Jane's History Nook

Live entertainment reigned in Fort Lauderdale restaurants and clubs of the 1960s. Below is a list of hot spots, some with the entertainers they regularly showcased. A few, such as Woody Woodbury, were more familiar to people than the venues they appeared at. Andy Bartha’s Dixieland Band was a big draw at several places in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano. There were other clubs and restaurants, but these places were landmarks.

Bahama Hotel– Woody Woodbury – See more about Woody at: www.woodywoodbury.com

Bahia Cabana - off A1A (still there) featured lounge music

Beach Club Hotel - A1A and Oakland Park Boulevard

Captain Al Starts Showboat Belle at A1A and 36^th Street

Cellar Bar on Federal Highway

Charcoal Pit– Federal and Sunrise Boulevard – Living Room Lounge

Chateau Madrid– Kennan Building – Federal and Oakland Park

Colonial Lounge – Federal Highway – any drink 48 cents

Dante’s Restaurant– Federal Highway

Fazio’s House of Prime Ribs– Federal Highway

Forum Restaurant– A1A and Las Olas – also featured lounge music at night

Gaslight Inn– State road 7 near Broward Boulevard

Heilman’s - at one time featured duo Roger Fenton and Faye Cantrell who played drums wearing long white gloves.

Jolly Roger Hotelfeatured the Punchinellos.

Lamplighter– McNab Road in Pompano – Piano by Mr. Pinky

Le Dome of the Four Seasons– off Las Olas, west side of Intracoastal. Four Seasons condo still there

Mai Kai Restaurant– Polynesian revue. Still operating.

Marlin Beach Hotelon A1A showcased “Flip” Phillips

Mark 2100 - 1900 N. A1A with its Patio Bar nearly on the sand at the beach

Mousetrap – 2960 N. Federal Highway featured Pat Brown, Ed Hunt, Peggy Martin

Pier Top Lounge at Pier 66 – opened in 1965

Round Table Restaurant at Oakland Park and Federal – lounge with live music and jukeboxes with accompanying movies/videos – ahead of its time.

Rum House at the Galt Ocean Mile Hotel

Sea Shore Resort– A1A north of Sunrise featured Danny Bridge and the Tunesmen at the Tapis Lounge

Statler Hilton Hotelon the Galt Mile

Tale O’ the Tiger– N. Federal Highway – featured Jay Wray

Tea House of the Tokyo Moon– Seabreeze Boulevard – live music

TJ's Lounge on Commercial Boulevard - jazz

Yankee Clipperfeatured a Polynesian Revue with Hal Aloma’s B and

Today, home of world acclaimed mermaid show at the Wreck Bar (swimming pool with portal windows to the bar)

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s, Fort Lauderdale entertainment history

By Jane Feehan

Boom times beckoned many to Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, including organized criminal types.

In 1922, a well-dressed group of men rented the Oliver home downtown with more than sand and surf in their plans.The visitors, who drove fancy cars, displayed expensive golf bags and threw big tips around, didn’t extend social invitations to locals to their rented quarters, raising suspicions. But would-be gamblers had little need for invitations. They beat a path to the rented Oliver home, hoping to leave with winnings from off-track betting. The well-heeled gang promised sure wins; they had wiretapped telephones at horse tracks.

Their elaborate scheme didn’t really include wiretapping; it was a ruse that eventually sent the unsuspecting to New Orleans by train with a gang member to pick up big winnings at their “headquarters.” The gang member would disappear en-route, leaving the gambler with nothing but a train ride. Victims, engaged in illegal gambling, didn’t bother reporting their misfortune to the police.

Nevertheless, word got around about bookies and wiretapping and a government raid on February 19, 1922, netted 13. Bail was posted and the men (all had given fictitious names), were set free. That was the end of the first organized crime foray into Fort Lauderdale.

Miami News, Mar. 3, 1922

The following month, Gov. Carey Hardee appointed Paul C. Bryan as Broward’s new sheriff. Bryan delivered a warning to criminals: those who came to Broward County would come to grief. “No wiretappers shall operate here.”

Hello Miami.

(Use search box to find more
"Florida history" on this blog)

____________

Sources:

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

2. Fort Lauderdale Herald, Feb. 20, Feb. 22, 1922

3. Miami News, March 3, 1922.

Tags: Florida in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, organized crime in South Florida, Fort Lauderdale history, Sheriff Paul Ryan, film research

By Jane Feehan

With world news abuzz about polio cases appearing recently in Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan, it might be interesting to revisit the polio epidemic in the 1940s and 1950s in Fort Lauderdale. Below are bits and pieces that appeared in newspapers of those decades.

In 1946, North Carolina banned visitors from Fort Lauderdale for a few weeks out of fear hundreds of children visiting summer camps from the city would bring the polio virus with them. It had been a normal year for polio cases in North Carolina with about 19 cases reported. The ban had an economic impact on rail travel.

· In 1946, sanitation workers sprayed DDT in alleys and garbage cans behind restaurants in Fort Lauderdale. Garbage trucks were followed by trucks with the deadly spray. Workers complained of sores and other skin problems after they were exposed daily to DDT. The Fort Lauderdale Caterers Association announced plans to underwrite spraying of the entire city.

· Polio cases with fatalities declined in 1949 in Fort Lauderdale, and rose in 1952 with a total of 77 cases.

· But the city, as Florida, was hit hard in 1953 and 1954. About 57,000 and 36,000 cases were reported respectively nation-wide, making those years among the worst of polio epidemics in the U.S. since it first appeared in 1894 in this country.

· An outbreak occurred in northwest Fort Lauderdale in 1954 with 65 cases. About 2,000 mothers and children lined up at the public health building to receive gamma globulin immunizations. More than 200 were turned away when they ran out of supplies. Fort Lauderdale reported a total of 95 cases that year. The Salk vaccine was made available later in 1954 and was successful in qwelling the epidemic in Florida and across of the nation.

· A D-Day vet, Robert Q. “Whitey" Garrigus, Jr., who survived the Normandy invasion in 1944 as part of the 507^th parachute regiment and subsequently spent one year in a German prison camp, fell victim to bulbar polio in Fort Lauderdale. The former Miami High football star died July 5, 1954 at Variety Children’s hospital after being stricken by the disease at his home at 1500 NW 11 Place.

· After Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine was developed and used successfully at schools during the 1954 epidemic, cases dropped dramatically in Fort Lauderdale and across the nation.

· The last U.S. case occurring naturally, i.e., not via the vaccine, was in 1979. A case was reported in Fort Lauderdale in 1996 that may have resulted from the vaccine.

· Rotary Club International has embraced the mission of wiping out polio around the globe. According to its website, the last case of wild poliovirus in the Americas occurred in 1991, and by 1994, the Western Hemisphere became polio-free.

Sources:

Miami News, June 16, 1946

Miami News, Jan. 11, 1949

Miami News, Oct. 13, 1952

St. Petersburg Times, July 2, 1954

Miami News, July 6, 1954

Miami News, July 18, 1954

Palm Beach Post, May 14, 1955

Ocala Star Banner May 15, 1955

Palm Beach Post, May 9, 1970

Fort Lauderdale Daily News, July 3, 1996

Peacock Inn circa 1900

By Jane Feehan

Joining the pantheon of South Florida pioneers that includes Julia Tuttle, Henry Flagler and Frank Stranahan are Charles and Isabella Peacock of England. The two were encouraged to come to the area by Charles’ brother Jack, keeper of the House of Refuge near what is now Miami Beach.

