Showing posts with label Miami in the 1960s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miami in the 1960s. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Fallout Shelters a Miami Growth Biz in the 1960s


Shelter sign in NYC
The Cold War heated up to nearly white hot during the early 1960s. The Soviet Union resumed testing of A-bombs in 1958 and continued into the new decade. They began building the Berlin War in August 1961 to mark their sphere of influence in Europe. 

President John F. Kennedy decided one of the most effective steps the U.S. could take to show that it stood firm in Europe was to immediately develop an air raid shelter program.

Kennedy wanted to convince the Kremlin that the American people (far more cohesive then) were willing to undergo an atomic war if necessary rather than to back away from the Russians in Europe. JFK told Americans it would be possible to organize or build shelters quickly by reinforcing public buildings and constructing safe havens at individual homes.

American entrepreneurs smelled a new opportunity and turned home shelter building into a growth business. By September 1961, 19 manufacturers in Miami were approved by the Dade County Office of Civil Defense to build home fallout shelters.
Lib. of Congress

Newspapers published articles about companies and their offerings and pages were filled with advertising. Shelters ran from $1,195 to $2,495 and could be constructed to protect from six to 12 people in fortifications that ranged in size from 10 feet by 8 feet to 14 by 16 feet.  Some could be installed adjacent to a house or in a garage (there weren’t many basements in South Florida). All qualified for financing under FHA’s Title 1 home improvement program.

Shelter advertisements nearly shouted with:
No down payment!
All forms of financing!
Shelters - use as playrooms or for storage!
Adequate shielding is the only effective means of preventing radiation casualties!
Do it yourself, just send $1 for plans!

Ancillary businesses opened to manufacture appliances for shelters and devices to power ventilation blowers, TVs and lighting.

By the mid - to late 1960s, fears diminished and, as with Dr. Strangelove, Americans learned to stop worrying and to love the bomb. Perhaps some today are used as hurricane shelters but more than likely, most are gone.

For the Kennedy Palm Beach shelter, see: 


Sources:
Palm Beach Post, July, 17, 1961
Miami News, Sept. 24. 1961
Miami News, Nov. 16, 1961


Tags: Miami business in 1960s, Miami during the cold war, Fallout shelter business 

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Dick Cami and Convulsion at Miami's Peppermint Lounge: the Twist, HullyGully, Mashed Potato and ...




By Jane Feehan

Note : Richard "Dick Cami" Camillucci, Jr.,  quoted below, died July 28, 2020 at  age 86.

One of Miami’s hottest night spots in the early 1960s was the Peppermint Lounge, a place where old and young, rich and famous danced their nights away to the latest gyrating crazes, including the one that launched the club, the Twist.

Ernest Evans, known forever after as Chubby Checker, recorded Hank Ballard’s rhythm and blues tune, The Twist, in 1959. The record did not sell well so Checker went on tour across the nation to sing the tune and demonstrate a dance that went with it. Some say he lost 30 pounds in just three weeks of performing. The tune – and the dance—finally caught on 14 months later as a fad that swept the world.

It proved to be a draw at the Peppermint Lounge on West 45th Street in New York where people waited in line to get through its doors. The popularity of the club spawned a few others, including the Peppermint Lounge on the 79th Street Causeway in Miami.

The Miami club opened Dec. 1, 1961 at the former site of Colonel Jim's. The Miami News reported Lee Ratner and Morris Levy of Roulette Records were its backers but according to Dick Cami (in his mid 20s at the time), he ran the place. Cami was married to the daughter of New York mobster Johnny “Futto” Biello.

An impressive roster of big name entertainers played at the Miami club.

"Major rock and roll acts worked at the Peppermint Lounge like the Coasters, Jerry Lee Lewis, Conway Twitty ... and more," said Cami.

