The Copa scene in Goodfellas is one of the most celebrated sequences in American film history. A man in a tuxedo walks into a nightclub, and the camera never cuts, following him through corridors, a kitchen, up a staircase, until a table materializes at the edge of the stage. Martin Scorsese called it seduction, the seduction of the audience by a life of glamour and power. But the nightclub in that scene was not a party.

It was a criminal enterprise running in plain sight, a machine so well constructed that it operated for over twenty years before Henry Hill ever walked through that kitchen, and it kept operating long after he left. The Copacabana opened on November 10, 1940, in a basement on East 60th Street in Manhattan. The man on the lease was Monte Proser, a thirty-six-year-old British-born promoter who had spent the 1930s building a reputation for spectacle in New York nightlife. He created a Brazilian-themed supper club with palm trees, Latin orchestras, three shows a night, and velvet bar stools.

It was designed to be an escape from reality, and it was ambitious. It was also expensive, and coming out of the Great Depression, Proser did not have the capital to build the most ambitious nightclub the city had ever seen. Banks would not lend him the money. So he went where ambitious men in New York went when they needed funds and could not get them legitimately.

He went to Frank Costello. Costello, born Francesco Castiglia in Calabria, Italy, in 1891, had risen from East Harlem street corners to become the acting boss of the Luciano crime family by 1940. Lucky Luciano was in prison, and Vito Genovese had fled to Italy to avoid a murder charge. Costello ran the family quietly, from barber chairs and restaurant tables, never raising his voice.

Proser’s son later explained that his father knew full well what he was getting into but needed the capital. The deal was made, and Costello became the Copa’s silent financial partner from opening night. Costello’s first move was not about money. It was about control.

He installed his own man inside the club, someone with no official role on paper but who ran everything every day in ways that could never be traced back to Costello. That man was Jules Podell, born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1899. Podell had run speakeasies during Prohibition and had a 1929 conviction for prohibition violations. He would not be officially registered as the Copa’s manager until 1948, but from opening night he was in the kitchen and the dining room, watching, controlling, and reporting back.

Podell was not a thug with a nightclub. He was a man who operated through absolute terror. Every night he sat at a small table near the entrance, not to socialize but to supervise. He watched the floor, the bar, the stage, and the kitchen.

When something displeased him, a performance running long, a waiter moving too slowly, a comedian he disliked, he rapped his large ring twice on the table. Two raps was the signal. Whatever was happening stopped immediately. George Carlin, who performed at the Copa multiple times, remembered the ring distinctly.

It became his way of describing what kind of place this was. Podell skimmed from suppliers systematically. Music agent Frank Military, who worked with the club for years, described Podell as violent, volatile, and cruel. He once locked singer Johnny Ray in a walk-in freezer for six hours.

Ray developed pneumonia and had to cancel an entire tour. This was not unusual. It was standard. But the violence and the terror were not what made the Copa valuable to organized crime.

They were the management style. What made the Copa extraordinary as a criminal asset was its structure, which operated on three layers simultaneously. The first layer was the skim. The Copa was a cash business.

Door money, bar sales, coat check, cigarette girls, all of it in small bills, all of it difficult to trace. Podell was skimming from suppliers from day one. The club received invoices for one amount and paid less, pocketing the difference. The Copa’s financial books were never independently audited during Podell’s thirty-three years of management.

In 1944, New York State tax officials began proceedings to recover unpaid sales taxes, and the club was placed on probation along with over six hundred other nightclubs for licensing irregularities. Publicly, the club announced it had terminated its relationship with Costello. The New York Times ran the story. Nothing changed.

Costello became more invisible, and the machine kept running. The second layer was entertainment leverage. The Copa’s status as the most important nightclub in America gave its management power over careers. It was a make-or-break venue.

Martin and Lewis made their New York debut there in 1949 and stayed for four months after their original two-week engagement produced a response so overwhelming the club refused to let them leave. Playing the Copa made you. Not playing the Copa could destroy you. In a world where mob influence ran through booking agencies, talent management, and record labels, that power never needed to be spoken aloud to be felt.