The Peacocks, who operated a meat business, left England in 1875 to come to the wilds of Florida with their three boys, Charles, Alfred and Harry. They made their way via New York and Key West to Fort Dallas at the mouth of the Miami River, an outpost that pre-dated the “Magic City.”

“We conducted a trading post and exchanged merchandise and commodities with the Indians who brought in gopher skins, plumes, corn and pumpkins,” recalled Harry Peacock in 1917 (Metropolis, July 27, 1917). “Besides trading, we also manufactured starch from komtie [coontie] selling that in Key West.”

After seven years the family built an inn at Jack’s Bight (named for Jack Peacock) in Coconut Grove. Built with “beach combed wood” the hotel opened in 1882 or 1883. The only hotel on the mainland between Key West and Lake Worth then, the Bayview House, as they named it, quickly attracted visitors. At times they were unable to accommodate all who wanted to stay. Rates were $1.50 a day, $7-9 a week or $30-$35 a month.

The inn housed a post office and courthouse and served as focal point of the growing community. According to the Miami News (Jan. 8, 1964), its visitors included President Grover Cleveland, actor JosephJefferson, playwright Henry Guy Carlton, author Kirk Munroe and Arthur Haigh of distillery fame who eventually bought Cat Cay. During the 1890s, railroad magnate Henry Flagler stayed there; by that time it was known as the Peacock Inn. There were five houses in the area when the Peacocks opened their hotel. Observing Isabella’s connection with the growing settlement, hotel guest Flagler nicknamed her the “Mother of Coconut Grove.” She served as “doctor, judge, minister and friend to the community.”

Life in the settlement seemed to suit pioneer Isabella. She mastered the art of cooking frontier style, serving stewed venison, boiled Seminole squash, corn pone, turtle fry, roast wild hog and turkey. She helped found the Church of the Union Chapel where Henry Ward Beecher’s nephew once preached and where she held the first Sunday school class in South Florida.

Peacock Park

Aging and infirm, Charles Peacock sold the hotel in 1902 to G.F. Schneider of Philadelphia who converted it into a school. Charles Peacock died in 1905; Isabella in 1917. The Peacock Inn was torn down in 1926, its site purchased by the City of Miami in 1934. Established as the Coconut Grove Bayfront Park, the site was renamed in honor of the Peacocks in 1973. Isabella and Charles picked a beautiful location for their inn; it’s one of the toughest spots in town to get a parking place today.

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Sources:

Metropolis, July 31, 1902

Metropolis, July 27, 1917

Miami News, March 6, 1958

Palm Beach Post, Jan. 8, 1964

Tags: Peacock Inn, Miami history, Isabella Peacock, Charles Peacock

Miami Daily Metropolis, March 22, 1923

By Jane Feehan

“Next movie will tax all Miami facilities for scenes and props,” the Aug, 22, 1922 Miami Daily Metropolis headline claimed.

The picture, Passion Vine, set in the South Pacific and directed by Rex Ingram (1892-1950), would include a live shark attack, a palm-tree-lined beach, and jungle waterfalls for the climatic final scene. Props would also include musical instruments, an assortment of odd articles and a collection of “natives.” The natives were provided by Seminole Willie Willie. The Indians, said Miami Studios, Inc. principle John Brunton, held a highly developed dramatic instinct, weeping realistically and enacting mob scenes with a singular expertise.

The story rang enthusiastic for the budding movie industry in Hialeah, a Miami suburb. Dublin-born Ingram was considered “one of the world’s best, if not the best, directors in the world.” To have him make a picture with wife and popular leading lady Alice Terry (1899-1987) at the Hialeah studio was a promising sign of things to come.

A news story nearly four months later did not wax as enthusiastic. On Dec. 1, Ingram, as he was to leave with his crew to film the valley scene in Cuba instead of Puerto Rico, complained that he should have visited Miami first himself, instead of sending a representative.

Ingram told the reporter that the picture cost $125,000 over budget and that they should have wrapped it up three weeks earlier. Rains dogged the production. “I didn’t know I was coming to Miami in the middle of the hurricane season.” He also groused about the lack of studio equipment, poor laboratory work and incompetent assistants.

“We got no cooperation at Hialeah,” said Ingram. “Workers did not take to pictures seriously.” Some were told to stay late to finish painting the set one night and instead left at 5 to see a picture show; he and his crew had to find brushes and complete the work themselves.

Ingram did not leave without thanking Brunton, whose hands, the director said, were tied because of the lack of capital. He heaped praise on those who provided their beach-side houses and pools for some of the scenes and thanked Captain Thompson for rounding up a few sharks for the drama.

The movie, based on John Russell’s novel, Passion Vine, is also known as Where the Pavement Ends. The film is lost. The picture, with its “cast of 1000s” opened in Miami at the Fairfax in March, 1923. Before making the Passion Vine, Director Ingram considered Black Orchids, and Trifling Women to be his best works.

Ingram opened a studio in France in 1923 where, perhaps, he found more cooperation, dryer weather and better equipment. He left the movie industry a year or two later after a failed picture he made in Morocco and returned to Los Angeles where he sculpted and wrote. Hialeah dropped out of the picture making scene not long afterward.

For more on the Hialeah studio, see my other blog at:

http://janesbits.blogspot.com/2012/08/florida-history-largest-motion-picture.html

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, April 10, 1922

Miami Daily Metropolis, Aug. 22, 1922

Miami Daily Metropolis, Dec. 1, 1922

Miami Daily Metrolpolis March 22, 1923

Wikipedia

Tags: Miami history, Hialeah history, Miami film industry, film researcher, Jane Feehan

Capone in 1930 (FBI) see below*

Al Capone folklore in Florida is nearly as ubiquitous as that of George Washington visiting towns in the northeast. For our first president, many of the stories were, indeed, the facts behind the battles fought during America’s War of Independence.

Not so with gangster Capone. Yes, he did live and die on Miami’s Palm Island. He did drive up the South Florida coast for recreation and to seek business opportunities during the boom times of the 1920s. But he did not buy what became known as “Capone Island” in the Intracoastal Waterway off Deerfield Beach.

During 1928 or 1929, the gangster and a few friends stopped at a speakeasy just south of Boca Raton, where Capone viewed a peninsula jutting out into the water off the north bank of the Hillsboro Canal west of the Intracoastal Waterway. The secluded, vacant property probably looked like an ideal place to conduct some bootlegging biz during Prohibition. Capone made an offer for the southeast portion of the peninsula.

A Saint Petersburg, FL, newspaper reported in 1930 that Judge Vincent C. Giblin, “chief of Al Capone’s legal staff in Miami,” was going to buy the property where Capone was to build a residence for $250,000 and a pool for $125,000. This was, no doubt, hyperbole. The Chicago gangster had paid only $40,000 for his Palm Island digs in 1928. The reporter editorialized that Capone’s “presence in Miami is destructive; his presence in Broward County, close to the Boca Raton Club in Palm Beach County will be destructive to the club and both counties.”

The state was willing to make a deal but the transaction never materialized for two reasons: Boca Raton residents did not want Capone in the neighborhood and the state wanted a road to be built on the property. The road was the deal breaker; Capone walked away. Anyway, he would not have had much time to enjoy it. In 1932, at 33 years old, he was convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz for seven years.

Today the 53-acre property is Deerfield Island, operating as a Broward County park since 1981 after it was leased from the state for 99 years. Waterway dredging during the 1960s created a canal, which turned the peninsula into an island (Capone's vision?) The park serves as a popular Boy Scout camp, wildlife refuge and recreational area for boaters and hikers.

See more on Capone on this blog.

