Fort Lauderdale gets "cosmopolitan" with ice plant - 1911

In 1911 the state of Florida  approved the charter of the Town of Fort Lauderdale. It was also the year of its first utility, the Fort Lauderdale Ice and Light Company. One of the town’s founders, Tom Bryan, proposed the formation of the company as a way to provide ice for railroad cars of vegetables bound for the north. Electricity would power machinery to make the ice and additional power would go to consumer use. Few houses were wired for electricity but it was a start. The story below amusingly refers to a "cosmopolitan air" as one benefit of the project.

The Miami News (March 20, 1911 edition)

 FT LAUDERDALE TO HAVE ICE PLANT SOON

“Watch us grow.” This is the slogan at Fort Lauderdale and Progresso. This section is to have an up-to-date ten ton ice plant at once … in a very few weeks the residents here will have these modern improvements, which together with the other many evidences of progress will lend to this flourishing town a cosmopolitan air not heretofore anticipated by even the most optimistic promoter.

It was just the beginning of Fort Lauderdale's "cosmopolitan" image; telephone service was to make it debut in 1914. Copyright © 2014 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.
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Other sources:

Gillis, Susan. Fort Lauderdale: The Venice of America. Charleston: Arcadia (2004).

Weidling, Philip J. and Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags: Florida history, Fort Lauderdale Centennial, Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale

The Liston-Clay fight in Miami Beach, a star is born

Feb. 25, 1964 Florida State Archives

By Jane Feehan

It was announced in December 1963 that a matchup between boxing champ Sonny Liston and the brash Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) would be held at the Miami Beach Convention Hall in February, 1964. 

The attorney representing Liston was Martha Jefferson Louis, wife of famed boxer Joe Louis. Miami millionaire Bill MacDonald and boxing promoter Chris Dundee were instrumental in bringing the historic fight to Miami Beach.

MacDonald guaranteed the pugilists $625,000 for the “live gate,” revenue derived from the sale of seats that sold for $20-$250. With 16,000 seats in the hall, a sellout would garner $1.1 million. Liston would get 40 percent, Clay, 22 ½.  MacDonald needed $800,000 to break even. Closed circuit TV would generate even more money after Theater Network Television took its 15 percent. 

MacDonald’s expectations merged with differing expectations for the outcome of the fight.

Some thought the pairing a mismatch; Clay, at 22, was thought to be too young—not ready—to beat the powerful and ferocious Liston, nicknamed “Big Bear.” About 30 years old (he was not sure of his birth date), Liston had a 35-1 record with 24 knockouts.

“No one could ever convince me that anyone could beat Sonny Liston,” said Dick Cami, one-time boxing manager and owner of Miami Beach’s Peppermint Lounge. “He had it all—the weight, the jaw, the punch and the reach ... he had unusually long arms.”

The Associated Press reported Liston stood to earn $1.6 million in a fight that may not last three rounds. Liston had anticipated no more than three rounds. Others mused it would be a good fight because Clay, “the Louisville Lip,” had already won 19 fights, 15 by knockouts. He was fast on his feet and fast with the punches.   Clay, 1960 Olympic Games light heavyweight gold medalist, already known for his dramatic outbursts (and poetry), claimed he would win in eight, five or three rounds. In any case, he planned to “upset the whole world.”

Sparring for the Tuesday, Feb. 25, 1964 fight began immediately. The two snarled at each other when meeting up accidentally at Dundee’s Fifth Street Gym where Clay was training with Angelo Dundee. Messages were exchanged before the big event with Liston claiming Clay was “his million dollar baby.” Clay’s poetic yet taunting prediction began with: Clay comes out to meet Liston and Liston starts to retreat; If Liston goes back an inch farther he’ll end up in a ringside seat.

Liston and Clay knew how to display both sides of their personalities. The Big Bear, a guest at the Casablanca Hotel on Miami Beach, played unofficial entertainment director, shaking hands and hamming it up by the pool lifting women into the air while husbands snapped pictures with their Brownie cameras. Ed Sullivan introduced Liston and Joe Louis sitting together in the audience at the Deauville Hotel for the Beatles' appearance on his show.*

Clay worked just as hard to let the world know who he was.

