Film producer and writer Polly Platt passed away a few weeks ago. She was also well known as being the ex-wife of director Peter Bogdanovich, and for being at the center of what those in the rag biz would call a ‘Hollywood Love Triangle.’ NYC Mob Tour director Carla Stockton was very close to Polly, has many years of memories, and has unique insight into the life of this extraordinary person. 

Author: Carla Stockton

Once when one of my cousins was putting on airs over some high profile success he had achieved, my grandmother shrugged.  “Mr. Big Deal he isn’t,” she sputtered.  “I knew him when he was an apple tree.”

Grandma’s pronouncement was an allusion to a favorite joke of hers, a long, convoluted story about an old Jew who, having provided the carving wood, was unimpressed by a religious icon.

Polly Platt knew a lot about apple trees.  Many of the biggest shots in Hollywood got to be that way because of the wood she brought to a variety of shops.  It was Polly, standing by her man Peter Bogdanovich, who first conceived of the brilliant film his Targets and Last Picture Show would become.  She co-wrote (at least) both scripts, designed the productions and, according to industry insiders, co-directed.

Polly provided the blueprint for Louis Malle’s American debut, launched meteoric careers for Wes Anderson, Owen Wilson and Bart Simpson and was the stronger half of Gracie Films, the half that made the best choices, including hiring Matt Groenig and saving audiences from the excruciating ordeal of listening to Nick Nolte (or anyone else) sing in I’ll Do Anything.

But for all her success, Polly could be remarkably cynical.  “Don’t move out here,” she advised me in 1997 when, at age 50, I embarked on a career change and was writing screenplays.  “You’re too old,” she blurted.  “And too fat.  No one over 40 or bigger than a size 4 should try to make it in this town.”

Platt had good reason to dole such counsel.  Having overcome the humiliation of Bogdanovich’s well-publicized affair with Cybill Shepard while hugely pregnant with her second child, having had to re-imagine herself creatively without Bogdanovich’s partnership, having risen to the top against all odds in a man’s world– she was the very first woman ever to be inducted into the Art Directors’ Guild – Polly had by then nearly reached 60 and had found she couldn’t get arrested in Hollywood.  Her talent was still there, her drive and her brilliance were still in tact, and she was petite and adorable as ever, but no one wanted to hire her.  She had become part of that invisible netherworld inhabited by all but the tiniest percentage of women over fifty, expected to step onto an ice floe and drift out to oblivion.

The Hollywood mob, like most of the mobs that govern our society had decided she had overstayed her usefulness.  Though James L. Brooks now extols Platt’s virtues as a mentor, a team inspiration, a life force to be reckoned with, was more than willing to let her go over “artistic differences.” As I heard it, he didn’t even attempt to find a way to make her stay.

The press loves to make a big show of valuing older women, if they are willing to compromise themselves and self deprecate, à la Betty White.  But even women designated HOT complain that they cease to feel relevant when they hit the age wall.  No one writes roles for older female actors because funders don’t want to take the risk of investing in them.  A woman over 50 reinventing herself after her children leave home or after pursuing a “first” career will more often than not be entirely overlooked in the talent pool of any operation.

Truth is that women in general are still highly marginalized.  The few who are in the forefront get a lot of attention, and it looks from the outside as though we have achieved a kind of equality.  But, as Gloria Steinham is wont to point out, women still only have 17% of the political seats in congress, women still have huge income inequity, divorced women still fare far worse than divorced men, and most women will wind their upward trajectory blocked by an impenetrable if well-camouflaged glass ceiling.

Steinem assures us that there is hope.  If more men were more critically invested in child rearing and less of the responsibility were to fall on women, women would someday cease to be threatening to the male infrastructure of our world.  As it is, women do inhabit  the mob, but those women only help to maintain the status quo.

The real pioneers, the truly brave, free spirits like Polly Platt get put out to pasture.

Please do not pity Polly Platt. She was smart enough to invest shrewdly, to protect herself from the inevitable halt to her career.  But remember her story, keep her in mind.  When you find yourself thinking that you’ve come a long way, baby, remind yourself that you still have an even longer way to go.

