Herman Hover

Famed nightclub owner Herman Hover dropped out of Columbia Law School in the 1930s to manage a speakeasy. He then got into "show business" as a publicity agent for Broadway producer Earl Carroll (he took credit for coming up with the motto for Carroll's Broadway and Hollywood theaters, "Through these portals pass the most beautiful girls in the world"). In 1942 he bought Ciro's, a nightclub on Los Angeles' Sunset Strip that was on its last legs. He turned it into a success by shrewdly hiring the top stars in Hollywood--and paying top dollar for them--to perform at his club, such as Frank Sinatra, Nat 'King' Cole and Édith Piaf, among many others (he once hired famous stripper Lili St. Cyr, whose show was so "hot" it was shut down by the authorities for "lewdness"). By the mid-'50s, however, with competition from Las Vegas, Ciro's fell on hard times (a slew of lawsuits and tax problems didn't help matters, either) and resulted in Hover closing the club and declaring bankruptcy in 1959. In 1976 the building was bought and turned into The Comedy Store, which itself has passed into Hollywood lore.