Ali in 1978,
Courtesy of the Maryland Stater

“To know Cassius, like the saying goes, was to love him,” Cami said.  Before the fight, Clay came into the Peppermint Lounge to visit (but never drink) with singer Dee Dee Sharp who had recently recorded the hit Mashed Potatoes. “He was in every sense of the word a gentleman and definitely not a womanizer,” recalled Cami.  One night the young fighter asked Cami if he could park his bus outside the lounge.

“He had a bus with a giant picture of him on each side and the 79th Street Causeway (where the Peppermint Lounge was located) was a perfect place for it to be seen," Cami said.

Clay’s public relations campaign continued. A few days after they appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Beatles stopped by the Fifth Street Gym where he playfully lifted one or two of them off their feet for the press.

The days for playing hard and training harder quickly slipped away as the main event approached.

During weigh-in the morning of the big day, the two continued the taunting. Clay’s outbursts were so wild that he was later fined by the Miami Boxing Commission. They eventually got down to business. Clay, at 6’3” weighed 210 pounds while 6’ 1” Liston weighed in at 218 pounds. The reach of the Louisville Lip was two inches shorter than that of the Big Bear. The fight was on.

Liston, a 7-1 favorite, came out like a bear for the first three rounds, but suddenly lost advantage to the younger Clay. The Louisville Lip landed a punch that left a deep gash beneath Liston’s eye. It bled heavily and later needed eight stitches. When the bell rang for the seventh round, Liston remained in the corner; his shoulder was reportedly injured. Clay was declared heavyweight champ of the world.  “I am the greatest,” the 22-year-old yelled. He had indeed upset the world. He was the greatest.

The outcome did not prove as pleasant for Bill MacDonald. Only 6,297 seats were sold out of the 16,000 in the hall. A news story reporting Cassius Clay had joined ranks with the Black Muslims turned spectators away who took a dim view of the group. Others reported seeing Clay with Malcolm X.

Whatever the reasons, the live gate brought in only $402,000; Liston (who died in 1970) reportedly received $367,000. MacDonald was mentioned as a defendant the following year in a law suit resulting from the fight.

After the historic fight, Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali. According to Cami, Angelo Dundee told him efforts by the Black Muslims to fire him and hire one of their own were spurned by Ali. The young fighter was smart; he remained loyal to the trainer who helped him earn his title.

Ali fought his last match in 1981, ending a career of 61 fights with 56 wins and 37 knock outs. The fighter who took control over his own image from the beginning became as mellow and majestic as an aging lion. Once one of the most recognized faces on the globe, Muhammad Ali died June 3, 2016 at 74.  Copyright © 2019. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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* It was a banner year for Miami Beach: the Beatles, the Liston-Clay fight and then the Jackie Gleason Show announced its plans to broadcast from the city.

Miami News, Dec. 6, 1963

Miami News, Dec. 10, 1963

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 23, 1964

Palm Beach Daily News, Jan. 7, 1965

Kleinberg, Howard. Miami Beach: A History. Miami. Centennial Press (1994)

Tags: Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston, Liston-Clay fight 1964, Miami Beach in the 1960s, Dick Cami, Peppermint Lounge, film researcher, boxing history, Miami Beach history

Hialeah Park opens in 1925 with creative betting

Hialeah Park
Florida State Archives/Florida Memory Postcard collection

Hialeah Park

East 4th Avenue
Hialeah, FL

https://hialeahparkcasino.com/

By Jane Feehan

Hialeah Park Race Track, developed by Missouri cattleman James Bright and aviation pioneer Glen Curtis, opened for thoroughbred races January 15, 1925.  Thousands of fans jammed the new park, nicknamed the “Longchamps of America,”* to watch horses run the one mile track.

The Miami Daily News reported the festivities; excerpts follow:

… Innovation after innovation greeted the thousands at the track this afternoon.

Unlike the grass lawns at other tracks, the Miami sward is a fast stretch of grey black tied concrete sweeping gently to the rail of the home stretch.

The band stand, a 20-foot enclosure that was sunken in the center of the lawn and surrounded by a high yellow daubed picket fence, was the stage for the famous Frank Novak band ...  Activity centered in the club house, a Spanish type structure. Two balconies were crowded with the smart set, a few dining between races in the beautiful buff and green paneled dining room.

Another Miami Daily News story of the same day anticipated the Hialeah visit of “Englishwoman bookmaker” Helen Vernet en route to the U.S. aboard the Mauritania. Claimed to be from one of oldest families in Great Britain, Vernet followed the horses to make fast money. She became a broker for Ladbroke and Company, the “largest turf commissioners in the world” where she handled more than $25 million in bets. She was anxious to see - and probably place a wager at - Hialeah.

She may have been disappointed with the betting situation at the Florida track. Pari-mutuel gambling was not legal then but track operators got creative. They developed an oral system of betting as well as a more complex “certificate plan” in which the betting tickets were sold as stocks (for one such system at the Pompano track in the 1920s see index for post about Judge Shippey).

Pari-mutuel betting was passed by the Florida legislature in May, 1931, but Governor Fuller Warren vetoed it because of a rumored (and later assessed as well-founded) payoff from a Dade County businessman. A month later, a compromise was reached in which each county, regardless of its size, would share equally in tax proceeds of pari-mutuels; it gave the Florida Senate enough votes to override the governor’s veto in June, 1931.

As for Hialeah Park Race Track, it was severely damaged by the 1926 hurricane. Joseph Widener and partner Edward R. Bradley purchased, renovated and re-opened the track in 1932 to wide and decades-long acclaim. The park closed in 2001 but opened again in 2009 and now offers a casino. Today Hialeah Park is on the National Register of Historic . Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

*Longchamps is a race track along the banks of the Seine River in Paris, France.
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Sources:

Miami Daily News, Jan. 15, 1925

Miami News, Aug. 8, 1978

www.hialeahparkracing.com


Tags: Hialeah history,  Miami history, Florida racing history, Florida gambling history, Florida history, film researcher, 

When exotic dancers reigned in Miami Beach

A blonde Zorita the Snake Dancer at the
Peppermint Lounge c. 1961
Photo & information about it courtesy of Dick Cami

By Jane Feehan

Where tourists flocked, entertainers soon followed. That’s how it was in Miami Beach after World War II. During the 1950s the beach side city became America’s glitzy vacation land—and the place to be for the big names of  radio, the silver screen, television, theater and music: Garry More, Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Durante, Tony Martin, Dick Shawn, Bobby Van, Morey Amsterdam, Duke Ellington, Debbie Reynolds, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey, Frank Sinatra.

Among the parade of entertainers were the burlesque queens of the day who included Miami Beach in their tours throughout the country. Blaze Starr, Lili St. Cyr, Evelyn West (with her “treasure chest”), and Tempest Storm joined a list of scantily clad performers who headlined the beach adults-only night clubs. These exotic dancers studied their craft; it was a time when taking off one’s clothes was considered an art.  

Two big-name strippers of the day eventually claimed the Miami area as home: Dorian Dennis, and Zorita the Snake Dancer. Their paths were to cross late in their careers.

Dorian Dennis (known by her family as Rene), was born in Brooklyn to parents who were pharmacists. Dorian set out to follow a similar vocational path; she earned a bachelor’s of science degree in chemistry in a pre-med program at New York University. She wanted to become a doctor but finances forced her into other work. Her first job after college was at the US Army’s Fort Monmouth where she analyzed wire. It didn’t pay much.

Impressed by her beauty, a former show girl suggested she get work in the more lucrative entertainment field. It proved to be good advice. Dorian worked a brief stint as a hat check girl at the Latin Quarter in New York and then at Toots Shor’s. She landed a job as a show girl at Havana Madrid. An agent spotted her and told her if she could learn to walk (she claimed she once walked like an elephant) she could follow in the steps of famed stripper, Gypsy Rose Lee. She learned how to walk, dance—and disrobe.

At first Dorian Dennis played rough, noisy clubs, but her career was launched. Soon she was making $1,200 a week (five times as much as a chemist) in shows around the country. She ranked in the top 15 exotic dancers in the nation. Her looks and 40-inch bust earned her regular work in Las Vegas where some joked that she was so well-stacked that card players wouldn’t trust her with a deck.