Commentary by Edward Ludvigsen

Another mobster flick is on track to hit the silver screen. This one seems cut from the 1940′s Hollywood, by way of LA Confidential cloth. Current ‘it’ girl Emma Stone, recently seen in Crazy Stupid Love and currently shooting the Spider-Man reboot as Gwen Stacy, is slated to play the female lead in Gangster Squad. She would star with Ryan Gosling (the ‘Baby Goose’), who plays a cop hunting down gangster Mickey Cohen. Says Black Book Mag:

Stone would play the female lead in story set in 1940s L.A., where a cop, played by Ryan Gosling, hunts down real-life mobster Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn. (Josh Brolin, Anthony Mackie, Giovanni Ribisi and Michael Pena round out the cast.) Stone would play a “sharp-tongued siren,” and would find herself at the apex of a love triangle between Gosling and Penn. The role would also reunite her with her Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer, and her Today show partner, Ryan Gosling. Our takeaway from all this is that Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling may or may not start dating soon. 

Gangster Squad (ugh, please change that title) is currently slated for a 2013 according to IMDB. It will be interesting to see what Sean Penn brings to the character of Mickey Cohen, a gangster who was sent out to Los Angeles by Meyer Lansky initially to keep an eye on Bugsy Siegel. Cohen was famously violent-tempered and eventually turned his home into a well armed fortress to fend off trigger and g-men. Daper and deadly indeed.

Breaking Bad star Bryan Cranston recently pulled out of the production, citing schedule conflicts. He was replaced by Robert Patrick to play a Texas cop transplanted to LA to be part of the squad busting gangsters. A “gangster squad” if you will. Again, maybe rethink the title. Mainly because I keep seeing—

Review by Carla Stockton

Even as nonfiction, without embellishment, without hyperbole, without dramatic characterizations, the story would be riveting.  In 1982, Ronald Reagan, desperate to fight off the perceived threat from extremist fundamentalists, explored the possibility of creating his own anti-terror squad, a band of reprobates like those who, under the direction of some of the Mafia’s most notorious leaders, had banned together with the US Navy in 1942 to save New York and hence the United States from Nazi infiltration.  The band of robbers was called the Ferret Squad, and their operation is the subject of an eminently readable new novel.

The Devil Himself,  by Eric Dezenhall,  is an engaging work of fiction. By dishing up an equal serving of literary license and fact-based narration, the author serves a satisfying helping of infinite possibilities.  I love a book that ends with a great “what if,” an idea I can mull over even after I’ve read the final acknowledgement page, and Dezenhall has laid just such a feast on my table.

There are two heroes in this tale, each classic in his own way: one a somewhat reluctant savior and the other a tragic hero.  While the Nazi menace looms dark and terrible over most of the story, the real villain is the US propensity for sweeping secrets under loosely-anchored carpets and allowing heroes to be treated as pariah because they have worked outside the box and threatened the sacrosanctity of The Norm.

The most salient hero here is crime kingpin Meyer Lansky, the original dapper don, the man who tamed Lucky Luciano and gave him the blueprint for the Modern Mafia and, according to this story, provided Luciano with a way out of the interminable Siberia of Dannemora State Prison by making him an American hero.

This fictitious Lansky is the book’s best conceit.  Known by history as a brilliant arch-villain who retired to a modest home in Florida to live out his last days as just another alter cacker (old guy) shuffling along the Intercoastal with a little dog under his arm, a guy who described himself as a “small businessman, an investor,  chief distributor of Wurlitzer juke boxes,”  this Lansky is that and more.  Like the real-life Russian Jewish refugee, this Lansky is a ruthless, avaricious outlaw Lansky too, the man who with his buddies Luciano, Vito Genovese, Joe Masseria and Siegel, was responsible for dozens of brutal murders, for eliminating the Mustache Pete Brigade of the first American Mafia Commission and for causing the demise of the Maranzano regime.

Dezenhall eschews the natural tendency to characterize Lansky either as a as a heartless terrorist or as latter day God-Zayde.  He’s a complex hero with a fantastic story to tell.

The Lansky we meet is a genuine patriot, a man with a mission.  Appalled by Hitler and the Final Solution, Lansky tried to enlist; but he was short and over 40, and the military didn’t want him.  As the mastermind behind a scheme to flush out Nazis spies from the waterfronts of New York and Boston, to avenge the allegedly Nazi-perpetrated destruction of  the Normandie and to facilitate the US’s successful entry into WWII’s  European Theater, Lansky was able to serve his country and avenge his landsmen.  To achieve this goal, he engages the Italian mob and provides the muscle of some of history’s most heartless professional killers.

