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Tiki Central / General Tiki / From the news archives 71 years ago: Don the Beachcomber mad at being copied in New York

Post #615216 by TikiTomD on Fri, Nov 25, 2011 1:17 PM

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T

Sven, it is easy to imagine that Monte had unpaid obligations to former business partners with long memories and unforgiving principles. Perhaps, as you conjecture, those debts were collected.

I ran across references to Monte Proser (spelled “Prosser”) in testimony given by Virgil W. Peterson, Operating Director, Chicago Crime Commission, to the 1950 U.S. Senate Hearings before the Special (Kefauver) Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (see http://www.onewal.com/kef/kefp2.html)...

Mr. PETERSON…Another individual who has held leases to hotels in Florida in which the gangster element has been closely identified is Thomas Cassara. Several years ago Thomas Cassara took over the lease of the Grand Hotel, 220 Twenty-third Street, Miami Beach, Fla. In 1940 he took over the lease of the Wofford Hotel, Miami Beach, Fla., which he operated for one season only. In 1947 Cassara reportedly operated the Chanticleer Restaurant, 8572 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, with Monte Prosser and Danny Romano. Prosser is manager of the Copacabana Night Club, New York City, and Danny Romano has a brother by the name of Louis who has been prominently identified with the Capone syndicate in Chicago.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you know who owns the Copacabana Night Club?

Mr. PETERSON. I can't prove who owns it. I know whose name has been very prominently identified with it.

The CHAIRMAN. If you do not know, just say so.

Mr. PETERSON. I think it has been printed in the papers as a matter of fact, who supposedly is connected with it, one of the big mobsters. That hasn't been proved.

That name was Frank Costello, boss of the Luciano crime family. Within a year after the Copacabana opened, Costello replaced Proser with Jules Podell, who ran the club until he died in 1973. Here’s an eBay photo of Podell...

-Tom