One of the New York metropolitan area’s most popular nightclubs, a place that featured crooners such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in the mid-1940s and 1950s, wasn’t even in New York City. It was clear across the Hudson River – a fixture atop the Palisades, in Fort Lee.

Bill Miller’s Riviera, with its large rooftop sign built at a slight angle to face the George Washington Bridge and Manhattan, was a mecca of mega-talent such as Vic Damone, Sophie Tucker, Lena Horne, Jackie Gleason, Pearl Bailey, and comedians such as Larry Storch, Jack E. Leonard, and Jerry Lewis.

Billed by Miller as “The Showplace of America,” the Riviera lived up to its name, drawing thousands to its doors off Hudson Terrace to catch Jackie Gleason, Jimmy Durante or Jane Froman performing under its retractable roof. Miller died six years ago, at age 98, but the memory of the club, and Miller’s demeanor, are fresh in the minds of performers who were booked there.

“I was happy, and honored, to be on the bill,” says Larry Storch, 85, the comic, impressionist, musician and actor who played Cpl. Agarn on the series F Troop. “There was a magic about the Riviera, especially where it was placed on the cliffs.”

The test of time
Storch, who has appeared on Broadway and in films, appeared on the Riviera stage with cabaret singer Francis Faye. The comic’s impressions – especially his unique characterization and phrasing of Cary Grant saying “Judy, Judy, Judy” (which the actor actually never said on film) – are considered time-honored classics.

“I did James Mason, Cary Grant … and a yoga bit on stage where I’d get in the lotus position of folding my legs, and couldn’t get out of it,” Storch remembers. “As part of the act, two waiters at the club would have to come up and carry me off the stage.”

Storch found the showroom “huge”; it was important, he explains, to capture the audience right away – “to get the whole of the room, or one could lose hold of the room.”

“There will never be another place like it [that is] that beautiful,” says Al Kevelson, 96, a silent partner with Miller in the Riviera. “It was quite a setting. It had a spectacular view and great talent to perform.”

The blue and yellow stucco façade of the nightclub was visible for miles from the far banks of the Hudson. Perched on cliff’s edge, about 100 or so yards north of the George Washington Bridge, the Riviera offered tiered seating and a revolving stage and dance floor. There wasn’t, Kevelson marvels, a bad seat in the house.

Comics such as Joey Bishop and Henny Youngman were club favorites, as were the showgirls and dancers and choreographers such as Jack Cole, Gwen Verdon, and Marge and Gower Champion. And Miller’s sister, Mollie Vine, recalls the team of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis taking comedy to a whole other level at the Riviera. “They went outside to the parking lot and starting parking cars for people,” says Vine, 88. “It wasn’t during their act or even part of the act. They just did it to get a laugh. They were just fooling around. That’s how it was at the Riviera.”

Comedian and Broadway actor Jack Carter calls Miller one of the few club bosses who didn’t scare him – a loveable man who always smiled and laughed. “He was he best boss I ever had,” adds Carter, 84. “I learned greatly from him. He’d tell me to get out and mingle, meet the people in the club. He convinced me to go out and socialize more. I took his advice. I went from table to table to do that before the show, instead of hiding in the dressing room.”

Appearing with Carter at the Riviera were Tony Martin, the dance team of Tony and Sally De Marco, and Eddie Fisher. Carter recalls Marge Champion – of the dance team of Gower and Marge Champion – getting hurt during a performance. “While they were dancing, his cane hit her eye … flicked her eye … and cut a nerve,” Carter says. “The audience screamed. Her eyeball blew up the size of an egg.”

Actors also, Carter notes, had the choice of performing under the stars or with the roof closed. But by 1953, neither option was available; the Riviera closed its doors that year, and was demolished a year later to make way for the Palisades Interstate Parkway.

Swan Song
“I closed the Riviera,” says singer Eddie Fisher, 79, who had four No. 1 hits between 1952 and 1954, and is best remembered for the song “Oh! My Papa.”

Fisher, whose wives included Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, and Connie Stevens, tried to fight the padlocking of the storied club’s doors. “I sang a song with lyrics written about the Riviera closing,” he adds. “It went like this: ‘Don’t let them tear the Riviera down, don’t let them build a highway through this town.’ ”

But after Fisher’s two week engagement, the club closed in October 1953.

