Long before Studio 54 became synonymous with New York nightlife, there was the Copacabana.
For generations, simply saying “the Copa” conjured images of glamorous showgirls, sharply dressed celebrities, packed tables, Latin rhythms, comedians, crooners and the intoxicating possibility that almost anyone famous might walk through the door.
Opening in New York City in 1940, the Copacabana became one of the most celebrated nightclubs in American entertainment history. Its name and tropical atmosphere were inspired by Rio de Janeiro’s famous Copacabana, bringing a fantasy of Brazilian nightlife to Manhattan.
But the Copa quickly developed a personality entirely its own.
It was elegant, exciting and occasionally dangerous. Movie stars rubbed shoulders with powerful businessmen and underworld figures. Singers could turn a successful engagement into a major career moment. Comedians tested their material before demanding New York audiences, while the glamorous Copa Girls became almost as famous as some of the performers appearing onstage.
Eventually, one songwriter would take all that mythology—showgirls, bartenders, romance, jealousy, glamour and danger—and turn it into one of the most recognizable story songs in pop history.
His name was Barry.
Where Stars Were Made
During its golden years, the Copacabana became an important stop for some of the biggest entertainers of the 20th century.
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, the Supremes, the Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Paul Anka, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and George Carlin were among the many performers associated with the Copa over the years.
Playing the Copacabana could represent something close to an arrival announcement. This wasn't simply another nightclub booking. Performing successfully at the Copa meant an entertainer could command one of New York's most prestigious rooms.
The comedy team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis was among the acts whose appearances at the Copa helped build their enormous reputation.
The club became particularly famous for combining sophisticated supper-club entertainment with the slightly unpredictable energy of New York nightlife.
There was glamour onstage.
But there was plenty happening at the tables, too.
Glamour With a Gangster Side
Like several famous New York nightspots of its era, the Copacabana also developed connections to organized crime figures.
One of the most important figures in Copa history was Jules Podell, the colorful and formidable nightclub operator who became closely identified with the club and presided over much of its golden era.
Podell's Copa attracted entertainers, athletes, politicians, celebrities and figures from New York's underworld. That mixture contributed to the club's reputation as a place where glamour and danger occasionally occupied neighboring tables.
The Copa was even connected to one of the most notorious incidents of Frank Sinatra's career.
In 1957, Sinatra became involved in a confrontation at the club after members of his party were reportedly denied entry. The incident escalated into a physical altercation and became national news.
It was exactly the sort of story that added to the Copa legend.
This wasn't merely a nightclub.
It was a place where things happened.
Historical Copa Acts
The Copa Girls
No history of the Copacabana would be complete without the Copa Girls.
The club became famous for its glamorous chorus line, with elaborately costumed dancers helping create the tropical fantasy promised by the Copacabana name.
Feathers, sequins, towering headpieces, elaborate costumes and choreographed production numbers were all part of the experience.
The showgirls became such a defining feature of the Copa that decades later, when Barry Manilow and his collaborators imagined a fictional woman working there, there was really only one logical occupation for her.
She had to be a showgirl.
And her name would be Lola.
The Copa and Black Entertainment History
The Copacabana's glamorous history also came with uncomfortable contradictions.
Like many elite American nightclubs of its era, the Copa had a complicated history involving racial discrimination and exclusion. Yet Black entertainers eventually became an essential part of the club's identity and entertainment legacy.
Performers including Sammy Davis Jr., Nat King Cole, Sam Cooke, Diana Ross and the Supremes, the Temptations, and Gladys Knight and the Pips helped transform expectations about who could headline America's most prestigious nightclubs.
Their appearances were important beyond the Copa itself.
Black performers weren't simply scoring hit records. They were increasingly entering rooms that had traditionally represented white mainstream sophistication and demonstrating that they belonged at the center of American popular entertainment.
Some of those performances were even preserved on record.
Sam Cooke at the Copa
One particularly fascinating piece of Copacabana history is Sam Cooke's 1964 live album, Sam Cooke at the Copa.
Cooke was already one of America's greatest popular singers, but the Copa engagement allowed him to present himself to the sophisticated supper-club audience.
The recording contains standards alongside Cooke's familiar material and reveals an entertainer capable of adapting his extraordinary voice and charisma to a very different setting.
Today, the album provides something even more valuable: an audio time capsule.
