From the Archives: A New Year’s Eve Riviera Nightclub Style

For the past year the Fort Lee Historical Society has been planning this very special 60th anniversary event.  Sixty years ago this New Year’s Eve, on the night of December 31st, 1953, Bill Miller’s Riviera Nightclub atop the Fort Lee Palisades opened for the final time.  Come the dawn of 1954 the famed Riviera Nightclub, perhaps the grandest nightclub in America, closed its doors forever.  Soon everything from the dishes to the dining ware would be auctioned off and before 1954 concluded the Riviera would be razed to live only in memory.  The Palisade Interstate Parkway soon would be built where the driveway of the Riviera sat just east of Hudson Terrace.

Fort Lee is a very mystical and special place as regards our history.  No town, city or village in America has more of a glorious past than Fort Lee.  Our history stretches back to the year 1776 and General George Washington and his three thousand troops stationed in Fort Lee.  General Washington gave us our name, first Fort Constitution and then Fort Lee.  As the 18th century melted into the 19th Fort Lee became a haven for those seeking the breezes atop the Palisades, and by the late 19th century grand hotels dotted the tops of the Palisades as they beckoned moneyed New Yorkers to the joys of the country.  Then in 1898 we saw the birth of Palisades Amusement Park which would become a palace of fun with music and rides not to be beat and that music would last until the park itself closed in September of 1971.  Then of course Fort Lee’s seminal role as the birthplace of the American film industry.  This period ran roughly from 1907 through World War One, a small amount of time but a crucial period in which movie production became the American film industry and such studios as Universal and Fox where born on the streets of Fort Lee.  On the heels of the film industry’s departure west came the construction of the George Washington Bridge which opened in October of 1931.  Almost simultaneously to that opening was the birth of the Riviera Nightclub, opened in the old Villa Richard Restaurant on the cliffs of the Palisades in the Coytesville section of Fort Lee.  Riviera owner Ben Marden created magic here with famed acts, fine dining, gambling for very high rollers protected by locals and operated by legendary mobsters.  This first Riviera out of the old Villa Richard was missing something Marden wanted desperately, a modern art deco look, and Marden, not one to waste time, already negotiated to purchase land about ½ mile south of his place,  atop the cliffs of the Palisades close to the George Washington Bridge.  On Thanksgiving night of 1936 a fire destroyed the Riviera and this allowed Marden to start planning for his modern Riviera Nightclub which was built and opened by May of 1937.  This nightclub became one of the most successful in the nation hosting celebrity performers and the elite from nearby Manhattan.  Both Riviera clubs were like a privately run Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression and into the 1940’s and early 1950’s  many Fort Lee residents secured employment with the nightclub. Marden closed the club in the early part of World War Two and sold it to nightclub operator Bill Miller who reopened it in 1946 as Bill Miller’s Riviera Nightclub.  Here Sinatra would make his comeback performance during a two week gig in September of 1953, Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis would perform on the heels of their first success in Atlantic City, and Sammy Davis Jr. would become a star.

The Fort Lee Historical Society will bring that magic back to life for one night, New Year’s Eve, December 31st, 2013, sixty years to the night of the last night of the Riviera.  Tickets to this Historical Society fundraiser sold out weeks ago and our 110 guests will come to In Napoli Restaurant on Fort Lee’s Main Street and ascend the staircase to the second floor party room and enter into the year 1953.  In Napoli Chef  / owner Sammy Gnasso will recreate the Riviera menu from 1953 that night.  There will be a special screening of a short Riviera documentary by the Fort Lee Historical Society.  Guests of honor include boxing legend Jake LaMotta and Riviera performer and TV / film legend comedian Larry Storch.  Larry worked at the  Riviera as a standup comic for Bill Miller.  The Fort Lee Film Commission will present a short tribute film on Larry and then present him with their 2013 Barrymore Award.  This will be followed by dining and dancing until 12:30 AM when our guests exit into 2014 and the Riviera once again disappears into the mist of history.  Oz had its Emerald City and Fort Lee its Riviera Nightclub.