R.I.P. Cal Neva Lodge Casino (1926-2010)

Cal Neva Lodge saw its heyday after being bought by singer Frank Sinatra in the early 1960s, reportedly in partnership with Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. The pair added a 35-seat celebrity showroom and rooftop helicopter pad, and ensured that film stars, singers and Mafiosi flocked to its blackjack and roulette games.

A network of underground tunnels, built to smuggle alcohol during Prohibition, allowed the VIP guests to move around the resort hidden from public gaze. But the casino, which sits on the edge of Lake Tahoe near the California border, has been killed off by plunging gambling rates and competition from Las Vegas – itself struggling – and the growing number of gambling resorts on Indian reservations.

Its revenue fell last year to about half of its 1992 level, 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 also closed or made severe cutbacks. “The realities are when you have that kind of decline the weakest operators typically get pushed out,” Professor Eadington said. “The older, tired casinos – and the Cal Neva is a great example – don’t have much to offer for gaming. It’s a tired property in a declining market.” Eadington said the casino had suffered from years of neglect and growing competition for a shrinking number of gamblers. It had long been perceived as an “ill-starred place” after burning down in the 1930s and having a series of owners who went bankrupt or were jailed.

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

Reputed to be the US’s oldest licensed casino, the Cal Neva opened in 1926 and hosted Garland’s first performance nine years later. Monroe spent the last weekend of her life at the resort in 1962 as a guest of Rat Pack actor Peter Lawford and his wife. She reportedly discussed making a film with singer Dean Martin and also a rapprochement with her second husband, baseball star Joe DiMaggio, another regular Cal Neva guest. However, a 1999 biography claimed Monroe was brought there in order to be threatened not to reveal her Mafia links; the same claimed Marilyn was drugged in her cabin and photographed in compromising positions for blackmail material.

Apart from the stories of her trysts with President John F. Kennedy, still another says that Joe Kennedy, the president’s father, took his secretary there each year while collecting the family Christmas tree.

Staff admits that the resort – whose hotel and restaurant remain open – has traded off its star-studded history but former Nevada state archivist Guy Rocha said the Cal Neva just doesn’t capture people’s imagination the way it once did.