Le Club International Yacht and Tennis Club
Once located at 2900 NE 9 St., Fort Lauderdale
By Jane Feehan
Le Club, as we called it then,
opened early in 1969 and took off like its sponsored Formula 1 car that
was to race in a Monaco Grand Prix.
Once site of the Everglades Yacht
and Tennis Club, just south of the Sunrise bridge, the property underwent a $175,000 renovation in 1968 as a venture
of Atlanta hotelier and Miami resident, Carling Dinkler. The renovation was
considered the first phase of a project that was to eventually include a
17-story condominium.
The condo, planned intermittently over the next decade as
a 14- or 32-story project, didn’t materialize, but the club thrived. It was
known as a celebrity and swinging nouveau riche magnet, thanks to the efforts
of country club impresario and consultant Paul Holm.
Holm and brother Lambert had
been involved in country club launches in Georgia and elsewhere before the Fort
Lauderdale endeavor.
Paul Holm, then 36-year-old general
manager and secretary-treasurer of Le Club, planned to hold a charity event about once a month. He and Lambert (referred to in some accounts as publicist),
knew how to line up celebrities. Dinah Shore appeared at their Pro-Celebrity
Tennis Classic in 1970. That was the year Elke Sommer, Barbara Marx (widow of Harpo),
and a host of other Hollywood notables joined in the fun and also discovered
Fort Lauderdale.
The list of celebrities visiting Le Club over the years was a
very long one and included Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon, Bobby Riggs, Burt
Bacharach, George Peppard, Liza Minelli, Red Buttons, James Franciscus,
Charlton Heston, Lloyd Bridges, Bill Cosby, Pat Boone, Kentucky governor and one-time
Kentucky Fried Chicken magnate John Y. Brown, jockey Eddie Arcaro and Revlon heir Peter Revson.
Other than high-profile yearly
tennis tourneys, high-stakes card games and sponsorship of Formula 1 racing, Le
Club was involved in off-shore boat racing and hot air balloon events. Always
thinking big, Paul Holm produced the movie, the Great Balloon Race in 1977. He bought the entire first-class
section of a 747 jet for club members to attend the movie’s premier at the
Canne Film Festival that year.
No doubt Le Club was the place to be for “nouveaus” during
the 1970s. The food was excellent, service top-notch and the setting glamorous—if
not a bit naughty. A few classified ads pointed to the mindset of the place—and
times. Some ads indicated Le Club was looking for an “alert young lady 27-35”
to assist an interior design firm at the club. Others stated management was
looking for a single, 30-34 social director; others ads were for an “attractive young
lady” for another job, etc. One can laugh looking at the ads through today’s
lens but knowing the club at that time, many would say the ads seemed perfectly normal.
Tides turned by the end of
the 1970s. The club was first sold to John Y. Brown and then in 1981 to Texas oil
man James Keenan, also a member, who had plans for renovating the club and
building a 14-story condo. Times weren’t right for the project or the club. Tax
laws changed during the Reagan administration restricting business write-offs, and it curtailed club business.
In 1985 the Romani Corporation was listed as owner.
They also had big plans for Le Club, but it finally closed February 1986. The building
was torn down in 1990. Today, a 16-story condominium, Le Club International,
sits there. (No connection to the yacht and tennis club.)
 |
| L to R: Lambert Holm, Carling Dinkler, Paul Holm State of Floridaa Archives/Florida Memory |
Paul Holm moved to Las Vegas,
married and had children. He died there in 2007 at age 74 (obituary below) after years contributing
his expertise to local charity events. Carling Dinkler, who built Miami’s Palm
Bay Club and Tower, died in 2005 in Morgantown, West Virginia, home town of his
second wife; he was 85.
The long gone Le Club
International will not be forgotten by those who participated in its legacy of well-known,
untold, outrageous or sometimes notorious stories.
Atlanta Constitution
Journal, July 26, 1965
Fort Lauderdale News,
Aug. 8, 1968
Fort Lauderdale News,
Aug. 23,1968
Fort Lauderdale News,
Sept 22, 1968
Fort Lauderdale News,
Nov. 16, 1968
Fort Lauderdale News,
May 19, 1969
Fort Lauderdale News,
June 10, 1969
Fort Lauderdale News,
Aug.31, 1969
Fort Lauderdale News,
Feb. 11, 1970
Fort Lauderdale News,
July 12, 1970
Fort Lauderdale News,
Nov. 13, 1982
Fort Lauderdale News,
Jan. 4, 1985
South Florida Sun-Sentinel,
June 3, 1990
Las Vegas Review,
May 30, 2007
Atlanta Constitution
Journal, May 25, 2005
Tags: Fort Lauderdale clubs of the 1970s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s, Paul Holm, Carling Dinkler, Le Club International tennis tournaments in Fort Lauderdale, Great Balloon Race, Fort Lauderdale history