Put it on and you're hearing what an evening at the Copacabana could actually sound like.
The Supremes Take the Copa
The following year brought another landmark recording.
The Supremes released The Supremes at the Copa in 1965, capturing Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson at a moment when they had become some of Motown's biggest stars.
Their Copa engagement represented an important expansion of their image.
They weren't simply a young vocal group producing hit singles such as “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love” and “Stop! In the Name of Love.”
They were becoming sophisticated nightclub entertainers who could perform standards, Broadway material and pop songs for upscale adult audiences.
For Motown, that crossover mattered enormously.
The Temptations Live at the Copa
Motown returned to the formula again when the Temptations recorded Live at the Copa in 1968.
By then, the Copacabana had become an important showcase for demonstrating that soul and R&B performers could move comfortably between pop radio, television, concert stages and sophisticated nightclub entertainment.
Taken together, the Cooke, Supremes and Temptations recordings preserve a remarkable period when the Copa was helping redefine what mainstream American entertainment looked and sounded like.
Hollywood Comes Calling
Naturally, Hollywood couldn't resist the Copacabana.
The nightclub had already inspired the 1947 musical comedy Copacabana starring Groucho Marx and Carmen Miranda.
Miranda—with her extravagant costumes, musical exuberance and larger-than-life Brazilian-inspired image—seemed practically designed for the fantasy world suggested by the Copa.
Over the decades, the club became associated with numerous films and television productions, either appearing directly, being recreated or serving as part of the story.
But perhaps the most famous movie depiction of the Copa arrived in Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.
In the celebrated sequence, Henry Hill escorts Karen into the Copacabana through a back entrance. Rather than waiting outside, they travel through hallways and the bustling kitchen before emerging inside the nightclub.
A table suddenly appears for them.
The famous tracking shot perfectly captures what the Copa represented in popular imagination.
If you were somebody—or knew somebody—you didn't wait outside with everyone else.
Doors simply opened.
The End of the Original Copacabana
By the early 1970s, however, the world that had created the classic Copa was disappearing.
The sophisticated Manhattan supper club was losing ground to a new generation of nightlife. Younger audiences wanted rock music, dancing and increasingly adventurous clubs rather than dinner, cocktails and a floor show.
Then the Copa lost the man who had become almost synonymous with it.
Jules Podell died in 1973.
Podell had presided over the Copacabana for decades, helping transform it into one of the most famous entertainment venues in America.
Following his death, the original Copacabana closed in 1973.
For approximately three years, the legendary nightclub went dark.
The Copa Girls were gone.
The orchestra stopped playing.
One of the great chapters of old New York nightlife appeared to be over.
But you can't keep the Copa down forever.
The Copacabana Returns — as a Disco
In 1976, the Copacabana reopened under new ownership.
But New York had changed dramatically during those three years.
Disco was exploding.
Dance floors were replacing supper clubs. DJs were becoming stars in their own right. Elaborate lighting and powerful sound systems were transforming nightlife into something more immersive, youthful and energetic.
So the Copacabana reinvented itself.
The newly reopened Copa combined live entertainment with a discothèque, allowing one of New York's great old-school nightclubs to enter the disco generation.
The symbolism couldn't have been better.
The Copa had survived Sinatra.
It had survived Martin and Lewis.
It had survived Sam Cooke and Motown.
Now it was ready for disco.
And then something almost unbelievably perfect happened.
Barry Manilow wrote a song about it.
Barry Manilow Takes Us to the Copa
In 1978, Barry Manilow released “Copacabana (At the Copa),” written with longtime collaborators Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman.
Manilow had known the New York Copacabana during its earlier years. The idea for the song later developed after Manilow and Sussman found themselves near the real Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro and began thinking about the famous name.
Eventually, they realized it offered the perfect setting for a story.
And “Copacabana” isn't really just a disco song.
It's a miniature musical.
The song introduces Lola, a glamorous Copa showgirl, and Tony, the bartender who loves her.
Then Rico, a wealthy patron, becomes interested in Lola.
Jealousy turns into confrontation.
A gun is fired.
Tony dies.
Suddenly, the glittering disco record becomes a tragedy.
Then comes the song's most theatrical trick.
The story jumps forward decades.
Lola is older. Tony is long gone. The glamorous world she knew has disappeared, but emotionally she remains trapped inside it, still remembering the Copa and the man she loved.
