Havana Nocturne

by T. J. English

  Although his background was as a gambling boss, Martín had always been most attracted to the club’s possibilities as a cabaret. El Guajiro had a dream, and that dream involved a kind of showmanship and entertainment that could only exist in Havana, where dance was a national obsession, everyone was a natural musician, and the island’s Afro-Cuban cultural heritage provided an exotic backdrop.

  A key moment in the club’s development occurred in March 1952, when Fox hired as his choreographer Roderico Neyra, known in Cuban dance and music circles simply as Rodney. Only weeks after Batista had staged his golpe de estado, inaugurating a period of tension, Martín’s hiring of a new choreographer would be the beginning of a history that unfolded in near total obliviousness of the outside world. Fox cared little about politics. All that mattered was that he be able to fulfill his dream of making the Tropicana the most dazzling entertainment venue in Cuba.

  Roderico Neyra was a fascinating character in his own right. Born a leper and raised in a leper colony outside Havana, he came of age in the streets. Even though his hands were gnarled by leprosy, he never let it get in the way of his ambition to become a famous song-and-dance man. Rodney achieved his dream, but as his physical incapacities became more apparent in his adulthood, he turned from performance to choreography. He was a short, light-skinned mulatto with a pencil-thin mustache. He had a wicked grin to go along with his lascivious sensibility—sort of a Cuban Bob Fosse, long before Fosse existed. He was also gay, which made it possible for him to work alongside some of the most desirable women in Havana without ever having to worry about succumbing to temptation.

  One of Rodney’s first regular gigs was at a burlesque theater called the Shanghai, on Zanja Street in Havana’s Chinatown. The Shanghai was one of the city’s most notorious strip clubs. It specialized in all-nude shows. In a guidebook published in 1953 entitled Havana: The Portrait of a City, American travel writer W. Adolphe Roberts described a show at the Shanghai most likely created by Rodney:

  The scene was a deserted city square at night, indicated by backdrops with street lamps painted in and the silhouettes of houses. There sauntered onstage a woman totally nude except for her hat and shoes, and swinging a handbag. Her implied calling was unmistakable. She produced a mirror from her bag and went through the motions of making up her face under a lamp. Presently she was joined by half a dozen other sisters of the pavement, all in a similar state of undress. They talked by means of grimaces and shrugs which established the fact that business was poor indeed. Then appeared a tall and robust female, naked too except for a policeman’s cap, brogans, and baton. The newcomer scowled at the harlots, menaced them with her nightstick, lined them up, and proceeded to search them for concealed weapons. The comedy of this last operation was broad. I need say no more.

  Some viewed the burlesque at the Shanghai as lewd and seedy, but not Rodney. His acts were often a mix of sex, music, dance, and humor that would be a precursor to his more elaborate work at venues like the Tropicana.

  By 1950, Rodney was working as head choreographer at the Sans Souci, located not far from the Tropicana. Managed by Norman Rothman, the Sans Souci was the Tropicana’s primary rival as an entertainment venue. Rothman’s club was winning the battle, mostly because he staged lavish floor shows that were the envy of theater directors throughout Havana.

  One of those shows was a production entitled Sun Sun Babae, which went up in 1952. The show incorporated many of the trappings of Afro-Cuban culture—batá drums, the ceremonial dress of Santería, and the rhythmic incantations of bembé, musical prayers devoted to the orishas (Afro-Cuban deities). Rodney was a devout creyente, or believer, in the Lucumí ritual, which he viewed as a meditative therapy to deal with his debilitating and often painful disease. But that didn’t mean his religion was above the kind of irreverence and sense of fun he applied to all his work.

  Sun Sun Babae was a kitschy, tropical burlesque. Onstage, a mulatto woman dressed in the traditional yellow garb of Ochun, goddess of love, danced rumba-style while encircled by a group of black Mandingo-like dancers. The woman moved suggestively to the sound of the drums; the faces of the men gleamed with perspiration. Suddenly, the men were drawn into the audience. As a spotlight followed, they descended from the stage and approached a table, where a blond female patron sat nursing a cocktail. The blonde was engrossed by the half-naked men who surrounded her but was also seemingly frightened. The men practically lifted her out of her seat and carried her to the stage, the spotlight following. Onstage, the woman became intoxicated by the drums and rhythmic chanting, which grew louder and more intense. The audience was both mesmerized and confused, not sure whether this was for real or part of the show.

