My mum and dad were married in the 1950s. They spent their courting days and the first few years of their marriage in one of the twentieth century’s most stylish decades. My dad was a shirt and tie man. He always wore sharply pressed suits and clean white shirts. He always had a trench coat over his suit, a fedora on his head and, during the muddy, slushy seasons, he wore slip-on “rubbers” to keep his dress shoes clean and free from unnecessary wear and tear. Not unlike the 1950s moms portrayed on TV, my mom always wore her lipstick red and had her hair neatly curled. A nurse by trade, she was an old school RN who always had a clean white uniform accompanied by a white hat affixed to her hair with bobby pins. Her hat was always starched and ironed. Whenever she went out shopping or for dinner, she wore heels that accentuated her “nurse’s legs”. My mom and dad had a thriving social life before they had me and became parents. As part of that life, they often went out to dances with other couples. When they did that, they were a dashing couple who knew how to cut a rug.
Fast forward seventy years. My youngest daughter Sophie has an eye for style and fashion that the rest of us agree she has inherited from my mother. Sophie is very aware of properly accessorizing before she leaves the house for school, shopping or a social visit somewhere. She colour co-ordinates her outfits to match her Stanley water bottle collection each and every day. She has also decorated her bedroom with tasteful splashes of colour here and there, along with small potted plants and teeny bouquets of fresh flowers. Being aware of the value of fashion has been something that Sophie has been conscious of the whole latter half of her life. It is not by fluke that she has several books about people like Coco Chanel in her room. This brings us to the spring of 2023. My mum, who was living on her own in an assisted living complex for seniors in Nova Scotia, had a fall and broke her hip. She was 91 at the time. That fall ended her ability to continue living on her own. While recovering in hospital, I traveled back home to deal with the task of organizing her possessions and cleaning out her apartment while she awaited placement in a nursing home. I took Sophie down with me because, in addition to being interested in fashion, Sophie is extremely well-organized and is a good worker. I knew that she would be a big help to me and she was! For years my mother had told my girls that when the time came for us to deal with her possessions, they could have whatever they wanted for themselves as a keepsake to remember her by. My history-loving eldest daughter was attracted to her Nanna’s school yearbooks and the like. As for Sophie, she headed straight for Nanna’s jewelry box and collected her memories there. Most days at school, Sophie wears some piece of jewelry that she acquired during that trip. Her Nanna is never that far away from her heart even though they live half a country apart from each other.
But one of the things that Sophie and I enjoyed most about being able to do a deeper dive into the story of my mother’s life was that we both discovered a side of her that we never really knew existed. It seems that my mother was a storyteller, too. Like me, she enjoyed chronicling her life and the people, places and events that shaped it all throughout the years. Unlike someone like me who does this by writing blog posts such as the one you are reading right now, my mom was a scrapbooker. Scissors, tape, pens and big blank scrapbooks were the tools available to her as the 1950s became the 60s and onward past Y2K and beyond. As Sophie and I combed through her things, we found a treasure trove of these scrapbooks. My mom’s scrapbooks told the story of the various stages of her life…as a child, as a teenager, as a nurse in training, as part of a loving dating relationship with my father, as newlyweds, as parents, as a nurse and as a friend to so many others along the way. She told these stories using newspaper clippings, personal photographs, handwritten anecdotal accounts, as well as through pamphlets, postcards, etc., from the places she had visited with my father when they were first married and afterwards, when the three of us traveled as a family and then, a few years later when my sister arrived on the scene and we were suddenly a foursome. For Sophie and I, we found everything to be of interest but the most interesting tales that my mom strove to tell were from the times she and my dad traveled as a couple before I was born. The two of them explored the world the same way they lived their lives. They donned their sharpest outfits and went to the trendiest hotspots. As we turned the pages of her scrapbooks we discovered photographs and travel brochures from Paris and, in particular, the Moulin Rouge. They went to Holland and London, too. Back in North America, they stayed at the stately Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa and then they took a guided bus tour of New York City. One of the many places they saw in NYC is the subject of today’s post, the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. Knowing my mom and dad as we have all come to know them better in these later years, I am not surprised at all that they wanted to experience the atmosphere found in one of the world’s hottest nightclubs back in the day. There were no photographs of this visit, only a brochure that they picked up on their visit but, just the same, I have no doubt that my dad wore his fedora and my mom had on her heels and silk evening gloves that went almost to her elbow. They would have put their best foot forward that evening because after all, the doorman would never let anyone in who didn’t look like they already belonged.
