Dan Tana, the actor who opened the iconic Dan Tana restaurant in 1964, has died. He was 90.
The news was announced by the restaurant’s social media team on Facebook.
“The great Dan Tana has passed on. We all know that he created a very magical place. Our beloved little yellow house will forever feel his presence,” a statement shared on the platform began.
“Dan started out working for La Scala and The Villa Capri in the 1950s. It was working for those classic eateries that encouraged him to open his own! And he did just that. He was always proud of where he came from and what he accomplished, a former soccer star from Yugoslavia.”
“Dan had wonderful stories about Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, James Dean, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis. In fact Robert Urich’s character was named after Dan Tana on the classic TV show, ‘Vega$.’”
“Today Dan Tana’s is owned by his dear friend Sonja Perencevic who’s kept it exactly the same since 1964,” the statement concluded. “This man is a legend, and as you know a legend never dies.”
Tana’s cinematic career kicked off with 1957’s “The Enemy Below.” He also had roles in “The Untouchables,” “Rin Tin Tin” and “Peter Gunn.”
Tana was born Dobrivoje Tanasijević in Čibutkovica, Danube Banovina, then a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslaviaon, on May 26, 1935. He initially pursued athletics and even played professional soccer in Canada before moving to Hollywood, where he began taking acting lessons.
Tana changed his name to make it more palatable to American audiences and landed the role in “The Enemy Below.” He began working in restaurants, first as a dishwasher at Patsy D’Amore’s Villa Capri in Hollywood, to supplement his income.
He took over a hamburger stand in 1964 and refashioned it into an Italian restaurant. The Los Angeles Times reviewed the restaurant and helped put it on the map; by the ’80s, the Times wrote the establishment was “the restaurant of choice” for anyone who wanted to be “seen in All The Right Places.”
Tana never lost his interest in soccer, and simultaneously became manager of the Los Angeles Toros in the 1960s, chaired an English team, and operated several soccer clubs throughout Belgrade.
He sold the restaurant to Sonja Perenčević in 2009 and moved to Serbia. In 2014 he told the Hollywood Reporter Perenčević had made good on her pledge to keep the restaurant exactly the same, and perhaps most importantly, “We are still serving my original customers — and their children and grandchildren.”
