Tijuana. There was no shortage of investors; I believe some of the original generation of movie moguls, such as Joe Schenck, came in on the deal. Joe supposedly spent something close to half a million dollars building the resort and casino.
Joe Schenck was such an interesting man. He and his brother Nick controlled three movie studios: Nick ran Loew’s Incorporated, the parent company of MGM, while Joe, after a very successfulcareer as an independent producer, first ran United Artists, then left to form 20th Century pictures with Darryl Zanuck, which soon took over the moribund Fox organization and became 20th Century Fox—the studio that signed me in 1949.
The resort’s grounds didn’t look like much originally—just scrub with sycamore trees—but by the time it opened in June 1928, after millions of dollars in construction costs, the landscape had been radically altered. Occupying 655 acres, it even had its own airport, with easier access for those long weekends. It was an immediate success, because it was the only game out of town. If you wanted the types of things Agua Caliente offered, you had to go to Agua Caliente.
The centerpiece of the resort was a four-hundred-room luxury hotel. Well, that’s not really true—the centerpiece was the casino, where roulette, baccarat, and faro were played. And after the casino came the racetrack. The racetrack attracted people who wouldn’t be caught dead in a casino—Gary Cooper was there, as were Bing Crosby and Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Howard Hughes.
Occasionally, a film would shoot there—the location was visually interesting, and there were plenty of ways to pass the time at night. When Jackie Cooper goes hunting for his alcoholic father around a luxury hotel in The Champ , he’s searching Agua Caliente. There was even a Warner Bros. movie called In Caliente , featuring the great Busby Berkeley number “The Lady in Red.”
While the hotel’s exterior looked like something left over from the mission days, inside it was another story entirely. There was an Art Deco dining room inspired by the 1925 Paris exhibition, plus a Moorish-style spa and a Louis XIV–inspired room.
It was the height of a certain kind of luxury. Even the barbershop, which had only three chairs, flaunted custom-designedterra-cotta. The power plant had a 150-foot-high smokestack that was tiled and covered with decorative ironwork so that it resembled an Istanbul minaret.
So much of what would make Vegas Vegas was actually devised at Agua Caliente. Food, for instance, was a loss leader—they charged only a dollar for a sumptuous lunch, and the casino was without clocks or windows. Sound familiar?
Agua Caliente did not set out to compete with Palm Springs or Catalina; it was designed to attract the same clientele as the Riviera or Palm Beach. And for a time, it succeeded. Movie people loved it. Aside from Joe Schenck, other shareholders included Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, and Alexander Pantages. In 1933, Schenck purchased control of the resort and positioned himself on the board of directors, along with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jesse Lasky.
And then it all came crashing down. In 1935 the president of Mexico signed an executive order outlawing gambling. Two days later, the resort shut down.
Conveniently, just a few years earlier, Nevada had passed legislation allowing gambling, which meant that it was just a question of time until everything that made Caliente Caliente would be available without having to cross the border. Mexico eventually nationalized the old resort and used it as an education facility, although three fires in the 1960s and a misguided urban renewal program in 1975 wiped out the facility as a whole. But for a few years, Caliente was the site of a gaudy spree that eventually landed close to home.
B illy Wilder could do a lot of things, and setting a scene was one of them.
“I had landed myself in the driveway of some big mansion that looked run-down and
Joe Schenck was such an interesting man. He and his brother Nick controlled three movie studios: Nick ran Loew’s Incorporated, the parent company of MGM, while Joe, after a very successfulcareer as an independent producer, first ran United Artists, then left to form 20th Century pictures with Darryl Zanuck, which soon took over the moribund Fox organization and became 20th Century Fox—the studio that signed me in 1949.
The resort’s grounds didn’t look like much originally—just scrub with sycamore trees—but by the time it opened in June 1928, after millions of dollars in construction costs, the landscape had been radically altered. Occupying 655 acres, it even had its own airport, with easier access for those long weekends. It was an immediate success, because it was the only game out of town. If you wanted the types of things Agua Caliente offered, you had to go to Agua Caliente.
The centerpiece of the resort was a four-hundred-room luxury hotel. Well, that’s not really true—the centerpiece was the casino, where roulette, baccarat, and faro were played. And after the casino came the racetrack. The racetrack attracted people who wouldn’t be caught dead in a casino—Gary Cooper was there, as were Bing Crosby and Clark Gable, Jean Harlow and Howard Hughes.
Occasionally, a film would shoot there—the location was visually interesting, and there were plenty of ways to pass the time at night. When Jackie Cooper goes hunting for his alcoholic father around a luxury hotel in The Champ , he’s searching Agua Caliente. There was even a Warner Bros. movie called In Caliente , featuring the great Busby Berkeley number “The Lady in Red.”
While the hotel’s exterior looked like something left over from the mission days, inside it was another story entirely. There was an Art Deco dining room inspired by the 1925 Paris exhibition, plus a Moorish-style spa and a Louis XIV–inspired room.
It was the height of a certain kind of luxury. Even the barbershop, which had only three chairs, flaunted custom-designedterra-cotta. The power plant had a 150-foot-high smokestack that was tiled and covered with decorative ironwork so that it resembled an Istanbul minaret.
So much of what would make Vegas Vegas was actually devised at Agua Caliente. Food, for instance, was a loss leader—they charged only a dollar for a sumptuous lunch, and the casino was without clocks or windows. Sound familiar?
Agua Caliente did not set out to compete with Palm Springs or Catalina; it was designed to attract the same clientele as the Riviera or Palm Beach. And for a time, it succeeded. Movie people loved it. Aside from Joe Schenck, other shareholders included Al Jolson, Irving Berlin, and Alexander Pantages. In 1933, Schenck purchased control of the resort and positioned himself on the board of directors, along with Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and Jesse Lasky.
And then it all came crashing down. In 1935 the president of Mexico signed an executive order outlawing gambling. Two days later, the resort shut down.
Conveniently, just a few years earlier, Nevada had passed legislation allowing gambling, which meant that it was just a question of time until everything that made Caliente Caliente would be available without having to cross the border. Mexico eventually nationalized the old resort and used it as an education facility, although three fires in the 1960s and a misguided urban renewal program in 1975 wiped out the facility as a whole. But for a few years, Caliente was the site of a gaudy spree that eventually landed close to home.
B illy Wilder could do a lot of things, and setting a scene was one of them.
“I had landed myself in the driveway of some big mansion that looked run-down and
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