‘I hear that the Hotel Tropicana’s quite comfortable,’ observes Sean Connery’s James Bond as he heads off to check in after escaping certain death in a burning coffin in Diamonds Are Forever.
In its 1960s and 1970s heyday, when 007 stayed there, the ‘Trop’ was certainly the name to drop in Las Vegas.
It was the glitziest hotel-casino in the desert city, attracting stars from Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds to Frank Sinatra and Muhammad Ali.
The celebrated big cat-taming magicians Siegfried & Roy made their debut on its stage, as did another Vegas institution – feathered showgirls – in the form of the topless Folies Bergere troupe who were imported from Paris and became the Las Vegas Strip’s longest-running show.
And as one might expect from a venue with strong links to Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and the rest of the ‘Rat Pack’ – some of whom had a financial stake in the Trop – it was also one of Sin City’s most shady hotels.
Actress and model Kitty Dolan poses outside The Tropicana Hotel in 1958 in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was the glitziest hotel-casino in the desert city, attracting stars from Elizabeth Taylor to Frank Sinatra
The Tropicana continued to grow to the point where it boasted two towers over 35 acres that offered nearly 1,500 rooms. In the 1980s, blackjack tables were even set up in the pool
Built in 1957 with Mafia money, it continued to be run for years by organised crime. Weeks after its grand opening, Mob boss Frank Costello was shot in the head in New York – but survived.
When police searched his pockets, they found a piece of paper listing details of the Tropicana’s revenue (an impressive $651,284 in its first 24 days – over $7million in modern money) and how much of it was being passed on to his cronies.
But now the show’s over.
On Tuesday, just two days shy of its 67th birthday, thousands of nostalgic gamblers and fans packed the casino as it took its last bets, checked out its final hotel guests and closed for good. In the finest traditions of Vegas’s capacity for reinvention, it is scheduled to be demolished in October and replaced by a distinctly less glamorous £1.2billion baseball stadium, which will become the new home of the Oakland Athletics.
‘It’s time. It ran its course,’ said Charlie Granado, a barman at the Tropicana for 38 years. ‘It makes me sad but on the other hand it’s a happy ending.’
Yet even the most sentimental Las Vegas lover had to admit that the Tropicana, which had gone through various facelifts but was increasingly plagued by broken windows and peeling paint, has seen better days.
Visitors to Vegas nowadays may struggle to associate its famous ‘Strip’ of soaring tower blocks and tacky themed casinos with the concepts of stylishness and sophistication but the Trop once had both in spades.
It may have been the third casino to go up on the Strip but it was easily the most expensive and opulent. The $15million price tag – a fortune in the late 1950s – paid for a hotel-casino that was tiny by today’s standards. It had just 300 rooms spread over a meagre three floors in two wings.
Surrounded by desert in a county that, back then, had a population of under 120,000, the Tropicana’s necklace-shaped layout – with manicured lawns, mahogany-panelled rooms and 60ft tulip-shaped fountain outside the entrance – earned it the nickname the ‘Tiffany of the Strip’.
Pin-up crooner and actor Eddie Fisher was one of the first acts to perform at the Tropicana, bringing with him the first two of his five wives, Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor
The celebrated big cat-taming magicians Siegfried & Roy made their debut on its stage, as did another Vegas institution – feathered showgirls – in the form of the topless Folies Bergere troupe who were imported from Paris and became the Las Vegas Strip’s longest-running show
‘It’s the Taj Mahal of the American scene,’ rhapsodised a local journalist who was given a preview tour and predicted that this innovative brand of ‘resort hotel’ would ‘attract a new clientele to Las Vegas’.
But the first people it attracted were professional criminals who saw the potential offered by gambling, particularly when it came to creaming off the takings.
Mainstream lenders regarded casinos as too risky, while Mobsters not only had bucket-loads of ill-gotten gains to invest but also had experience running illegal gambling networks.
Casinos further offered criminals a perfect opportunity for ‘skimming’, extracting revenue before it was officially counted and so avoiding taxes.