The funny thing to me about that visit is that I wonder if my parents realized that by entering the Copacabana nightclub, they were actually entering one of the Mafia’s most famous and visible hideouts. Ya see, the Copacabana nightclub was actually owned jointly by a loosely affiliated organization known as the Five Families. These “five families” were the top five major crime syndicates that operated at the time in New York City. As part of their operational strategies, these mafia outfits needed to find legitimate ways to launder the proceeds from the various illegal activities that they were involved in. One of the ways that they tried to cover their financial tracks was by operating real businesses. Once they had an established business acting as a front for their operations, the Mob would funnel the profits from their crimes through these businesses under the guise of expenditures and investments which, in turn, would emerge as regular business profits. Thus, these crime bosses could claim with a straight face that they were all just ordinary businessmen trying to make a living. One of the Mob’s highest profile business fronts was the Copacabana nightclub in Manhattan. While it was built and owned by several people in its earliest iterations, during its heyday in the 1950s and 60s, it was owned by mobster Frank Costello. In order to hide his money laundering operations, Costello was not an active owner over the day-to-day operations of the club. That task was delegated to a man named Jules Podell. Podell was as tough as nails but he knew how to run a nightclub. During his time as manager, the Copacabana was arguably one of the most important night spots in the world. Everyone from Frank Sinatra, to Tom Jones, to Danny Thomas and Don Rickles performed there. Initially, the Copacabana was a whites-only establishment but that barrier was broken by Sidney Poitier, who headlined there, as well as by almost every Motown artist and group of note during the 1960s.
One of the many legendary stories to do with race that has emerged from the Podell era Copacabana is of the time a bunch of players from the New York Yankees started a brawl there. The story is that Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and a few others including Billy Martin when he was still in his playing days, all went out with their wives and girlfriends to celebrate Martin’s birthday. While out on the town, the group decided to head to the Copacabana to catch the Sammy Davis Jr. headlining show. Upon entering the basement showroom (the upstairs was a dining room), the Yankees were given tables near the front of the stage. Sammy Davis Jr. came on and began his set. All was going well until some intoxicated bowlers (of all people!) started shouting racial slurs at Davis while he was trying to do his show. Yankee Billy Martin was roommates on the road with a man named Elston Howard who was one of the first black players to ever play for the New York Yankees so Martin was keenly aware of how racial taunts hurt and angered his friend. As the bowlers continued to shout out, a few of the Yankee players suggested that they cool it because they were embarrassing themselves and that there were women present who shouldn’t be exposed to such salty language. The bowlers replied that if the Yankees wanted to continue the conversation outside then they would be happy to oblige. That is what happened. In the melee that followed, one of the bowlers was knocked out and suffered a concussion, along with a fractured nose. The bowler sued the ballplayers for assault. The case ended up being a sensation due to the involvement of the Yankee players but, in the end, the case was quietly thrown out of court. This is noteworthy for two reasons, while initially a news sensation, the court case disappeared quickly because the Mob bosses used their influence on the courts to make it go away. They didn’t want any attention on the seamy side of what was going on at the Copacabana thus, the case was quietly and quickly dropped. Further to that point, the Copacabana was, as a general rule, one of the safest places in New York City. On any given night, the club was filled with organized crime figures. It quickly became known that starting fights inside of the club was a most inadvisable thing to do because that guy whose nose you just punched might turn out to have been a “made” mafia family member. If that happened to be the case then, it might end up being you who quickly and quietly disappeared, if you know what I mean. ***The link to an interview given by Yankees legend Mickey Mantle about this incident can be found here.
