Dan Tana, proprietor of a classic Hollywood restaurant who boosted Brentford FC’s fortunes as chairman
Dan Tana, who has died aged 90, was an actor, gambler, restaurateur and footballer; he was an outstanding forward for Red Star Belgrade in his youth, owned the celebrity Italian restaurant Dan Tana's in West Hollywood, and made an unlikely chairman of Brentford FC, steering the London club to promotion and profitability.
He had countless tales of Hollywood royalty. Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe borrowed his flat for an assignation; the Eagles wrote their classic song Lyin' Eyes (1975) at one of his tables; and Phil Spector left a $500 tip the night before his 2003 arrest for murdering the actress Lana Clarkson. On one occasion Tana delivered a basket of food and a bottle of Dom Pérignon to Elizabeth Taylor, who answered the door in a transparent negligee.
Tana had been a Serbian refugee, making his way around Europe and Canada before landing in California as a young soccer player. Although he took acting classes with Natalie Wood and Kim Novak and appeared in films with Robert Mitchum (The Enemy Below, 1957) and Glenn Ford (Imitation General, 1958), he saw himself as an footballer.
Yet his biggest success came after buying the restaurant next door to his office in 1964 and reopening it as Dan Tana's, a dark and romantic hangout with Old World atmosphere, a menu in Italian-American "red-sauce" style, flickering candles and recessed booths decorated with rich, red wall coverings. It might have been small but soon became an institution, "hosting perhaps more famous people per square inch than anywhere else in town", according to the Los Angeles Times.
The actor James Woods described it as "a great place to park your ass and eat the best food with a fascinating mix of people", while John Wayne took calls there from the White House. But its proprietor refused $25,000 from Barbara Sinatra to close for a night so she could throw a surprise birthday party for her husband, Frank, saying he could not do that to his regulars.
Dan Tana's: a romantic hangout with Old World atmosphere - George Rose/Getty
Ringo Starr proposed to his girlfriend Nancy Lee Andrews there, slipping a diamond ring on her finger for dessert, while for the television series Vega$ the producer Aaron Spelling named his private investigator (played by Robert Urich) Dan Tanna. When Richard Burton was refused a last-minute booking for a table of eight, he spent 10 minutes complaining on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. The next day, a friend told Tana: "Son of a bitch, you got a million dollars-worth of publicity last night for not giving Richard Burton a table."
Perhaps Tana's strangest encounter came when he met Marshal Tito, the leader of his native Yugoslavia, on a visit to Los Angeles. When Tito asked why he spoke Serbo-Croat so well, Tana reluctantly explained that he had defected: "He wrapped his left arm around me and brought me close, like we were hugging. Then he whispered, 'I would have done the same thing if I were you'. "
Dobrivoje Tanasijevic-Bata was born on a farm on May 26 1935 in Cibutkovica, near Belgrade. "One of the women working in the field cut my umbilical cord with a scythe," he wrote. His restaurateur father, Radojko, was arrested by the Germans during the war and his mother Lenka, an Ava Gardner lookalike, held the family together.
Radojko was later sentenced to 12 years' hard labour by the Communists for collaborating with the enemy, Lenka found work in a sweet factory and their son played football with the neighbourhood team. One day a scout for the Red Star Belgrade apprentice team stopped by and invited him to a training session. During his time with the club they won the Yugoslavian National Cup three times in a row.
He went on to play for Bokelj FC while studying at naval college, but was recalled to Belgrade for a competition in Belgium, travelling there under another player's name because of his father's conviction. In Antwerp he defected and was sheltered by nuns before being offered a footballing contract with RSC Anderlecht. He ended up in a US prison camp in occupied Germany, before making his way to the Hannover 96 football club and thence to Montreal Hakoah in Canada.
A gambling win took him to California where, abandoned by his travelling companion, he caught a bus to Hollywood, found work in a pizza restaurant and resumed playing soccer. He also took English lessons and made his professional acting debut in NBC's anthology series Matinee Theater playing Germans, mafia hitmen, thugs and soldiers. "I died about 30 times and never once got to kiss the girl, at least on camera," he wrote.
A casting agent changed his name to Dan Tana, but with his profile rising his immigration status needed regularising. A lawyer arranged a marriage of convenience, while a brief trip to Mexico regularised his presence in the US via a corrupt border guard. Three months later the marriage was annulled. He worked at the restaurants Villa Capri and La Scala, taking over as mâitre d' of the latter when the incumbent stepped into a vat of boiling marinara sauce. "I was a natural out front," he recalled. "Marlon Brando came in and I ushered him straight to his booth. I did the same with Paul Newman, Robert Wagner, Dick Powell and Fred Astaire."
Tana after joining the board of Brentford FC in 1974 - Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
By then Tana was also managing the United Scots, one of a dozen semi-professional teams in the Greater Los Angeles Soccer League. After making a fortune investing in the Peppermint West club, he bought the rights to start the Golden Eagles football team in Los Angeles, while supporting the American Youth Soccer Organisation, a programme for children.
When his young daughter came home from school with a marijuana joint, Tana decided to move the family to London from where he managed the restaurant in LA. He became immersed in English football, playing on Sundays in Hyde Park, where he met Frank Blunstone, a Chelsea star of the 1950s who managed Brentford in the early 1970s. They wore the same colours as the Red Star team of Tana's youth, but were languishing in what was then the fourth and lowest division.
Tana joined the board and in 1975 was elected chairman, one the first foreigners to hold that position in English football. He made it his mission to reshape the team both on and off the field: Bill Dodgin was hired as manager, players visited children in hospitals and schools, and ticket sales rose. He also railed against racist fans, even making a citizen's arrest of one who screamed obscenities during a match against Watford.
In time he was elected to the FA and then Uefa, the governing body of European football, but in 1981 was ousted from Brentford amid protests by disillusioned fans outside Griffin Park. Before long he was involved with the Yugoslav national team, accompanying them to the 1990 World Cup.
When it came to selling Dan Tana's, luck seemed against him. One prospective purchaser died, and another's partnership melted down at the signing. An anonymous buyer from the Middle East left a certified cheque for $5 million and a phone number, but eventually he sold the business to his assistant Nadia and her best friend, Sonja, and retired to a villa he had built on the island of Hvar in the Adriatic Sea, and later to Belgrade.
Tana's second marriage, in 1961, to the artist Andrea Wiesenthal, was dissolved and in 2006 he was married a third time, to Biljana Strezovski. She survives him with the two daughters from his second marriage.
Dan Tana, born May 26 1935, died August 16 2025
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