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THE
BALINESE ROOM
HAD TWO LAST HOORAHSby
Bill Cherry | |
A
lot of people have benefited in one way or another from the fabled dinner club
that was owned and operated by Rose
and Sam Maceo and their family, and was called the Balinese
Room.
It was located on a wooden pier that extended out over the Gulf
of Mexico at the corner of 21st Street and Seawall Boulevard. For most of the
1940s and 1950s its main interest to members was its illegal gambling casino.
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| The
photo shows the Seawall looking east from 25th Street. The first pier...the big
wide one is Murdock's. It was the oldest one on the island, and it, too, was totally
destroyed by Ike. The second pier, the long one, is the Balinese
Room. In was across from the Galvez Hotel. This photo is rather rare since
it also has in it the famous Mountain Speedway roller coaster. The Mountain Speedway
was made totally of wood. It was destroyed by Hurricane Carla in 1962. |
What's
left of the Balinese Room after Hurricane Ike
Photo courtesy Julian A. Levy,
Jr., Nov. 2008 |
Lawmen’s
raid after raid tried to wipe it out. And one hurricane after another tried to
blow the house down, but the flame would continue to smolder and eventually resurrect
in one form or another.
But Hurricane Ike dealt it the true fatal blow.
When the winds subsided and the gulf returned to calm waters, there was no longer
anything out over the water at the corner of 21st and Seawall. The Balinese Room
was gone.
If you’ve lived around Galveston
and Houston, even Texas, for more than
5 minutes, you know the legends of former Houston sheriff Johnny Klevenhagen and
hard living, drinking and womanizing criminal defense attorney Percy Foreman.
But there was another Johnny Klevenhagen. He was Sheriff Klevenhagen’s father.
And he rode into the gulf coast in 1941 as Texas Ranger Capt. Klevenhagen.
One time Capt. Klevenhagen was on the stand and Percy Foreman was cross-examining
him. Percy was up to his old tricks, impeach the witness at all costs. So he decided
he’d start by questioning Capt. Klevenhagen’s integrity. The jury was sitting
there taking it all in.
Finally the Texas Ranger had had enough. He flew
out of the witness chair, drew his gun and chased old Percy out of the courthouse.
No one seems to know for sure what happened after that. But the next day as the
trial continued, the jury saw Foreman was bandaged everywhere, was on crutches
and complaining about his broken leg. And he didn’t mention a thing about the
Texas Ranger’s character again.
Galvestonians
and tourists like to talk about the Island’s days of debauchery – the gambling,
drinking, prostitution and high-style living. Lots of authors, including me, have
written books about it. My friends Dr. Robert Wilkins and Broadway’s Mark York
even wrote a musical about it.
But I don’t recall that any of us ever
got around to revealing how it got closed down and who did it.
Well let
me right now give that credit to Capt. Johnny Klevenhagen. Here’s how he did it.
In the mid-1950s, he brought in his troop of rangers, known as Company A. And
they just walked into the Balinese
Room every day when it opened, and they just sat down, ate dinner, drank coffee
and enjoyed the show and stayed till closing time. They did this for months. In
fact to make their point, they moved into the Buccaneer Hotel across the street,
and they lived there for 2 ½ years!
With those guys chowing down and hanging
out at the Balinese
and the other Maceo
gambling joints on the island, how could the other patrons gamble?
And
while we’re at it, how could the houses of ill-repute operate with a Texas Ranger
sitting in the cat house’s living room night after night drinking coffee? They
were there, too.
Texas Ranger Johnny Klevenhagen did what no other lawman
before him had been able to do. It was his last accomplishment as a lawman. He
took gambling out of the Maceo
empire for good.
And while I love the story and memory of Capt. Johnny
Klevenhagen, quite frankly I’m sorry that he showed up.
Bill
Cherry's Galveston Memories November 1, 2008 column
Copyright William
S. Cherry. All rights reserved |
More on Balinese
Room: How
Sam, Rose and Frank Maceo Created the Fabled Balinese Room by Bill
Cherry
Balinese
Room Cashiered by
Mike Cox ("Texas Tales" 9-18-08 column)
The Texas Rangers finally
succeeded in eliminating gambling at Galveston’s famed Balinese Room in 1957,
but it took a Category 2 hurricane to cashier the old casino-on-a-pier once and
for all. Coming ashore on Galveston Island in the predawn hours of Sept. 13, Hurricane
Ike... |
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here and save
Bill Cherry, a Dallas Realtor and free lance writer
was a longtime columnist for "The Galveston County Daily News." His book, Bill
Cherry's Galveston Memories, has sold thousands, and is still available at
Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com and other bookstores. |
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