Dan Tana

Dobrivoje Tanasijević (; May 26, 1935 – August 16, 2025), known as Dan Tana, was a Serbian and American restaurateur, professional footballer, football administrator and executive, actor and producer.

Tana is best known as the proprietor of an eponymous restaurant, Dan Tana's, in West Hollywood, California, as well as being closely associated with football clubs Red Star Belgrade and Brentford F.C.

Early life Dobrivoje Tanasijević was born in 1935 to Serbian parents that had been residing in Belgrade. Dobrivoje's housewife mother Lenka Milošević gave birth in her home village of Čibutkovica near Lazarevac where she had temporarily moved to in order to stay with her parents while her kafana owner husband, Dobrivoje's father Radojko Tanasijević, was away serving his mandatory Royal Yugoslav Army stint.

Growing up on near the Zeleni Venac open market in Belgrade, young Dobrivoje, nicknamed Bata, was a lively kid with a keen interest in football.

Football career Youth football at Red Star Belgrade Tanasijević was spotted playing football at 12, and offered an apprenticeship with Red Star Belgrade. He spent five years at Red Star, developing as a striker. Corey, a banned actor turned acting teacher after being blacklisted in Hollywood during the Second Red Scare (McCarthyism) witchhunt in the United States, thought Tanasijević's looks and accent might enable him to play 'bad guy roles' in films. Tanasijević, now going by Americanized Dan Tana, soon made his cinematic debut in the small part of a Nazi torpedo engineer in 1957's The Enemy Below, starring Curd Jürgens and Robert Mitchum. For the role Tana earned US$20,000 for eight weeks work, more than he ever had playing football. Tana also appeared in the films The Untouchables, Rin Tin Tin and Peter Gunn. Selvaggio launched Valentino on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica in December 1972 that ran for 46 years before closing in late 2018. Patti launched La Famiglia in late 1974 on North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills before closing almost two decades later in August 1994.

In popular culture Owing to Tana's friendship with television producers Aaron Spelling and E. Duke Vincent, both regulars at Dan Tana's, the two decided to name the main character in their 1978 U.S. television drama Vega$, Dan Tanna (played by Robert Urich), after the restaurateur.

The restaurant is referenced in movies such as Get Shorty and Hail, Caesar!, TV sitcom The Larry Sanders Show as well as in the songs "Small Clone" by Mayer Hawthorne, "But I Am A Good Girl" from the Burlesque soundtrack, and "Christmas in LA" by The Killers and Dawes.

Association football executive career Los Angeles Toros general manager In 1967, more than a decade removed from his time as a professional footballer, an increasingly successful West Hollywood restaurateur Tana was hired to be the general manager of the newly established Los Angeles Toros franchise of the simultaneously newly launched National Professional Soccer League (NPSL), one of the first attempts at establishing a professional soccer league in the United States. Not sanctioned by FIFA but holding a two-year U.S. national television contract with CBS, the NPSL looked to cater to what at the time—following unexpectedly good U.S. television ratings of the 1966 FIFA World Cup final on NBC—seemed like large untapped soccer market in the country.

Due to being one of the rare NPSL executives maintaining active connections to individuals within European club football, Tana's involvement with the NPSL project went beyond just the franchise employing him, the Toros, as the new North American soccer league went about staffing nine other new franchises with players, coaches, and executives. Calling on his Yugoslavia football connections, Tana put the new Oakland Clippers NPSL franchise in touch with his former Red Star Belgrade boss, Aca Obradović, who would soon reach an agreement to become the Clippers general manager and in turn bring a head coach and number of Yugoslav footballers from Red Star, FK Partizan, and OFK Beograd to Oakland: head coach Ivan Toplak as well as players such as Ilija Mitić, Mirko Stojanović, Momčilo Gavrić, Dimitrije Davidović, Milan Čop, Ilija Lukić, Sele Milošević, and Dragan Đukić.

As for Tana's Toros soccer team—owned by Dan Reeves who had already been the owner of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams since 1941—it failed to gain a foothold into the L.A. sports scene, drawing only an average of 3,595 spectators to their home matches at the 93,000 capacity Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

Similarly, the NPSL project itself—facing competition from a simultaneously launched rival professional U.S. soccer league, the FIFA-affiliated United Soccer Association, whose inaugural season ran from late May until mid July 1967—folded after just one season via the two competing leagues merging to form the North American Soccer League (NASL). The Los Angeles Toros relocated to San Diego, becoming the San Diego Toros, ahead of their first season in the NASL.

Brentford F.C. chairman In 1973, Tana moved to London, feeling that "... [he] had more to give to the game and to do that [he] had to be in a soccer culture. Football was calling [him] home." Meeting with the English playwright Willis Hall, Hall invited him to join a regular football gathering, which included broadcaster Michael Parkinson and the football personality Jimmy Hill.

Tana died from cancer at a hospital in Belgrade on August 16, 2025, at the age of 90.