Dennis became a top draw at Miami Beach revues where she frequently appeared at Place Pigalle, Gaiety Club, Club 23, Copa City Lounge (while Duke Ellington played in the main room), and others. She moved to Miami in 1959 after a union dispute in New York. The move probably changed her plans to learn drama for her theater and movie aspirations.

Zorita knew early in life what she wanted to be.  Born Kathryn Boyd in 1915, she performed her first strip show in Pittsburgh in 1937. She soon included two snakes in her performances. The enterprising 20-year-old, who was occasionally arrested for indecency, took her show to Toledo and Tampa (and probably other cities) before she first visited Miami in 1939.

Zorita was no stranger to publicity. In 1939, she stopped Miami traffic at Flagler Street downtown when she took her Chinese bull snake on a stroll with a leash. More than 1,000 spectators gathered, including the press. The police took both stripper and snake into custody. They charged Zorita with disorderly conduct.

More than a decade later, the snake dancer was regularly performing in Miami at several spots, including the 5 O’clock Club. By the 1960s, she was living permanently in North Bay Village, not far from Miami Beach. The exotic dancer, grabbing an occasional headline in local entertainment news, retired from performing to open her own place, Zorita’s Show Bar on Collins Avenue.

An aging and single Dorian Dennis took a job at Zorita’s in the 1960s. Her last performance was in 1969. In 1970, in her early 40s, Dennis died of cancer at Fort Lauderale’s Broward General Hospital. At the time, she was living on North 13^th Street in Hollywood.

What happened to some of  the other dancers?

• Ever the entrepreneur, Zorita decided to sell pornographic bed sheets in 1975.  She reportedly died in Florida in 2001.
• Lili St. Cyr (Willis Marie Van Schaack) died in 1999 at 80 in Los Angeles.
• Blaze Starr, born in 1932 (Fannie Belle Fleming), was once the controversial lover of Louisiana Gov. Earl Long.  Starr died June, 2015 in West Virginia. Her final years were spent as a gemologist in Maryland.
• Tempest Storm (Annie Blanch Banks), born in 1928 retired at 67. She performed in Miami at a place on Biscayne Boulevard as late as the 1970s. In 2006, she appeared at the Miss Exotic World Pageant. Tempest Storm lived in Las Vegas until her death April, 2021. I had the pleasure of sitting next to her and her former husband, Herb Jeffries, in 1972 at a banquet in San Francisco.

Eleven exotic dancers, including most of those mentioned here, performed in director Irving Klaw’s 1956 documentary Buxom Beautease.  Perhaps he knew the curtain would soon close on the burlesque queen era, an era tightly woven into the history of Miami Beach. 

Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

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Sources:

Pittsburgh Press, Apr. 4, 1937

Miami News, Feb. 22, 1939

Times Daily, Nov. 16, 1958

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1959

Miami News, Dec. 21, 1959

Miami News, Apr 23, 1960

Miami News, July 24, 1964

Miami News, Dec. 8, 1970

Miami News, Sept. 4, 1975

Tags: Miami Beach strippers, Miami Beach entertainers, Dorian Dennis, Zorita the Snake Dancer, film researcher, burlesque in Miami Beach, Miami Beach history

Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, Virginia Hill and Miami Beach

1928

By Jane Feehan

Ben “Bugsy” Siegel (b. 1906) was shot dead in the rented Beverly Hills home of girlfriend Virginia Hill in 1947 while she was partying in Paris.  The girl from Alabama liked to party in many cities and Miami Beach was one of them.

During Hill’s early days with the Chicago mob, she caught the eye of trucking and oil millionaire - and mob front man - Major Arterburn Riddle who took her on a vacation to Miami Beach; it was probably her first time there.  When she hooked up with Siegel, he bought her a house from publisher William Randolph Hearst’s son at Number One Sunset Isle in Miami Beach.

After Siegel’s murder, which was never solved, Hill’s brother Charles “Chick” Hill and his girlfriend Jerri Mason, took refuge at his sister’s Miami Beach home. Virginia made her way back to the U.S. and headed for Sunset Isle. While in South Florida, she bought a $6,500 car and took off for Mexico. The house was sold soon after.

