To date we've shared a few pops with sailors and their dates at Frank Nick's The Nite Spot in '45 and pulled up a chair at the old Plantation on Greenville. Next stop on our eBay tour of legendary Dallas nightspots: Abe Weinstein's Colony Club, which, at this late date, should need no introduction. But for those who'd like a wee bit of the back story, well, we need turn no further than my old friend Josh Alan Friedman:
Abe Weinstein's Colony Club was Dallas's most reputable burlesque from 1939 to 1973. [Jack] Ruby envied this deco cabaret, which seemed to possess the elusive class he so craved.The pic's on sale for real cheap: $2.85 with but a few hours left to place your bids. Me, I'd like to have it just for the logo on the back -- that's the real keeper. But the guy in the photo looks ... I dunno ... familiar, maybe?
"My club was a nightclub," says retired owner, Abe Weinstein, now 83. "His was just a joint. I had big names; he had nobody. When he came from Chicago to Dallas in '47, he came up to my club right away. He was told there's a Jew runs a club, that's how I met him."
Ruby, whose God-given name was Rubenstein, ran a few music spots before opening the Carousel right next to Abe in 1960. Ruby was a tremendous pain in the ass, bottom-feeding off the Colony's action for three years. "My relationship with Jack was bad," says Weinstein. "He threatened to kill me one week before he killed Oswald."