Tony Martin, the famous crooner married for nearly 60 years to actress and dancer Cyd Charisse, recalls happier times at the Riviera, when his appearances broke attendance records. They also caused traffic snarls from the nightclub’s long driveway, south to the George Washington Bridge. “My agent said they shouldn’t open the roof when I performed there, because it might rain,” says Martin, now 95 and still performing in New York. “I was a big New York Yankees fan, and they all used to come out to the Riviera to see my shows. The place was always full of entertainers and celebrities. It was wonderful.”

So wonderful that many performers yearned for more stage time. One of those jostling for exposure was Jack E. Leonard, Martin’s opening act. A barely dressed Leonard cut into Martin’s singing one night, to the shock and laughter of the audience. “He came out in nothing but a bath towel, running through the audience,” Martin laughs. “He ran all over the place yelling “Where’s the soup?’”

Not unusual for Leonard, points out Lou Gallo, 80, a Fort Lee resident and former waiter at the club. “Leonard was the comedian opening the show for Tony Martin when he went backstage and wrapped himself in that big bath towel,” Gallo says. “Jack E. Leonard had a big belly. He put it on and ran around the ringside seating area, but hey – they’re comedians … they used to do a lot of kooky things like that.”

The Riviera attracted more than its share of big names, just to see the show. New York Yankees great Yogi Berra and his wife, Carmen, were regular patrons. “I would come with Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford,” remembers the Hall of Fame catcher and New Jersey resident. “I saw Frank Sinatra, Tony Martin and Joey Bishop there. It was the definition of a supper club of the 1950s. Everyone would get dressed up, come in limousines. It was just a classic of-the-era club.”

Berra was in the audience when Sinatra made a comeback appearance of sorts, in 1953. Ol’ Blue Eyes had suffered a vocal-chord hemorrhage at an earlier booking in Manhattan, and was teetering on the verge of divorce from second wife Ava Gardner.  Sinatra was also on the cusp of hitting it big as an actor, co-starring in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. “It was one of the first venues Frank Sinatra came back to after he had suffered the loss of his voice,” Berra recalls. “Everyone was there. We had a wonderful time watching him perform that night.”

The Riviera had a star-studded season the year it closed. Sinatra’s 1953 appearance was prior to Fisher’s, and had followed Lena Horne’s booking.

Gallo waited the ringside tables during the Sinatra show, which followed the New York premiere of From Here To Eternity. “The Voice” would soon earn a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Private Angelo Maggio in the film.

“He was so happy to be back on stage,” says Gallo. “We sat 1,000 people, and 665 of them that night were celebrities.”

Montgomery Clift, who also starred in the film, was in the audience supporting Sinatra. Gallo was the waiter for this top-tier table. “He took out his inexpensive pocket watch, and when I saw it, I commented on it,” Gallo says of Clift. “He told me he didn’t go for that fancy stuff, and didn’t need an expensive pocket watch. Then he offered it to me for $3. I didn’t buy it. I should have.”

Eye for a star
Bill Miller relished good entertainment – he was a former vaudeville performer himself. Born in Russia in 1904 as one of six children, he immigrated to the United States at age 2 with his parents, settling in Jersey City, where he played baseball and basketball and ran track at Dickinson High School.

The young Miller became a vaudevillian and dancer for a few years with partner Nat Peterson, playing, among other venues, the famous Palace Theater in Manhattan. After dabbling as a stage producer, Miller restyled himself as a film agent, and later, a Broadway talent agent, working with such names as the debonair Walter Pidgeon, Joe Besser, Everett Marshall, and celebrated magician Charles “Think-a-Drink” Hoffman. Miller took over the Coney Island amusement park Luna Park, which burned in 1944, as well as clubs in Florida and Manhattan, including the famous Embassy on 57th Street. Early on, Miller demonstrated an eye for talent, booking the great French singer-composer Charles Trenet, whose ballad “La Mer” became the Bobby Darin mega-hit “Beyond The Sea.”

But Miller crossed the Hudson, leaving an indelible mark where he landed: in Fort Lee, where he bought the club from the previous owner, Bill Marden, for a reported cost of between $500,000 and $750,000.

“Bill was a great guy – a real gentleman who loved the business and loved the Riviera,” says partner Kevelson. “He was a pro. He did all the talking, I did all the financing. Bill would hire the talent, and I would pay them, guaranteeing their salaries.”

When the Riviera was condemned to make way for the Palisades Interstate Parkway, the State Highway Commission was ordered to pay Miller close to $758,000 for the club and its 1.5-acre tract. The former driveway is still visible from Hudson Terrace in Fort Lee and is a popular hiking destination offered by historians and guides with the New Jersey section of the Palisades Interstate Park.

