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Gorky

N.Y. Times
4-89-73

Ben Marden, 77, Who Owned The Riviera Nightclub, Is Dead

Silver Slipper, Cotton Club and Palais Royale Also Among His Enterprises

Ben Marden, proprietor of the former Riviera nightclub in For Lee, M.J., and one-time owner of the Playhouse Theater here, died yesterday of cancer in University Hospital. He was 77 years old and lived at 60 West 57th Street and in Miami Beach.

Mr. Marden who served in the Navy in World War I, entered the cade business at the age of 19. In 1926 he opened the Silver Slipper on 48th Street and Broadway. Two years later he opened the Cotton Club in Harlem, where Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Ada Ward, Bill Robinson and Florence Mills appeared.

In the early nineteen-thirties Mr. Marden moved downtown and opened the Palais Royale with Paul Whiteman's orchestra. later Phil Harris and his orchestra provided music, with Allice Faye as soloist.

Ran Havana Casino

In 1932 he opened Ben Marden's Riviera on a terrace on the Palisades. When it burned down in 1936, he retained Louis Allen Abramson to design the new cafe, which was opened the following year. A feature was a huge circular room under a domed roof, which could be opened to the sky.

Among the stars that appeared there were Danny Kaye, Martha Raye, Phil Baker, Joe E. Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Harry Richman, Estelle Taylor and Xavier Cugat.

The Riviera was a summer operation, and in the winter Mr. Marden ran the Casino Naciónal in Havana. He left the cafe business in World War II. From 1946 to 1956 he owned the Playhouse Theater and financed a number of stage plays.

(image) 
Ben Marden

More recently he had been interested in industrial concerns and had been active in real estate here and in Florida.

Aided the Elderly

Mr. Marden formerly owned the apartment house at 101 West 55th Street, where he never issued a dispossess notice and where he ordered air conditioning units for the elderly at his own expense. The doorman of the building left Mr. Marden his entire estate of $30,00. noting "You are a kind man and you will know better how to utilize these monies for the good of people than anyone I know of."

Mr. Marden was a founder of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a sponsor of Parents Anonymous. He had been active in support of schools and clinics for retarded and disturbed children.

Surviving are two sons, Jay and Jon; a daughter, former Judge Gertrude M. Bacon' a brother, four sisters, four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

The funeral service will be private.

Arshile Gorky painted murals for Ben Marden's Riviera which were destroyed when it burned.