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Some of the most enter­tain­ing bits on Blue Underground’s Midnight Blue com­pi­la­tion series are the vin­tage t.v. ads for Plato’s Retreat, mainly because of the sales­man­ship of their founder, Larry Levenson.  He gives off an unas­sum­ing, schlubby working-class vibe as he (badly) reads off cue cards in a flat, nasal Noo Yawk accent.  He doesn’t look or sound like a man who once held the keys to anyone’s sex­ual fan­tasies… and yet he was wor­shipped as the King Of Swing on a nightly basis from 1977 until the mid-1980’s as Plato’s became a scan­dalously suc­cess­ful swinger’s des­ti­na­tion.  In short, he is the kind of acci­den­tal icon whose story demands to be told.

Levenson’s story has finally been told, albeit in a judi­ciously fil­tered style, in American Swing.  The basic out­line has a clas­sic ‘rise and fall’ ring to it.  Levenson was an aver­age joe whose sex­ual appetite caused him to chafe under the yoke of 1960’s, family-oriented American atti­tudes.  He fell in with New York’s bud­ding swinger sub­cul­ture and found his ver­sion of heaven on earth.  He even­tu­ally real­ized the best way to pre­serve this lifestyle was to cre­ate a cen­tral­ized place for its prac­ti­tion­ers.  That way, he could enjoy reg­u­lar, unin­ter­rupted sex with many women AND get to rule over the place as a king.

Thus, Plato’s Retreat was born in 1977.  This members-only swinger’s club quickly became the talk of the town and, after being pub­li­cized via a voyeuris­tic press, became an inter­na­tional des­ti­na­tion for the sex­u­ally curi­ous.  Levenson ran it with the atti­tude of a Catskills hote­lier and his “c’mon, let’s have fun” approach won a steady stream of cus­tomers.  Unfortunately, all good things must end — and Levenson even­tu­ally would have to con­tend with jeal­ousy, money trou­bles, a prison sen­tence and the inevitable end of Plato’s Retreat being dealt out by a force no one saw coming.

American Swing is a blast while you are watch­ing it.  Documentarians Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman weave together an easily-digested nar­ra­tive from a series of talk­ing head inter­views, includ­ing Levenson’s fam­ily & friends, porn scen­esters like Al Goldstein and even law enforce­ment offi­cials.  The smooth­ness of the nar­ra­tive is fur­ther enhanced by well-chosen archive footage (includ­ing fre­quently hilar­i­ous clips from Levenson’s appear­ances on Midnight Blue) and a skillfully-selected-and-deployed sound­track of 1970’s pop and disco.  It’s witty, eye-opening and fun.

Unfortunately, holes in the nar­ra­tive pop up if you look a lit­tle closely at the his­tor­i­cal events.  For instance, the fact that Levenson pro­hib­ited gay sex between males while allow­ing it between females is never addressed.  The film also breezes through the darker ele­ments of the Levenson story, includ­ing how a lover of his mid-1970’s lady com­pan­ion had Levenson kid­napped and beaten and how he allowed his sons to bring teenage girls to visit Plato’s (one son briefly dis­cusses this in a deleted scene on the dvd).  Apparently, the film­mak­ers had a hard time get­ting Levenson’s friends and asso­ciates to talk so it is under­stand­able that they needed to tread care­fully… but they could have brought the dif­fi­cult stuff out in other ways.

Despite such omis­sions, American Swing remains an enter­tain­ing por­trait of a unique place and time in American cul­tural his­tory.  It may dodge the more dif­fi­cult ele­ments of its cho­sen sub­ject but the film does suc­ceed in con­vey­ing the unique vibe of Plato’s Retreat and what endeared it to its fans.  The full mys­tery of Larry Levenson has yet to be revealed but this will suf­fice as an open­ing salvo.  At the very least, you won’t be bored.

NOTE: the fol­low­ing clip has no nudity but the talk may be Not Safe For Work: