Burton, from Elfi’s own interviews (Corroborated as her telling)
Elfi Arkus-Duntov at the Copa Cabana in Miami Beach is a story that reaches us through one door: Jerry Burton’s authorized Zora biography, printed pages 102 to 103, built on interviews with Elfi herself, with a note dated March 1997. Burton records that she drove to Miami in a Packard convertible with a girlfriend, that she was one of four dancers brought down from New York, and that she was told she had the best legs. He records a room full of glitterati and mobsters, and an Illinois mobster who offered Zora a Bentley for Elfi. Zora declined. Those are her memories as Burton set them down. They are not a 1940s newspaper clipping.
The venue (Documented)
Miami Beach did have a Copa Cabana, separate from the famous Copacabana at 10 East 60th Street in New York. Murray Weinger ran it near 1301 Dade Boulevard. It opened in December 1944 on the site of the Monte Carlo, burned to a total loss on 7 June 1948, and came back as Copa City in December 1948. The Florida Historical Quarterly history of Copa City and local preservation notes carry that chronology. So the room in Elfi’s story was real, and it had a short life.
The roads she did not take (Burton)
Burton also writes that Elfi could have stayed in that world. He names a Jackie Gleason and June Taylor audition, Las Vegas work, and a Katherine Dunham tour of South America. She did not stay away from Zora. Our house reading of the June Taylor oral history found no mention of Elfi by name, so this page does not make her a June Taylor dancer. Burton says the audition was offered. That is all we write.
Where the record tangles (Secondary)
Museum and painting-page summaries online describe the Copa in two ways. One says she performed there with the June Taylor Dancers. Another speaks of an offer to work at the Copa Cabana. Burton says she performed and that later dance work was offered. We follow Burton, because his account rests on her interviews, and we mark the museum lines as secondary.
What this page does not claim
No 1945 to 1952 newspaper, Billboard, or Variety page opened in our research names Elfi Dukar, Elfi Duka, Elfi Arkus-Duntov, or Elfriede Wolff in a Miami chorus line. We hold no program, no photograph from the club, and no exact season. We do not date the engagement more tightly than Burton does. We do not give the mobster a name, and we do not write dialogue for the Bentley offer.
OPEN
OPEN: the season she danced in Miami, before or after the June 1948 fire. OPEN: a contemporary clipping or program that prints her stage name. OPEN: whether the girlfriend in the Packard can be named from any record. Until paper turns up, the Copa stays a sourced memory, told by the woman who lived it and set down by her husband’s biographer.
The photograph on this page is a labelled period photograph of Elfi Arkus-Duntov. It is not a Copa Cabana still. The Yours Is My Heart note holds the 1946 Broadway ensemble credit. The Folies Bergère note holds the Paris dance years. The Jerry Burton note explains the biography this page leans on.
Margot Dorée wrote First Lady of Corvette, a sourced historical novel published by North Star Publishing Group and now on Kindle. It is independent of General Motors and the museum. It keeps the Copa where the record keeps it.
Sources: Jerry Burton, Zora Arkus-Duntov: The Legend Behind Corvette (2002), printed pp. 102–103; note “Elfi’s dancing at Copa Cabana, EAD, (March 1997)”. Florida Historical Quarterly, “Rise and Fall of Copa City”; Miami Design Preservation League Copa City note (venue chronology). June Taylor oral history: no Elfi by name. NCM bio and painting page: secondary. No contemporaneous Miami clipping naming Elfi found.