Atlantic Beach's Le Chateau drew celebrities and had thousands of stories. Here are a few.

Kathy Marvin remembers the only time she ever saw her father, Preben Johansen, break into tears. It was in September 1964 after giant waves from Hurricane Dora lashed at the windows of Le Chateau, his elegant restaurant on the Atlantic Beach oceanfront, then scraped out the sand from underneath it, collapsing the floor and the roof, leaving the place a ruin.

But Johansen and his Le Chateau weren't done for.

He rebuilt, with the help of federal disaster relief, and Le Chateau reopened as an even more elaborate restaurant than before, including a statue of a Greek goddess saved from the destroyed living room and placed into a pool that was reconfigured as a wishing well.

Johansen added a piano bar too, and in a cheeky twist called it La Dora Lounge. And that changed the course of Le Chateau's history — especially after 1970 when the family persuaded a handsome, talented young pianist named Gene Nordan to come down for the summer from Atlanta.

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As he came down Ocean Boulevard toward Le Chateau, Nordan instantly liked what he saw of Atlantic Beach, and he just as quickly liked the piano bar and the tips that patrons left scattered across the top. So he stayed after his three months were up, playing six nights a week (he had Mondays off). Five nights at the piano bar, one night in the restaurant. That lasted more than 12 years.

He drew a younger crowd than the piano bar had before, playing things like Burt Bacharach and "Mr. Bojangles," show tunes and ragtime, whatever you wanted. He had a sharp memory — still does — and he remembered everyone's names, even the summer visitors from Georgia or Ohio, and he remembered all their favorite songs and could play them all.

People sat on the piano bench with him, and he gave the mic to those who could sing and wanted to sing. It rarely slowed down.

“I would play 9 to 2, most of the time without getting off the bench," Nordan said this month. "It was so busy, once you get your crowd going you just can’t walk away.”

Benny Johansen, Preben's son and Kathy Marvin's brother, laughed at that: “Once that money hit the top of that piano, he wouldn’t stop."

So many stories

Nordan, Marvin and Benny Johansen met one recent Sunday afternoon at Nordan's house a few blocks from where Le Chateau used to be, to reminisce about the old place. Nordan gave a visitor a warning: "There's thousands of stories we could do. We'd keep you here all day."

Here's one: One customer, who was extremely introverted, never said a word until he drank. Then, Nordan says, he became chatty and effusive “Mr. Personality." Late one night, after a few, Mr. Personality went out to the parking lot and crawled into the back of a pickup truck to nap.

He woke up in Fernandina.

Here's another: One time, Nordan, Marvin and Benny Johansen, without telling Preben, worked up a skit in which Benny rode his motorcycle through the restaurant doors and into the piano bar, where the three of them sang doo-wop songs.

It went great, Nordan said. Benny was the comedian, his sister had a voice like Karen Carpenter, and the customers were standing on their seats trying to get a glimpse of the show over the heads of others and through the heavy cigarette smoke.

Preben, in his tuxedo, looked on in dismay, as if wondering what had happened to his restaurant. But after witnessing the reception the act got, he had a question for them a few days later, Marvin recalled. "Y’all are going to do that show again, right?”

They've got thousands of stories.

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Here's one more, for now: There was a Greek man who liked to come by, Nordan says, who worked for a Greek shipping magnate second only to Aristotle Onassis. Each time he arrived he'd go to the restaurant front desk, take out a crisp $100 bill and get it changed into $1 bills.

Nordan knew he liked "Zorba the Greek's" theme song, "Never on Sunday," so when Nordan played it, the Greek would take out his roll of dollar bills and run a finger and thumb along it, making it rain down on the piano — and the floor. That would send customers scrambling for the errant bills under the piano.

Years later, Nordan met some one-time college students who'd done just that. "Gene," they told him, "we financed our nights out with your tips."

And when Le Chateau finally shut down and Nordan was packing up his gear, he found 13 $1 bills stuck in the ceiling, hanging there by his old speaker wire.

One last tip from the Greek.

'Everybody was dancing'

Eating at Le Chateau was an event, Marvin said, with lots of flair and lots of flambéing.

"It was fine dining," she said. "Tableside Caesar salad tossed, steak Diane prepared, flambé. And desserts: crepes suzette, cherries jubilee, bananas foster — and everybody was dancing.”

There were waiters in tuxedos, chefs in those tall white hats, white linens and fancy silverware on the tables.

A sweeping, curving staircase led to upstairs banquet rooms, and in the opulent oceanfront dining room, the Jimmy Knight Trio played for the dancers who packed the big dance floor.

Women dressed up, and men wore coats and ties, even though they weren’t required. Benny remembers Mickey Rooney coming by one night, one of numerous celebrities who dined there, and how dismayed the star was when he realized he wasn't wearing a suit jacket.

Benny insisted it was OK, that they even had spare jackets if he wanted to borrow one, but Rooney was adamant. He'd go back to his hotel room and get a jacket of his own. Benny figured that was the last they'd see of him, but 20 minutes later Rooney was back, wearing a jacket.

"Now that's a class guy," he said.

Liberace liked to eat there

Preben and Nina Johansen met and eventually married in Europe after World War II. She was a civil service secretary from Florida, and he served in the Danish Navy. They moved to Jacksonville and he started out selling shoes before taking a job as a dishwasher at the Adeeb family's Green Turtle restaurant on Philips Highway.

Making his way up in the business, he later went to the Adeebs' Sea Turtle in Atlantic Beach, moving with his family into a little four-room house in the restaurant parking lot.

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In 1959 he took over Le Chateau, at the foot of Seventh Street in an otherwise residential neighborhood in Atlantic Beach. An elaborate Spanish-style building built in the 1930s as a private home for jeweler Hayden Crosby, it had been a restaurant since 1954.

