The Vapors

TV Drama Series

Created with Michael Sofranko, Eric Chase & Tomas Elliott

Currently Marketing

The Vapors is one of the most storied nightclubs in American history—but it’s a club whose story is largely unknown to the world. Until now. 

Set in the spa city of Hot Springs, Arkansas, surrounded by the lush Ouachita mountains, The Vapors opens its doors in 1960 as a home to music, fine dining, dancing, and full service gambling. And it soon becomes the clubhouse for American organized crime.

Owney’s partner in The Vapors is WWII fighter pilot Danny Hall, an Arkansas native son and upstanding citizen who is the club’s front man. Together, the duo plan to give their customers whatever they want. But Danny Hall soon discovers that the customers want more than even the “look the other way” law of Hot Springs allows. 

Danny likes the money he’s making for his wife Christie and children Danny Jr. and Susie, and he likes the glamour. And Owney likes the Arkansas shadows in which he can continue his criminal business. When J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy get wind of The Vapors, they have Owney in their sights. 

All the while, America and The Vapors are living through turbulent social change: the Cold War against Communism; the hot war in Vietnam; the rise of the Civil Rights movement and the harshness of their opponents; the assassination of JFK; the space race; and every night at The Vapors, the musical talents of artists from Tony Bennett to Rosemary Clooney to the Smothers Brothers, to the upstart rock n’ rollers who want to take over the tune.

And of course, there’s the gambling, for that’s what makes The Vapors its real money, and that’s what brings in the trouble. Owney’s gangster pals from New York and Chicago see a good thing here in friendly old Hot Springs—and they want a piece of it. 

So Danny Hall has to fend off the law and the gangsters to protect his gangster partner. To protect his new way of life. And to stay alive.