‘Hatcheck King’ of New York City Dies

Abraham Ellis, the “Hatcheck King” who went from rags to riches running concessions in New York City nightclubs, died Friday of a heart attack at his home in Orange, N.J. He was 84.

Ellis earned the nickname in the 1940s when he ran hatcheck concessions at popular New York City night spots and hotels, including the Copacabana, Latin Quarter, Toots Shor’s, the Algonquin and the St. Regis.

In an obituary, the New York Times said Ellis revolutionized the concession business with numbered claim checks and hatcheck girls. His stands also dispensed cigars, washroom towels and candid photographs.

Later in life he bought industrial parks in New Jersey because the nightclub business was “preempted by television,” his daughter, Judith Liederman, told the New York Times.

The youngest of seven children, he was born in a cold-water flat on New York’s Lower East Side and began helping support his family at a young age. At 11 he was a delivery boy and at 14 sold candy bars at Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera House, which he bought 23 years later for $750,000.

He first married Yetta Samuel in 1926 and shortly after used $5,000 of her money to buy the hatcheck concession at the Brooklyn Elks Club, which launched his career. That marriage ended in a highly publicized divorce in 1946.

He leaves his second wife, Valerie Ellis; three daughters, Liederman of Beverly Hills, Lynn Clurman of Manhattan and Carol Shapiro of Coral Gables, Fla.; four sons, David Ellis of Muttontown, N.Y., Eugene Ellis and Richard Ellis of New York and Steven Ellis of Toms River, N.J., and 15 grandchildren.

Funeral services and interment will be in New York City.