"Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl
With yellow feathers in her hair and a dress cut down to there
She would merengue and do the cha-cha
And while she tried to be a star
Tony always tended bar
Across the crowded floor, they worked from eight til four
They were young and they had each other
Who could ask for more?"
The third single from Barry Manilow's fifth album, Even Now, "Copacabana (At the Copa)" was written because Mannilow was a regular at the club and asked co-writer Bruce Sussman if anyone had ever written a song about the club. Working with Jack Feldman, Sussman did the words and Manilow the music. The result? Mannilow's first gold record for a song he wrote and his only Grammy, as he won the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. It peaked at #8 in the U. S. but was a hit worldwide.
Dick Clark asked Manilow to make the movie, which was directed by Waris Hussein and written by James Lipton. Yes, the very same James Lipton you're thinking of.
Manilow is Tony Starr, a bartender and aspiring musician, who works with Lola Lamar (Annette O'Toole), who goes on to become a star in Havana working for Rico Castelli (Joseph Bologna) while Tony gets big at the Copa. The song plays out and you learn "who shot who," as the movie ends with an older Lola sitting on a bar stool, drunk and lamenting the loss of Tony and not seeing disco, but instead her dancing with him.
This movie upset my family to the worst of degrees, depressing everyone by the end. I don't know what we expected, as the song is a downer. But we were hoping that maybe things would be changed for the movie.
The third single from Barry Manilow's fifth album, Even Now, "Copacabana (At the Copa)" was written because Mannilow was a regular at the club and asked co-writer Bruce Sussman if anyone had ever written a song about the club. Working with Jack Feldman, Sussman did the words and Manilow the music. The result? Mannilow's first gold record for a song he wrote and his only Grammy, as he won the Best Male Pop Vocal Performance. It peaked at #8 in the U. S. but was a hit worldwide.
Dick Clark asked Manilow to make the movie, which was directed by Waris Hussein and written by James Lipton. Yes, the very same James Lipton you're thinking of.
Manilow is Tony Starr, a bartender and aspiring musician, who works with Lola Lamar (Annette O'Toole), who goes on to become a star in Havana working for Rico Castelli (Joseph Bologna) while Tony gets big at the Copa. The song plays out and you learn "who shot who," as the movie ends with an older Lola sitting on a bar stool, drunk and lamenting the loss of Tony and not seeing disco, but instead her dancing with him.
This movie upset my family to the worst of degrees, depressing everyone by the end. I don't know what we expected, as the song is a downer. But we were hoping that maybe things would be changed for the movie.