that 'cuffs and collar' trademark and make it into a Chippendales look,” he said. “That reversal was such an eye grabber that women were just immediately locked into it.”
Within a few years, Banerjee expanded his horizons and opened clubs across New York, Denver, and Dallas. He also launched three touring strip-troupe that performed across the US and Europe.
Banerjee's Oversight, De Noia's Profit
Everything was hunky-dory, Chippendales was blooming, and Banerjee was always on the prowl, finding newer ways to make the show better. One of these moves was made in the early 1980s, when he hired Emmy-winning TV producer Nick De Noia, who he hoped could help navigate the expanding empire.
However, De Noia's entry was when everything started to go south.
A charismatic choreographer, Banerjee hired De Noia to help create dance routines for Chippendales'’ dancers and named him the group’s in-house choreographer.
But their relationship was anything but friendly, and the two often butted heads. According to The New York Post, the pair were, personality wise, “like oil and water.”
Former company dancer Read Scot told People magazine that the two “used to go toe-to-toe and just scream and curse at each other” when it came to the Chippendales show flow and direction.
Both men wanted control of what was getting closer to becoming an empire, and soon enough, De Noia made an offer, one that would eventually fuel Banerjee’s discontent and hatred for him.
De Noia’s offer would have him develop and launch an east coast Chippendales show out of New York, and keep 50 percent of the company’s revenue, along with a caveat that Banerjee, for some reason, didn't register.
Original Chippendales member Dan Peterson said, “Nick wrote on a napkin that he has the right to take Chippendales on the road and own it in perpetuity.”
Banerjee, in agreement, signed the deal but only because he had no idea what he was signing away. Peterson says, “Steve signed it and [gave] away the most profitable part of the business because he did not know what perpetuity meant.”
Will the Real Mr Chippendales Please Stand Up?
Over the next few years, Banerjee sat with growing rage as De Noia took all of the credit, along with 50 percent of the money, from Chippendales’ growing national success. He had also begun doubting if his business partner was paying him fair share of the tour profits.
In the mid-1980s, De Noia moved to New York to set up a new Chippendales show, and later launched a successful tour under the name “Chippendales Universal,” an entity independent from Banerjee, that paid him royalties to the right to use the Chippendales name.
Soon enough, the tour made Chippendales a cultural sensation with sexy calendars, talk show appearances and even spoofs on Saturday Night Live (SNL). But the tour created a massive rift between the two partners who already didn’t get along.
As success grew, De Noia conveniently became the face of the Chippendales franchise, to a point where he was nicknamed “Mr Chippendales,” which obviously was a vexingly bitter pill to swallow.
“I think that [ the nickname] helped fuel the anger that Steve had toward Nick,” Mayeron said in 2021. “Their verbal fights became vicious.”
But even if we discount the vile and bitter relationship with Nick De Noia, Banerjee had other problems, mostly originating from his passion of hiring people for crimes. For many years, the Bengali-origin entrepreneur had engaged in severely corrupt business practices, putting his painstakingly built empire at risk on several occasions.
Banerjee's Final Solution: Arson and Hitmen
Towards the end of the 1970s, he hired someone to set ablaze Moody’s Disco, a rival nightclub. Almost half a decade later, he tried the same thing with another competitor. But it was a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by Don Gibson, a Black UCLA law student who was allegedly denied entry into the Chippendales nightclub, which was the tipping point for Somen.
Growing more desperate to protect himself and Chippendales among the growing number of male strip bars in the United States, he grew angrier about the deal he struck with De Noia.
As the tour continued to gather speed, Banerjee was convinced that De Noia was stealing from him and hired Ray Colon, a friend, former police officer, and nightclub performer, to organise a hit and "take Nick out". On 7 April 1987, De Noia was shot dead at his desk in New York City.
The case went unsolved for years, much to Banerjee’s benefit, after he bought back the touring rights following De Noia’s death.
Once again in 1990, he enlisted Colon’s help to organise a hit on three former Chippendales dancers who had formed a rival dance troupe. But the hitman Coleman hired went rogue and informed the FBI of the murder plot.
He eventually helped the FBI build a case against Banerjee, and even met the man in the hope of getting a confession on record.
Banerjee, in clear defiance, responded using post-it notes which were subsequently flushed down the toilet, refusing to talk about business out loud. It was a year later that Banerjee confessed to giving Colon money to buy guns to kill Nick De Noia.
Finally charged with enlisting Colon to commit Nick’s murder and the attempted murder of three former dancers, Banerjee pleaded guilty to murder for hire, attempted arson, and racketeering.
He entered a plea agreement which would see the Indian serve 26 years in prison and lose all stake in Chippendales. But hours before his sentencing for De Noia’s murder, Banerjee hung himself inside his cell.
Kumail Nanjiani’s portrayal of Banerjee remains true to who the man actually was: the antithesis of the ‘good immigrant’ stereotype.
Because of his “less respectable business practices,” he "brought shame to the immigrant community", by changing his name from Somen to the more English-sounding Steve, he even tried to shed his brown image. He aspired to be a gentleman, but his crimes, unlike his strippers, were not all white-collared.
Till date, Chippendales continues to hold a special place in strip culture, with the touring shows still performing throughout the world, while their residency in Las Vegas continues to be a highly popular choice, even 40 years since the troupe came into existence.
True to Banerjee’s vision, the group continues to be a safe space for women, who can let go their inhibitions, while Banerjee’s signature bow-tied, white collared, muscular men, continue to strip to 70s pop music.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)