Willie Colón performing opening night at the new Copacabana in Times Square, NYC, July 13, 2011. Photo by L. Frank Cabrera on wikimedia commons. Some rights reserved.

The Copacabana night club in New York plays an integral part in the story of Miss Mizzou. It’s where Milton Caniff picked the first Miss Mizzou model Bek Stiner in 1952, and another Miss Mizzou model Gayle Sheldon in 1958.

As I say in the book, I think that Caniff used the Copacabana to pick his Miss Mizzou models for particular reason. In the academy award winning film All About Eve, a young Marilyn Monroe is introduced in the film as a “graduate of the Copabana school of dramatic art.” The comment is a sly insult to the character since the Copabana night club featured women known for dancing and not their acting skills.

Reportedly the insult made it’s way into infamy as other comedians repeated the quip, so it’s likely that Caniff would have been aware of it. When he decided to loosely base Miss Mizzou on Marilyn Monroe, I bet the idea of picking out a model from the Copacabana came to him as a novel solution.

The Copacabana is still a popular nightclub in New York. To modern audiences, they’ve probably mostly heard of it due to the infamous 1978 Barry Manilow tune. If you’re looking for more background on the nightclub, check out the books The Copa: Jules Podell and the Hottest Club North of Havana and The Copacabana.