Murray Handwerker, who took his father Nathan's Coney Island hot dog business national, died at age 89 in Florida yesterday. His son told the Daily News, "He was a visionary entrepreneur. He had such a passion for Nathan's and Coney Island and what they represented."
Nathan Handwerker founded Nathan's Famous at Coney Island in 1916. According to the News, Murray Handwerker "returned from World War II in the 1940s and helped his parents open locations in Times Square and Long Island. He took over as chairman in the early 1970s, rapidly expanding Nathan's through dozens of franchise deals across the country after taking it public... Handwerker also helped expand the Nathan's brand to supermarkets, turning its hot dogs into a household name." Today, the chain is also featured prominently on national television with the ESPN-broadcast Nathan's July 4th Hot Dog Eating Contest.
In 1954, Handwerker, while his father was on vacation, once displayed a dead 70-ton finback whale at the Coney Island location, thinking "crowds lured to gape at the spectacle would want a dog and a soda to go with it.... But things took a turn for the worse when an unexpected heat wave hit Brooklyn, and the giant decomposing carcass began to smell very odd. Potential customers steered clear of the rotting whale -- and Nathan's." Eventually, after complaints from other businesses, the Health Department got involved and Handwerker had the whale cut up and put in the sea. Needless to say, Nathan Handwerker was not happy.
Handwerker's favorite hot dog was plain in a bun.
