Ever since first arriving in
California in 1956, while attempting to transition professionally from playing football to acting, Tana took various odd jobs—working in a tuna
cannery and
washing dishes at the Villa Capri restaurant—as his main source of income. Gradually, unable to support himself from sporadic acting gigs, and unwilling to go back to Europe to continue pursuing his journeyman football playing career, Tana began working in hospitality. Living in a small apartment above Villa Capri, he continued working at the restaurant as a
bus boy for its owner Pasquale "Patsy" D'Amore. Tana then became involved in running a nightclub, Peppermint West, that catered to young patrons looking to partake in the
twist craze. In the early 1960s, Tana worked as the
maître d' at a
Beverly Hills restaurant, La Scala, owned by a
Santander-born
Basque immigrant to the U.S., Jean Leon, who had launched the spot in 1956 on North Canon Drive having had previously also worked for D'Amore at Villa Capri. Selvaggio launched Valentino on
Pico Boulevard in
Santa Monica in December 1972 that ran for 46 years before closing in late 2018. Patti launched La Famiglia in late 1974 on North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills before closing almost two decades later in August 1994.
Dan Tana's In 1964, twenty-nine-year-old Tana launched his own eatery by taking over the Dominick's hamburger restaurant on
Santa Monica Boulevard in
West Hollywood from an art-gallerist friend Chuck Feingarten for
US$30,000 (US$287,000 in 2023) with a three-year payment schedule of US$10,000 annually. For decades prior, the location had also housed food hospitality venues: first, Black's Lucky Spot Café counter-style lunch joint catering to the workers doing maintenance on the
Pacific Electric's old
Red Car Trolley that ran outside along Santa Monica Blvd. until the 1950s, followed by Domenico's Lucky Spot. Tana originally named his newly acquired venue after his adopted last name only, '''Tana's'
, changing its concept to New York City–style Italian dinner spot with a small bar and hiring chef Michele Diguglio to run the kitchen. Prior to the effusive 1966 Los Angeles Times'' review, the restaurant had reportedly been doing about 25 dinners per night, however, after the review, the number increased to 200 dinners per night. As a result of the increased demand, Tana had to hire a lot more staff as the restaurant only had two waiters and one bartender. Resisting the then-popular practice of restaurant staff bringing
telephones to the tables as per customer requests, Tana insisted—even after vociferous protestation from an infuriated
Universal Pictures studio executive
Ned Tanen—on a relaxed ambiance allowing customers to eat in relative anonymity. Gotovac—a Croat born in 1943 in the village of
Lećevica before leaving Communist Yugoslavia in 1964 as a young
gastarbeiter to
West Germany and eventually arriving in the U.S. in 1967—would go on to become one of Dan Tana's staples for the following 52 years, displaying a gruff, big-hearted personality while tending the bar and pouring drinks in what some saw as curmudgeonly fashion. Chef Diguglio left after five years, in 1969, at which point Tana hired another fellow Yugoslav, Mate Mustać, who had been working on Italian cruise ships, as the new chef.
1970s Into the 1970s, already frequented by a great number of film industry individuals—from major showbusiness eminences such as
John Wayne,
Kirk Douglas,
Karl Malden, and studio boss
Lew Wasserman to emerging
New Hollywood personalities such as
Harry Dean Stanton,
Jack Nicholson, screenwriter
Carole Eastman, and director
Bob Rafelson starring at the time in a Broadway staging of
The Pirates of Penzance, went even further; upon hearing of Tana facing a multiple-month delay just to get building permits approved by the city, she asked her boyfriend,
California governor Jerry Brown to help. and Jimmy Cano as its maître d'. In 1988, yet another Yugoslav, Neno Mladenović (a
Split-born Croat), joined as a cook working under chef Mustać; eventually, during early 2000s, Mladenović would replace Mustać as chef. The same year, Tana hired a young aspiring actor, Craig Susser, as a waiter; Susser would end up staying at Dan Tana's for the following 23 years: first as waiter and weekend bartender before being promoted in 2002 to maitre d' and manager. By the late 1980s, already running for 25 years, Dan Tana's continued attracting glamorous Hollywood patrons. In a 1989
Los Angeles Times review, the restaurant was described as hosting "plenty of flesh and hair, lots of dames and a movie crowd that looks as if it was costumed for a
film noir" with "plenty of two-cheek kissy-kissy stuff going on from table to table, the way they do in
Rome or
Cannes".
2000s In 2009, Tana sold his restaurant to Croatian tycoon Mihajlo Perenčević and his wife Sonja, providing they kept the name of the restaurant. Since their divorce, the restaurant has been in the sole ownership of Sonja Perenčević. Perenčević continues Tana's commitment to the community, with proceeds from the restaurant's 50th and 60th anniversaries donated to
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and
Children's Hospital Los Angeles, include the sale of a print donated by Tana's ex-wife Andrea Tana (
née Wiesenthal). ==In popular culture==