Miami’s Peppermint Lounge, with its mirrored ceilings and fenced-in dance floor attracted locals, tourists—and the famous. Nat King Cole asked Cami if he could play the piano there a few nights to get the feel of the rock ‘n roll thing his daughter Natalie liked so much. He was at the piano when singer Sam Cooke, who recorded his own top-of-the-chart tune, Twistin' the Night Away, came in one evening. The Beatles visited Cami's place to pay homage to rock n' roll—the inspiration for their musicthree times when they
Lenny Bruce, frequent visitor.
Domita Jo on his left, photo courtesy of Dick Cami
were in the area to appear on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Politicos ventured fearlessly into the club to be part of the action. Gov. Grant Sawyer of Nevada was at a Governors Conference in Miami when he found the Peppermint Lounge. He visited the club each night with his wife; a large crowd gathered as the governor climbed the dance floor fence and twisted the night away.

And the Twist kept raging “round and round” Miami, Miami Beach and the rest of the country. “How long will the Twist epidemic last?” asked columnist Herb Kelly as he listed all the Miami Beach hotel lounges bowing to the fad. “It’s spreading so fast nobody knows.”  Gray-haired matrons were shaking their hips on the same dance floor with green-haired girls and bearded young men, “all shaking like there was no one else in the world, not even their partner,” mused Cami.

The Twist was invented by chiropractors, quipped comedian Bob Hope.  “The whole world’s sacroiliac is going to be out in about three days.”

Actually it took a bit longer than three days.

Things began to slow down about a year later. That’s why the Peppermint Lounge started featuring a dance revue, the “Crazy Crazes,” a history of dance fads. Four dancers—two male, two female—and singer Regina Rae highlighted the show presenting dance crazes from the 1920s to the Twist.

Other dances caught on at the Peppermint Lounge as they had elsewhere in the U.S.: the Hully Gully, the Mashed Potato, the Fly, Bird, Dog, Frug, Slop, and the Continental. The Legends provided the music at the Miami lounge for all the crazes and so did a band from Jamaica, Freddie Scott’s Blues Busters. Their claim to fame was blending calypso and rock ‘n roll, known then by another name.

"We were the first to bring Ska, the precursor of Reggae, to America, " reminisced Cami.

Lights went out on the dance floor by 1964 or early 1965. In late ’64, Cami sold the lounge to Joe Camperlengo of Fort Lauderdale; Camperlengo owned the 4 o’Clock Club in that city. The Peppermint Lounge reopened shortly after the sale and soon became the Inner Circle. By 1965, the place was razed to make way for a new steak house.

Lucky for South Florida, Dick Cami remained but moved on to other endeavors in the area. He opened Applause, a nightclub at the Omni Center in Miami. Some reported that he wanted to go into construction but he (and later with his two sons) became the driving force behind several restaurants: Cami’s Seashells in Dade and Broward counties; Grumpy Dick’s in Plantation, Crabby Dick’s in Key West, and Islamorada Fish House in Dania. 

The restaurant closest to Cami's heart was his Top of the Home in Hollywood, FL. For 26 years  it stood acclaimed for its fine Continental dining, outstanding wine selection, and stunning panoramic vista of Broward County. His popular lounge featured two singing bartenders and piano player Sonny Gambino. 

Today, Cami no longer owns a restaurant but with a wealth of experience accumulated over the years he serves as chief operating officer of food and beverage for  Excelsior Hospitality Management International, a consulting and asset management company. 

There is more to Cami's past —and present—than the restaurant biz.

He stepped into the boxing world for a time, managing a few fighters who the late, great Angelo Dundee trained at his Fifth Street Gym in Miami Beach.

Cami also manages affairs for his friend, Sandi Lansky*, daughter of reputed mobster, gambling kingpin and former Miami resident, Meyer Lansky. Cami has served as advisor during the compilation of her memoirs by William Stadium. The book, Daughter of the King, was released March, 2014.

The former restaurateur is currently in discussions with Fox about a TV pilot series, The Twist, and has teamed up with a former colleague to produce an animated musical feature, The Dog Show, a story about a mutt who wins the Westminster Dog Show.   