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Sources:

Evening Independent, Saint Petersburg, FL. July 19, 1930

The Day, New London, CT, Jan. 25, 1985

http://www.broward.org/parks/deerfieldislandpark/pages/default.aspx

"Al Capone in 1930" by Wide World Photos, Chicago Bureau (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - http://gottahaveit.com/Al_Capone_Original_1930_s_Wire_Photograph-ITEM14763.aspx. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Al_Capone_in_1930.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Al_Capone_in_1930.jpg

Tags: Al Capone, Capone in Florida, Deerfield Island, Broward County history

Opening in Jacksonville, 1914*

Robert Vignola, director; Kenean Buel,

writer, actor, director, studio manager

By Jane Feehan

Miami attracted a series of filmmakers in its early days (see labels for additional posts on the subject), including D.W Griffith in 1919. One of the most prolific in the business was the Kalem Company who filmed daily life in Miami as early as 1913.

Kalem's L.A. Darling came to Miami in March of that year and his activities made front page news of the local paper.

He produced 14 films in a matter of days capturing shots of tourists at the Royal Palm hotel, millionaire yachtsmen returning from a day of fishing, the Great Commoner William Jennings Bryan—a new resident of Coconut Grove—and pioneer and large land holder Mary Brickell. He also filmed six Seminoles in traditional dress. It was reported that the “film was to advertise to the continent the Paradise of the eastern south, the California that is right at home.”

Darling’s mission was to film an accurate representation of life in the sub-tropics, including its ocean waters, palm trees and coconuts. One film, aimed at the “lady suffragettes,” showed Mary Brickell “bossing the job” or directing a man as he gathered coconuts. Another shows one of Seminoles at “Indian headquarters, Girtman’s Cash grocery,” who, only after much cajoling, moved around for the camera. The Seminoles were convinced Darling didn’t know what he was doing; they assumed the only pictures were still shots.

Political celebrity William Jennings Bryan, who served as congressman for Nebraska, ran for U.S. president three times and later argued for the state in the Scopes trial, came to Coconut Grove to build a home in 1913. Darling caught him on film with his sleeves rolled up directing construction workers on the site.The filmmaker regretted he hadn’t stopped by three weeks earlier when he could have found Bryan hoeing in his radish patch.

Bryan home in Coconut Grove, 1922. **

Darling also captured shots of a grapefruit packing house, residential neighborhoods and traffic in business areas. His work took a matter of weeks, including the making of negatives to sell to local movie houses. Theater owners needed lots of product to change up programs on a weekly or even daily basis.

Established in New York City in 1907 and operating from 131 West 24th Street, Kalem Company filmed on location throughout the U.S and Ireland. They opened studios in California and Jacksonville and in doing so, became the first company to film year-round. The company made the first Ben-Hur and the first adaptation of

Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. Its legacy includes more than 1,200 films including several about Florida: The Seminole’s Vengeance, A Florida Feud: or, Love in the Everglades, In Old Florida, St. Augustine, Florida, the Celery Industry in Florida, and Cypress Logging in Florida.

Kalem was purchased in 1917 by Vitagraph Studios.

*State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/5975- opening in Jacksonville 1914

Sources:

** State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/32186bryan home by Fishbaugh, W. A.(William A.), 1873-1950

See more on William Jennings Bryan at Jane's Bits: http://bit.ly/1oMQmt5

Sources:

Miami Metropolis, March 12, 1913

Miami Metropolis, March 13, 1913

Mast, Gerald. A Short History of the Movies. New York: Pegasus, 1971

Wikipedia

IMDB.org

Florida Memories

Tags: early filmmakers in Florida, Florida movie studios, Kalem Company,Jane Feehan film researcher, Miami history

By Jane Feehan

The nation’s first oceangoing hydrofoil, the H.S. Denison, sailed out of Port Everglades February 2, 1964 for a sea trial. The vessel, first of its kind designed for high speeds over rough waters, was scheduled for passenger service between Fort Lauderdale and Nassau.

Capt. P.O. Clarke ran the vessel through an impressive test. At 23 knots, the 104.6 foot Denisonbegan to rise from the water. At 30 knots it was free from the seas and at 50 knots it was “flying” on its foils with the hull five feet above the ocean.

Though its sea trial was impressive, the Denison remained an experimental vessel, a disappointment to many. The project, initially developed by the Marine Administration (MARAD) of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Aircraft Engine Corporation and General Electric, was coordinated by enthusiastic supporter Charles R. Denison in 1958. The group’s objective was to research possibilities for express cargo shipping and passenger travel at 200 knots. Dension died early in the ship’s design, which diminished impetus for and focus on the project in the years that followed.

It was reported that 73 companies collectively invested more than $8 million to develop the hydrofoil named posthumously for its most ardent supporter. General Electric built a 14,000 horsepower gas turbine engine for the experimental 94-ton ship. The vessel was completed and launched June 5, 1962 by Grumman Corp. in Oyster Bay, Long Island. Sea trials commenced a few days later and were conducted along the eastern seaboard from Maine to Florida in ocean waters as high as nine feet.

The U.S. Navy withdrew its support of the project to pursue development of its own hydrofoil, which affected commercial plans for the H.S. Dension. Today, a ferry service from Port Everglades to Bimini operates at about 32 knots for passenger and cargo transport—considerably slower than Charles R. Denison envisioned during the 1950s. Maybe speed is why a solid business model for ferry service in this market seems elusive.

Sources:

Miami News, Feb. 2, 1964

www.foils.org/denison.htm

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Fort Lauderdale historian, Port Everglades history, film researcher, hydrofoils, maritime history

Fort Lauderdale

By Jane Feehan

Fans of award-winning writer Carl Hiaasen usually associate his name with one of his many novels set in Miami or with the Miami Herald, where he contributes a column. But few know that his grandfather Carl Andreas Hiaasen was a Fort Lauderdale pioneer.

The elder Hiaasen was born in North Dakota in 1894. After earning a law degree at the University of North Dakota in 1922, he was enticed to come to booming Fort Lauderdale by World War I buddy Charles McCune. Hiaasen gladly went south to seek adventure but his plan was to return home.

The native North Dakotan’s early adventures in Florida included teaching and preaching. Then McCune asked him to join a law firm—Fort Lauderdale’s first—that he established with attorney C.P. Weidling; Hiaasen took up his friend’s offer and never returned to North Dakota.

He didn’t have much time to think about home. There was enough work at the law office to keep two dozen lawyers busy 24 hours a day. Hopeful developers were flocking to the fledgling Fort Lauderdale (established in 1915) and needed legal expertise for their land deals.

The firm became known as McCune Hiaasen and later McCune, Hiaasen, Kelley (and Fleming was added). Carl Hiaasen served as Port Everglades attorney, as counsel to Hollywood founder Joseph Young, to the City of Fort Lauderdale and to a number of other high-profile clients.

Hiaasen married and had one son Kermit Odell, who also practiced law and is father of today’s novelist, Carl Hiaasen. The senior Carl Hiaasen worked until his firm disbanded in 1990. During his career, the Fort Lauderdale pioneer was lauded in at least eight Who’s Who books and was a member of the bar of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1926. He died at his Coral Ridge home in June, 1994, a few weeks after his 100^th birthday.

Sources:

Palm Beach Post, Feb. 14, 1935

Miami News, April 12, 1950

Boca Raton News, June 16, 1994
Weidling, Philip J. , Burghard, August. Checkered Sunshine. Gainesville: University of Florida Press (1966).