Miller went on to Las Vegas, where he is credited with developing the modern-day lounge act, and became known as “Mr. Entertainment,” bringing in stars including Mae West and Elvis Presley, and introducing the public to talent such as Sonny & Cher. Miller was married to his fourth wife, Denise, when he died in Palm Springs, Calif., in 2002. Often described as a captivating storyteller, Miller dressed impeccably and was sophisticated, with a knack for charming his patrons and spotting talent.

As such, his Fort Lee club proved a stepping stone for Sammy Davis Jr., who was performing with the Will Mastin Trio during the Miller years. And his staff, who took their meals near the basement kitchen, proved a perfect testing ground, and captive audience, for Davis. The waiters, bus boys and club management were drawn in, as Davis would drum on the glasses with plastic stirrers, or do impressions of Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Cagney, Cary Grant, Danny Kaye and Edward G. Robinson.

Davis took the stage with the trio, but when it came time for his solo during the act, the Riviera waiters and bus boys would egg him on.

“The lights would be out in the audience, and we’d yell out for him to do his impressions,” says Gallo. “No one saw us. No one in the audience knew it was us doing it but Sammy. His 15 minutes on stage turned into a 25- or 30-minute act. Bill Miller saw that people wanted it. Ed Sullivan saw it too, and two weeks after an appearance at the Riviera, Sullivan booked Sammy on his TV show.”

Davis returned to the Fort Lee stage the following year, spurring the trio to request triple its customary $600 salary. And, Gallo adds, they got it.

Stardust memories
Ramsey artist and Realtor Tom Austin relished his unique view of the Riviera floor shows: from the rafters. Austin – a former member of The Royal Teens singing group, famous for the song “(Who Wears) Short Shorts” – is the son of Al Austin, a special police officer then assigned to the nightclub by the Fort Lee Police Department.

“My dad would take me down to the Riviera on Tuesday nights, and let me go up to the spotlight booth where I could watch acts like Sammy Davis Jr.,” Austin recalls.

The revolving stage allowed the Latin house band, led by Pupi Campo, and the big band led by Walter Nye, to switch seamlessly, adds Austin.

Two hundred patrons sat comfortably at the bar, which was backed by wall murals created by noted Abstract Expressionist painter Arshile Gorky. A large upstairs room was used for parties, and often as a backdrop for group photos of the showgirls and master of ceremonies. Prior to the Miller years, it was said, the space was used for gambling.

Headliners considered the Riviera more than a suburban club, with two shows on weeknights and three or four on weekends. Stars such as Milton Berle, Martha Raye, Zero Mostel, Buddy Hackett, comedian Peter Lind Hayes and his wife, entertainer Mary Healy, and the Ames Brothers were booked there from May through October. The month of August, however, was quiet, with crowds heading north to Saratoga for the races.

The Riviera would reopen again only each New Year’s Eve, for a gala celebration. Miller was always at the club to greet guests such as Ray Milland, Marlene Dietrich, Esther Williams and heavyweight boxer Rocky Marciano.

“I do remember the Riviera fondly,” says Judith Miller, the eldest daughter of Bill Miller and his third wife, Mary (Connolly) Miller. The author, former New York Times journalist and fellow and contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, was a child during the club’s heyday. Miller recalls “the elegance and the excitement” of the Riviera, “the audience in jewels and fur.” Vivid memories remain of the “plush red carpet” inside one area; the rug is now part of the permanent collection of the Fort Lee Museum, which bought it at auction in Englewood a few years back.

Bill Miller’s brother-in-law, Abe Vine, was a food manager at the club, overseeing the preparation of 1,000 à la carte dinners each night for the early show, and another 1,500 for the second show. Vine, the husband of Miller’s sister Mollie and a food manager at the club, says the freezer held $25,000 worth of meat, with eight walk-in ice boxes. “It was a terrific place,” adds Vine, 91. “There was never an empty seat. It was the prettiest nightclub in the area. It was so sad when it closed.”

Between the ages of 9 and 14, Miller’s niece, Rosalie Walner of Mahwah, would come to the Riviera with her father, Joseph, the night food manager. When she wasn’t in the kitchen watching gourmet meals being prepared, she was in the showroom watching entertainers rehearse. It was a great way to pass the time, notes Walner, 67. “I met Eddie Fisher, Tony Martin and Lena Horne. Even though I was young, I certainly knew they were big stars.”