In any case, the Jules Podell-run Copacabana nightclub hosted the cream of the entertainment world on a nightly basis. If you want to get a good sense of what life was like during the Podell era, please take a moment to check out a clip from the movie Goodfellas. One of the reasons that Goodfellas is deemed to be such a masterful movie is because those who know how the mafia really worked all say that director Martin Scorcese really got the essential details of those times exactly right. A case in point is how things worked at the Copacabana. The scene in this clip shows a junior mobster named Henry Hill trying to impress his new girlfriend by taking her to the Copacabana. In this clip, he skips the long line-up on the sidewalk by sneaking in a side door. This door leads to the kitchen. One of the things about the Copacabana that many don’t know about is that during its heyday it was known for the excellence of the Chinese food that they served. So, as Henry Hill squires his girlfriend through the kitchen, take note of the number of Asian actors in the scene. None of them have a major role but it is this attention to detail that sets directors like Scorcese apart. In any case, from the kitchen, Hill enters the basement showroom, is given a seat at the front of the stage, is offered free champagne from other mobsters as a sign of respect and then, the show begins. It is all pretty heady stuff for Henry Hill’s girlfriend who, stunned by it all, finally asks HIll who he really is and what he does for a living. Henry Hill replies with a smile and says that he is simply in construction. Once again, a mobster puts up a legitimate front to hide the real shady side of his business dealings. ***The Goodfellas clip can be found here.
Many people outside of New York City came to know about the Copacabana night club because of a song called “Copacabana (At The Copa)” by singer Barry Manilow that was released in the 1970s. “The Copacabana (At The Copa)” was a big hit in the disco era and has gone on to become Manilow’s signature song. It even morphed into becoming a musical that starred Mr. Manilow himself. However, knowing what I know now about how the Copacabana was a Mob-run joint, Barry Manilow’s song reads differently to me. When I first listened to the song as a teenager, it seemed like just another story of a girl and a guy and a fight that happens when another man tries to ask the girl out. In real life, the Copacabana featured scantily clad showgirls, as many clubs did in those days. In Manilow’s song, it turns out that the girl he named as Lola was, in fact, one of the Copacabana’s showgirls. Her character was based on real life Broadway singer Lola Falana. In the song, Lola is the girlfriend of a bartender named Tony who works at the club. One evening, a rich man named Rico enters the club, is given a prime table and takes a fancy to Lola, demanding that she spend time with him. When Tony intervenes to protect his girlfriend, shots are fired. Although it is never stated directly, Rico kills Tony. In the closing verse, Manilow draws upon the real history of the Copacabana once again by stating that thirty years later, Lola finds herself back at the Copa, which is now a disco, still wearing her showgirl costume, drinking herself blind in remorse for her lost boyfriend. Again, Manilow never says that Rico was a Mob guy but, if you know anything about mafia life, you will note the clever connection Manilow makes by naming the killer as Rico. In law enforcement circles, the R.I.C.O. Act stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. R.I.C.O. laws are the main tools used by the police to deal with organized crime. Thus, when Barry Manilow sang about the Copacabana, he was giving all of us a history lesson in the form of a disco-era story song.
And in this environment of la cosa nostra sat my mother and father in the early 1960s, all dolled up and out for a night on the town, never once realizing who some of the sharp dressed people were sitting beside them at other tables. Luckily for me, none of the Mob guys tried to pick my mother up that evening so my dad didn’t have to defend her honour and end up with a bullet in his chest from some Mob guy for his efforts. Thus, because their visit was nothing more than an enjoyable night out, it became possible for me to be born a short while later. It would be a really cool end to this post to be able to suggest that I was conceived after that night at the Copacabana in New York City but, unfortunately for the storyteller in me, my folks were there in 1962 and I wasn’t born until ‘64 so the math doesn’t support that conjecture.