Tags:Fort Lauderdale in the 1920s, Fort Lauderdale pioneers, film researcher, Carl Hiaasen

A California Lustron house

By Jane Feehan

A housing shortage affected the nation—and South Florida—after World War II. Among the reasons was pent up demand and a dearth of building materials (see my post at http://bit.ly/17FH9wa ).

Carl G. Strandlund, then 48, set out to remedy the problem with his idea for a prefabricated house. He launched Lustron Corporation in 1947 with $1,000 jointly invested with his wife, some other private capital and a loan of about $37.5 million from the federal government. It was a controversial loan because of its risk, one that had many detractors in Washington, but the housing need, as defined by President Harry S. Truman, was critical. Strandlund, an engineer, put up his patent for his prefab house as collateral.

Strandlund’s plan was to build 150 a day or a total of 17,500 houses in a plant in Columbus, Ohio with thousands of employees. Lustron Corp. built about 2,500 units, which were delivered as kits. Walls, ceilings and roofs were made of porcelain-enameled steel. Plumbing fixtures were constructed of enamel. The automotive and aircraft industries provided the templates for wiring and lighting. The houses were low maintenance, simple structures of one or two bedrooms but they had low curb appeal.

Lustron Corporation declared bankruptcy in February, 1950.

There were production delays and lack of a distribution strategy. Also, little thought went into community or site planning. But a few were sent to Florida, with the largest number to Sarasota. Records indicate there was one located at 110 Hendricks Isle in Fort Lauderdale. One remains in this city, the Alfred and Olive Thorpe Lustron House, at 1001 NE 2^nd Street (see Broward link below for photo). It was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. A Lustron house in Boca Raton is recorded as demolished. One may still exist on Biscayne Boulevard in Miami and another is listed as being on 59^th Street near the Miami International Airport.

The largest assembly (60) of Lustron houses, was at the U.S. Marine military base in Quantico, VA. Information and history about the low-maintenance units is still being researched and compiled by the Lustron Preservation Organization (www.lustronpreservation.org). Some estimate that 2,000 still exist, a testimony to their structural integrity.

Sources:

* Fetters, Thomas A. Lustron Home: The History of a Postwar Prefabricated Housing Experiment. McFarland and Company. Jefferson, NC: 2002

*Lodi News-Sentinel, March 26, 1948

*Miami News, Jan. 13, 1951

* lustronpreservation.org

* www.broward.org/History/NationalRegister/Pages/AlfredandOliveThorpeLustronHouse.aspx

* Wikipedia

Crimean conference, 1945 L to R:

Sec. of State Edward Stettinius,

Maj. Gen. L. S. Kuter, Admiral E. J. King,

Gen. George C. Marshall,

Amb. Averill Harriman, Admiral William Leahy,

President F. D. Roosevelt. Crimea, Russia. LOC

Among the famous and powerful to visit South Florida during the 1940s was General George C. Marshall (b. 1880-d. 1959), U.S. Army Chief of Staff, who flew in unannounced to the Fort Lauderdale Municipal Airport Nov. 16, 1941.

Marshall “blitzkrieged the entire county” while he paid a visit to Edward Stettinius, Jr. (b. 1900 - d. 1949), former lend-lease administrator who was vacationing in Pompano Beach. The visit was termed social but turmoil in international affairs hinted at another reason for the brief overnight stay. Pearl Harbor was a few weeks away.

Pompano remained “blissfully unaware” of the confab until after Marshall’s departure at 7 a.m. the following day aboard a Great Douglas Bomber or C-41 (Eastern Airlines acquired a few C-41s and changed the designation to DC-3). The four-star general and his pilot, Major L.R. Parker, headed to North Carolina to fly over a maneuver area before landing in Washington, D.C.

Stettinius, who later served as secretary of state under President Truman, hosted Winston
Churchill in Pompano a few years later. It gave rise to the local myth that Churchill and President Roosevelt met at Cap’s Place for dinner when, in fact, food from the restaurant (and former gambling hub) was delivered to the Stettinius residence for the prime minister’s visit. Roosevelt had suggested Churchill visit Florida (without the president) when he needed a breather from the prime minister who had been in Washington. (In Pompano,Churchill totally disrobed at the ocean's edge and fell into the water, dousing his cigar, according to a Secret Service agent.)

General Marshall encouraged U.S. assistance in the post-WWII economic recovery of Europe, thus the naming of the Marshall Plan, an unprecedented $17 billion program that helped restore war-ravaged countries. Marshall also served as the nation’s third secretary of defense and as secretary of state under Truman.

Sources:
Fort Lauderdale Daily News, Nov. 17, 1941.
Manchester, William and Reid, Paul. The Last Lion, Vol. 3: Defender of the Realm. 2012.

Tags: WWII, Pompano Beach history, Florida during WWII, Gen. George Marshall, Edward Stettinius, Jr., film researcher

Wonderland, by
George Potter of Lake Worth

By Jane Feehan

In the late 1870s, Ohio physician James A. Henshall (1836-1925) urged a few “chronic” patients from Kentucky who lived on fried food to improve their health by joining him on a trip to South Florida. A “plain diet, pure air and bright sunshine” would go far in curing their ills.

Henshall had been to Palatka and St. Augustine but never south of those towns. He could not find anything to read about South Florida so decided to write of his travels during the winters of 1879-1880 and 1880-1881. What resulted was probably the first travelogue for the area, Camping and Cruising in Florida. The book provides a vivid snapshot of wild and settler life in the early days of Florida development.

This post will focus on his first Southeast Florida journey.

Henshall and his party traveled aboard his boat, Blue Wing, from Titusville, at the head of the Indian River, to Biscayne Bay on that first expedition. They camped, hunted, fished and visited a few Houses of Refuge along the coast where they made friends and picked up a few travel tips.

Blue Wing, by George Potter

Some of Henshall’s highlights include remarks about:

The two best harbors - the Hillsboro Inlet and New River (today Port Everglades), reached from the “outside” or ocean instead of the conventional interior route;
Hunting and dining on deer, possum, ducks, squirrels and fish;
Bass fish aplenty (“too good of a good thing”) at the south branch of St. Lucie River; bits of white cloth used successfully as bait;
Sea cows (manatees) spotted in St. Lucie River and shares a story about Captain Estes who shipped two sea cows to Philadelphia for the Centennial Expo where they died in a fire opening day;
Redfish near Merritt Island 20 pounds and more;
Sharks, pompano, drum fish, green turtles, oysters, bluefish, kingfish and crabs in or just "outside" Lake Worth in the ocean;
Lake Worth residents (25 families on east side of the lake) who say the climate there is better than that of Southern Italy. They grow pineapples, coconuts, sugarcane;
Thousands of green turtles (20-200 pounds) caught, held in pens and shipped north each year;
New River (winding through downtown Fort Lauderdale today) … “the straightest, deepest and finest river I have ever seen in Florida.” Thousands of fish visible in its clear, amber-colored waters, include an abundance of Crevalles (jacks) 10-30 pounds. Also largest alligator (12 feet) of the trip spotted in New River;
The beauty and silence of the Everglades and its friendly Seminoles;
Their experience of an earthquake Jan. 12, 1879 at 11:30 p.m., which threw oil out of the lamp of the Jupiter Lighthouse and shook its brick foundation (one of several recorded in Florida and was felt for 25,000 square miles);
Jupiter Lighthouse, whichprovides “one of the grandest and wildest views of land and water in Florida.” (It still does);
The Biscayne Bay area, with fewer than 30 residents, is cooler in summer than any other portion of Florida because of the trade winds. It does not get as hot as New York City. One day it will be a “popular health resort or sanitarium.” (Today the Magic City and Miami Beach lie at the bay's edge—sanitariums indeed.)