Some of the era’s colorful underworld figures – including Albert Anastasia, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Abner “Longie” Zwillman, and brothers Willie and Sal Moretti – were also frequent visitors. But Walner doubts the mobsters had any inside track at the Riviera. “My uncle had a presence – he was very good looking … very charismatic,” she says. “Everyone used to tell me my uncle was ‘connected’, but I never saw any sign of it.”

To be sure, all types visited the clubs, says comedian Jack Carter – from mob bosses and garment-district types to New York club-goers and drinkers. “It was only $4 to $5 for a full Chinese meal. There was no cover,” remembers Carter. “Then, television helped kill the clubs. It was free on the [Johnny] Carson show, and there was a change of times. The clubs became too expensive to run.” Indeed, Carter notes, places like the Riviera, along with New York City clubs like the Copacabana and Latin Quarter, were a bargain compared with the prices at Manhattan hotels with entertainment venues.

Guilty pleasures
Bill Miller had a keen sense for which entertainers would be hits with audiences, says nephew Barney Miller, 71. But there were always showgirls to fill in. “Bill Miller loved legs,” laughs Barney. “The showgirls happened to have pretty faces, but my uncle used to tell me that people in the audience didn’t look at the faces – they looked at the legs.”

Outside the south end of the nightclub, meanwhile, a horseshoe court provided the perfect relaxation for the staff – and an occasional singer. Tony Martin, Sinatra and the Ames Brothers were avid pitchers, waiter Gallo recalls. Martin, in particular, was “a very good player,” scoring plenty of ringers, while Sinatra’s horseshoe pitches “were all over the place,” Gallo adds. “Sinatra pitched wild.”

But Miller also had a home life, within a few miles of the club, his relatives point out. Judith Miller tells of the Tudor home in Englewood where she lived until age 6 with her parents and younger sister, Susan. And Mollie Vine tells of traditional meals at the house with her brother and family. “Every Sunday, we were out at Bill’s mansion for dinner,” says Vine. “We’d do that every week. It was a wonderful time.”

Tony Lip, who played New York mob boss Carmine Lupertazzi in HBO’s The Sopranos, and appeared in the films Goodfellas and Donnie Brasco, remembers crossing the George Washington Bridge to visit Palisades Amusement Park; the trip from the Bronx meant seeing the Riviera along the way. Lip went on to work at Manhattan’s famous Copacabana nightclub as a supervisor and maitre d’, just a few years after the Riviera closed. “The area was bubbling, humming at the time,” says Lip, 77, of Paramus. “We’d see the Riviera all the time, sitting on those cliffs. Those were great times. I started at the Copacabana in 1961, a few years after the Riviera was demolished. But what was great about that period was all the excitement, all the entertainment that was around the area. What’s missing now is that action, those types of entertainers. They’re just not around anymore like they were regularly at these clubs.”

Jack Carter, who stayed friendly with Miller over the years and who worked at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas under Miller’s regime there, agrees. Carter laments that Las Vegas today is a “factory” of shows – many with the title “cirque.” The days of clubs like the Riviera are sorely missed, he says with an air of resignation.

Unfading mystique
Inarguably, a nostalgic curiosity about the Riviera remains for area residents, notes Eric Nelsen, the historical interpreter with the New Jersey Section of the Palisades Interstate Park. “I encounter it whenever I give a slideshow about the park,” Nelsen says. “There are people in the audience old enough to remember the Riviera, and many who are not. The hiking tours to the site attract people who wouldn’t normally be out hiking, but when they hear it’s the Riviera, they want to come. They want to touch the memory of something that was magical, and now it’s gone.”

Tom Meyers, administrator for cultural and heritage affairs for the borough of Fort Lee, was a main organizer of the 2005 Riviera exhibit at the Fort Lee Museum. The exhibit featured memorabilia from the Miller and Marden days, including the plush rug Judith Miller recalls.

During the 85 days Judith Miller was incarcerated for protecting her source in an investigation of the outing of a CIA employee to the press, Meyers wrote and invited her to the exhibit of photographs, menus and other valuable memorabilia salvaged or collected from the club. Meyers promises that another exhibit is in the works. “The Riviera is one of the most asked-about sites in the borough,” Meyers says. “It is such a topic of interest.”

Equally intriguing was Bill Miller himself. “Miller wasn’t impressed with fame, and treated the performers just like they were ordinary people,” explains nephew Barney Miller. “You couldn’t be around Bill without gravitating toward him. He drew an audience into conversation right away, with his magnetic personality and stories of the business.”

And Rosalie Walner believes it’s because her uncle had show business in his blood.  “He came up from the ranks of vaudeville,” Walner says, simply. “He was a real showman.”