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5 unusual facts about Tropicana Club


Max Borges, Jr.

His best known work is the Tropicana Club of 1951, for which he later designed expansions.

Santo Trafficante, Jr.

As a leading member of the syndicate, it was suspected that he also had behind-the-scenes interests in other syndicate-owned Cuban gambling casinos namely, the Hotel Habana Riviera, the Tropicana Club, the Sevilla-Biltmore, the Capri Hotel Casino, the Commodoro, the Deauville, and the Havana Hilton.

Tropicana Club

On the TV series I Love Lucy, the character Ricky Ricardo (played by Cuban-born Desi Arnaz) was a singer and bandleader at Manhattan's fictional Tropicana nightclub, now recreated in reality in Jamestown, New York at the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center's Tropicana Room.

The history of the cabaret is detailed in Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt, 2005) by Rosa Lowinger and Ofelia Fox.

Within a few years, Trafficante owned or held stakes in both The Tropicana and The Sans Souci (the only casinos which had been operating in Havana for several years prior to 1955).


Oriental Park Racetrack

Many American celebrities on vacation or who were performing at the nearby Tropicana Club visited fashionable Oriental Park Racetrack, as did Europeans such as tennis star Suzanne Lenglen.


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