An avid angler, Henshall is chock full of fish tales—the kind that would have today’s anglers pining for time travel.

Current Fort Lauderdale resident, famed fisherman and author Steve Kantner says fishing is not the sport it used to be because of one thing: habitat destruction. Pollution from development and over-population has affected natural environments.

It’s interesting to note that Henshall did not mention tarpon in New River. Kantner, also known as the Landcaptain, caught one weighing 135 pounds; others have landed giants of 200 pounds. (See link below to view his book.)

"Fishing in Lake Worth or in the ocean “outside”remains remarkable," said Kantner. "That’s because only one canal, the C-16, pours into it and the Gulfstream flows closest to that area." The Landcaptain knows of one fisherman who snagged a tuna in the Lake Worth lagoon.

Fishing there may one day be closer to what it was in Henshall's time. Plans are underway to restore the salinity and original habitat of Lake Worth.

Dr. Henshall, who has since been referred to as the “apostle of the black bass,” left medicine to write several other books on fishing, some included in the American Sportsman’s Library. His Camping and Cruising in Florida(see link below to view book) remains the centerpiece of his legacy.

Sources:

James Alexander Henshall, M.D., Cruising and Camping in Florida. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co., 1884

Kantner, Steve. Ultimate Guide to Fishing South Florida on Foot. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 2014.

www.gutenberg.org

www.wikipedia.org

www.bassmaster.com

Tags: Florida travel, Florida fishing, Steve Kantner, Florida history

By Jane Feehan

Long-time Fort Lauderdale residents may remember the robbery at the Yellow Rolls Royce Restaurant in 1976. It was bold, but not quite as big as it could have been. High-profile Miami News reporter Milt Sosin briefly covered the story as did The Associated Press, which sent it across the country. There was something about the place, its flashy patrons—and stylish thieves—that captured headlines. It was the stuff of TV and silver screen scripts.

Long gone, the upscale eatery was located on Northeast 20 Avenue, close to Sunrise Boulevard and the Middle River fork of New River. Between 30 and 40 patrons were enjoying a night out in late March, high season in South Florida, when a man with a handgun came through the rear entrance to hold staff at bay. A few moments later, a well-dressed couple entered the front door, with the male partner brandishing a gun. After commanding attention and calm, he instructed his young female accomplice to begin passing a bag around. In went wallets and jewelry but not before many took off rings and other glitter to drop into coffee, food and mouths. Personal searches were not conducted, diminishing the thieves’ take.

The dynamic duo warned diners not to follow them; they took off with about $15,000 in cash and jewels, a substantial haul from such a small gathering. As soon as they left, rings and other baubles were spat out or removed from food. (One may speculate about how much cash the robbers would have gotten away with six or seven years later, when cocaine cowboys were walking around with paper bags of the green stuff before laundering it at jewelry stores and through real estate transactions.)

According to owner Terrence Scott Moser, robbers missed more than they took. He described his customers as the “quiet elite of Fort Lauderdale,” among them women wearing “diamonds by the yard.” Many of them managed to hide the glitter simply by buttoning up their blouses.

Days after the heist, police were still seeking clues to the bold robbery…and the nation was reading about it. The story soon dropped off the radar, as did the Yellow Rolls Royce and Terrence Scott Moser. Any of you remember additional stories about it?

Sources:

Miami News, March 29, 1976

Sarasota Herald-Tribune, March 31, 1976

Tags: Film researcher, Fort Lauderdale in the 1970s, Fort Lauderdale history

The Yankee baseball team held Spring training in Fort Lauderdale during the 1960s after local hotelier Bob Gill encouraged the club’s owner, Dan Topping Sr., to come to the growing city. Stories about team legends Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford abound and firmly claim a place in this city’s celebrity history.

Part of Yankee history includes filming of the kid’s movie Safe at Home! in 1961 in Fort Lauderdale and Pompano. Hollywood, as captivated as the nation was with Roger Maris’s successful bid to break Babe Ruth’s homerun record during the 1961 season, thought a movie with Mantle and Maris would be a hit. (Where the BoysAre also filmed in Fort Lauderdale, was released in 1960).

Local public relations guru, Jack Drury, who played a small part as a police officer, arranged for the film crew to stay at the beach side Trade Winds Hotel (later associated with the wild Candy Store and its wet T-shirt contests).

Trade Winds Hotel (built 1940)

The movie starred Mantle, Maris, Don Collier, Patricia Barry, William Frawley (of I Love Lucy fame) and Bryan Russell as the kid who told friends he knew the players, but did not. Team Manager Ralph Hauk also appeared. According to Drury who has written about Fort Lauderdale’s celebrity past, it was Frawley’s last feature film.

From Herald Journal Apr. 21,1962

By all accounts, working on the film provided Spring training diversion for players. Mickey Mantle claimed he forgot a few of his lines but wasn’t concerned because “they didn’t want me for my acting ability.”

Safe at Home!,while not a box office hit, was continuation of a Hollywood tradition featuring sports stars in their productions; Babe Ruth appeared in 10 films, Olympian swimmer Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan in a number of films and the tradition continues …

Safe at Home! Is available to rent or purchase from Amazon. See below.

Sources:

Drury, Jack. Fort Lauderdale, Playground of the Stars (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2008).

IMDB.org

Sun-Sentinel, Apr. 21, 1989

Tags: Fort Lauderdale history, Filmed in Fort Lauderdale, Yankees in Fort Lauderdale, Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford William Frawley, film researcher Jane Feehan

The Candy Store was adjacent to the Tradewinds Hotel

By Jane Feehan

A few years ago, someone suggested I write histories of restaurants and clubs in Fort Lauderdale and Miami. I pointed out that unless establishments made the news, there wouldn’t be much to write about; owners are/were too busy trying to keep the doors open to think about legacy. Most go out of business.

But a few spots did make the news. One of them was the infamous Candy Store at 1 North Atlantic Boulevard on Fort Lauderdale beach, adjacent to then-named Caribbean West Trade Winds Hotel.* Popular for its wet T-shirt, Teenie Weenie Bikini, belly flop, beer guzzling contests and a lineup of other slothful student activities of the Spring Break years, the Candy Store packed in 2,000 during the day and 3,000 patrons at night during the height of its popularity, which one manager deemed was 1986. That year, more than 325,000 young people swarmed the beach for the six-week bacchanal. (Some news stories indicate 380,000 Spring Breakers visited the city in 1985.)

Owner Bobby “Van” Vannuchi, opened the Candy Store in 1977 (its beloved beach predecessor, The Button Lounge opened in 1970). A friend of football great and party hearty guy Joe Namath, Van also had an interest in Namath’s Bachelor’s III, and owned Mr. Laffs and Mr. Pips, all in Fort Lauderdale.

According to Van, he employed as many as 350 at the Candy Store during Spring Break. That’s what he told Daytona Beach officials in 1989 where he was opening another Candy Store on Grandview Avenue (he also owned one in New York City.) He was getting nervous about things in Fort Lauderdale; the welcome mat for students coming to that city was about to be pulled.

The Spring Break business climate was changing in Fort Lauderdale. Commissioners had had enough of the city’s demeaning party image. It wasn’t attracting the development needed to expand its tax base. And, in 1987 as many as 12 students were killed in Florida during Spring Break in alcohol and drug-related incidents. The Candy Store was emblematic of all the city was trying to get rid of so it became a major target—and tactic—of dismantling the festivities that began in 1935 and increased in popularity with the 1960 release of the film Where the Boys Are.