It is old Lansky, looking back at his days of intrigue and aiding the Navy, who narrates much of the story.  He doesn’t pretend to be warm and fuzzy, even to his best friend’s grandson, sent by Reagan to get the goods on the so-called “ferret squad” Lansky was responsible for creating.   This Lansky, in his crisply intoned English. is as reliable a narrator as we could hope he’d be; he’s at once sharp and critical, then equally empathetic, sympathetic.

We see him first in a recurring nightmare, witnessing the explosion on the Normandie, and we see him as Jonah Eastman’s Uncle Meyer, a demanding but loving curmudgeon; we examine him through the actions of his friend, protégé and sometime alter ego Ben “Bugsy” Siegel, who explains to one his enemy captives that this ferret squad of Lansky’s is an unfamiliar breed. “From now on,” brags Siegel;  “you’ll be dealing with a different kind of Jew.  No more Yeshiva boys.  Now you meet shtarkers.”

It is Lansky in his own words who takes us back to 1942 to meet the other hero of the book, whose story is a recurring tragedy in American history.

Lt. Commander Charles Radcliffe “Rad” Haffenden, appointed by the Navy to head up a B-3 unit to rout the German spies believed responsible for the sabotaging of the Normandie, engages Meyer Lansky’s aid because in gaining control of the docks in order to put an espionage plan in place.

The docks are the domain of Charles “Lucky” Luciano, imprisoned for life on trumped up charges of pandering and prostitution, desperate to be released.  But Haffenden doesn’t know if he can trust Luciano.  Despite the fact that Mussolini has been brutal to the Sicilian Mafia, many Italian mobsters are known to have loyalty to their homeland and to Il Duce, and Haffenden has no way to know where Luciano stands.

Jewish mobsters, on the other hand, have no use for Hitler, have no real homeland other than America, and are well aware of the wholesale slaughter of their people in Europe.  Haffenden calculates that Lansky has enough genuine belief in the cause and enough clout to put pressure on Luciano to work an acceptable deal with the stevedores, who will then do as Luciano instructs them.  The ploy works.

Haffenden’s and Lansky’s subterfuge is ultimately successful – I can say this without worry that the plot is revealed, right?  We all know the Nazis lost! – and Lansky goes on to establish an empire in casinos and to further his “legitimate businesses like Emby Music Distribution.  To Lansky, everything was about business, and his life was about being a successful businessman.  Like the Harrahs, the Hyatts and the Hiltons, who eventually managed to wrest the casino business away from the Mobs and whom Lansky ranked among the biggest thieves of all, Lansky ended his life in comfort, respected and admired by his Miami neighbors.

Haffenden’s end, however,  was ignominious.

Having rescued a tattered Navy from a second Pearl Harbor in New York City, he had taken a dangerous risk.  When his bravery paid off, the brass held their noses and sent him first to the Pacific Theater, where he was suffered near-mortal injuries that left him with chronic internal bleeding and a seriously compromised quality of life till his death at the age of 60, and then to the ignominy of selling Dictaphone machines to corporations who bought because they pitied him.   Haffenden’s willingness to put himself on the line for the government may very well have won the war for the US,  and the US repaid him with disgrace.

Haffeden’s story is timely and timeless.  In the end, as we well know from the popularity of the all things gang-related, Americans love their mobsters more than they love their war heroes.  Mobsters are our other cowboys, and we love to root for them, cringe at their evil deeds, revel in their chutzpah.  We want to imagine they’re really good underneath, but we don’t want to admit that they really do what we know they do. Any more than we want to be reminded of what it really takes to win a war.

In the end, this book is as much an indictment of our propensity for turning villains into heroes as it is for our need to turn heroes into villains.  The ultimate words of wisdom emerge from the mouth of Dezenhall’s unhinged zealot, serial killer Ben Siegel.

“Americans don’t like war.  Americans like war movies.  There’s a difference.  It’s like in my business.  Everyone wants to be a tough guy. Everyone wants to pull a gun – like this one.  See, they want the killer swagger, but they don’t want to draw blood.”

Eric Dezenhall

Certainly no stranger to self promotion, gangsters, or just hamming it the hell up— former prosecutor, mayor, misunderstood drag performer, and savior of NYC during 9/11 ( (just ask him, he’ll tell you), Rudy Giuliani will be hosting “Mob Week” on AMC from August 1 through 7. Giuliani is apparently a big Godfather fan, which will be great for him as AMC is playing the films in exhausting rotation over the course of the week. Over 300 hours of The Godfather, says quick math. Is that too much Abe Vigoda, or just enough to hook you for life? Food for thought.

