Cuba: Havana Nights

“Open to the sky, the stage appears to float in a prehistoric jungle of oversize ferns. Coffee-coloured girls dressed in spangles slink down the branches towards the audience or else shimmy down creeping wines. The retro orchestra kicks in with a mambo, and the warm breeze carries the perfume of expensive cigar smoke. Waitresses even more stunning than the dancers bring another round of mojitos, and you wonder just how you go to heaven.” – Alfredo Jose Estrada
Described as a must in guidebooks, the Tropicana is Havana’s most famous nightclub of the 1950s tries hard to recapture its lost glory.
You can’t help but wonder what the Tropicana was like fifty years ago, when tuxedoed guests were entertained by Nat King Cole and where the guitar-shaped dancers dressed like Greek Goddesses. High rollers were flown in on a nightly chartered flight from Miami called the “Tropicana Special” and won or lost fortunes at the roulette tables. At the tiem, the nightclub combined the glamour of Monte Carlo and the spectacle of Hollywood.
The Tropicana Tigres in which the master of ceremonies announces:

“Showtime!...the most fabulous nightclub in the world..presents its latest show..where performers of the Continental fame will take you all to the wonderful world of supernatural beauty of the Tropics…”

In her book Tropicana Nights, Rosa Lowinger recounts in loving detail how the Tropicana first opened its doors in 1939. It’s location was an estate in Marianao called the Villa Mina, built by the former president of the Havana Yacht Club. Located next to the Colegio Belen, the Jesuit school favoured by the Cuba’s elite (Castro, the son of wealthy landowner, enrolled in 1941), it had six acres of lush gardens. According to one theory, the name Tropicana comes from “tropical” and “Mina.” But the war brought tourism to a halt, and gambling was banned by the President Grau who took office in 1944.
But then the Tropicana had been acquired by Martin Fox, a burly, rough-hewn gambler under Ciego de Avila. Known as the Guajiro, he made his fortune running illegal but lucrative bolita games and used his mob connections to keep the police at bay. When casinos were reopened in 1949 under President Prio, the Guajiro added roulette, baccarat, and blackjack to his repertore.
The Tropicana soon became Havana’s glitziest cabaret. The allure was not just gambling but musical acts like Rita Montaner and Xavier Cugat. Erratic weather often closed it down, so the Guajiro commissioned architected Max Borges Jr. to build an indoor stage.
The results was known as Arcos de Cristal (Arches of Crystal), a tour de force of soaring concrete arches and glass sheets, like a vast modernist seashell. At the entrance was a fountain ringed by eight marble nymphs that had once graced the Casion Nacional.
One of Rodney’s ( celebrated choreographer) most famous efforts was called Omelen-ko, in which a white woman woanders into Santeria ritual and is possessed. According to Lowinger, Rodney’s shows were razzle-dazzle productions that cost an unprecedented $12,000 a night. They featured Cuban music, African drums, elaborated costumes and above all, gorgeous dancers. In 1954, NBC broadcast live from the stage for its show Wide, Wide World.
The guests at the Tropicana included Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Rocky Marciano, David O. Selznick, and Joan Crawford with her husband, Alfred Steele, the president of Pepsi-Cola. Hemingway came once or twice, according to Fox’s widow, Ofelia. Headliners were not just Cuban stars such as Celia Cruz and Benny More but Josephine Baker, Liberace and Yma Sumac.
The Tropicana was also a favourite of Graham Greene, who knew Cuba well. In Our Man in Havana, British vaccum cleaner salesman cum spy Wormold celebrates his daughter Milly’s birthday there. As he describes it,

“Chorus girls paraded twenty feet up among the great palm trees, while pink and mauve searchlights swept the floor…Then the piano was wheeled away into the undergrowth and the dancers stepped down like awkward birds from the among the branches.”

Greene adds that it “was not a night [Wormold] was ever likely to forget.”