The City of Fort Lauderdale cited the Candy Store for 52 code violations in April, 1989 that included plumbing, electrical and fire and safety infractions. Additionally, it was to lose its liquor license, which was predicated upon the club operating adjacent to a hotel with at least 50 rooms. That hotel, the Caribbean Tradewinds, entered bankruptcy in 1988 or 1989 and was to close.

Van also had problems in Daytona. He paid $375,000 for his new 15,000 square foot club and about $500,000 for renovations. City officials raised zoning concerns and tried to block the opening for six months; its pending moratorium on issuing building permits was overturned by the 5th Court of Appeals in March 1989. Van planned to go ahead and open before the end of that year’s Spring Break. The Candy Store in Daytona remained open until March, 1991. He retained part ownership rights on the building and leased it to another nightclub impresario. (The fate of the NYC club is unknown to this writer.)

Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale could claim success in its re-imaging efforts: only 20,000 students flocked to its beaches in 1989. By 1990, business at the Candy Store was reportedly off 50 percent (at least). The club limped along until 1993 when it shut its doors. Bobby Van remained in the restaurant biz as late as 2005 when he owned Jilly’s Café at 2761 E. Oakland Park Boulevard; it has since closed.

The Candy Store still evokes fond memories. On one message board, a man asked recently if anyone knew the tall blonde bartender he went out with in 1986. He wanted to reconnect but lost her name and phone number (hilarious - she could be a grandmother now). Others remember Paul W. Lorenzo, managing partner in 1983 who dressed in shorts, tuxedo jacket and tie and one of his 700 zany hats. Anyone who gave him a hat earned a free lifetime membership to the Candy Store. Today, that membership is to a hall of memories of Spring Break madness. The only place still operating along the strip is the Elbo Room first opened in 1936 or 1938. No doubt people gather there on occasion to share stories about Bobby Van's place.

----------
Note: The Ritz Carlton Hotel currently sits at the old site of the Candy Store.

*The original Trade Winds Oceanfront Hotel was built in 1940, one of the city's largest at the time.

Tags: Fort Lauderdale clubs, Fort Lauderdale in the 1980s, Fort Lauderdale Spring Break

Sources:
Lakeland Star Ledger, April 3, 1983
Star News, Feb. 19, 1987
News-Journal, Feb. 4, 1989
News-Journal, Feb. 17, 1989
Ocala Star Banner, Nov. 25, 1990
News-Journal, Feb. 19, 1992
Sun-Sentinel, Nov. 15, 1996
NBC News, March 17, 2008

New York Times, Nov. 19, 1998

By Jane Feehan

I was hooked on boxing as a kid after seeing World Heavyweight Champion Floyd Patterson running along River Road in Chatham, N.J., training for his matchup with Ingemar Johansson. In his early 20s then, Patterson exuded intensity and purpose, endurance and physical magnificence. I was awe struck when I learned it was all for professional fighting.

A few years later we moved to Fort Lauderdale, about 25 miles from the epicenter of boxing, the 5th Street Gym in Miami Beach. Looking back it may have been the one time I wished I were a man … to climb those creaky wood stairs to the dilapidated, termite-invested gym sitting above a drugstore and news stand. How else to authentically experience this fraternity of the "sweet science" whose members were punching, jabbing, left hooking and pivoting hours each day in hopes of reaching pugilistic fame and fortune? I could only read about it … and that was OK.

Born in Philadelphia, Chris Dundee (1907-1998) had managed the boxing career of brother and club fighter, Joe Dundee. The family name was Mirena but “Dundee” sounded Irish, loaning (they thought) street cred to their boxing finesse and promoting abilities. It stuck.

Chris first came to Miami Beach in 1938 to promote the Ken Overlin-Ben Brown fight at the jai alai fronton. The area was ripe for boxing events; Miami was the new land of opportunity. He returned to stay in 1950 and opened a gym at 5th Street and Washington Avenue. Younger brother Angelo Dundee (1921-2012), who gave the gym its name, came aboard as trainer and manager. The Miami Beach Auditorium often served as stage for official boxing events. Chris remained the consummate promoter, keeping seats filled. With complementing skills, they yin-yanged their way to success. .

New York Times, Jul. 25, 1971

Brothers Dundee kept the gym humming with hopefuls and Chris scored a few notable promotions, the first big one in 1956 with the lightweight World’s Championship fight between Wallace “Bud” Smith and Joe Brown. The most famous, of course, was the Cassius Clay-Sonny Liston matchup for the World Heavyweight title in 1964. It catapulted Clay, who had just taken the name Muhammad Ali, the 5th Street Gym, and the Dundees—especially Angelo—into world fame.

There was another among the gym’s notables who rode this rising tide.

Dr. Ferdie Pacheco (b. 1927) operated a free clinic in Miami’s poor Overtown neighborhood when he joined the cast of characters at the 5th Street Gym in 1962. He became known as the fight doctor, corner man and personal physician to Ali and other boxers. Pacheco left Ali’s camp after a controversial bout with Ernie Shavers in 1977. He went on to become a media personality as boxing analyst for NBC and Univision. Pacheco and Ali remain friends.

Pacheco’s book, Tales from the 5th Street Gym (University of Florida Press, 2010) captures both the history of the gym and essence of what it meant to fighters, including a troupe of talented Cuban pugs and their fellow exile fans, and other managers and trainers during the decades before its demolition in 1993. Several practitioners of the sweet science contributed to Pacheco’s compilation but he set the background and tone, providing context. His wife, Luisita Sevilla Pacheco, provided many of the photos.

To know the gym’s history is to understand why Ferdie Pacheco was “steamed” in 2006 when Miami Beach Mayor David Dermer ceremoniously installed a plaque at the site of the demolished gym dedicated to Angelo Dundee who was on hand for the occasion. Chris was gone by then but Angie remained in the collective conscience (he still does). Now 87, Pacheco is a treasure trove of good, bad and hilarious memories from this Golden Era of boxing. He’s a prolific writer, with 14 books to his credit, and painter of works that fetch thousands; his book features a few of them.

No, I never made it to that boxing mecca in South Beach, but reading the doctor’s tales was almost as good as climbing those stairs to boxing heaven. Sweet.

Tags: Ferdie Pacheco, Angelo Dundee, Chris Dundee, Muhammad Ali, Miami Beach, 5th Street Gym, film researcher

By Jane Feehan

Miami Beach boxing promoter Chris Dundee denied doing business with mobster Frankie Carbo, but admitted he first met the “Czar of Boxing” in 1937 at Stillman’s gym in New York City. There was probably more to that relationship than he let on.

Carbo, part of the New York-based Lucchese crime family, had ties with boxing managers and fighters as far back as 1936. He was always ready with the “long green,” paying the gym tabs, car notes and other expenses of fighters. He also lined the pockets of managers. They were in too deep by the time they realized favors led to obligations.

It wasn’t easy doing business without getting involved with the mob. Carbo had the connections to make things happen. Money flowed to those who associated with the unofficial “commissioner” of boxing. Fighters and managers saw money that they may not have seen otherwise. In 1959, a New York Amsterdam News reporter suggested many boxers would have remained in obscurity had it not been for Carbo.

Fight doctor Ferdie Pacheco wrote that Chris Dundee “had to join the boxing union of Frankie Carbo.” The "membership" helped Dundee, brother of manager Angelo Dundee, to develop world champions at his 5^thStreet Gym. Without happy fighters and worthy matchups there was no business.

Some in the fight world would turn over as much as 50 percent of the take to Carbo. Boxing champ Sugar Ray Robinson resisted. Though he was considered to be in Carbo’s circle of influence, he didn’t like taking orders. Famed fighter Jake La Motta admitted Carbo ordered him in 1947 to take a dive in a bout with Billy Fox. To his many boxing credits, Muhammad Ali was the first heavyweight champion to be totally free of mob ties.

Carbo, who used the alias “Mr. Gray” in arranging fights, chose the contenders; he was probably behind what was then thought to be a mismatched bout between Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Sonny Liston in February 1964 at the Miami Beach Auditorium. Throughout the years, however, Dundee maintained he hadn’t done business with Carbo. In 1960 he was quoted as saying boxing wasn’t “big enough any more to attract a real racketeer.” There was more money, he said, in horse racing, football and baseball.

Before that historic, if not pretty, 1964 fight, rumors flew about Chris Dundee using Carbo’s influence to obtain certain closed circuit television rights for another championship fight. But Dundee steadfastly denied connections ... and then there was the time Frankie Carbo, in the company of Chris Dundee, picked up the check of Miami News editor Howard Kleinberg and his wife at the Saxony Hotel restaurant. He asked Dundee who the friend was who waved when he attempted to pay the check. Dundee told a startled (and not entirely happy) Kleinberg it was Carbo. Wink wink.

Carbo illegally arranged a long roster of fights at Madison Square Garden and other venues, including Miami Beach, for more than two decades. In the 1940s he kept an apartment in New York City to conduct business with boxing managers. A few years later, the FBI knew he had a place at the 2000 block of Taft Street in Hollywood, FL. Carbo was seldom there, it was reported, but it was also used for business.

More on Carbo’s pedigree: He was born in New York’s Lower East Side in 1904 as Paolo Giovanni Carbo. By age 11, he was declared a juvenile delinquent. He went on to run a Bronx taxicab protection racket in the 1920s and was arrested and convicted in 1928 for murdering a driver who would not pay up. Carbo served 20 months in prison for a reduced charge of manslaughter. The conviction precluded his obtaining a license for boxing operations. An associate of mobsters Owney Madden and the “Lord High Executioner” Albert Anastasia, Carbo was suspected of being a trigger man for Murder, Inc., with possible involvement in several mob hits including that of Bugsy Siegel (yet unsolved) in 1947 . He was also thought active in bootlegging and bookmaking during his career.

In 1958, Carbo was indicted along with Frank “Blinky” Palermo with seven counts of undercover management and two counts of unlicensed matchmaking in fights. Charges included conspiring with Herman (Hymie the Mink) Waller, New York furrier and fight manager, to commit a crime of undercover management of boxer Don Jordan. While awaiting trial on Rikers Island in New York, he was brought before the Kefauver Committee in Washington, D.C. investigating organized crime. Carbo responded to each of the 25 questions he was asked by invoking the Fifth Amendment giving up no information.

The Czar of Boxing was convicted in July of 1961 with Attorney General Robert Kennedy as U.S. prosecutor and was sentenced to 25 years at McNeil Island Penitentiary in the state of Washington. Like many mobsters during jail time, he remained a powerful influence in his criminal domain. Kennedy long suspected him of continued involvement in the fight world and particularly with Sonny Liston. Carbo was released for health reasons 12 years into his sentence. He died in 1976, aged 72 at a Miami Beach hospital.

Dundee probably didn’t need Carbo’s help during the ensuing Muhammad Ali years, but he maintained that the czar was a gentleman, if not a friend. The Dundees are gone now and so too the electrifying days of heavyweight stars, matchups at the Miami Beach Auditorium and the roof raisers at the Garden. And mob influence?

For more on the 5th Street Gym, see the labels for boxing or my post: http://janeshistorynook.blogspot.com/2015/08/brothers-dundee-5th-street-gym-and.html

Sources:

Pacheco, Ferdie. Tales from the 5^th Street Gym. University Press (2010).

Raab, Selwyn. Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires. Thomas Dunne Books (2006).

Chicago Daily Defender, Jul. 24, 1958

New York Amsterdam News, Jul. 25, 1958

Chicago Daily Defender, Nov. 2, 1959

New York Amsterdam News, Nov. 7, 1959

Chicago Daily DefenderMar. 21, 1962

Miami News, Nov. 29, 1954

New York Times, Nov. 11, 1976

Tags: Boxing history, Chris Dundee, Mob history,

Not theater patrons

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale’s Parker Playhouse lifted the curtain on its first production Feb. 6, 1967*. The theater is located at the fringe of Holiday Park off Federal Highway near Sunrise Boulevard, but few remember another theater was planned in 1959 for a site off A1A near the Galt Ocean Mile.

The participants in the two projects were different – and so were the plans. George S. Engle, owner and producer of the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, teamed up with famed Florida architect, Alfred Browning Parker (no relation to donor Louis W. Parker of the Parker Playhouse), to draw up elaborate plans for the A1A location.

The $2 million project would include features “never before attempted in the entire country.” For starters, its marquee was to be so large that 30 automobiles could pull up at once to discharge passengers. A drive-in ticket window would be available where patrons could view available seating and purchase tickets before parking their cars. A restaurant and lounge seating 1,000 theatergoers would operate near another lounge with a soda fountain and dining area for teenagers.

There’s more. Much more.

The ambitious plans also included a library for playwrights, producers and directors, a private room for the press, an art gallery and exhibit hall for artists and students, and a theater memorabilia room featuring thespian history since Greek and Roman times.

A penthouse and club would operate late into the night for dining and dancing. Also, a model of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre would be constructed featuring manikins draped in clothes of that era. A drama and art school was to operate at this very busy facility. The entire complex and its offerings were to be run by a Society of Theatre Arts that would coordinate activities and performances at the Coconut Grove Playhouse … and a theater in Nassau, Bahamas (a tropical paradise teaming with theatergoers).

Engle proposed a 99-year lease on an 800-ft frontage property along A1A. A condition of the project would be a substantial advance subscription sale. That never happened. What were they thinking? People came to Fort Lauderdale (and still do) for surf, sun and fun, and depending on the age group, the fun might be boats, booze, and babes—not theater.

Theater sanity arrived with electrical engineer and inventor, Louis M. Parker, Ph.D., who tired of driving to Miami and Palm Beach to see plays. In 1966 it was announced that Dr. Parker would

Parker Playhouse

donate $700,000 for construction of a theater on land near Holiday Park. The City of Fort Lauderdale would pay $300,000 for the property. Some papers reported that Parker donated up to $1.5 million.

The theater, run then by Zev Buffman, opened with about 2,000 seats, 48 shimmering chandeliers and two cocktail lounges, a much more realistic venture than the one proposed earlier. Its architect, John Volk was the last of the early 1920s Palm Beach architects that included Addison Mizner. Volk had also designed the Good Samaritan Hospital, parts of the Everglades Club, the Royal Poinciana Theater—all in Palm Beach—and a long list of other landmarks.

The Parker Playhouse is now run by the Performing Arts Center Authority, which includes the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

*The play that night was Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple,” starring E.G. Marshall and Dennis O’Keefe. It was directed by Danny Simon, the playwright’s brother.

Sources:

New York Times, Nov. 15, 1959

Pittsburgh Press, Nov. 25, 1966

Palm Beach Daily News, Feb. 22, 1984

New York Times,Feb. 6, 1967

Tags: Fort Lauderdale theater, Parker Playhouse, Jane Feehan, film researcher, Alfred Browning Parker. Louis M. Parker, Fort Lauderdale in the 1950s, Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s

By Jane Feehan

When most of us think about whale watching, Alaska and Cabo San Lucas in Baja California come to mind, not the waters off Fort Lauderdale and Southeast Florida.

In 1935, The New York Times (Mar. 25) reported on a six-hour whale chase and its bloody outcome off Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood. Many today would consider it a gruesome tale.

Captain Frank Merritt, a fishing guide operating out of Port Everglades, spotted two whales a couple of miles off the coast one day at 9:30 a.m. In his tiny “cabin cruiser,” loaded with seven harpoons and 200 rounds of rifle bullets, Merritt set out to give chase and make a kill. His plan was to separate the two whales, which appeared to be a mother and her calf.

The fishing guide harpooned the eight-ton, 32-foot baby whale, which then dived into the blue and took Merritt’s 22-foot boat on a wild ride southward. The furious mother whale immediately attacked the vessel leaving several ribs of its bow slightly damaged. Another fisherman, Captain Jack Weygant, came by to assess the smash up and his boat was also rammed.

The unfolding drama drew four more boats, including one from the U.S. Coast Guard. All performed maneuvers to chase off the 72-foot mother while her baby was being peppered with rifle shot and “stuck” with harpoons. In all, three boats were rammed in the chase.

The hunt ended at 4 p.m. off Hollywood when the calf, bleeding profusely, died and the exhausted mother disappeared. “It’s just a baby,” said Capt. Merritt, who described the chase as the most exciting and dangerous day of his long fishing career.

By the 1930s, more than 50 thousand whales were killed annually throughout the world. The whales in this story could have been grey whales or northern right (Balaenidae) whales, so-called as they

Southern right whale
by Michaël CATANZARITI *

were the right kind to hunt: slow and large. Because of their size, they don’t breach the water's surface often. Hunting of northern right whales was outlawed in 1937. Today they travel in shipping lanes, which may account for their near extinction.

Whales feed in cold waters and breed in warm waters during the spring. I asked legendary Fort Lauderdale angler, Steve Kantner, about his sighting of whales off South Florida. He hasn’t seen them frequently but recalled one time that he did from a commercial airplane.

It was a few years back, but I still remember looking out the plane’s window as it started to bank. I’d say we were maybe five miles from shore and less than a mile from the surface.

I was scanning the water, like fisherman do, looking for weed lines—that sort of thing—when I first saw them. Frankly, I had trouble believing my eyes, although in those days my vision was perfect, yet here were two huge whales swimming in tandem. I made them out to be between 30 and 50 feet long. They kept tooling along and their flukes were visible. I watched the whales as we continued our turn and until our position changed.I’ve seen a whale shark before; this time was different.

Kantner also said whales of many species travel the globe; their presence near Florida during the 1930s or now would not be a rare occurrence.

Commercial whaling is outlawed in many parts of the world with exceptions, one being for nine indigenous communities of Alaska that hunt with limits on the number they can kill.

Fort Lauderdale residents who don’t want to travel to Alaska or Cabo to see a whale may be as close to a sighting as a fishing boat ride off our coast.

Sources:

The New York Times, Mar. 25, 1935

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_right_whale

* Photo licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Southern_right_whale.jpg#/media/File:Southern_right_whale.jpg

Tags: Steve Kantner, whales off Florida, Florida whales

By Jane Feehan

Fort Lauderdale frequently made the pages of Sunday newspaper travel sections in the north after airlines began nonstop service here in the 1950s. Ads for and tips on what to see and do in the seaside town have peppered travel pages from January until April each year since.

With tongue in cheek, a reporter from The New York Times claimed in January 1967 that Fort Lauderdale was becoming a major railroad center. Why? There were four miniature “railroads” in the city that ran in circles for tourists. The little trains hardly made for a rail center but the premise did catch the attention of those heading south for a winter vacation. Some long time residents may have also availed themselves of the four sightseeing venues:

"Magellan Railcar" by Alexf
at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Commons

The Gold Coast Railroad Museum ran eight cars on tracks near U.S. Highway 1 (near today’s Snyder Park) and into Port Evergladesso visitors could view cruise ships and freighters. The museum, originally based in Miami, was first known as the Miami Railroad Historical Society. The group had asked for and received from the federal government in 1959 the presidential Pullman car

used by Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. They moved the vehicle, known as FerdinandMagellan and later as U.S. No. 1 Presidential Car, to Fort Lauderdale in 1967 and housed it along with other railroad cars in their new site near the port. (The museum has since moved back to Miami and the U.S. No. 1 was placed on the National Register of Historical Places in 1985. See www.GCRM.org for more information. This deserves an entire post.)

Hugh Taylor Birch State Park featured a small diesel-powered train that ran on a three-mile narrow gauge track. Visitors rode the train along the Intracoastal, atop a trestle and over a fresh water lagoon in the 180-acre park. This was also a great source of amusement to some locals who wore masks and pretended to be raiders swooping down on unsuspecting visitors who rode the rails at little over 10 mph. I only heard laughter on these jaunts and never saw a fearful face. The popular ride ceased to operate in 1985.

Pioneer Cityoperated a train 15 miles west of Fort Lauderdale in Davie. The train, known as the Jenny Lynn, was a replica of a steam locomotive used in 1890. It transported “dudes” to a sternwheeler headed for a mock-up of a 19^th-century cow town featuring a saloon, shops, shoot outs and staged bank robberies. Visitors could take the train past an artificial mountain and a real buffalo grazing on a prairie sprinkled with whitened steer skulls. Pioneer City opened in 1966. It was closed and up for sale by 1968 due to poor ticket sales. The buffalo was also included in the property sale.

Not really a train, but a string of cars pulled by a rubber-tired vehicle, the Voyager Sightseeing Train took visitors on a 30-minute tour of the city landmarks. Based at 600 Seabreeze Blvd. and launched in 1962, the Voyagerbecame a landmark itself. We knew tourist season had arrived when the cars were filled to capacity and the Voyager became a traffic nuisance. It no longer operates.

Sources:

Miami News, June 6, 1966

The New York Times, Jan. 8, 1967

Lakeland Ledger, Apr. 16, 1978

Evening Independent,Mar. 19, 1968

www.GCRM.org

Tags: Fort Lauderdale tourism, Pioneer City, Hugh Taylor Birch Park, Gold Coast Railroad Museum, Voyager Sightseeing Train

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Al Capone and "Capone Island" Deerfield Beach: facts and folklore

Kalem films Miami: "Paradise of the eastern south, the California that is right at home"

First U.S. high-speed hydrofoil sails from Port Everglades

Hiaasen: name among novelists, journalists and Fort Lauderdale pioneers

Lustron House: Solution to post WWII housing comes to Fort Lauderdale

WWII titans meet in Pompano Beach 1941

Tags: WWII, Pompano Beach history, Florida during WWII, Gen. George Marshall, Edward Stettinius, Jr., film researcher

SOFLA Travelogue 1880s: Of fishing, sailing, an earthquake and more …

Flash and grab at the Yellow Rolls Royce - A 1970s Fort Lauderdale story

Yankees film in Fort Lauderdale - Safe at Home!

The Candy Store, sleazy ghost of Fort Lauderdale's Spring Break past

Brothers Dundee, the 5th Street Gym, and boxing's best days in Miami Beach

A profitable alliance: Boxing and Frankie Carbo

Plans before Fort Lauderdale's Parker Playhouse: What were they thinking?

Whaling off Fort Lauderdale ... really

Fort Lauderdale's four "railroads" in 1967: Can you name them? Think tourists.