Underneath that infectious beat is a surprisingly melancholy story about love, loss, aging, memory and being unable to let go of the past.
That's part of what makes “Copacabana” such an extraordinary pop song.
People dance to it at weddings and parties without necessarily realizing they're dancing to a song about murder and lifelong grief.
The Timing Was Almost Too Perfect
There is another fascinating layer to Manilow's hit.
The original Copa had closed in 1973.
The Copacabana reopened as a disco-oriented nightclub in 1976.
Then Barry Manilow released his disco-flavored “Copacabana” in 1978.
The sequence almost feels scripted.
Manilow was singing nostalgically about the old Copa—the showgirls, bartenders and glamorous nightclub world—while using the sound of the new disco generation.
Even better, the actual Copacabana was once again open while the record was becoming a hit.
The song therefore existed in two eras at once.
Its story belonged to the old Copa.
Its music belonged to the new Copa.
For people dancing to “Copacabana” in 1978, the nightclub wasn't simply a vanished relic of New York history.
You could still go there.
From One Song to an Entire Musical
Barry Manilow wasn't finished with Lola and Tony.
The story had always sounded like a miniature stage musical, so eventually it became one.
In 1985, “Copacabana” was expanded into a made-for-television musical starring Barry Manilow and Annette O'Toole.
Rather than simply stretching the original song into a longer story, Manilow and his collaborators created additional music and characters that expanded the fictional world of the nightclub.
Songs associated with the expanded Copacabana project included “Who Needs to Dream,” “Sweet Heaven (I'm in Love Again),” “Let's Go Steppin',” “Man Wanted,” “Aye Caramba!” and “El Bravo.”
The concept continued to evolve.
Barry Manilow Presents Copacabana became a stage production in Atlantic City beginning in 1990, and the story was eventually developed further as a full theatrical musical.
Later versions featured additional songs including “Just Arrived,” “Dancing Fool,” “Copa Girl,” “Night on the Town” and “This Can't Be Real.”
What began as a single 1978 pop record had become its own theatrical universe.
Lola had escaped the song.
More Than One Copacabana
One reason the history of the Copacabana can become confusing is that the club has not remained in one location.
The Copa moved and reinvented itself several times over the decades.
Later incarnations increasingly emphasized Latin music and dancing, helping the Copacabana name remain relevant to entirely new generations of New Yorkers.
Its addresses changed.
Its audiences changed.
Its music changed.
Even the definition of what a nightclub was changed.
Yet somehow the name survived.
Before Studio 54, There Was the Copa
Studio 54 may have become the ultimate symbol of celebrity excess during the disco era, but the Copacabana had already been mixing entertainment, glamour, scandal and famous faces for decades.
The difference is longevity.
The Copa belonged to multiple generations.
It belonged to Sinatra and supper clubs.
It belonged to Martin and Lewis.
It belonged to Sammy Davis Jr.
It belonged to Sam Cooke.
It belonged to Diana Ross and the Supremes.
It belonged to the Temptations.
It belonged to comedians, gangsters, movie stars and Copa Girls.
Then it survived long enough to belong to disco.
And finally, through Barry Manilow, it belonged to pop culture forever.
The Club That Became a Song
Perhaps the greatest testament to the Copacabana's cultural importance is that millions of people who have never entered the club know exactly what happens when someone says:
“At the Copa…”
Barry Manilow took everything the name already suggested—romance, feathers, Latin rhythms, danger, glamour and heartbreak—and distilled it into a few unforgettable minutes of music.
But the real Copacabana was even more extraordinary than Lola and Tony's fictional world.
It witnessed enormous changes in American entertainment, race, music, celebrity and nightlife. It survived the decline of the supper club, disappeared after the death of the man most closely associated with its golden years, returned during the disco revolution and continued reinventing itself long after many of its contemporaries vanished.
Buildings changed.
Music changed.
New York changed.
The Copa kept dancing.
And more than eight decades after its name first appeared above a Manhattan nightclub, you don't need to know the address. You don't need a reservation. You don't even need to have been alive during its golden age.
All it takes is the opening of a certain song.
Suddenly the feathers are back.
The band is playing.
Lola is dancing.
Tony is behind the bar.
And for a few minutes, at least, the Copacabana is open again.
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