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Old Posted Jan 18, 2021, 9:58 PM
Martin Pal Martin Pal is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin Pal View Post
HOW MANY HAVE WE NOT HEARD OF?
[...]
“The record company promo men all went to an Italian spot named Martoni’s.
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After reading about Martoni's online a bit today, I wonder why I haven't heard of this place before.

Maybe because the building is quite non-descript. The address was 1523 Cahuenga Blvd. (A couple websites say 1538, but the matchbook covers I looked up say 1523.) It opened in 1960 and closed due to the 1994 earthquake, it is said. So it was around 34 years, quite a long run as restaurants go. This is the only photo I've found of it.


LARadio

Here's what the restaurant sign would've looked like:...and a postcard of the interior:

On "Yahoo! Answers" someone asked the question, "Does anyone remember Martoni's in Hollywood?" The replies are provocative. Here are two of them:

Vince DeMattia writes: I was a new reporter for Daily Variety. I started in early fall of 1965. Not too long after being there, Joe Price who was the Music/Recording reporter for Daily Variety, told me he wanted to take me somewhere for a special experience. He picked me at my apartment and we went back to Daily Variety to park the car and walked across the street to Martoni's... a place I had not yet visited even though it was that close to the Variety office. We walked in and made an immediate right turn to go up stairs to the "Up-A-Stairs Lounge (that's actually what the sign above the entrance to the stairway read. When we got up stairs, there was about 12-15 people. Among them Joe Smith from Warner records, Frank Sinatra and Bill Cosby. As you might imagine, I was stunned. It turns out that Bill Cosby recorded for Frank Sinatra's then new record company, Reprise and Frank was there to present Bill Cosby with Three Gold Albums. That was my first introduction to Martoni's and the level of famous persons one might run into there. One time I went in and sat at the bar and gabbed with Mama Cass Elliot and another time sat at one of the "2-tops " at the end of the wall you walked around to get to the back section. Sammy Davis, Jr and a lady sat next to me in the other 2-top. Yeah... it was quite a place!

Gene Grossman writes: I was the first entertainer hired to work there, and played piano right next to the kitchen door. As for the restaurant's ownership, you be the judge: in the kitchen there was a State document posted stating that the liquor license was in the name of the "Ring-a-Ding-Ding" corporation, and in the office hung a life-sized portrait of Frank Sinatra.

Sam Giancana was seen there.

On a Vintage Los Angeles Facebook page, Barbra Kaye writes: Was sitting at the bar the night Sonny and Cher were asked to leave because their dress was so outlandish... I believe they wrote a hit song about the incident! In another search I found someone wrote: Supposedly Sonny Bono wrote "Laugh at Me" after being kicked out of Martoni’s for his wild attire.

And Ryan writes: Went there a few times (early 90's). Met CHEAP TRICK (they bought me drinks...lol)! And Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot there. Ended up at his house with a couple other friends. Crazy.

With all this notoriety and celebrity status, and in Hollywood frequently enough, how is this place something unfamiliar to me?

On this site: L.A. Radio People, Don Elliott wrote a section (scroll about halfway down the page, the picture of the restaurant in my post is in the section) titled "Martoni's Was the Place to Be in the 60s and 70s" and he has a sort of Top Ten list: Recalling back-in-the-dj-day Hollywood. Best shows in town. (ALL AT MARTONI’S).

A few of them are:

--Frank Sinatra “Up-a Stairs"
--Lenny’s “back room show"
--Anything Sal said behind the bar
--Pretending to talk trash into hidden FBI microphones in the lamps.

Now that last part about the hidden microphones is interesting because there's a website -- Advanced Electronic Security Company, where they have a section titled: Technical Surveillance Counter Measures, Bug Sweeping, Detection of Telephone Taps, Wiretaps, Covert Hidden Video Cameras Detection, Detecting Hidden Room Bugs, Electronic Harassment Information & Detection and a link to "Advanced Electronic Security Historical Photos" where Martoni's is featured: "Every private eye has a restaurant that is their hangout at night. For me it was Martoni, which was on Cahuenga in the heart of Hollywood, CA."
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