  Suddenly and without warning, the blonde ripped off her black cocktail dress and began dancing in black lace underwear and garter belt. The audience now realized this was all part of the act, and they tittered with laughter. The woman appeared as if she were hypnotized, her dancing more frenzied as she fell under the spell of the santos. The men tossed her around in their arms. Then, amid the heightening music and movement, the woman suddenly snapped out of her trance, let out an embarrassed scream, and grabbed her clothes. Still half-naked, she hurried off the stage, through the club, and out the back door of the cabaret. The audience applauded—stunned, amused, and aroused all at the same time.

  Rodney, the choreographer, staged Sun Sun Babae for shock value and laughs, but behind the showmanship was a powerful theme. He was inviting the audience to be enticed by Afro-Cuban culture, to get up out of their seats and take part in the sensual pleasures of the island. In this and other shows he later staged at the Tropicana, Rodney was providing a seductive counterpoint to the mundane nature of life back home that would become one of the primary draws for the entire era. It was precisely the kind of entertainment that would give the Havana Mob its naughty, irresistible allure.

  SCANTILY CLAD DANCERS and saucy floor shows were what made the Tropicana famous, but the economic engine that made everything possible was the club’s casino operations. Martín Fox was smart. In early 1954, he converted a garage behind the cabaret into a smaller, simpler version of the main casino. The place became known as the Casino Popular, a refuge for taxi drivers and other less affluent habaneros who couldn’t afford the prices at the main cabaret. Although Fox built his business on the backs of the rich and famous, he never lost the common touch. Not only did he tip the taxi drivers a peso each for every tourist they brought to the club, he also cut certain drivers in on a percentage of the house’s profit each time their tourist lost in the casino. It was an ingenious move, giving the city’s most basic workers a stake in the fortunes of the Havana Mob. And of course, with the Casino Popular open twenty-four hours a day, many taxi drivers gambled their profit share right back into the casino.

  Many Cubans took a special pride in the Tropicana; it was promoted as the only major venue in town owned exclusively by Cubans. This was true, up to a point. Fox was a guajiro, and his administrative employees were mostly extended family members and friends from his lifetime in the gambling business. Also, the cabaret was the city’s premiere showcase for Cuban-born talent—dancers, musicians, costume designers, set directors, etc. The club’s casino, however, was a different story. Although there were more Cuban employees at the Tropicana than at most casinos, the gambling concession was coveted by the Havana Mob, who knew a profit-making venture when they saw one.

  The initial overtures on the part of the Mob were subtle. On October 5, 1954, Ofelia Fox received a silver mink coat from Santo Trafficante. It was accompanied by a note, which read: “Wishing you a very happy second anniversary.” At the time, Trafficante was in Tampa in the middle of his bolita trial, but he still had the presence of mind to send a lavish gift to the wife of his “friend” Martín Fox.

  The sending of extravagant gifts to the wives and girlfriends of potential business associates was a common mobster technique. Lucky Luciano had done it back in 1946 when, having just arrived in Hava
na and looking to cultivate local contacts, he purchased a car from the United States and had it shipped to the wife of Senator Eduardo Suarez Rivas. In fact, during his time on the island, Luciano was known to bestow gold watches, diamond necklaces, and other expensive trinkets on politicians, club owners, and entertainers and their paramours on a regular basis. To those with a fanciful view of human nature, Luciano’s largesse was touching. To others more firmly rooted in the corporeal world, it was a crude though time-tested attempt to buy the loyalty of men in power.

  To Trafficante, the allure of the Tropicana was obvious: the club had become the proverbial icing on the cake. The mobster from Tampa owned the gambling concession at the Sans Souci, but by 1954 Rodney the showman had moved his act to the Tropicana. The celebrities and big-time gamblers followed. As a representative of the Havana Mob, Trafficante needed to establish a beachhead at the Tropicana to show that the Mob was the underwriter of all that prospered on their watch.

  Back in the States, top mobsters routinely used intimidation or violence when they wanted to muscle in on a preexisting business. In Havana, this would not be necessary. Martín Fox understood the dictates of the underworld. If it were in his interest to form an alliance with Trafficante and the Havana Mob, he would do so. He just needed to be convinced.