The discovery of the incriminating note in Luciano crime family boss Frank Costello’s pocket alerted the authorities to the scale of the Mafia’s grip on Las Vegas but they failed to weed out every Mob-connected member of the Tropicana’s management.
Meanwhile, visiting mafiosi and their celebrity friends also liked the Trop’s louche brand of entertainment. In 1959, it paid £590,000 to bring in Les Folies Bergere, a celebrated bare-breasted revue from Paris.
The high-kicking girls of the Tropicana featured in the 1964 Elvis film Viva Las Vegas and the revue would remain there, titillating tourists and off-duty gamblers, until 2009.
On Tuesday, just two days shy of its 67th birthday, thousands of nostalgic gamblers and fans packed the casino as it took its last bets, checked out its final hotel guests and closed for good
In the finest traditions of Vegas’s capacity for reinvention, it is scheduled to be demolished in October and replaced by a distinctly less glamorous £1.2billion baseball stadium, which will become the new home of the Oakland Athletics
Pin-up crooner and actor Eddie Fisher was one of the first acts to perform at the Tropicana, bringing with him the first two of his five wives, Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, who scandalously betrayed Reynolds, her best friend, by starting an affair with Fisher.
Sammy Davis Jr became the first African-American to own a share in a Las Vegas resort when he bought a stake in the Tropicana in the early 1970s. By then, he and fellow Rat Pack members, such as Sinatra and Dean Martin, had performed there many times.
In 1975, the Tropicana hosted Muhammad Ali, who went there to limber up before a world heavyweight championship bout against Ron Lyle. The glitzy hotel also became Hollywood’s first choice for shooting casino scenes and it featured in 1972’s The Godfather.
But the Tropicana’s failure to shake off the Mob’s secret heavy investment in the business led, in 1979, to the FBI raiding the casino after a major eavesdropping exercise known as ‘Operation Strawman’ that was thought to have inspired the Martin Scorsese thriller Casino.
In one of the FBI tapes, crooked Tropicana executive Joe Agosto was caught claiming that Harry Reid, then the chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission and later one of the most senior Democrats in the US Senate, was in his pocket. Reid vehemently denied the allegations and, after the state governor accepted his word, kept his job.
It emerged that at least $280,000 had been siphoned off from the casino cashier cage (where takings are counted) to a powerful crime family in Kansas City, Missouri. Several members of that Mob family who became secret casino shareholders after securing pension fund loans from the Teamsters were convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
‘I hear that the Hotel Tropicana’s quite comfortable,’ observes Sean Connery ‘s James Bond as he heads off to check in after escaping certain death in a burning coffin in Diamonds Are Forever, 1971
Built in 1957 with Mafia money, the hotel continued to be run for years by organised crime. Weeks after its grand opening, Italian-born Mob boss Frank Costello was shot in the head in New York – but survived
As a result, the Gaming Commission, which regulated gambling, demanded the Tropicana find respectable owners and it was sold to the Ramada Inn hotel empire.
Even then, the hotel-casino wasn’t totally freed from trouble. In 1984, it became the target of a bombing campaign over its use of non-union employees during a bitter strike on the Strip. In one incident, a bomb outside the Trop damaged the cars of nine staff who had crossed picket lines.
In the succeeding decades, the Tropicana continued to grow to the point where it boasted two towers over 35 acres that offered nearly 1,500 rooms. In the 1980s, blackjack tables were even set up in the pool.
The Tropicana’s ownership has changed hands several times since it was bought by Ramada, with Bally’s Corp, an entertainment company, acquiring it for £117million in 2022.
However, as historians note, hotels built in the 1950s were not designed for the 2020s. ‘What they say is true,’ said local academic David Schwartz, noting that Las Vegas ‘is not a sentimental town’.
It’s increasingly not just a casino town, either. The sports industry long avoided Las Vegas as, until a Supreme Court decision in 2018, sports betting was illegal in the US. Now the floodgates are open and sport – as exemplified by the new baseball stadium replacing the Trop – is competing with casinos as the city’s main attraction.
An attraction for some, maybe, but hardly one that would have had James Bond reaching for his cheque book.