One supposes that the former mayor of New York City is a sensible choice for a celebrity host, as he is very familiar with the organized crime landscape of the city. Notes The Gothamist:

Of course, Giuliani has always been a family guy—even when he was raiding bars during his mayorship, it’s long believed that he never touched Kokie’s—Williamsburg’s notorious members-only cocaine den—because it was owned by his friend’s brother (it was raided and shut down when Bloomberg came into office).

Breezing through AMC’s “Mob Week” schedule reveals a roster of all the expected biggies: Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco, Untouchables, Scarface. More Pacino and DeNiro than you can shake a (bread)stick at. The Juror, curiously, is also in heavy rotation. Affordable syndication?

The only two films that stand out as being a little unexpected are Machine Gun Kelly, for which you will have to tune in at 4AM on August 2 to see, and Mad Dog & Glory. The latter is a funny little gem from 1993 starring DeNiro (playing against type), Bill Murray, and Uma Thurman. It gets a few more time slots and may be easier to catch. It would have been nice to see a little more variety and unexpected fare within AMC’s gangland film festival. The Freshman, Mean Streets, and The Pope of Greenwich Village all spring to mind.

Got any favorite mobster movies that may NOT be amongst the expected family of classics? Let us know in the comments!

Commentary: Edward Ludvigsen

Having spent a lot of time in the brand world and a small (but invaluable) amount of time in the world of mobile apps and gaming, I am a firm believer in the inevitable explosion and eventual ubiquity of hybrid digital/real-world entertainment experiences. Certainly there are a few big guns already there, like Foursquare, owning their space and bringing a generally well-received (or at least a very well monitored) approach to the marriage of brand awareness and social gaming.

When it comes to digital-meets-realworld hybrid products and experiences gaining true adoption, it makes sense that a larger influx of these kinds of games would be the launch pad to larger entrances into various other markets and types of pairings. In fact, its my hope and goal to take the NYC Mob Tour and all the ways it evolves down this kind of path, and find the digital component that makes sense, and not just an add-on, but a true hybrid experience. And now may be the time for our own collective travel, entertainment, and tourism space to carve out a presence at the crossroads of location exploration, and experience enhancement through mobile technology. Greg Steen, writing for Mashable, cites some current examples, new games to watch for, and some general guidance for the marketing and brand folk beginning to explore the possibilities.

Angry Birds will soon include location-based features that give players access to new characters and content. Players will also be able to compete with one another on a unique leader board tied to each location. This feature will turn coffee shops, bars and apartment buildings into proving grounds for the next Angry Birds champion and could serve as a great ice breaker for players that compete in the same spot at the same time.

[...]

Games such as these can be a great fit for marketers looking to connect with customers. Logos, buildings and products can all be incorporated into the gaming environment through barcode scanning, image recognition or GPS. Such games add more depth to social check-ins, a field where developers are still trying to figure out how to create worthwhile experiences. MyTown is an early example of how this can work. Players buy and sell the locations they check in at, much like Monopoly, and products are integrated through barcode scanning, which can unlock virtual goods and manufacturer promotions.

[...]

The market is primed for the right game to galvanize interest in experiences that combine the real and virtual worlds. Just as FarmVille put social gaming on the map and Angry Birds brought attention to mobile gaming in general, we could see a wave of smartphone owners flood the application markets looking for similar experiences. This will present a valuable opportunity to marketers that want to foster emotional connections with their audiences, so keep a close eye on new releases and brace yourself for the next big thing in mobile gaming.

Read the entire article at Mashable.

Not really, but that would be awesome, right?

In what sounds like a much better story and concept for the fourth Indiana Jones film, (and before you say it, yes we know that the 1920′s would demand a prequel or a Young Indiana Jones story. Holster that geek gun, sir.) former globe-trotting archaeologist and everyone’s favorite galactic smuggler/scoundrel, Harrison Ford, will be portraying an aging Wyatt Earp in an adaptation of Max Allan Collins’ novel Black Hats, who takes on Capone and the mob.

Black Hats blends fact with fiction in its telling of the story involving an older Earp, the one who spent his last years as a private detective and movie consultant in Los Angeles. The spin involves Earp learning that his friend and compatriot Doc Holliday had a son, now living in Prohibition-era New York City. While Holliday is long dead, the son has gotten himself in trouble with a rising mobster, Al Capone.

Earp teams up with Bat Masterson, one of his former deputies and now noted sportswriter for the New York Morning Telegraph, to take on  the gang in what becomes a tale of six-shooters versus tommy guns.

Read the entire story at Hollywood Reporter.

Barbara and Frank Sinatra relax at a friend's pool in the 1970s. / Courtesy of Crown Archetype

The wife of the late Frank Sinatra granted a rarer than rare interview with Bruce Fessier of The Desert Sun. Don’t expect any video or photos, though, as she had some stringent ground rules for the interview to even take place.

Barbara relaxes with Frank. / Courtesy of Crown Archetype

Before marrying Sinatra in 1976, she had been married for almost 14 years to Zeppo Marx, the straight man of the Marx Brothers comedy team who lived at Tamarisk Country Club.

The longtime Rancho Mirage resident has recently published “Lady Blue Eyes,” an autobiography that focuses on her years with Sinatra. In it she reveals her encounters with individuals ranging from mobsters to blue bloods.

Barbara sat in the relatively modest beach-front house in which Ol’ Blue Eyes spent many of his final days trying to avoid the media. Back then, the paparazzi hovered over their backyard in helicopters and took pictures with telephoto lenses from boats.

Today, the house remains largely as it was. Her living room, with an overhead stereo system playing Sinatra music, features tasteful memorabilia, sculptured art and pictures offering glimpses of her life with Frank.

Read the entire interview at The Desert Sun.

Author: Carla Stockton

The film version of Catch Me If You Can was a delightful film, full of vari-colored motives and a brilliantly complex, heroic anti-hero.  It was engaging, written in witty dialog that moved the plot, sharply directed as a timely morality play.  Should we like Frank Abagnale?  Should we rue his deeds?  Or should we even believe anything he pretends to do or have done?  Here we had intrigue, tortured characters acting out with comic zeal, good people gone bad or bad people deeply good underneath, but either way they had dimension.

No question or dimension plagues – or enlivens – the musical version on Broadway.  Told in first person narration by young Frank himself, we are from the beginning told to expect to be drawn into a web of deceptions and plot twists that will  make us spin, but we know from the onset that we can’t trust this Frank Abagnale at all.  He’s not capable of spinning such a web, of constructing turns that will thrill us.  He’s just an average Joe Lounge Lizard performing on a Night Club stage, and his story has all the depth and thought provocation of a Wayne Newton song.

In fact, Wayne Newton’s music is more complex at its simplest than any of the music in this score.  Repetitive, redundant, derivative, the music drones together in a long string of uninspired lounge numbers with ho-hum dances that lack either real choreography or real oomph.  The only thing these dancers seem be expected to show us that they know how to wiggle their butts, and that the production designers get the ‘60’s.  Okay.  It was authentically 60’s television-ish – I kept expecting Goldie Hawn to poke her head out of a window over stage left and say, “Sock it to me,” or Uncle Miltie to emerge from under a table in drag.

The headlining performers are really talented, I believe, though they have nothing here with which to prove that hypothesis.  Tom Wopat is a lovably sleezy womanizer who turns his son to his life of deceit; Rachel de Benedet is a competently sexy/simpering housewife, and Aaron Tveit is as cute as Carol Strong is a belter, and I’m really sorry they were so seriously underwhelming here because I suspect that if they had had something to say or do that I found the least bit intriguing, I might have enjoyed them.

Even Norbert Leo Butz, who brings the house down with his first-act Production Number, is more like a throwback.  He reminded me of a lither, more physical Stubby Kaye, and he, too, was sorely wasted in this role.  I just couldn’t bring myself to care about him or anyone else on that stage.

Most wasted was the phoned-in book, written by much honored, oft-cited playwright Terrence E. McNally.

Truth be told, the worst B-mob movie has more complexity than this simple doodad of a play.  You know what?  Rent a episode of an old Untouchables TV show, and you’ll get more stimulation than you will at the Neil Simon Theater, and it won’t cost you a month’s rent.

But is that actually reality? Don’t be so sure. As observers and guides to the mob’s influence throughout New York City, we can assure you that these are individuals with far more cunning and adaptability than the average schmuck or petty criminal. Those who live the life of organized crime have a way of evolving and embracing new technology and methods of alluding detection and capture. Tell us a little something, NY Mag and a G-Man…

Special Agent George Khouzami helped coordinate the sweeping FBI mafia takedown in New York this past January — which then became a plot point on Mob Wives, VH1′s hit show about the wives and daughters of Mafiosos. (Think Real Housewives with Staten Island accents and rap sheets.) With its jokey gunshot sound effects and surveillance-camera intros, Mob Wives made organized crime look about as serious as Flava Flav’s love life. And yet it’s deadly serious … right? With mafia families becoming a reality-TV trend — including Investigation Discovery’s I Married a Mobster, premiering tonight — we asked Agent Khouzami about the current state of the mafia and how the wiseguys we’ve seen on TV and film compare to the real deal.

All these reality-TV shows about mafia family members make the mob seem almost cartoonish, not something to be taken seriously anymore. What do actual mobsters think of these shows?
Based on my knowledge, the mob looks at these TV shows as a mockery of what they do. I certainly don’t think that they’re proud of having these shows. Without speaking for Anthony Graziano, who I believe is the father of one of the girls in the VH1 show [Renee Graziano], I imagine that he’s probably beside himself over what his daughter is doing.

During the reunion special, I believe Renee said her father refuses to watch the show.
I think that’s something you should bet on. I think she’s probably gonna get a mouthful from him when he gets out.

[...]

Let’s talk about The Sopranos for a minute. The Sopranos sort of portrayed the mob as a dying organization, not like it was in the old days. How accurate was that portrayal of the New Jersey–New York mafia? 
When people say “the mob is dead,” I think that’s an inaccurate statement. It’s certainly less than what you experienced in the sixties and seventies. The way of doing business from the mob’s perspective has changed dramatically, and I think some people confuse that with the idea that the mob is dying. It’s still rabid, strong, and alive; I just think the days of easily charging the mob — those days are over, because people are engaged in more sophisticated crimes. Their level of concealment as it relates to financial-type fraud and health-care fraud and all the other, the different complex crimes that they’re involved in, it’s just made it harder for us to track them. So it appears as if it’s not as big of a problem, but certainly the mob is still there, and they’re still very strong. Their hierarchy is well-established, and it’s been established for decades, so it’s very easy to replace somebody. When we arrest a high-ranking captain, the next day somebody’s there to fill that person’s shoes.

So what crimes are the mob likely to be involved in now that they wouldn’t have been involved in twenty years ago?
We’ve had numerous cases that illustrate their involvement in the stock market. They’re infiltrating the financial sector a lot more than they did twenty or thirty years ago. The days of “give me a thousand dollars or I’m gonna break your legs” explicitly stated to someone and captured on tape, I think, are mostly over. The forms of extorting individuals are now concealed in inflated invoices, they’re concealed in control of high-level executives at companies.

Read the full interview at NYMag.com

Like a great many, MANY things and places in New York City, the Copacabana had its roots in the mob and mob money. When the now legendary nightclub first opened in 1940, the official owner and manager was Monte Proser. However, the real lord and master was Frank Costello, boss of the Luciano crime family (later renamed the Genovese family). Within a year Costello replaced Proser with Jules Podell, who ran the club until he died in 1973.

Copacabana Dancer, 1953

The Copa originally resided on East 60th Street. In the early 1990′s the club was moved to West 57th, and then again later to West 34th Street. And now the Copacabana has reopened again in Times Square on West 47th Street. Play us some salsa, NY Daily News:

The venerable New York City nightclub that has seen legends like Celia Cruz, Héctor Lavoe and Tito Puente grace its stage is back after a four-year hiatus.

Last night, the Copacabana was scheduled to officially open its brand-new Times Square digs with Willie Colón as the headliner.

“We looked and we looked and we looked, and then all of a sudden Times Square became available to us and what better place could the Copa be than in Times Square?” said owner John Juliano. “So it was a natural.”

The Copa was displaced from its last venue at 34th St. and 11th Ave. in 2007 after the city exerted its power of eminent domain to construct the No. 7 subway line extension.

This fourth Copa reincarnation, at 268 W. 47th St. (the former China Club space), is a four-floor nightclub complex that comprises a dance club, restaurant, rooftop cocktail/dining space and a VIP room (that will open in September).

Everything from its décor to the food and dancing at the new Copa recalls its storied 71-year legacy all the while staying au courant.

The main dance floor’s walls are accented by sleek steel trimming and four flat screens displaying the iconic Copa woman wearing a fruit headdress a la Carmen Miranda. Toward the back, a gray marble bar holds court at the entrance to the lounge area, where palm fronds are splashed along walls above metallic gold seats.

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