  Trafficante set out to seduce Martín, to kill him with kindness. He routinely called Fox at the club, identifying himself as El Solitario, the Solitary One. The nickname suggested to Fox that Trafficante was operating alone, which was hardly the case. But to someone like Fox, who ran a highly personalized operation, selling out to an individual partner was more agreeable than giving it all up to a budding conglomerate like the Havana Mob. Santo became a friend, his placid, inscrutable visage a recurring sight in numerous photographs taken at the owner’s table, which Ofelia Fox collected and later published in her memoir.

  Trafficante befriended Martín and his wife, but he also realized that he would never be fully welcome at the club unless he also won over the hired help. For this he used the same method he had employed to curry favor with the owner’s wife: lavish gifts bestowed at the drop of a hat.

  One person who experienced Trafficante’s beneficence firsthand was Felipe Dulzaides, the jazz pianist whose band, Los Armónicos, regularly played in the club’s lounge. Dulzaides’s band was a favorite of Santo, who often brought friends and business associates into the lounge for cocktails. Trafficante liked to reward his favorite employees. Dulzaides found this out one afternoon when the mobster made a big show of lining up the piano player and other members of the quartet. He handed Felipe a set of keys and said, “This is for you and the boys.” Dulzaides was stunned when he stepped outside and laid his eyes on a brand-new Cadillac Seville parked in front of the Tropicana. Trafficante had given him the car seemingly with no strings attached.

  The fact that the owner of a rival club was giving away big-ticket gifts to employees around the Tropicana might have been viewed as encroachment by some, but it was in keeping with the philosophy of the Havana Mob. Trafficante was making sure that everyone knew who was boss, and he encouraged others in his crew to do the same.

  Norman Rothman was a Trafficante underling who operated the gambling concession at the rival Sans Souci, but he too was seen often at the Tropicana. Part of the reason was that Rothman’s girlfriend, the stunning Olga Chaviano, was a showgirl under contract at the club. Rothman was an elegant older gentleman with a long career in the nightclub business going back to his days in Miami Beach. Many felt he had designs on the Tropicana. Again, a competitor having as his lover one of the cabaret’s star attractions could be viewed as poaching, but it was tolerated and even encouraged. After all, what could be more in keeping with the image of the times than the pairing of a middle-aged Jewish nightclub owner and a luscious Cuban showgirl? The Havana Mob was in charge.

  FOR THOSE WHO FOLLOWED Cuba’s development as a tourist destination, the island seemed to be perched on the edge of a new Golden Age. Financiers, mobsters, investors, and sightseers liked what they saw. The number of foreign travelers spending money in Cuba grew by 35 percent between 1952 and 1955, with the prospect of even greater increases for years to come. Pan American airlines made it easier to get there by offering a thirty-nine-dollar round-trip flight from Miami, advertised in newspapers and magazines up and down the East Coast of the United States. Of course, the company had a vested interest: as owners of International Hotels, Inc., Pan American had a controlling interest in the Hotel Nacional and was therefore an investor in the Lansky brothers and the rest of the Havana Mob.

  With Pan Am leading the way, other transportation companies jumped on board. Delta Airlines announced a year-round thirty-day excursion to various Caribbean destinations, culminating with a stop in Havana. A number of steamship lines reconfigured their schedules to connect New York, Miami, and New Orleans directly with Havana. An entity known as the West Indies Fruit and Steamship Company came up with a novel idea: they refurbished two of their largest passenger ferries so that they were equipped to transport automobiles. Tourists leaving from Florida could now drive their cars onto a ferry and disembark in the Port of Havana. The gimmick touched off a fascination with American cars in Havana. Fords, Chevrolets, Duesenbergs, and Cadillacs from the late 1940s and ’50s flooded into Havana; it was the beginning of a vintage-car culture that exists in Havana to this day.

  In the months leading up to the 1955 tourist season, a series of events signaled that it was likely to be the most lucrative season ever. First came the grand reopening of Oriental Park Racetrack, believed to be among the most attractive racetracks in the Americas. The occasion was chronicled in the New York Times, which described the new owners of the track as a “group of American and Cuban investors.” Lansky, Trafficante, and a host of other mobsters were part of this group, and the action at the track promised to be fierce. A full schedule of races was slated for Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Purses were raised to a minimum of one thousand dollars, with a twenty-five-hundred-dollar handicap on weekdays and five thousand dollars on Sundays.

