Tony Bennett remembered by NYC celebrities, restaurant owners

nypost.com:

just two weeks before his 97th birthday.“The first time I ever got up to do stand up and a little tap dancing, was opening for him in Hawaii.

I was so bad, and he was so nice to me.”Bennett used to sing at the Copacabana on East 60th Street, where mobster Frank Costello was a partner.“Godfather” actor Gianni Russo, who was Costello’s “personal errand boy,” recalled the first time he met Bennett at the famed nightclub in 1959. “I was 16.

I was there for all the band rehearsals. He was so nice to me,” said Russo, who lives on the Upper East Side. They reconnected when Russo’s and Bennett’s bands played at the Rainbow Room for General Electric’s holiday party — and their paychecks that evening were very different. “They paid me $25,000 and I found out later they got $250,000,” he said. “I’m saying to myself, ‘I got the tax on it.'”Bennett, who grew up in Astoria, Queens, lived at 100 Central Park South, and was a regular at the Brooklyn Diner on West 57th.“He was the sweetest, nicest guy you’d ever want to socially spend a couple of hours with.

There couldn’t be a nicer New York kind of a guy,” said the restaurant’s owner Shelly Fireman.“It’s sad for America; it’s sad for New York and we’re going to miss him a lot.”He was so respected at the eatery that they named a booth after him and a menu item of his choosing — Tony Bennett’s Famous Thick-Cut Cinnamon, Raisin & Pecan French Toast.“I don’t want to take his name off the French toast,” Fireman said. “I want to honor him forever.”Gerard Renny, who owned Lucky’s Bar and Grill on 57th Street and Sixth Avenue, where Bennett — who was also a gifted painter — was a frequent diner, recalled one of his kind gestures.