Thread by @LOLrakshak

Today's #quizzytime: Which Bengali gentleman was probably the person to popularize erotic entertainment for women worldover?
Quiz ends at 2 PM. Google if you like.

Ans: One of the best known American brand name was created by Desi boy Somen 'Steve' Banerjee. Having left India possibly in the late 1960s, Banerjee arrived in the USA via Canada, ultimately settling in Playa Del Rey, California, near Los Angeles.

His early business ventures were a Mobil gas station and a failed backgammon club. But his luck turned in 1975, when he bought Destiny II for a song. In 1979 he renamed it ‘Chippendales’, and launched a ‘Male Exotic Dance Night for Ladies Only’ the first such spectacle in the USA

Thus began a rollercoaster ride that would make Chippendales almost a household name, thanks to its wildly popular shows and calendars, and catapult Banerjee into the big league in no time at all. From the very beginning, Banerjee would break the mould of the meek, hardworking,

law-abiding immigrant. Brash, ambitious, and dynamic, he had a taste for expensive cars, large homes, designer clothes, and the finer things in life. He was a man in a hurry, and didn’t care who knew it. He was raking in the millions, and wasn’t bashful about flaunting his wealth

And yet, the dazzle had a darker lining. Intolerant of competition, Banerjee was a suspect in at least two cases of arson, once in 1979 and again in 1984, when he attempted to have two competing nightclubs burnt to the ground. Starting from the mid-1980s, Chippendales was also

embroiled in a series of civil lawsuits. Through it all, Banerjee was working with Emmy Award winning director Nick DeNoia, who became the choreographer of Chippendales, and who contributed in no small measure to the nightclub’s immense popularity.

However, Banerjee and DeNoia eventually became involved in a bitter financial dispute, and parted ways. In 1987, DeNoia sued Steve for violating their touring agreement. And in April of that year, he was shot in the face and killed in New York by hired hitman Ray Colon.

Banerjee’s name did come up in the list of suspects, but there was no evidence linking him to the killing. He was back on the radar in 1990-91, when he once again tasked Colon with the job of killing former Chippendales choreographer Mike Fullington and two other former

Chippendales dancers, all three of whom had joined a competing troupe. Colon in turn hired a hitman to do the job, who turned out to be an FBI informer. Following a complicated FBI chase that swung between Switzerland and the USA, and on the strength of electronic surveillance,

Banerjee was charged with conspiracy to murder on September 2, 1993, and held without bail. About a month later, he was charged with the murder of DeNoia, racketeering, and arson, as well as the 1990 killing of Indian businessman Jagjit Sehdeva. Hours before he was to be

sentenced, in the early hours of October 23, 1994, Somen ‘Steve’ Banerjee hanged himself from a coat hook in his cell, using a bedsheet. Notwithstanding the squeamishness about him within the immigrant Bengali community, it is perhaps ironic that Steve Banerjee has today become

far more ‘mainstream’ than most immigrants can ever hope to be. His drive and dynamism smashed through the glass ceiling that separates modern American immigrants from the ‘original’ settlers, and helped him create an iconic brand that will remain an integral part of the American

cultural landscape in a way that thousands of Silicon Valley start-ups never will. getbengal.com/details/steve-…