Cami lives in Oregon today but memories of those sizzling Miami Beach days and the twisting Peppermint Lounge nights loom large. I'll have to ask the next time I speak with him if he ever hums the Chubby Checker song:                         
           Come on, baby, let’s do the twist.
      Take me by my little hand and go like this.
                              We’re gonna twisty …

*  Sandra Lansky, daughter of Meyer Lansky wrote a memoir, Daughter of the King, in 2014.


Sources:
Miami News, Dec. 5, 1961
Miami News, Nov. 29, 1961
Miami News, Aug. 17, 1962
Miami News, Nov. 27, 1962
Miami News, Aug. 7, 1963
Miami News, Oct. 8, 1964
Miami News, Sept. 19, 1965
Beaver County Times, Aug. 19, 1964
Lakeland Ledger, Feb. 29,1988
Reading Eagle, May 20, 1965
Rome News-Tribune, Mar. 14, 1972
Richard "Dick Cami" Camillucci, Jr.

Tags: Miami history, Miami dance clubs, Peppermint Lounge, the Twist, Chubby Checker, Sandi Lansky, Meyer Lansky,Fort Lauderdale historian, Miami historian



Monday, October 21, 2013

Miami tops Los Angeles in cars per capita in 19...

By Jane Feehan

The Automobile Manufacturers Association reported in 1940 that Miami led the nation among major cities in the number of cars per capita. A count of 53,078 cars converted into an impressive 2.8 per capita, or a car for every 2.8 persons. That figure topped the 2.9 number in Los Angeles and 3.0 in Long Beach CA. The Magic City held the lead in the number of cars well into the 1960s.
The national auto per capita (per 1,000) the following decades reveals how impressive Miami’s 1940 statistic was:

1950      .28 per capita
1960      .37         "
1970      .48         "
1980      .62         "
1990      .72         "
1999      .77         "

With a metric that could point to prosperity or a climate well-suited for conspicuous consumption, came grim vehicle-related news a few decades later. In 1962, the Miami area—Dade County—held the distinction of reporting the highest number of vehicular deaths in the nation. It may not come as a surprise to some that in 2009 the Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach statistical area ranked among the nation’s top 50 in motor vehicle crash death rates at 11.1 deaths per 100,000. Jacksonville, FL counted 13.3 per 100,000, while Houston, Texas cited 12.9 deaths.

Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
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Sources:
Miami News, Dec. 30, 1962
Miami News, Nov. 16, 1964
Centers for Disease Control www.cdc.gov
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics 2007



Tags; Miami history, SOFLA auto ownership history, cars in Miami, auto deaths, vehicular motor crash stats, film researcher, historical researcher

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Miami's Playboy Club a profit center until ...

Miami skyline from Biscayne Bay,
 from Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress. 











By Jane Feehan

The first Playboy Club opened in February, 1960 in Chicago. The Playboy enterprise, headed then by Hugh Hefner, initially offered seven franchise operations. The second club opened in Miami in May 1961 at 77th Street and Biscayne Boulevard.

Eight investors, led by Miamian Thomas A. Perrine, kicked in $300,000, including the $10,000 franchise fee, under the corporate name Play-Key, Inc. Even after paying 10 percent gross to Playboy Clubs International each month, the investors made money. Within weeks 2,000 joined the club paying $25 each for the coveted Playboy membership “key.” Within months, 5,400 had joined.

The club was so popular – and profitable - Hefner bought the Miami franchise back from its investors five months later in September for $697,000, about a $400,000 profit for Play-Key, Inc.  Hefner claimed the buy back gave the company more opportunities to better serve its members. The Miami Playboy Club continued to be operated by original managers Ray Baribeau and Buffy Dee.

The swinging 1960s became hokey by the 1980s. The Miami Playboy Club closed its Biscayne location in 1983 and moved to a site near the Miami International Airport. It didn’t do much for declining business; the club closed its doors by the mid to late 1980s.

Playboy Clubs International shut down most of its 24 units by 1991. About two remain open in other countries.Copyright © 2013. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:
Miami News, Sept. 27, 1961
Sun-Sentinel, Dec. 11, 1985



Tags: Miami Playboy Club, Miami history, Miami in the 1960s, Florida film researcher,  historical researcher