But the real life story of the lives my parents led is cool, just the same. Both my mom and my dad grew up on Cape Breton Island. They were surrounded by the sea. They were born, lived, loved and died (my Dad, anyway) in small towns built on the backs of the coal mining, steelmaking and fishing industries. And yet, they both had a sense of fashion and style that belied their circumstances. They loved dancing and they loved each other. And when my sister and I came along, they loved us, too. As far as I am aware, there are no mafia connections in our family history. What there is are stories of happy times, snappy outfits and lots of love. While I would never express happy thoughts at the prospect of my elderly mother breaking her hip and losing her independence, I am eternally grateful for the experience that Sophie and I got to share when it came time to go through my mom’s possessions and clear out her apartment. That Sophie got to have an insider’s look at the life her Nanna lived and, by doing so, got to see her own life reflected in that story is something I could never put a price on. If nothing else, Sophie now knows that she has a cool Nanna and that her Nanna lived a good and happy life with style being an important factor in it all. That is a roadmap for the future that I already see Sophie following. I see this manifest itself each day as she plans her wardrobe and chooses which colourful Stanley water bottle best matches her outfit. Because, as we all know, it is important to drink water each day but it is even more important to be colour-coordinated while doing so. It should surprise no one to learn that her nickname at school is “Stanley”. She is, after all, her Nanna’s grand-daughter.
The link to the official website for the Copacabana night club in New York City can be found here.
The link to a video narrated by the son of a former mobster involved in the running of the Copacabana night club can be found here. This video contains lots of good anecdotal insights into how completely integrated the mafia was in the running of the Copacabana. Well worth watching.
The link to a video of interviews with comedian Don Rickles and singer Steve Lawrence about what it was like to work for Copacabana manger Jules Podell can be found here. Again, interesting stuff when it comes to gaining a sneak peak at the inside world of the Mob.
The link to the video for the song “Copacabana (At The Copa)” by Barry Manilow can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for singer Barry Manilow can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
Today what you reminded me of has nothing to do with music, or the Copacabana.
Your mother broke her hip, and had to move from assisted living to a nursing home. My ex-wife’s great aunt was still living in her own little cottage at 105. She had people coming in weekly to help, but she refused to go into a community dwelling. She liked living on her own. The day before her 106 th birthday she was crossing a road outside her home when she was struck by a passing car. At the hospital it was discovered she had a broken hip. Her dloctor told her that once she recovered she could no longer live on her own, she would have to move into a nursing facility after the operation to fix the hip. She absolutely refused to let him do the operation. “I am an independent woman!” she declared. The doctor said he would give her the night to reconsider. Then he gave her some pain killers to help her sleep. She never woke up.
We hever thought anything of it at the time, not seeing any significance in how things happened. Until a few years later, when my wife’s father, the great-aunt’s nephew, had his driver’s licence taken away from him. His car, an old 1958 Pontiac, in excellent condition, was the joy of his life. When the doctor told him he was a danger to other drivers — the police had pulled him over for going so slow he was causing a traffic jam behind him, but to him he was just being cautious — and took away his licence, he cried. “I have nothing left to live for if I cannot drive my car,” he told his wife of over 60 years that evening. She tried to console him but could not. The next morning when she woke up, she found her husband dead beside her. An autopsy found no cause of death — they thought he might have somehow committed suicide. But we put two and two together, and concluded his family could literally die of broken hearts. When aunt and nephew felt they had nothing to live for, that was it. The very same night they lost their “freedom” it seems they willed themselves to death.
My ex is still alive, though she is in her 80s now, and living with her partner in a cottage on West Hawk Lake. I wonder if she will also die of a broken heart when she eventually has to move into the city because she cannot stay where she loves to be.
It may sound stupid, but I expect she will. It is in her DNA.
I am happy for you your mother is still alive and hopefully enjoying life. She sounds like an smazing woman.
Hope and purpose are powerful motivational forces. I feel sorry for many of our elderly. It mustn’t be easy to have lived so long according to one’s own rules and then have it all taken away toward the end. Sorry to hear of your family stories. As for my mum, she is doing ok for 93. She wears wireless headphones when we speak with her online. That has made a difference in the quality of our conversations. But dementia is still dementia. She is where she needs to be. We will see her next in early August.
Say “Hi!” for me. Tell her I think she brought up a wonderful son.
I know that she would say thank you to you for your kind words. Knowing her, she would also tell you that you are correct. 🤣
😊