It was quickly successful, with Preben and Nina Johansen watching over everything. It was formal and elegant, and drew a largely wealthy and established crowd. Once the piano bar opened, and especially when Nordan arrived, it got more informal and more boisterous, at least in that part of the establishment.

Le Chateau had a steady crew of regulars, whose quirks and stories Nordan later leaned on for inspiration when he wrote a well-received musical, "Piano Bar."

"It was our 'Cheers,'" Marvin said of the Boston bar and popular '80s sitcom.

The restaurant was also popular with repeat summer visitors and celebrities who found themselves in Jacksonville.

Comedian Victor Borge came by many times. He and Preben spoke Danish together, and he would dine with the Johansens. Betty Grable came too, as did Jane Russell, George Hamilton, Imogene Coca, Melanie, Pernell Roberts, Arnold Palmer, Prince Andrew, Barry Goldwater and David and Julie Nixon Eisenhower (Ike's grandson was in the Navy at Mayport and they lived in Atlantic Beach).

Then there was time a sex-symbol actress came to visit and Nordan found himself sitting with her at a low table as they talked about wellness and fitness. “She said, 'I’m very fit. Reach under the table and feel my leg.’ So I reached under the table and felt her calf. She said, ‘No, feel my thigh!’”

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The pianist Liberace, meanwhile, came by on a cold February night after entertaining in Jacksonville. His manager called and asked Preben if he wouldn’t mind keeping the kitchen open. He didn’t mind.

“At 10 ‘o’clock, 11 o’clock, maybe midnight, Liberace shows up and he comes walking in with a flowing beaver-fur coat down to his ankles," Nordan said. "Just swept in like a star, and he headed on into the dining area, hung his coat in the foyer. My former wife tried the coat on and he caught her with the coat on while he was going to the restroom. And he just smiled at her. He was so nice.”

About 1 a.m., Liberace came into the piano bar and sat directly at Nordan's right. He played just one song, "Over the Rainbow," and Nordan ended up playing the piano for him until 5 a.m.

It wasn't intimidating, he said; Liberace was just so pleasant. He even visited Le Chateau several more times and once played "Happy Birthday" for Nina in various tempos and styles.

He and Nordan, meanwhile, became pen pals. He's got the letters around somewhere. "God only knows where," he said.

One more story

Nordan likes to tell the story of a regular named Barney, an illegal bookmaker from Atlanta, a big, heavyset guy who loved “My Way” and tipped him $20 every time he’d play it. So Nordan would play it over and over.

One day, though, Barney just disappeared. Until a year or two later, when Nordan left the piano after he was summoned to take a telephone call in a dark corner of the restaurant.

He takes the story from there.

“'Hello, this is Barney. I’m in the Montgomery, Ala., federal penitentiary. Would you play ‘My Way’ for me?' So I held the phone up like this and I said, ‘Everybody, say hello to Barney!’ And the whole bar: ‘Hello, Barney!' Then I went back to the piano and played ‘My Way.’ And then at the end, I said over my microphone, ‘Everybody say good night to Barney!’ ‘Goodnight, Barney!’ They hung up the telephone, and that’s the last I ever saw of Barney.”

Memories and tears at Le Chateau

All the time, people tell Nordan, Marvin and Johansen about their memories of Le Chateau, how they met the love of their life there, how they proposed there, how they had an anniversary there, how they went there on prom night.

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It felt like their home away from home, Marvin said, which is key. “When you're successful in the restaurant business, it’s when it becomes theirs, it becomes the customers. You know, ‘I want to take you to my place.’ They walked in, and our cocktail waitresses knew what they drank, so it was like before they even got to the table they were coming over with their drinks."

Nordan jumped in: “Remember when they’d walk in and I’d say, ‘Heeere’s Darryl!’"

"And then he’d start playing their favorite songs," Marvin said.

They think of all the many people who worked there too, who gave part of their lives to Le Chateau, then moved on. Nordan chuckled about the time he got a call to play a party in Ponte Vedra and was greeted by the homeowner when he showed up at a giant sprawling oceanfront mansion.

"Hey Gene, do you remember me?" he said. "I was a busboy at Le Chateau.”

It was great, for a long time, but times changed. Formal dining — the tuxedos, the flambéing and the white tablecloths — fell out of fashion. Besides, Marvin and Johansen say, Le Chateau was expensive, and when Ragtime Tavern opened up down the street, it came with great food, lower prices and no white tablecloths, drawing a younger, bigger crowd than Le Chateau could.

Then in 1982 Preben Johansen was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died three weeks later. He was just 55.

The family had been thinking about selling before that, Marvin said, but his death sealed that decision. Le Chateau was sold to a group of investors but didn't last much longer before the bank took over and ownership reverted back to Nina Johansen.

The family looked for people who wanted to keep a restaurant going there, but found none. There was little parking in that residential area, and besides, there were those changing times and changing tastes to reckon with.

The Johansen children finally persuaded their mother to sell it to a developer. It was her nest egg, they told her, for the rest of her life (she died in 2016 in her early 90s).

Developers bought the building, took it down and turned it into oceanfront condos. The name, Le Chateau, stayed with it, however.

Nordan was having a midlife crisis when it came down. Le Chateau had closed, his father had died, Preben had died. "Man, I was a mess," he said.

And as he stood there on the beach that day, watching that big mechanical claw eat away at the once glorious place, with all of its stories, all of its characters, all of its music, it was Nordan's turn, this time, to shed tears for the old Le Chateau.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Atlantic Beach restaurant and bar drew Liberace, Mickey Rooney and more