| |
Balinese
Room Cashiered by
Mike Cox | |
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 pushed a towering storm surge that beat the Balinese
Room worse than a guy betting a full house against a straight flush. When
the sun came up on Sept. 13 all that remained of the 79-year-old National Historic
Landmark were the pilings that once supported a pier that extended 600 feet into
the Gulf and a pile of debris that included the old joint’s famous red door. |
What's
left of the Balinese
Room after Hurricane Ike
Photo courtesy Julian A. Levy, Jr., Nov. 2008 |
Oh, one other thing
survived, at least in the early days following the storm – the club’s Web site.
Visiting www.balineseroom.net less than 24 hours after the club’s destruction
was almost as painful as listening to a dead friend’s voice on their not-yet-erased
answering machine message.
Hopefully, the club’s latest owner has managed
to salvage some artifacts from the ruins and has deep enough pockets to rebuild
the place. But it won’t be the actual structure that hosted some of America’s
biggest entertainers, from Bob Hope to Chairman of the Board Frank Sinatra.
The
club’s history goes back to 1923 when a small restaurant not-so-uniquely known
as the Chop Suey opened at 21st Street and Seawall. Though shut down for a time
for illegal gambling, it reopened after Sam
and Rosario Maceo – Italian immigrants who went from barbering to bootlegging
– used some of their illicit income to purchase it. They called it the Sui Jen
and offered Chinese food and a night club. Oh, and wide-open gambling.
By
this time, the early 1930s, many Texans and out-of-state visitors came to Galveston
to brace themselves with illegal booze and a little partying in the face of a
financial crisis first referred to in the newspapers and magazines as “the Emergency.”
Soon it came to be called the Depression, and later, the Great Depression.
Indeed, the Sui Jen and other places owned by the Maceos,
including the Turf Club, helped Galveston
fare better than many cities as the Emergency dragged on.
Early in World
War II, with Galveston
swarming with soldiers, airmen and sailors, the Maceos
decided to go with a more tropical sounding name – the Balinese Room. They remodeled
the place and lengthened what had been a 200-foot pier by 400 feet. At the end
of the pier, 200 yards out into the Gulf of Mexico, they built a sophisticated
gaming room. |
 |
| 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. |
Of course, 600 feet
was still well inside U.S. territorial waters, but the Maceos
seemed to think the room lay far enough at sea for them to run a casino just as
if it were legal to do so.
Galveston
had always seen itself as independent from the rest
of Texas and no one minded particularly that the club had been a speak-easy
and gambling joint for most of its existence. The Maceos
stimulated the local economy.
When someone asked long-time Galveston County
Sheriff Frank Biaggne why he didn’t shutter the Balinese Room, he famously replied
that it was a private club and he was not a member.
Using the business
model later perfected in a then-small Nevada town called Las Vegas, the Maceos
brought in the biggest names in entertainment during the club’s heyday. The list
of men and women who appeared at the club reads like an entertainment industry’s
Who’s Who. Listed alphabetically, some of those who had gigs at the Balinese Room
included Gene Autry, Jack Benny,
George Burns and Gracie Allen, Duke Ellington, Phil Harris, Guy Lombardo, Groucho
Marx and Mel Torme. |
On
orders from Austin, Rangers occasionally
raided the place. That usually came after some politician found it expedient to
proclaim he was “Shocked, shocked to find out that gaming is going on…” in the
Great State of Texas. (Rent a DVD of “Casablanca”
if you’d like to practice Captain Renault’s famous line.)
Usually, when
the men in the big hats showed up at the red door, the Balinese’s house band struck
up a rousing version of “The Eyes of Texas” to alert the staff in the back that
the Rangers had arrived. By the time the lawmen got to the gaming room, no evidence
of gambling could be found. |
|
| In 1957, newly
elected state Attorney General Will Wilson, who as a district attorney had cleaned
up gambling and vice in Dallas, turned
his attention to the so-called Free State of Galveston.
“Shocked, shocked…” he employed undercover operatives to penetrate the club and
later, after someone tipped off the Balinese that the Rangers were planning a
big raid, used civil injunctions to still the slots and stop the roulette wheels.
Even so, the process took longer than most people realize. Up to the early
‘60s, Rangers still occasionally showed up to make sure the lid on Galveston
gaming stayed down.
But for all practical purposes, the party – at least
the illegal version – was over by the spring of 1957. The Maceos
had died a few years earlier and the club closed. Variously someone would reopen
the place as a shell shop or eatery, but the magic was long gone.
The
old club got roughed up by Hurricane Carla in 1961 and again by Alicia in 1983,
but the structure proved as durable as a geriatric slot machine addict.
Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, the Balinese Room
sat empty for a time before Houston lawyer Scott Arnold took a 60-year lease on
the place in 2001. He reopened it as a live entertainment venue – sans gambling.
Whether he will rebuild the Balinese and roll the figurative dice one more time
remains to be seen.
© Mike Cox
"Texas
Tales"
September 18, 2008 column |
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