• Jim Caruso’s Cast Party at the King Kong Room

  240 West 47th Street, 212-921-1940

  Last year, writer, singer, and E! producer Jim Caruso threw a party at the Supper Club’s King Kong Room—a theater-district lounge decorated with murals of Fay Wray and metal palm trees—and his friends spent the whole night, well into the morning, singing songs to one another at the piano. Duly impressed, the Supper Club’s owners asked Caruso if he could throw such a party every week. Since then, at about ten every Monday night, Caruso has hosted an open affair frequented by actors in shows playing down the block (when we were there recently, the cast of Urban Cowboy moseyed in), drag queens, and stars like Billy Stritch and Lauren Bacall. For the price of a single drink, you can see Broadway professionals casually sidle up to the piano and belt out a song, martini in one hand, mike in the other. By the time the party wraps up, at about 2:30, you’ll agree with Caruso—“It sure feels like the golden age of something!”

From the 2003 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine