The Copa Read online

  My parents at the bar in the lounge area of the Copacabana. My mother would have dinner with my father every Sunday night at the club.

  Rosemary Clooney, a staple of the singing field, peculiarly enough until now has never played the Jules Podell flagship, long regarded as one of the important display dates for singers. She has made up for this, of course, by bookings at the Waldorf-Astoria, plus a string of disk hits some years ago, which established her reputation. Miss Clooney still excels in many fields of vocal endeavor. One of her major assets is her flawless diction. Every word she utters is understood, even onto the far reaches of the Burma Road sections of the room. Of course, the how-now-brown-cow attributes are projected by a clear set of pipes. Technically, she’s well in command and easily infuses warmth and feeling to her efforts. Miss Clooney purveys a series of tunes that have seen service for many years including recounting of her days as a hit-disk singer. She makes it an enjoyable session. There are times when she tends to use the woman’s prerogative and talk too much, far beyond what is necessary to rest her pipes. But overall, she makes an extremely likeable impression, and at her late evening premiere night got vocal acclaim after a 45-minute wing.

  Years later, Clooney would fondly recall the evenings she spent at the Copa along with memories of seeing Frank Sinatra at the club. “If you were really lucky and Sinatra was in town, he would sometimes do a third show at the Copacabana, at maybe two o’clock in the morning, and just sing ballads.”

  Acts such as Frank Sinatra were no longer the mainstay in terms of headliners. Rock and Motown acts, now the rage on the music charts, were being booked into the club along with stand-up comedians. The Temptations were a frequent booking in the 1960s and the reviews were good. One reviewer wrote: “The Temptations, Gordy Records group, opened at the Copacabana with a fast-paced fun-filled 60-minute show. The five-member team has perfected the art of showmanship…backed by its own group of musicians, artfully integrated with the Copa’s house band; the group, with the relentless energy of a railroad express, delivered a repertoire of songs that included many of the top hits from their two latest albums, Psychedelic Shack and Puzzle People.” Although business was good, it was disheartening to my father, who certainly did not have a copy of Psychedelic Shack in his personal record collection. The times were changing and Dad was forced to adapt so the Copa was relevant with the current generation.

  Gladys Knight recalled an incident with my father over her group’s name, “The Pips,” when she played the Copa for the first time. “We gave ourselves that name, Pips, in honor of a cousin of ours. His nickname was Pip, and he just did everything for the group. As a matter of fact, when we finally got an opportunity to play the Copacabana, Jules Podell, who was a big man in the industry at that time, wanted us to change our name. He said, ‘I don’t see having “Pips” in the Copacabana!’ And you know what? We refused to change our name! Berry Gordy talked to us about it, too. He said, ‘You’ve gotta be out of your mind!’ and we said, ‘That’s what we came up with, take it or leave it!’”

  Della Resse was an audience favorite every time she appeared at the Copa. Phoebe Jacobs said, “The Copa was still swinging in the late 1960s. One night Ella Fitzgerald and I went to see Della Reese…. I had worked for Della, periodically, promoting her records, and Ella and she were good friends. Ella was working at my uncle’s club and after her show decided to go to the Copa and catch Della’s late show. Della knocked them dead—her show was dynamite. Those were great days; after Della’s show we went up to Harlem to have breakfast together; I loved those two ladies. There was camaraderie between performers; they’d support each other; it is not like that today. I can’t tell you how many celebrities would be in the audience at the Copa catching other performer’s shows; it was something.”

  Our family, at my father’s booth, on a typical Sunday evening at the club.

  Edwin Starr was a black soul singer who had a few hits in the late 1960s; one was the song “25 Miles.” One night my mother and I were sitting in our booth, one that my father always kept reserved for us, watching Edwin perform. His act was loud and he asked everyone to clap, audience participation, during one of his numbers. Mother and I didn’t clap. So Edwin pointed to us and said, “You two ladies over there, why aren’t you clapping for me?” My mother was mortified; she just froze like a deer in headlights. Word got back to my father, who became livid at Starr for embarrassing us. Needless to say, Edwin Starr never played the Copa again after that.

  Diana Ross and the Supremes played the Copa at the height of their popularity. I went to the show and met Miss Ross. By this time, my father was not as fond of the many new acts as he was with the stars from the past such as Joe E. Lewis, Jimmy Durante, and Nat Cole. But as long as the new acts brought in customers, he was happy.

  As the 1960s were drawing to a close and the decade of the 1970s beginning, the future of the Copa was not looking bright. The one bright spot for me during this time was in 1967, when my daughter Jama was born. As happens to most people, my father’s last years were a mixture of happiness and sadness, mostly the sadness that comes with reflecting on days gone by. The Copacabana was facing some tough times, and the decline was rapid. Discos would soon be the new hot spots, and the era of elegant nightclubs was fading fast.

  In 1969, my father decided it was time to eliminate the world-famous Copa Girls. Various reasons were given for the change, but in the end it was a strictly economic decision. This clearly was one of the final nails in the coffin for the club. Customers no longer needed the extra bonus of seeing beautiful woman dancing and singing onstage; they were content with strictly a headliner to entertain them. A new line of girls called “The Golddiggers” attempted to capture the magic and mystique of the Copa Girls, but it was not to be.

  Club patrons no longer had the patience to sit through a vast production show. It was not just the nightclubs that were affected by the change; for the first time in many years, variety shows were losing popularity and ratings on network television. New York was no longer the entertainment mecca it had once been; Johnny Carson would move his Tonight Show to Burbank, California, in 1972.

  Also around this time, my father decided to cut the size of the house band at the Copa in half. Besides the monetary savings, many acts no longer required the use of the band, as they traveled with their own musicians or self-contained groups. Also, stand-up comedians had become as popular as the music acts and they did not require the use of a large orchestra.

  The Copacabana and my father, for all intents and purposes, were now viewed as relics. Both were shells of their former selves. Although he would put up a brave front to the press and those around him, he realized he could not turn back time and that his world had changed. Because he could not match the salaries that Las Vegas casinos were paying the top entertainers, the club suffered and this made him very depressed.

  He longed for the days when the audience seemed to be of a higher class and people would dress for a night at the Copa. At one time, men were not allowed in without a suit and tie, while women wore fancy dresses and were adorned with jewelry; it was very posh. The club had a strict dress code for many years, but that had to eventually be rescinded. My father did not like change, but there was not much he could do about it and he felt powerless.

  Frank Military observed: “Clubs like the Copacabana couldn’t succeed, mainly because of television and the fact that there were no new stars coming up as in the previous decades that could draw that type of audience. The public could see performers on TV without getting dressed up and paying for an evening out on the town. In the old days, if you didn’t have the proper attire when seeing a show at the Copa, Podell would have you thrown out.”

  Over the next few years the club’s entertainment schedule alternated between headliners and comedians. Sammy Davis Jr., Don Rickles, Bobby Darin, Joan Rivers, Bobby Vinton, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and Tony Orlando and Dawn all played the Copa in its final years. Tom Jones, a singer from South
Wales, Great Britain, would for a short time rekindle the spark at the Copa by drawing record crowds during his 1969 engagement. Variety reported, “Jones brought a different element of excitement…. Podell’s customers are ready for extreme volume as well as hard and driving precepts as laid down by a new generation which offers musical violence and validity.” My father preferred the music of Sinatra, Nat Cole, and Tony Bennett.

  Jama recalls:

  I remember my grandparents were always very regal. My grandfather was always in a suit or dressed well; they would never sit around the house in casual clothes. Everything was perfect at my grandparents’ apartment; at that time they were living at a building on 900 Fifth Avenue. They had buzzers on the walls and under the tables to summon the help when needed. I even had a buzzer in my bedroom if I needed anything. After we finished eating, my grandmother would buzz to have the plates cleared by the maids. I was an overweight child because of my parents’ divorce, so my grandmother would march me into my grandfather’s master bathroom every morning to be weighed on his scale. My grandmother was very much into appearance and how things looked to the outside world. They wanted things to be just perfect all the time.

  I was never allowed in my grandfather’s bedroom, which was a little further off the den; that was off-limits to me. If you went further down the hall there was another huge bedroom with a massive walk-in closet that I would sometimes hide in. I would play with my toys or watch television in my grandfather’s den. Since he was hardly home during the hours I was up, I made his office my room. I liked to sit at his desk and draw pictures in my coloring book.

  Anytime we would go to the Copa, we’d always enter through the kitchen, never through the front door. I would be dressed up to go to the club, usually wearing my long dress and white gloves. I always took a nap in the afternoon before going to the Copa because it was going to be a long night out for me. I actually sang at the Copa when I was four years old.

  My daughter, Jama, performing on stage at the Copa with a friend.

  In 1972 Jules made another radical change; he decided to close the Copa for the first time in decades during the summer months. With many New Yorkers leaving the city for vacations at that time, it seemed like a wise decision economically. The Copacabana was not the only club suffering from a decline in business. In fact, many nightclubs had already closed their doors or would in the next few years. The new generation was content to go to a club and dance to a disc jockey spinning records as entertainment. The future was bleak and this distressed my father. The main source of happiness in his last years seemed to be derived from Jama, his first granddaughter.

  Jama recalls:

  I have amazing memories of my grandfather. While others may have feared him or thought of him as gruff and abrasive, he was a gentle giant to me. Everyone seemed to walk on eggshells around him, but I never felt scared of him. The only time he was a little too rough was when we would have our picture taken at the Copa and he would practically choke me as he was hugging me. I would play dominoes with him when he was home and he’d let me take his order on the Copa pads, the ones the waitresses would actually use at the club, for his lunch. When we moved to Lancaster [Pennsylvania] we got a cat; it was a white Persian cat named Hector. My grandfather was not much of a pet person, but when we would visit him in New York we would bring the cat along. Needless to say, Hector was supposed to be kept away from my grandfather at all times. You can imagine the tension one day when we were all sitting in his office and the cat jumped up on his desk. Everyone in the room froze but me, waiting for my grandfather’s reaction. I’ll never forget the way Mother glared at me. Because it was my cat, my grandfather didn’t say or do anything and the cat was quietly removed without a scene. When it came to his rules, I had special privileges.

