Daniel Lavezzo Jr.; Owner of Manhattan’s P.J. Clarke’s

Daniel Lavezzo Jr., 83, owner of a New York saloon that attracted such notables as Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Buddy Holly. For more than half a century, Lavezzo proffered juicy hamburgers and cold beer at his Manhattan refuge, P.J. Clarke’s. The bar was the setting for the multiple Oscar-winning Ray Milland movie about alcoholism, “The Lost Weekend,” in 1945. The novelist Charles Jackson, on whose book the motion picture was based, was a habitue of the bar. Dressed in his customary madras sport jacket, Lavezzo greeted customers, welcoming all comers, from the famous to the blue-collar worker. Holly proposed there; Sinatra had Table No. 23 reserved for his use; Cole named the establishment’s bacon cheeseburger “the Cadillac of burgers.” Louis Armstrong often stopped by in the wee morning hours. But musicians were not the only famous Clarke’s aficionados. Aristotle Onassis took Lee Radziwill there before he married her sister, Jacqueline Kennedy. One stellar night in the late 1950s, Lavezzo welcomed mobster Frank Costello, Sen. Hubert H. Humphrey and actress Marilyn Monroe to separate tables. As skyscrapers took over the neighborhood, Lavezzo maintained the bar for more than 50 years, extracting a 99-year lease from developers Tishman Realty and Construction Co. On Tuesday in New York City.