Andrew Delaplaine, a ‘walking cocktail party’ in South Beach’s wild club scene, dies at 73

Andrew Delaplaine — store salesman, South Beach nightclub owner, publisher, mayoral candidate and author, probably wasn’t the first personality to wear shorts to black-tie occasions.

We imagine Jimmy Buffett has done the same, and in flip-flops, too.

And like Buffett, who branded Key West as a barefoot paradise dubbed Margaritaville, some give Delaplaine his due for doing the same for South Beach in the late-’80s and 1990s.

“The birth of South Beach was an extraordinary time in history and social evolution. Miami Beach, and South Beach in particular, quickly became a destination for music, fashion, parties, clubs, famous people buying properties, recording studios, filming of motion pictures, etc. It was a decadent playland and Andrew Delaplaine had a unique front row seat,” said director/producer Richard Jay-Alexander in an email to the Miami Herald after Delaplaine’s death Monday.

Delaplaine died at his Miami home on May 1, his niece Sophie Delaplaine said. He was 73, and had undergone treatment for stomach cancer.

“A SoBe pioneer, he entered the scene when South Beach was redefining itself with a cast of characters that had flocked in from all over the world,” said Lisa Cole, director of Americas Communications-Hilton. “It was magical when I think back of how so many came together to create a fun, entertaining place, where the vibe was as carefree as the swaying palms in Lummus Park.”

From Warsaw to Wire

Delaplaine was born in Coconut Grove on Dec. 16, 1949, and he earned his bachelor’s at Wofford College, a liberal arts school in South Carolina.

His résumé reads like that of a character in a Carl Hiaasen novel.

Delaplaine sold underwear at the now-defunct Lincoln Road Saks Fifth Avenue, published tourist guides and opened Scratch restaurant and its black box nightclub, Backscratch.

He also founded Wire, a weekly newspaper chronicling South Beach’s nascent gay community. He ran for mayor of Miami Beach, wrote the 2011 film, “Meeting Spencer,” and ended his career conceiving a Broadway-bound musical about beloved jazz legend Louis Armstrong.

But it was the Warsaw Ballroom, where muscled men and celebs partied all night long at the club at 1450 Collins Ave., that Delaplaine made his mark.

He re-imagined the 1940s space — the building’s Art Deco nautical lines standing sentry on Collins and Española Way — as a “big version of a small club,” he told the Herald in February 1989.

Fans remember how the Warsaw, which Delaplaine relaunched in 1989, was famed for its foam parties, drag queens and Gianni Versace-hosted bashes with his celeb pals Elton John and Sylvester Stallone. Who can forget Madonna grinding with go-go boys on Warsaw’s oversized dance floor or the underwear parties the club hosted under new ownership until it closed in 1999?

(Warsaw reopened as Jerry’s Famous Deli and then a Señor Frog’s bar/restaurant before the property was sold for $10 million in 2022 to a Miami Beach developer who plans to convert it into a boutique, Real Deal reported.)

Broadway bound

More recently, Delaplaine dreamed up “A Wonderful World,” a musical about Armstrong, with Tony-nominated British director Christopher Renshaw. Michel Hausmann, co-founder and artistic director of Miami New Drama at the Colony Theatre, ran previews of the $1.5 million production in 2020. Hausmann opened it again at Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre nearly two years later after a COVID break. Reviews were strong.

KNOW MORE: Miami New Drama’s ‘A Wonderful World’ gets its long-delayed opening

According to Broadway World, “A Wonderful World” will open runs in New Orleans and Chicago in October 2023, en route to Broadway, producers hope.

Delaplaine seemed on the mend and anticipated attending the Broadway opening, his niece said. He died in his sleep.

His friends will share his Broadway dreams.

“The Louis Armstrong musical, ‘A Wonderful World,’ will be a legacy of remembrance for him,” said Jay-Alexander, who has directed Barbra Streisand, Bernadette Peters and Kristin Chenoweth.

Wire founder

To spread the word about his and others’ endeavors in a pre-internet world, Delaplaine founded and edited Wire in 1991, a free South Beach weekly that chronicled the colorful celeb South Beach scene. It was a time when dance mixes of new Madonna, Cher and Crystal Waters songs would break first out of gay clubs like Warsaw and Twist, their rhythms spilling onto sidewalks at 3 a.m., luring locals and the causeway crowd to see what the fuss was about.

Writer, photographer James Cubby was one of Delaplaine’s first hires at Wire, lured from a similar publication in Virginia in 1995.

“He started the whole scene with his clubs, Scratch and Warsaw, and Wire magazine at that time was the magazine to read to find out where to go, what to do and what was happening. It was their connection to the nightlife,” Cubby said. “He brought the whole community together when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go and then Wire magazine would have weekly parties.”

Cher promoted her comeback worldwide smash “Believe” single at nearby Liquid in the predawn hours in January 1999. Two months later, Bette Midler brought her “Bathhouse Betty” album to the streets of South Beach, including a post-1 a.m. Winter Party stop at Club Salvation off the Venetian Causeway.

Delaplaine ran Wire for 10 years. Today, owner Rafa Carvajal publishes a revamped Wire as a glossy print and digital publication.

South Beach pioneer

Delaplaine and his sister Renee, who survives him, opened Scratch inside a former Rolls Royce garage at 427 Jefferson Ave. in South Beach. The club didn’t last long — just 1988 to 1989 — but it was hot and a forerunner of the genre, the Herald reported.

“Scratch was a comet that goes through the sky; it wasn’t meant to last long,” Delaplaine told the Herald in 1990. “For a while, everybody who came through town had to stop here.”

Scratch had a rough, industrial look. “We couldn’t afford anything else,” Delaplaine told the Herald. Through the next decade, offshoots of that style dotted both sides of Washington Avenue.

“He was a ‘Walking Cocktail Party’ and never failed to entertain accordingly. He was and forever will be one of the real originals who put South Beach on the map,” Jay-Alexander said.

Party scene

Cole remembers an over-the-top surprise birthday party for Delaplaine on South Beach in 1988 that featured a three-tier papier-mâché birthday cake built specifically for one of his friends to pop out of in a red ball gown.

Delaplaine, clad in shorts, naturally, arrived at his soiree with his Mom on his arm, the Herald reported.

“Andrew was smart and fun and loved a cocktail hour. More importantly, he loved what a cocktail hour would bring, people together to have fun and tell stories,” Cole said. ... He showed up, in his shorts, of course, but with that smile that sometimes looked a bit more like a smirk.”

Unconventional mayoral race

In 1995, at age 45, amid all the frivolity nightclubs and risque publications can bring, Delaplaine got serious.

Kind of.

Delaplaine ran for mayor of Miami Beach against the incumbent: Mayor Seymour Gelber, then 76, and a retired juvenile court judge who was running for his third consecutive term.

READ MORE: Prosecutor, judge and mayor Seymour Gelber dies at 99

“I got in this race because I saw another situation where an entrenched mayor representing an entrenched power structure was running unopposed. That’s unacceptable. There are just huge issues,” Delaplaine told the Herald then.

To run his campaign, Delaplaine had assembled his team: an Australian producer turned South Beach nightclub scribe, and a 20-something cinematographer, to film spots for his cable television commercials. Neither had worked a campaign before. In fact, there was no real campaign manager, Miami New Times reported.

Delaplaine, reportedly the city’s first gay candidate, tossed about his pitch to voters. New Times documented a moment in his office with his ragtag team:

“I’m taking the issues seriously. I have real solutions ...” Delaplaine started.

The Aussie producer finished his sentence, “... for real problems.”

Gelber won another term in office.

Delaplaine’s family plans to celebrate his life privately.