Restaurateur Raises Glass to Sinatra Select

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Alessandro Uzielli has been a fan of La Dolce Vita for years. In fact, he dines at the Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills three or four days a week.

So a few years ago, he was alarmed when he heard the place might be closing and he quickly made a decision.

“Probably one of the most impulsive things I’ve ever done,” he said.

He brought his mother and wife for dinner the next day and made a buyout offer to the owner.

“I think I got the look from both of them: Are you crazy?” he recalled.

But he loved the place too much to let it go away. The restaurant, which opened in 1966 and whose interior was created by a set designer at 20th Century Fox, grew to be popular with numerous Hollywood celebrities, said Uzielli, 47.

Recently, Brown-Forman Corp., Jack Daniel’s parent company, chose La Dolce Vita to host the launch of its new Sinatra Select brand.

“They wanted to find a restaurant that most epitomizes sort of the (Frank) Sinatra-Rat Pack atmosphere that they are trying to emulate with the whiskey,” he said. “One of the reasons I bought La Dolce Vita was that I knew it was one of Sinatra’s favorite places.”

Uzielli, the great-great-grandson of Henry Ford, remains chief of Ford Global Brand Entertainment in Century City. He said he is happy about his decision to buy the diner.

“I was preserving a piece of Hollywood history, but now it’s sort of gone beyond that,” he said. “It’s not really about history anymore. We created this unique spot and it’s going to be around for a while.”

Five Years Later

As Randy Gordon nears the 20-year mark as chief executive of the Long Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, he’s wondering what surprise lies in store for him. Gordon, who is about to turn 65, got quite the surprise five years ago for his 15th anniversary with the chamber.

“My wife actually designed and mailed a fictitious invitation to our home inviting us to a 50th anniversary luncheon for one of our past chairmen,” he said. “Upon entering what I thought was an event for someone else, I was completely surprised to find over 100 people were really there to celebrate my birthday, my chamber anniversary and enjoy the roast.”

He’s not sure how that can be topped as the 20-year anniversary arrives this April.

Reflecting on his 20 years at the chamber, Gordon said his happiest moment was an unusual political victory: the re-election 12 years ago of his staunch political ally, former Long Beach Mayor Beverly O’Neill, after an unorthodox write-in campaign.

“More than 20,000 voters wrote her name on the ballot, which to our knowledge had never happened in any other city of our size in America,” he said.

Gordon is not so sanguine on politics in Long Beach today. He said the City Council has morphed from a “congenial pro-business group to a left-leaning pro-labor council more concerned about getting elected to the next office.”

And Gordon said his saddest moment was learning of the death of the chamber’s top lobbyist and political consultant, Shaun Lumachi, who died in late 2011 at the age of 33 after an out-of-state car accident.

“There’s not a day I don’t think about him. He was like a third son to me,” he said.

Staff reporters Kay Chinn and Howard Fine contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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