![Feature Photo](https://www.channelnonfiction.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Larry-copy-Edit-800x1024.jpeg)
By Gregory Crofton
“AMERICAN SWING” is like an X-rated episode of ABC’s Nightline, which, in my opinion, is a big compliment. There’s lots of footage of naked 1970s people frolicking, and fucking, inside Plato’s Retreat. I mean lots.
The “retreat” was a couple’s club open in New York City from 1977 until it was shut down by city health inspectors in 1985, primarily because it fostered high-risk sex during the rise of HIV and AIDS.
“AMERICAN SWING” tells the story of the club’s founder Larry “King of Swing” Levenson and how he created a utopia for straight men like himself. He was a generous and benevolent fellow whose mission was to sleep with every woman in New York.
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An orgy room filled with mattresses, drugs, prostitution and tax evasion followed. But Larry is able to hot step over these things for a few years, long enough to move the club into a more upscale location in the basement of a hotel on the Upper West Side, a former gay hot spot called the Continental Baths.
Larry had a good solid run at living out his fantasies, but things that go way up come down hard, and his life has a much darker second act.
Watch a trailer for the film below, or rent it here for $3.99. It’s also streaming for free on Prime if you’re a member.
Watch an interview with the co-directors of the documentary below: