Customer Reviews

The Copacabana (Images of America)

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Rather than watching those traditional parades on television during the morning of New Year's day, I instead spent a very pleasant couple of hours returning to the wondrous days of my youth. It happens that I entered this world only a scant six months before the Copacabana made its own debut in October 1940. However, even by my late teens I had neither the opportunity nor the inclination to frequent a nightclub some two hundred miles distant from my home in rural upstate New York. What we did have here, starting in the early 50's, was television, and that first opened to a cloistered twelve-year-old that wondrous, glorious world of show business. The faces of Jerry Lester, Peter Lind Hayes, Sid Caesar, Vivian Blaine, Martin and Lewis, Jimmy Durante, the young Eddie Fisher and so many others - fixtures on television in its infancy - were all there in this profusely illustrated volume. All those stars I was watching on television as a kid, when they were not before the cameras, were appearing at one time or another at the Copa. For someone like me, who still wistfully dwells in that decade of the 50's, these were all my old friends!

At first glance one would receive the impression that this is primarily a picture book, a miniature coffee table book, as it were. However, the often lengthy and always insightful captions deliver a thorough history of this New York City institution, starting with its conception and tracing the path to its ultimate demise, as the times and popular tastes changed. While the history of the Copa's first decade contains many names unfamiliar to most of us, those in its artistic and financial management, still many others are well known. Some performers appearing at the venue during the 1940's had already achieved fame in the movies, even vaudeville, while others like June Allyson and Joanne Dru, plucked from the Copa chorus line, would later make their mark in Hollywood.

I heartily recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of the entertainment business in this country during a golden age. The original Copacabana for some four decades provided a venue for the best and most revered talent of the day to display their wares, and Ms. Baggelaar most ably escorts us along the journey through those years.

Albert J. Kopec

The Copacabana captures the essence of entertainment, particularly the1950's, during which time my parents and relatives in the Midwest savored the music and comedy of these young emerging stars. Though they never attended the performances at the Club, they were well aware of the biggest names in show biz through radio and newly emerging television.

Performers like Jerry Lewis, Dean Martin, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Fischer, Frank Sinatra, Julius La Rosa, Red Buttons, Tony Benett, Sammy Davis Jr. Johnny Raye, Milton Berle, Mel Torme, Sid Caesar, Xavier Cugat, and Joe E. Lewis among many others entertained our families and captured our attention while we were gathered around the television at my grandmother's house. My parents and grandparents owned most of their albums.

Kristin Baggelaar makes all of these stars come to life in her book, which celebrates this famous Manhattan Night Club. Her interviews create an intimacy with the characters as if she knew them all personally. In a few words she cites their place in history and highlights their accomplishments and personality. Billy Eckstine was a "robust" baritone, "big hearted" Jimmy Durante was a "perennially crowd pleaser," and Tony Bennett "grew as a performer" at the Copacabana.

Her writing is lively, historic, fast moving and makes all of us who have read this book wish we were indeed a part of the glamour and sophistication of this era of American history.

Jean E. Baldikoski

This book's lots of fun! Just a hoot. This is a chronological picture and caption story about the Copacabana that can't be found anywhere else. Kristin Baggelaar interviewed former Copa showgirls to get their insightful stories and photos. Being a Copa Girl back then was like being an American Idol today. A marvelously resourceful undertaking.

As a former musician who worked at the Copacabana during the 1960.s Kristin Baggelaar,s wonderful book accurately describes the history of "The Copa" through wonderfully reproduced photos. She takes you on a chronological trip from the earliest days of the Copacabana to it;s sad demise in the 70.s. I highly recommend this book to anyone who remembers or is interested in those glorious days of show business.

Morty Trautman

The Copacabana personified the nightclub era of 1944 to 1953 in the country. Kristin Baggelaar's nostalgic book captures those days of mega stars and their acts in 126 pages of page-turning comments and photographs.
- Former Copa Girl Wendy Bartlett

book is great, it shows and tells of all the happenings at the wonderful
nightclub on 60th st. in manhattan for so many years. It brought back
wonderful memories. I wish it was still there.

I enjoyed this book very much. It is well done and wonderfully illustrated with beautiful photographs.

The Copacabana flooded me with memories of one of my first dates with my then future husband. It was a big deal because we didn't go into New York very much, so it was a special occasion. Kristin Baggelaar's book evokes these special times in our lives. These are wonderful memories of a bygone era filled with elegance, romance, and high-living. It is an easy book to pick up, browse through, and look back on the different times in our lives.

Other books have been written about the famous Copacabana nightclub, but none have captured the feeling of that era the way Kristin Baggelaar has - every page is a joy.

Edna Ryan, former Copa Girl

I became a Copa fan at an early age; dreamed of growing up and going to the glamorous Copacabana to see for myself the "smart people doing the rhumba." Gossip columnists Wilson, Winchell and Killgallen said the Copa was where smart folks went to do it. I wanted to see what Winchell called "the best girl show in town."

The Copacabana is about the number one night spot in the world. Many of the movie and stage icons I grew up idolizing got their start there: June Allyson, Carmen Miranda, Rosemary Clooney, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, and Peggy Lee; and their male counterparts: Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat "King" Cole, Morton Downey, Vic Damone and others. I still see all of them exactly as they are portrayed in the glamorous vintage photos the author chose for this book.

The Copacabana takes us back to an era in which a bare mid-riff raised more eyebrows than the yards of skin displayed by entertainers today; a place where the smart set met to enjoy good entertainment, good food and good drink, and to try to forget for a little while the horrors of the Great War being waged in Europe and Asia. The early Copacabana can never be duplicated, but Kris Baggelaar has captured much of its luminosity and overlaid it on the pages of this delightful book.