Virginia Hill continued to make the news when she appeared before the U.S. Senate Crime Investigating Committee (1951) headed by Sen. Estes Kefauver.  She appeared in a $5,000 mink coat late for testimony; Kefauver excused her saying "ladies from my part of the country are traditionally late.”  When asked how she supported her lavish lifestyle, Hill said she made a living with lucky horse-racing bets. Those bets, according to some, were all won at the end of the year and in even amounts.

In 1951, Hill, who federal agents chased around the country for back taxes, married Austrian Hans Hauser, a ski instructor with whom she had a son.  She died of an apparent (and much disputed) sleeping pill overdose in Austria in 1966 at age 49. Today the 1930s Miami Beach house Virginia Hill occasionally called home still stands. Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

For more on Kefauver hearings, see index

Use search box at top right to find more on gambling and mobsters.

Sources:

Miami News, Mar. 15, 1951

Miami News, Jul. 7, 1951

Palm Beach Post, Mar. 25, 1966

Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 2, 1992


Tags: Organized crime in Miami, Miami Beach history, Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, Virginia Hill, Sen. Kefauver, film researcher, Florida film research,  historical researcher

Kenann Building and its Chateau Madrid: singular in architecture and nightlife memories

See photo below for changes to this corner

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale's Kenann Building, the cylindrical landmark structure at the northwest corner of Federal Highway and Oakland Park Boulevard was completed in 1964. Builder and realtor Kenneth G. Burnstein entertained an idea for such a structure long before it was set to blueprints by architect F. Louis Wolff.*

Historically, builders shied away from round structures because they were thought to be more expensive to construct, restricted usable space, and were tough to get loans for.  Burnstein, 32 years-old at the time, admitted it took longer than usual to land a loan for the eight-story office building but he was successful in obtaining one in New York.

Ground was broken for the building, named for Burnstein and his wife Ann, on Nov. 22, 1963, the day President Kennedy was assassinated. Seven stories were dedicated to 1,000 square-foot offices. Each floor had its own air conditioning unit.  Burnstein claimed the structure offered 30 percent more usable space than did conventional construction.

When completed, the building featured a circular entrance of reinforced concrete that tapered vertically to a singular round pylon, similar to that used by Frank Lloyd Wright in his design of the Johnson Wax headquarters built in 1940. The lobby included two cypress trees four-stories tall, and a large pool with waterfalls, plants and fish.

Construction also included a colorful, external 60-foot vertical mosaic, a South Florida design element popular in the 1960s and 70s. According to Tropical Magazine (Oct. 2012), the mosaic, with images of swordfish, ocean waves, and tropical palms, holds the distinction of being the “best mid-century mosaic from Fort Lauderdale to Miami.”

Other than for its design, the Kenann Building evokes memories among many for its eighth floor nightclub and dining venue, Chateau Madrid. For 20 years the night spot, opened by John and Diane Bachan, was the place to go for top-tier entertainment including Rosemary Clooney, Buddy Greco, Tony Martin, and Louis Armstrong. Armstrong played there for one week in 1966, including New Year’s Eve. Revelers could have dinner and be entertained by Armstrong for $25 per person.  (Trivia: the club was also managed by Philip Zaslavsky, once manager of Wolfie’s on Sunrise Boulevard and later part owner of Durty Nelly’s. He died in 1991.)

Fortune changed for Burnstein, who first came to Fort Lauderdale from Mobile, AL in 1957. He became the target of several investigations. The realtor reportedly died in a plane crash in 1976. According to legend, only his severed finger was found.

After Burnstein’s death, the Kenann Building slid into disrepair; tenants left. In 1991, investors purchased the property for $1.3 million. Architect Dan Duckham redesigned the landmark and included a second level attachment that resembles a satellite that has since been occupied by various restaurants and nightclubs.

The Kenann Building, with its colorful past and blend of Wolff and Duckham architectural features, still holds a special place in Fort Lauderdale's past—and its present. Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

* F. Louis Wolff and wife Jean established an endowed scholarship for the School of Architecture at Florida Atlantic University in 2002.

