Cal Neva Closing

Frank Sinatra casino to close due to Las Vegas competition

A Nevada casino once owned by Frank Sinatra and patronised by Hollywood stars and mobsters has closed amid plunging gambling rates and competition from Las Vegas.


Not even a star-spangled history and an association with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Junior has been enough to save the Cal Neva Lodge Casino from the grim realities of the US casino industry.

The casino, which sits on Lake Tahoe near the California border, last year saw its revenues fall to about a half of what they were in 1992 allowing for inflation, said William Eadington, director of the Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada

Other local casinos have closed or made drastic cutbacks, unable to compete with Las Vegas – itself struggling – and the growing number of gambling resorts on Indian reservations.

"The realities are when you have that kind of decline the weakest operators typically get pushed out," said Professor Eadington. "The older, tired casinos and the Cal Neva is a great example don't have much to offer for gaming."

Prof Eadington said the casino had suffered from years of neglect as well as growing competition for a shrinking number of gamblers.

“It’s a tired property in a declining market,” he said.

He said the Cal Neva had long been viewed as “ill-starred place” - burning down in the 1930s and having a series of owners who went bankrupt or landed in prison.

Sinatra gave up the gambling licence in 1963 after Giancana, supposedly an outlaw, got into a fight on the premises and the singer later swore at the head of the local gaming control board.

Reputed to be America's oldest licensed casino, the Cal Neva opened in 1926 and hosted a 13-year-old Judy Garland's first performance nine years later.

However, it enjoyed its heyday in the early 1960s when it was bought by Sinatra, reportedly in partnership with Sam Giancana, a Chicago mobster.

Adding a 35-seat celebrity show room and rooftop helicopter pad, the pair ensured film stars, singers and Mafiosi flocked to its blackjack games and roulette tables.

A network of underground tunnels, built to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition, allowed the VIP guests to move around the resort without being seen by the public.

Monroe spent the last weekend of her life at the resort in 1962 as a guest of the Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and his wife.

While there, she discussed making a film with Dean Martin and, it is said, a rapprochement with her second husband, the baseball star Joe DiMaggio, another regular Cal Neva guest.

However, a 1999 biography claimed Monroe was brought there to be threatened not to reveal her Mafia links, drugged in her cabin and photographed in compromising positions.

Another popular Cal Neva rumour claims she used the resort for a tryst with John F Kennedy, still another that Joe Kennedy, the president's father, took his secretary there each year while collecting the family Christmas tree.

Staff admit the resort – whose hotel and restaurant remain open – has traded off its colourful history but Guy Rocha, a former Nevada state archivist, said it would not register with younger gamblers.

"The Cal Neva doesn't capture people's imagination the way it once did," he said.