There is, and it’s a long one. So long, in fact, that we’ve had to break it into two parts; here’s the first installment of the history of the Las Vegas Tropicana Resort-Casino.
The Tropicana debuted in April 1957, the second-to-last major hotel-casino to open on the Las Vegas Strip in the grifty fifties.
Here it was, a full 25 years since wide-open gambling was legalized in Nevada and more than 10 years since the Nevada Tax Commission had been granted policy and procedure powers over the casino industry. Fifteen major resorts amounted to a total investment of $100 million and already accounted for more than half of the state’s entire gambling revenues. Yet the state Gaming Control Board had been in existence a mere two years. Mob money, and the jungle law of gamblers and hoods, ruled the day. And nowhere was this more evident than the situation of the Tropicana.
The Trop was the brainchild of "Dandy" Phil Kastel, who’d spent 25 years managing the Louisiana gambling scene for Frank Costello, a boss of bosses for the national Cosa Nostra organization. Kastel enlisted Ben Jaffe, of the Miami Fontainebleau Hotel, to invest and front for him in the Tropicana. Jaffe also held an interest in the Riviera, which had opened in 1955, and he hired the same Miami construction company to build the Trop. By opening night, Jaffe had infused more than $7 million of his own money, plus another $7 million of investor funds, compared to Kastel’s $300,000; licensing of the Tropicana had been held up a year, until Kastel’s name was dropped from the application.
The $15 million 300-room Y-shaped Tropicana, featuring more than 17 acres of manicured lawns and gardens, quickly earned the nickname "Tiffany of the Strip." Designed as the ultimate resort-casino, like the Riviera the Trop oozed elegance in a Havana-modern style. Its 60-fot tulip-shaped fountain in the center of a 110-foot-diameter pool stood as a landmark at the south end of the Strip for two decades. The mahogany-paneled casino was tastefully screened from the lobby by ornamental horticulture, and "Peacock Alleys" from the front desk to the rooms actually bypassed the casino. The Celebrity Gourmet Room was enclosed by a 150-foot curved-glass wall, highlighted by colorful dancing fountains and massive Czech chandeliers.
The genteel calm, however, was shattered only a month later, when Frank Costello was wounded in an assassination attempt in New York, and detectives found a slop of paper in his pocket with a tidy sum of figures, which turned out to be the gross profits from the Tropicana’s first three weeks in business. Out went Kastel as the casino manager. In came J. Kell Houssels.
Houssels was a geologist who, while working in the copper mines at Ely, got a start in gambling at the illegal blackjack games at the Hotel Nevada. He moved to Las Vegas in 1929 and bought an interest in a legal card room at the corner of Fremont and Main; when gambling was legalized a couple years later, he was one of the first to be granted a license. He renamed the card room the Las Vegas Club.
Ten years later, he and two partners built the El Cortez down Fremont Street. In 1945, they sold the El Cortez to a group that included Gus Greenbaum and Davie Berman, fronts for Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky; a year later, they asked Houssels to return and manage the casino for them.
In 1954, Houssels and his partners opened the Showboat out on Boulder Highway and he was one of Jaffe’s investors in the Tropicana. Though he was connected to gangsters, government officials believed that he wasn’t mobbed up himself and considered him independent, honest, and competent and they asked him to take over management of the Trop casino and hotel.
Houssels really hit his stride at there and over the next 15 years, he turned the Trop into one of the most successful Vegas resorts. He built an Olympic-sized pool and tennis courts and added the 18-hole golf course and country club that eventually turned into the MGM Grand. He also hired producer Lou Walters (Barbara Walters’ father) to import the elaborate French revue Folies Bergere, with its gorgeous showgirls in elaborate and skimpy costumes. Claudine Longet (see QoD 6/7/09), Bobby Gentry (of "Ode to Billy Joe" fame; she was once married to Bill Harrah -- for a few weeks), and Felicia Atkins (Miss Australia and a Playboy Playmate) were Folies showgirls in those days.
J. Kell Houssels remained the CEO till retiring in 1972, when the Trop was sold to Consolidated Financial Corporation. He died in 1979.
Tomorrow: The thrilling conclusion of the Tropicana story.