  Those who did business with the new owners of Oriental Park Racetrack got a taste of the company’s Mob-style approach. An independent contractor named Joseph Lease attempted to install a totalizer—a mechanical apparatus that automatically updates the sums of money bet on a race. This new technology would eliminate the old-style hand-manipulated pari-mutual boards that had been a fixture at racetracks for generations. On the night of December 9—five days after the refurbished racetrack opened—two racketeers slipped into Havana, beat Lease over the head with blackjacks in his hotel room, and hopped on the next plane back to Miami. In an article in the Havana Post, police investigators speculated that the assailants wanted Lease to dismantle the newfangled betting equipment, which threatened their ability to manipulate the stateside bolita payoff—payoffs that were based on pari-mutual totals at the track.

  A more sanguine event relating to the fortunes of the Havana Mob occurred later in December, when American entertainer Eartha Kitt performed at the grand opening of the Club Parisién, a lavish, newly renovated cabaret in the Hotel Nacional. Lansky underling Wilbur Clark was the entertainment director at the Nacional, and all major acts in Havana were contracted by Trafficante’s International Amusements Corporation, so nary a show took place in the city in which the Mob did not get a piece of the action.

  The Club Parisién had been renovated to attract major American talent. It did not have the size or ambitious floor shows common at the Montmartre, Sans Souci, or Tropicana, but it offered the same kind of intimacy that made clubs like the Copacabana and Stork Club so popular in New York City. With dark mood lighting, tropical flora and fauna, and cozy velour banquettes, the club was designed for lovers. No one personified the sleek glamour of the place better than Eartha Kitt.

  Described by her former lover Orson Welles as “the most exciting woman in the world,” Kitt was a sultry African-American actress, singer, and dancer with a trademar
k “purrrrrr.” Her exotic, slightly Asiatic beauty and dancer’s grace gave her a catlike quality that she would later parlay into her role as Catwoman in the popular 1960s TV series Batman. In 1954 Kitt scored a major hit with a novelty song entitled “Santa Baby.” The song was loaded with sexual innuendo. Onstage at the Parisién, Kitt caressed the microphone and slunk around like a jungle temptress. Dressed in a low-cut, tight-fitting black slip, she cooed, “Santa baby, just slip a sable under the tree, for me / Been an awful good girl, Santa Baby, / So hurry down the chimney tonight.” To those who were there, Eartha Kitt’s opening-night act at the Parisién would stand as one of the most alluring evenings of the entire era.

  Another show that lit up the sky with star power was the arrival of Nat “King” Cole at the Tropicana. The suave Mr. Cole, who would later become the first African American to host a variety show on U.S. television, was then at the height of his popularity. His signature song, “Unforgettable,” had been at the top of the charts for months, and his two-week engagement at the Tropicana was sold out weeks in advance.

  Cole’s lead-in act was an elaborate floor show entitled Fantasia Mexicana, with frolicking señoritas, conga drums, and a bikini-clad dancer whose headdress consisted of a four-foot-high stack of sombreros. Some were concerned that Cole’s more intimate lounge style would not be able to compete with the elaborate lead-in act or the sheer size of the Tropicana’s stage. Those worries were put to rest when Cole walked out on the proscenium in a white tuxedo, sat down at the piano, and began to sing in his milk-and-honey baritone. The audience was hooked. Said Ofelia Fox, wife of the owner, “No one loved the Tropicana shows more than me. But after hearing Nat King Cole sing, I didn’t want to hear anything else.”

  Both Kitt and Cole were African American, as were Dorothy Dandridge, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Mathis, and many of the other entertainers who would headline Havana’s nightclubs in the months and years ahead. The city’s nightlife was a multiracial mix of blacks, whites, and Latinos, making it one of the hippest scenes in the world. Whereas the shows and casinos in Las Vegas were overwhelmingly populated by Caucasians, and nightclubs in New York City were still mostly segregated according to race, Havana provided entertainment venues that were an international swirl of race, language, and social class. You weren’t cool unless you could speak a little español, dance the mambo, and drink a Cuba libre, daiquiri, mojito, or many of the other tropical cocktails that had been created for the tourists. The scene was sexy, percussive, and the envy of partygoers around the world.