  My father and a group of friends.

  My second child, another daughter, Danielle, was born in 1972. I was actively involved with my children and tried to be a hands-on mom to them. Of course my mother thought I was crazy and would say so. She was shocked that my children were going to public schools. “I am leaving you money, and I want you to get a governess for your children. You don’t know how to be a parent.” I replied, “And you did?” I told her she wasn’t there for me emotionally and that nurses practically raised me. “I went to your school plays, didn’t I?” was her retort. She was shallow in that regard; she really didn’t know better. The fact that she was so wrapped up in being Mrs. Jules Podell left little time for her to devote to me. She loved the fame; she’d walk in a room and everyone would dote on her.

  By 1973 rumors circulated that my father might close or sell the Copacabana. Longtime friend and syndicated columnist Earl Wilson asked him if the rumors were true. My father replied, “I haven’t sold out, everything is the same as it was, and, as I told you, I’m going to open in the fall. I don’t pay attention to rumors, and don’t you.”

  The tough facade he had built and polished over the decades, which served his position, reputation, and status, would soon begin to disintegrate. In the past, that facade vanished only for a few hours at a time, when he would lavish gifts on the orphans during the holidays at home or the club. Now it was slipping away as those he knew and worked with over the years themselves were either dead or retired and the club was on its last legs. His partner for decades, Jack Entratter, would hang on at the Sands in Las Vegas until he passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1971. Entratter’s status and position at the hotel had also diminished after the powers that be sold the hotel to billionaire Howard Hughes in 1967.

  Even though things were tough for the club, my father was constantly trying to think of ways to keep it open and successful. It was hard for him to come to the realization that he hadn’t anticipated when it was time to get out of the business and retire. It probably would not have mattered if he had, for the Copa was his life. My father had no hobbies; he had nothing besides the Copa. Nothing. So as the Copacabana began its decline and started to die, so did he. On September 27, 1973, my father passed away. The heart and soul of the Copacabana also died that day.

  The day my father died was Rosh Hashanah. In the past, he’d never gone to temple on this holiday; he went only on Yom Kippur. Well, this day, for some reason he decided to go. Apparently, my father woke up and told Jackson to get the car ready, as he wanted to go to temple. My mother called me and said, “I don’t know what is going on, but your father wants to go to temple today.” So he went, and then he came back and they were sitting in the den and he said, “Claudia, I love you,” then suddenly suffered a fatal heart attack. This was my mother’s version of what happened.

  Whether she was accurate or not didn’t matter; I was thankful that he passed away peacefully; it was quick and seemingly painless. It seems he knew his time was coming and went without a struggle; he simple lost his will to live. His decision to attend Rosh Hashanah services that afternoon makes me think he had some premonition of his end.

  It was ironic that hardly any celebrities attended his funeral; some sent telegrams, but that was it. There were photographers outside the funeral home, but it was really sad and amazing that with all of the people he had given a break to and set up, none came to pay their respects.

  My mother did not last long after my father’s death. He was the focus of her life, and when she lost him a big part of her was gone. Their life was a very strange love story. They loved each other in their own way. She was gorgeous; it was like Beauty and the Beast. I guess they were meant to be with each other. I still remember how she would sit there at lunch and would make sure that his food was the way he liked it. She’d just sit with him while he ate and then off he would go to the club.

  My mother eventually moved to the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, where she enjoyed being treated as a queen until her passing in 1976, shortly after my son, Benjamin, was born.

  It wasn’t until after my parents had passed that I decided to try to track down information on my birth parents. I’m not sure why I
waited so long; maybe I thought it might hurt Jules and Claudia. I was also busy living my life and having children.

  As I was going through some family belongings, I came across my birth certificate at the very bottom of a box of pictures. I’ll never forget that day; I was in my garage and I saw this birth certificate for a baby girl born on February 11, 1945, at Sydenham Hospital, New York. My birth mother’s name was Frances Goldberg and my birth name was Linda Goldberg. The paper stated that Jules and Claudia Podell had adopted me.

  My father and me before giving me away at my wedding.

  By the time I came across this information, my birth mother was dead. I would later find out that I had three siblings, a half sister, and two half brothers. After making contact with them, they informed me that we had a surviving aunt living in the projects in Brooklyn. My half sister took me to see my mother’s sister Martha. The entire experience was surreal. Here I was in Brooklyn, talking to this woman lying in a bed who told me she had been with my birth mother the night I was born. Prior to that, my mother had been put up in a hotel and was taken to the hospital once she went into labor. All Martha recalled was that once I was born, my mother signed adoption papers and I was taken away.

  I was still curious about how Jules and Claudia had made a connection with my mother. From what Martha told me, it seems that her sister must have known someone who knew my father or was possibly associated with the club. That “missing link” put them together to set up the adoption transaction to occur. I say “transaction” because my father paid Frances Goldberg, in addition to taking care of her hotel and hospital expenses. Since everyone involved at the time of the adoption is dead except me, the specific facts will forever remain a mystery.

  Needless to say, my siblings did not grow up in the luxurious surroundings that I was afforded as the adopted daughter of Jules and Claudia Podell.