The Cattleman Retrieved on October 6, 2012. was a

steakhouse A steakhouse, steak house, or chophouse refers to a restaurant that specializes in steaks and chops, found mainly in North America. Modern steakhouses may also carry other cuts of meat including poultry, roast prime rib, and veal, as well as ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

founded in 1959 by restaurateur Larry Ellman. During its heyday, The Cattleman attracted media attention as an early example of a theme restaurant, and it became the inspirational basis for the musical ''

Pump Boys and Dinettes ''Pump Boys and Dinettes'' is a musical written by a performance group of the same name. The group, Pump Boys and Dinettes, consists of John Foley, Mark Hardwick, Debra Monk, Cass Morgan, John Schimmel and Jim Wann. The members directed and star ...

''.

History

In his twenties, Larry Ellman became the New York distributor for Automatique, a Danish firm that manufactured Wittenborg brand food-vending machines "similar in appearance and operation to the

Automat An automat is a fast food restaurant where simple foods and drinks are served by vending machines. The world's first automat, Quisisana, opened in Berlin, Germany in 1895. By country Germany The first automat in the world was the Quisisana ...

." Proceeds from the sale of his business enabled him to pursue his first restaurant venture. The Cattleman opened at Lexington Avenue and East 47th Street in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

, in 1959, with sales reaching $450,000 that year. By 1967, The Cattleman had relocated to 5 East 45th Street (the Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue), with sales of over $4,000,000 a year at the 400-seat restaurant. By 1972 at the latest, Ellman had additionally opened The Cattleman West at 154 West 51st Street, at Seventh Avenue. The restaurants closed circa 1989. Starting in 1961, Ellman introduced

sing-along Sing-along, also called community singing or group singing, is an event of singing together at gatherings or parties, less formally than choir singing. One can use a songbook. Common genres are folk songs, patriotic songs, kids' songs, spiritual ...

sessions every evening from 9 p.m. until 2 a.m., led by Bill Farrell. As ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' described in 1967: In 1964, publisher James Warren held the launch party for ''

Creepy Creepiness is the state of being wikt:creepy, creepy, or causing an unpleasant feeling of fear or wikt:unease, unease. A person who exhibits creepy behaviour is called a creep. Certain traits or hobbies may make people seem creepy to others. The ...

'', the first

horror-comics Horror comics are comic books, graphic novels, black-and-white comics magazines, and manga focusing on horror fiction. In the US market, horror comic books reached a peak in the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, when concern over content and the ...

magazine of

Warren Publishing Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades. Magazines published by Warren include '' After Hours'', '' Creepy'', '' Eerie'', '' F ...

, at The Cattleman. By at least 1968, the restaurant offered "free stagecoach rides around the city" on Saturday and Sunday from 5 to 9:30 p.m. A history of New York dining, ''On the Town in New York'' (1998), called the restaurant a "riotously successful steakhouse". Retrieved on October 4, 2012. In 1961, ''The Theatre'' magazine said it was "one of the best dining emporiums in New York." Ellman announced in 1997 that he and partners Edward Buyes and William Opper planned to recreate The Cattleman at 1241 Mamaroneck Avenue in

White Plains, New York (Always Faithful) , image_seal = WhitePlainsSeal.png , seal_link = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = U.S. state, State , su ...

, in November of that year. Ellman's son, Kevin Ellman, played drums and percussion in singer-songwriter

Todd Rundgren Todd Harry Rundgren (born June 22, 1948) is an American multi-instrumentalist, singer, songwriter, multimedia artist, sound engineer and record producer who has performed a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of the band Ut ...

's 1973-1986 band

Utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book '' Utopia'', describing a fictional island societ ...

, leaving it in 1975.

In media

In 1967, Grosset & Dunlap published the cookbook ''The Cattleman's Steak Book: Best Beef Recipes'', a collaboration of the staff of Cattleman Restaurant, food writer

Carol Truax Carol Truax (3 October 1899June 1986) was an American music administrator and an author of many cookbooks. She was noted both for her time as Executive Director of Fine Arts at Colorado College (1945–1951), and also as consultant in Fine Arts to t ...

, and writer S. Omar Barker. Ellman wrote the foreword. ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's Lifestyle magazine, lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from H ...

'' magazine printed the recipe for a house cocktail, the Cattleman's Cooler, " om the Cattleman, a Manhattan dining spot that calls itself an adult Western restaurant." The musical ''

'' (1981) was created by two friends who worked at The Cattleman, dramatizing their experiences there. It started as a two-man act there, and then expanded. As Jim Wann, the show's principal author and composer recalled in 2010, The restaurant was known for the radio slogan "Where you can get your steak rare and entertainment well done." The 1966 remake of the

Western film The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

'' Stagecoach'' did part of its publicity at The Cattleman, photographing some of its stars atop a stagecoach there. A passage in

Rupert Holmes David Goldstein (born February 24, 1947), better known as Rupert Holmes, is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" (1979) and " Him" (1980). ...

' novel ''Where the Truth Lies'' involves the restaurant: "In Manhattan, theme restaurants were blooming like plastic flowers in winter. ... The Cattleman had set the stage, or rather the stagecoach, for such funhouse eateries, supposedly patterned after a Kansas City steer palace. ..."

References

External links

* American Express full-page ad for The Cattleman, with description of restaurant and image of its stagecoach, at Retrieved on October 6, 2012. * Retrieved on October 6, 2012. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cattleman Defunct restaurants in New York City Restaurants established in 1959 1959 establishments in New York City 1989 disestablishments in New York (state) Culture of New York City Cuisine of New York City Restaurants disestablished in 1989 Steakhouses in New York City Defunct steakhouses in the United States