Dan Tana spent five years at Red Star, developing as a striker.
23 Facts About Dan Tana
1.
2.
Luca was later taken away by men in a black limousine who Dan Tana assumed were immigration officers.
3.
Dan Tana faced the dilemma of whether to return to Canada to resume his football career or remain in the United States, with $10 to his name.
4.
Dan Tana decided to remain in Hollywood and began working as a dishwasher.
5.
Tanasijevic, now going by Americanized Dan Tana, soon made his cinematic debut in a small part of a Nazi torpedo engineer in 1957's The Enemy Below, starring Curt Jurgens and Robert Mitchum.
6.
Dan Tana appeared in the films The Untouchables, Rin Tin Tin and Peter Gunn.
7.
Dan Tana rejected an approach from Hannover to return to Europe to play football in 1960, as he was involved in the running of a nightclub, Peppermint West.
8.
Gradually, unable to support himself from sporadic acting gigs, and unwilling to go back to Europe to continue pursuing his journeyman football playing career, Dan Tana began working in hospitality.
9.
Dan Tana then became involved in running a nightclub, Peppermint West, that catered to young patrons looking to partake in the twist craze.
10.
In 1964, twenty-nine-year-old Dan 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 with a three-year payment schedule of US$10,000 annually.
11.
Chef Diguglio left after five years, in 1969, at which point Dan Tana hired another fellow Yugoslav, Mate Mustac, who had been working on Italian cruise ships, as the new chef.
12.
The Eagles' guitarist Glenn Frey and drummer Don Henley were said to have been inspired into writing their 1975 hit "Lyin' Eyes" after once eating at Dan Tana's while observing the many beautiful women in the restaurant, many of whom were with much older wealthy men.
13.
Some of them, such as singer Linda Ronstadt starring at the time in a Broadway staging of The Pirates of Penzance, went even further; upon hearing of Dan 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.
14.
Since accumulating a number of regulars over decades, Dan Tana's began naming dishes after them thus offering veal Jerry Weintraub, scaloppine Karl Malden, braciola Vlade Divac, chopped salad Nicky Hilton, steak Dabney Coleman, and shrimp scampi Jerry Buss.
15.
The series ran for three seasons with Dan Tana reportedly receiving US$500 per airing in royalties, altogether making US$500,000 that he donated to charity.
16.
In 1967, more than a decade removed from his time as a professional footballer, an increasingly successful West Hollywood restaurateur Dan Tana was hired to be the general manager of the newly-established Los Angeles Toros franchise of the simultaneously newly-launched National Professional Soccer League, one of the first attempts at establishing a professional soccer league in the United States.
17.
The manager of Brentford FC, Frank Blunstone, attended the gatherings and invited Dan Tana to watch Brentford play.
18.
Dan Tana was asked to join the board of Brentford, a privilege for which Dan Tana bought five shares at 50p each.
19.
Dan Tana became chairman of Brentford and they were promoted and turned a profit.
20.
In 1988 Dan Tana was approached to join the Yugoslav Football Federation by his former teammate, Miljan Miljanic, then president of the federation.
21.
Dan Tana subsequently prepared a Yugoslav side for the 1992 UEFA European Championship, from which they were banned as a result of United Nations sanctions.
22.
Dan Tana was elected to the board of Red Star Belgrade in 2000.
23.
Dan Tana has a summerhouse vacation villa on the Dalmatian island of Hvar in the Adriatic Sea in what is Croatia.