The Penthouse Night Club

I’m one of the few people in this city that’s never been to the Penthouse Night Club, and fortunately for me I’ll still get the chance because of the quick response by Vancouver firefighters early this morning.

Yes, it’s a strip club with dubious connections, but it’s also one of the longest running family businesses in the city and its history of bootlegging and bad cops is also the history of early Vancouver.

Over the years current owner Danny Filippone has knocked back offers to bulldoze the place for another downtown office building or high-rise, but kept it going because he loves the building’s story. “We can paint it and refurbish it and hold all sorts of special events, but the Penthouse will always have its past and that’s what makes it different,” he told a reporter in 2009.

The story of its connections to the underworld and high class prostitution has been told many times as has the murder of owner and son of the founder, Joe Philliponi.

A few years ago I interviewed Bernie “Whistling” Smith for At Home with History and this is his story.

Bernie was 14 when he went to work for Philliponi in 1937 (his name was actually Filippone, but Canadian customs couldn’t spell it. At that time Philliponi owned and operated Eagle-Time Delivery Systems, a bike courier system. Philliponi called Smith “Speed Ball 21.” When Philliponi asked him what he wanted to do with his life, Smith told him he wanted to be a policeman. Philliponi, he said, actively encouraged him.

Smith joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1947, the same year that Philliponi opened the Penthouse Cabaret. The Penthouse originally opened as a bottle club providing ice and mix to customers at wildly inflated prices and turning a blind eye to their booze, usually hidden under the table in brown paper bags. Soon it attracted headliners such as Sammy Davis Junior, Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte and George Burns. Supposedly Errol Flynn dropped in the day before he died.

Ironically, Smith, who earned his nickname for whistling while he patrolled the streets, became a detective in the liquor squad and spent many nights in and out of clubs. “It was part of a way of life, and as a policeman, I didn’t feel like crawling on my hands and knees under a table looking for a bottle of whisky, so we would try and get them before they went in,” he said. “You must understand bootlegging was a violation of the Provincial Government Liquor Act, it wasn’t a criminal offence. The government could have stopped it by opening a liquor store any time at all. They were making money both ways: the money from the bootleggers when they bought from the government, and the fines that they got when they caught them. They sold them the stuff then fined them for selling it.”

Police, he said, would take the confiscated liquor to the station and return it later for a $15 “service charge.”

In 1983, at 71, Philliponi was shot to death in his office in a failed robbery attempt. Smith, along with a crowd of several hundred, including judges, businessmen and dancers, attended his funeral at Christ Church Cathedral on Burrard Street.

I figure if the Penthouse can survive police raids, its closure in 1975 when the vice squad charged Philliponi with living off the avails of prostitution, and legions of developers, it can withstand some smoke and water damage. Also think it’s about time I checked it out.

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