Performers who were cooperative found doors open. Performers who caused problems found them closed. Podell himself originally ran a strict whites-only door policy until Frank Sinatra personally confronted him and demanded that Sammy Davis Jr. and Buddy Rich be allowed inside.

Podell backed down. Sinatra had leverage Podell respected. The third layer was the meeting room. In organized crime, a secure meeting place with legitimate social cover is worth more than almost any other asset.

The Copa’s mob-connected management and security created an environment where the most dangerous men in America could sit at a supper club table, eat Chinese food, watch a comedian, and conduct criminal business simultaneously. Albert Anastasia dined there. Joe Adonis drank there. Carmine Galante, Joe Bonanno, and Gaspar Di Gregorio were photographed together at a Copa table.

These were not coincidental social visits. They were working meetings held inside a venue that made surveillance nearly impossible. The Goodfellas Copa scene is set in the early 1960s, the period when Henry Hill and his future wife Karen became regulars. During those years, Jules Podell was still at his table near the entrance, still with the ring, still with absolute authority over every person in that building.

Frank Costello had been gone since May 2, 1957. That was the night everything changed. On that evening, Costello had dinner with his wife and friends at the Monsignor restaurant on East 55th Street. He left early, alone, taking a cab back to his apartment at the Majestic on Central Park West.

As he walked into the building’s lobby, a large man stepped in behind him. The man called out, “This is for you, Frank. ” Costello turned. At that instant, the bullet meant to kill him grazed his skull.

He crumpled to a leather couch, bleeding. The gunman ran. The shooter was Vincent “The Chin” Gigante, acting on orders from Vito Genovese, who had returned from Italy and wanted the top job. A doorman identified Gigante.

Costello refused to identify anyone, saying he never saw the shooter’s face. Gigante was acquitted in 1958, and Costello retired. He was sixty-six years old. He was done.

What he left behind was Podell, and the machine ran flawlessly without him. One of the most famous nights in the Copa’s history came during this era and had nothing to do with the mob. On May 16, 1957, Billy Martin, the twenty-nine-year-old second baseman for the New York Yankees, was celebrating his birthday. His friend Mickey Mantle suggested the Copa.

Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Hank Bauer, and Johnny Kucks joined, along with several wives. The headliner that night was Sammy Davis Jr. Also at the Copa was a bowling team from the Bronx. They got loud and heckled Davis with racial slurs.

The Yankees, who had only recently welcomed Elston Howard as the first black player on the team, were furious. Words were exchanged, and the bowlers ended up downstairs in a corridor. When it was over, one of them, a Bronx deli owner named Edwin Jones, was on the floor with a concussion and a broken jaw. He later sued Hank Bauer for aggravated assault.

The charges were dropped for insufficient evidence. Podell had a brawl in his club involving six of the most famous athletes in America and walked away without a single legal consequence. The club was at its commercial peak in the mid-1960s. The Supremes debuted in July 1965, recording a live album that barely missed the top ten.

Sammy Davis Jr. broke attendance records in May 1964. Sam Cooke performed on July 8, 1964, and recorded a live LP. Marvin Gaye and the Temptations followed.

The highest-paid acts earned twenty thousand dollars a week, more money than at any point in the club’s history. Podell was still there, still at the table, still with the ring. When Henry Hill walked through that kitchen, when every dishwasher and cook and waiter smiled at him and took his twenty-dollar bills, when a ringside table appeared from nothing, that was not just Henry’s power on display. That was the Copa’s organizational structure in operation.

Every person who greeted him had been hired and controlled by Jules Podell. Every arrangement that made a table appear at the front of the stage existed because Podell had built a system where the right people were taken care of and the wrong people never got through the door. The Copa that Scorsese showed on screen was a criminal enterprise running in plain sight, and the man who ran it sat quietly at his table, watching it all.