Manny Dworman, a musician whose first club opened on MacDougal St. in 1960 and has continued in various forms for 40 years as a proving ground for comedians and musicians, died Dec. 28 in New York Hospital at the age of 73.
The cause was cancer, according to his son, Noam, a member of Community Board 2 and a principal in the club founded by his father.
Dworman owned Comedy Cellar, a basement club at 117 MacDougal St., and its upstairs annex, Olive Tree Café.
Comedy Cellar, which opened in 1980, was the launching pad for contemporary comedians including Jerry Seinfeld and Colin Quinn. The club became celebrated for late-night roundtables with comedians about political issues, sessions that inspired the Comedy Central episode, “Tough Crowd With Colin Quinn.” Dworman, appeared as himself in the 2002 Seinfeld documentary “Comedian.”
Born Menachem Emanuel Dworman in Tel Aviv, he came to the U.S. at the age of 8 and attended Columbia University. Working at times as a cab driver, a salesman and a merchant seaman, he was an avid musician who played oud (a Middle Eastern equivalent of the lute), guitar and mandolin in Village clubs. He opened Café Feenjon on MacDougal St. as a coffeehouse in 1960 featuring Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Israeli, Armenian and Yiddish music.
With his band, The Feenjon Group, an ensemble that included doumbek (Turkish drum) balalaika and bouzouki (Russian and Greek mandolin-like variants) and accordion, he performed at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall as well as Café Feenjon.
In addition to his son, his wife, Ava, survives.
