Chez Show and the Copacabana

The Copacabana Lounge first opened November 10th, 1940. The club was located at 10 East 60th Street in NYC. The owner officially was Monte Proser but the club was in bed with mob boss Frank Costello. Costello installed Jules Podell as his man inside the business. Eventually Podell was the name on the lease.

Jack's broadcasting career began a decade earlier at WMCA-AM where he delivered a radio version of a Broadway gossip column he wrote for a New York theatrical publication. Variety claims a plug in an Ed Sullivan column landed him this gig.

But the Copa gig began in 1947. Eigen had a program on WHN cut a deal with Copa boss Jules Podell to do a radio program. It was to be broadcast live from The Copacabana Lounge, one of New York's busiest nightclubs. Podell made arrangements with 1010 WINS-AM to carry it. The whole program was done with 2 turntables, 2 microphones and 2 phone lines. The program ran midnight to four AM, seven days a week. It debuted April 22nd, 1947. Eigen's theme song was "Jack, Jack, Jack" performed by the five DeMarco Sisters. (Interesting to note that in 1944 the club had a no blacks policy, banning African-Americans from the venue and thus the radio show). More here. Fred Allen regularly mentioned Eigen on his broadcasts, adding to his reputation beyond Manhattan. More here.

The program ended in 1950. The Copa started a new show that diminished the role of the disc jockey. New Host Johnny McKnight started in October of 1950 and the new show "Meet me at the Copa" via WVNJ-AM in New Jersey. By Then WINS had backed out and Eigns program was on WMGM. n Chicago Eigen's did a program called "Chez Show" on 670 WMAQ-AM. It was love from the Chez Paree restaurant was was 30 minutes long and ran 6 nights a week. It was similar to his Copa program and began sometime in 1951. More here.

He worked a year in St. Louis radio. Then returned to Chicago in 1960 to resume The Jack Eigen Show on WMAQ. He stayed there until at least 1966. he relocated to Florida in 1971 where he continued to broadcast on local stations. I wish I could say witch ones. He died in Fort Lauderdale in1983. Not bad for a kid from Brooklyn who started out as a pin setter in a bowling alley.

Wilcox-Gay gets Majestic

Wilcox was just a little company in in Charlotte Michigan making radios and transcription recorders. They started out around 1910 manufacturing amateur radio components and kits at an office on West Lawrence Ave in Charlotte. In the 1926 they branched out into consumer radios. In 1931 Paul Gay joined the company forming Wilcox-Gay Corp. They moved into the old Bennett furniture factory and expanded into tape decks, reel-to-reel, televisions, police radios, and record players. More here.They launched the Recordio in 1939 which was a major coup. It was advertised to the middle class in both Ebony and Life Magazine and it sold well. It recorded 78 rpm transcriptions with decent fidelity. Musicians recorded on these machines including Les Paul and Johnny Cash. In 1939 they sold 25,00 units. But the world was beginning to adopt magnetic tape and the great depression was hurting them.

In 1950 Leonard Ashbach of the Leonard Ashbach Company acquired a controlling interest in Wilcox-Gay. The Ashbach Company already owned Garod and Grundig. Simultaneously Ashbach was privately funding Jack Eigen, a WMGM host turned real estate developer opening social clubs on Manhattan.
One of the first things Ashbach did was arrange for Wilcox-Gay to purchase Majestic Radio and television to fully merge the 3 companies he was heading. It was prudent and it consolidated a signifigant portion of American radio manufacturing. Ashbach dropped the Majestic brand and in 1955 modified the Grundig branding to be "Grundig-Majestic."
More here.

The Feds have had a lot to say over the years to Leonard Ashbach.
-1954 Leonard Ashback Co. Vs. Lear Inc; Abatement.
-1955 Birnbaum Vs. Wilcox-Gay Corp. Abatement.
-1956 Wilcox-Gay declares chapter 11 bankrupcy
-1965 Nichimen Co. Vs. Leonard Ashbach fraud judgement
-1970 SEC injunction against the sale of unregistered stock
-1973 enjoined by the SEC for fraud

In 1960 they re-located to 743 LaSalle Street in Chicago. It was probably related to their 6 year saga trying to get out of bankruptcy. In 1961 they got up from under the SEC and promptly Ashbach changed the company's name from Wilcox-Gay Corp to Wilcox-Gay-Majestic Electronics Corp. But only 2 years later they declared bankruptcy again and this time were gone for good. Some sources put their closure as 1958 but magazine ads can easily be found to the 1960s more aligning with the 1961 chapter 7 filing with the SEC.

But Ashbach wasn't done. After sinking Wilcox-Gay he moved to Encino California and got a job heading up Monarch Electronics in North Hollywood. There in 1967 he relaunched the Majestic brand to make 8-track cassette tapes. In 1969 their subsidiary Concertone started making those flimsy mini cassettes. But in 1973 the SEC spanked him again for fraud. The trail ends there.