L.A. nightclub owner, restaurateur
Jackie Rebora, a longtime Los Angeles nightclub owner, hotel executive and restaurateur, died of complications from pneumonia and heart failure Jan. 5 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 77 and lived in Beverly Hills.
Born in Chicago in 1931, Rebora came to Los Angeles to attend USC. She got her start in the business at Virginia’s, a Latin dance club on 7th Street west of downtown Los Angeles that she and her first husband, Richard Thorne, owned and operated in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
After running nightclubs in Hollywood, Rebora switched to hotel event management in the late 1960s. She was banquet coordinator at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, a Studio City landmark that closed Jan. 1. Her second husband, Arthur Lawrence, also worked as a manager at the hotel.
Rebora moved on to the Beverly Hilton in the early ‘70s and by 1976 had become director of catering. Among the many glitzy events she helped coordinate were the Governors Ball after the 1978 Academy Awards, a string of Golden Globe Awards ceremonies, and countless benefits and gala dinners attended by high-profile politicians and entertainers.
The job entailed “more than putting together menus,” Rebora told The Times in 1978. “You have to know how to organize things, how to handle people and how to sell banquets. In short, you have to have administrative ability. I learned most everything I know about food while I was on the job.”
In 1979, she and her third husband, Adriano Rebora, opened Adriano’s, an Italian restaurant in Bel-Air known for its entertainment industry clientele. Rebora also ran an independent event planning business, and in 1998 the couple closed Adriano’s. Her husband died in 2002.
She is survived by two children from her first marriage, son Robert Thorne and daughter Gail Shelly; a sister, Gloria Steinberg; six grandchildren; and a great-grandchild.
A memorial service is planned at 2 p.m. Sunday at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Hollywood Hills, 5950 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles.
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