About Ben Novack
“Ben Novack was a wonderful old codger, very innovative. If he liked you, he invited you to sit at his personal table at the Poodle Lounge for happy hour. Cocktails were $5, and everyone drank Cutty on the Rocks. They sat around and talked about the shows and the broads and what was going down. There was always a surplus of girls, especially girls who ran after the Rat Pack guys.
Novack was hard of hearing and he refused to wear a hearing aid, so you had to yell in his ear. He wore outlandish clothes, bright green sports jackets and moccasins with no socks. When I was finally invited to join his table, I thought I had arrived – I was now one of the Young Jewish Important People. That was how the social hierarchy of the day worked: Who you were was where you sat at the Fontainebleau.”
– Al Malnik, Attorney