KenAnn Building 9/2023; it no longer dominates
the Oakland Park, Federal Highway corner

 Sources:

Miami News, June 28, 1964

Miami News, Dec. 27, 1966

Miami News, Oct. 11, 1991

Tropic Magazine, Oct., 2012

 Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Chateau Madrid, Fort Lauderdale architects, film researcher, architects

Stiltsville: Poor man's paradise, party central, millionaires' retreat and ...

Photo from Wikipedia 

By Jane Feehan

Stiltsville, a community of fishing shacks in Biscayne Bay that morphed into a millionaire’s retreat, was legendary among those who grew up in Miami during the mid-20^th century as a party destination. But it was more than that.  For others it promised good fishing, solitude without the modern-day intrusion of television and telephone, or a place to reconnect with family.

Fishing shacks on stilts went up as early as 1922 in the shallow blue-green Biscayne Bay tidal flats off Cape Florida. Famed fisherman and lighthouse tender, Eddie “Crawfish” Walker, built a shack that served as center of a growing colony he set mangrove pilings for in the 1930s. Among those shacks was the first social center, the Calvert Club. The Quarterdeck Club, built by Ed Turner in 1940, added to the community’s party reputation.

That reputation catapulted among the “smart set” after Life Magazine (Feb. 10, 1941) featured the Quarterdeck as a celebrity magnet. The club went through a series of owners after it was destroyed by the 1945 hurricane. One owner, Harold Clark, developed the site as an exclusive yacht club and employed a French chef who specialized in local seafood plucked from the waters beneath the building.

Crawfish Eddie’s shack was also swept away by the 1945 storm. He died in 1949 (at his residence on NW 69^th Street) but not before seeing the Biscayne Bay shack colony grow to 20 wooden houses after World War II.

Quarterdeck remained party central but was damaged in a 1950 storm. It reopened in 1951 with 300 guests in attendance. The “amazing club on stilts” offered 20 slips for yachts, several luxury hotel rooms, a swimming pool, a live fish pen and a lounge designed by Chris Jones. Good times, if not good business, lasted at the Quarterdeck until 1961 (owned then by Karl Mongelluzzo) when it burned to the water’s edge.

Stiltsville drew politicians, including Florida Gov. Leroy Collins, lawyers, stag party aficionados, and a host of other pleasure seekers, including bachelor Ted Kennedy, for decades. By the 1960s, the notorious Bikini Club opened on a shipwrecked yacht, Jeff.  Known for serving free drinks to women in bikinis, it was shuttered in 1965 for selling liquor without a license.

Complaints also rolled in about the shacks serving as blight on Biscayne Bay. But Stiltsville became a community of millionaires. Many of them were lawyers and politicians whose weekend retreats built for $20, 000 to $80,000, helped redeem a blighted appearance. But hurricanes continued to take their toll, defining the community’s history. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965, new pilings were to be constructed with concrete.  

The 1980s brought changes as well as national attention to Stiltsville. The water colony (by then 14 houses) served as backdrop to several episodes of TV’s Miami Vice. The community was also featured in a Pittsburgh Paint national ad campaign. Perhaps the most significant event of that decade was the establishment of Biscayne National Park in 1980.  Boundaries of this 173,000-acre park include Stiltsville.

The state transferred the $1000 yearly leases (at one time a dollar) to Biscayne National Park.   Hurricane Andrew (1992) took seven more houses down. Today, seven structures remain but they are not privately owned; they are co-managed by the park and the Stiltsville Trust.

What remains of the historic village can be viewed by private boat or on a tour boat operated by Miami History and narrated by area historian Paul George, PhD (see: www.historymiami.org).

I shall treasure memories of a party or two in Stiltsville; there will never be another place like it in those waters off Miami. Copyright © 2014. All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

Sources:

Miami News, Feb. 16, 1949
Miami News, Dec. 8, 1951

Spokesman Review, Aug. 25, 1971

Boca Raton News, Dec. 17, 1989

The News, Aug. 17, 1995
www.stiltsville.org/pages/history.html

Tags: Miami history, film researcher, party places in Miami