Dan Tana, the actor and former master of who opened the homonym Dan Tana in West Hollywood in 1964, died. He was 90 years old.
The restaurant, which has become an institution in Los Angeles, welcoming actors and various personalities from the industry, announced Tana’s death on Saturday in an article on Facebook, saying that it had “succeeded”.
“We all know that he has created a very magical place,” said the declaration, awarded to Dan Tana staff about the former restaurant owner. “Our little beloved yellow house will forever feel its presence.”
Tana took over the former Dominick at West Hollywood in 1964, after working as a master of Scala and Villa Capri, and saw a need for a place where the stars could come together and dinner late at night (he kept the kitchen open until 12:30 p.m.).
“There was no decent restaurant in the service before 1 a.m., you had to go to a coffee,” said Tana about the Los Angeles culinary scene at the time in a 2014 interview with The Hollywood Reporter in which he looked at his eponymous restaurant as he celebrated his 50th anniversary.
In the Facebook post on Saturday, Dan Tana’s staff said that working for Scala and Villa Capri inspired Tana to open his own place.
“He was still proud of where he came and what he did,” said the post, noting Tana’s past as a football star in Yugoslavia.
The staff praised his “wonderful stories” on Marilyn Monroe, Joe Dimaggio, James Dean, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis.
“This man is a legend, and as you know, a legend never dies,” concluded the Facebook post.
After rejecting the offers of other potential buyers, Tana sold the restaurant to the current owner Sonja Perence in 2009 and moved to Belgrade, Serbia.
Perencevic promised to keep things as they had been, which the Facebook message on Saturday said that it had done more than 15 years later, saying that it “kept it exactly the same since 1964.”
“Some of our customers were skeptical,” said Pérencevic THR In 2014 and Tana himself declared the same year that he was “happy” to discover “nothing had changed”.
The Hollywood figures that frequented the restaurant include Cameron Diaz, Harry Dean Stanton, Rick Yorn, Nick Styne, Jerry West, Johnny Carson, Jack Nicholson and Dabney Coleman.
“I have been coming here for so long, it’s part of all my lifestyle,” said Stanton THR in 2014.
Diaz had his first meal at Dan Tana at the age of 16 and regularly met the manager Yorn and Styna in the restaurant.
“It was the first restaurant in which I ate in Los Angeles. I am 42 years old now, and it has not changed,” said Diaz THR In 2014. “We have the impression that you entered directly in the moment when it was designed.”
Stylian added: “It looks very much like these Italian places in New York where everyone is from the family.”
And Tana recalled in 2014 that Barrymore’s parents brought him to the restaurant and changed his diaper on the bar.
“We always serve my original clients-and their children and grandchildren,” he said.
The Italian restaurant of West Hollywood, with its white shutters, its red cabins and its bottles of chianti hanging from the ceiling, has only 17 tables and a menu that has barely changed, but saw articles named from famous fans, including 18 Oz from Coleman. New York steak, Veal amonggiana Jerry Weintraub, Veal Cutlet at the George Clooney and Shrimps Scampi for the owner of the Lakers Jerry Buss.
Tana was also the inspiration behind the character of Dan Tanna by Robert Urich in the television series Aaron Spelling 1978-1981 Vega $.
