Tony Cornero well aware of the raid ordered by Earl Warren on August 1st, 1939. As he watched the boats, full of L.A. county sheriffs and vice officers, speed toward his ship, he knew this would be thee monumental battle in his right to do business off the Southern California coast. This was not another potshot by Los Angeles D.A. to annoy the gambling ship owners or temporarily cripple their business; California Attorney General Earl Warren had coordinated a slew of law enforcement agencies into line and made his declaration in the newspapers that the four gambling ships were officially a “public nuisance” and would immediately shut down for good this time. The day before the Tango and the Mount Baker had fallen, the Texas was taken earlier that morning, leaving behind only the Rex, the largest, most famous, and most stalwart of the gambling ships. Tony Cornero held a near ideological belief in the legality of his business, and in his mind it was actually Earl Warren who was acting outside the law. Cornero was a wealthy one-time bootlegger and gambling impresario who could eloquently give speeches- at length and off the top of his head, to reporter, to juries, to anyone who would listen- in matters of American maritime law, the history of early California exploration, and liberty of citizens to choose how they spend their leisure time in a free democracy- all in defense of the gambling ships right to exist three miles west of Santa Monica. Where other gambling ship owners remained in the shadows, everybody knew the name Tony Cornero. He was famously even-handed, uncharacteristically generous for a man in his line of work, and delighted in mingling with common customers, reporters and movie stars. Cornero was naturally gregarious, but life in limelight was also an orchestrated strategy. Though he may have made his fortune in crime, Cornero went above and beyond to prove that he was now a legitimate businessman, to the point that he only hired proven American citizens and then sent each employee’s fingerprints to the police. Sure, Cornero had no qualms about greasing a few of the right palms when need arose, but that was only because the system was so biased against folks like him, Italian immigrants with criminal records. Tony probably even welcomed this final showdown because it was the opportunity to put this all to rest. He was utterly convinced that in the end, justice would prevail, and the public, the courts, and history would vindicate his claims.
As the Fish and Gaming boats drew closer, Cornero made every person in his loyal crew give up their guns. If things got harry, he was determined that the bullets didn’t first fly of the Rex. However, he had no intention of giving up his ship. Tony ordered for the steel doors closed where water taxis docked, leaving no point of entry onto the ship. His men took their posts at the high-pressure water cannons that lined the deck, ready to blast down any over-eager lawmen who got to close. Inside the casino, six hundred gamblers went about their business, either unaware of what was taking place, or confident Cornero would deflect this attack, just like he had all the others.
When the government boats came within firing range, Cornero yelled into a megaphone, “You cannot board this ship. We are beyond the three-mile limit. You’re just a lousy bunch of pirates! We are on the high seas, and it’s our business weather we stay here on day or ten years. We are not defying any Constitutional Authority!” The first government boat came into rang and was met with a deluge of sea water fired from the deck of the Rex and was pushed back. The Battle of Santa Monica Bay had begun. And the world was watching.
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| Tony Cornero |
Before we get into the meat of Tony Cornero’s story and the fall of the last gambling ships in California, I feel I should probably make some mention of the fact that I just took six months between episodes. There. It is noted. At the end of this episode I’ll fill you in a bit on what the future of the Bear Flag Libation podcast will look like. For now, just let me say I sincerely appreciate your patience and listenership. Also, I want to point out at the outset that I am relaying heavily on one source for Tony Cornero’s part in this episode, and that book is Noir Afloat by Ernest Marquez. Usually and ideally, I weave a narrative pulled from multiple sources, but almost all the primary sources are currently out of my reach and nobody else has researched the details of Cornero’s life as thoroughly as Mr. Marquez has. I’ll only hit on some of the highlights, so if this subject interests you at all, I highly encourage you to check out Noir Afloat. Aside from the engaging stories, there are phenomenal photographs of the gambling ships that are worth the jacket price alone.
Like so many great rags to riches stories about flamboyant crime lords in the early twentieth century, this one begins in Italy. Anthony Cornero was born in the northern Piedmont District of Italy in 1900. Many years later, Cornero would claim his family had to immigrate to America because as a four-year-old he had burned down the family farm on accident, but Cornero often spun tall-tales like this. Whatever the reason, young Tony, along with his father, mother and brother moved to the town of Los Gatos, California, just south of San Jose. Tony’s father died in an accident less than year after moving to the United States and faced with raising two children alone in a strange land, Tony’s mother married another Italian immigrant, Giacomo Stralla. Stralla raised the boys like his own, gave them his name, legally make Tony’s name Anthony Cornero Stralla when he became an American citizen along with the Giacomo in 1914.
By age fifteen, Cornero had been convicted of three counts of robbery and sent to reform school. At eighteen, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve during World War One, but was booted out within six months for continually going AWOL. He took up driving a taxi in San Francisco, and would likely have remained so if not for the introduction of Prohibition in 1920. Within just a few years Tony, his brother Frank and his stepbrother, Louis Stralla, were among the largest and wealthiest bootleggers on the West Coast, mostly catering to the Los Angeles area. Aside from amassing a fortune illegally smuggling Scotch Whiskey down from Canada, Tony considered their business a public service. Perfectly keeping in line with his own moral code that would justify the gambling ship operations years later, Cornero was able to avoid getting caught in the act by authorities, but he flaunted his wealth openly, advertised himself as an importer and told anyone who would listen that his whiskey was saving citizens from poisonous home-made “rotgut”. People were going to drink no matter what, Cornero saw himself as simply providing a safe and well-established avenue toward inebriation without risk of blindness- for a modest fee, of course.
In the spring of 1926, the Long Beach Police got a tip about a private yacht that been missing after being chartered from the owner. Somebody had seen it docked in the harbor, suspiciously packed full of burlap sacks. Most people today imagine bottles of booze being smuggled in creates, but more burlap sacks were easier to move around in between boats and could fit more into tight places. Sure enough, when the cops arrived they found the yacht filled to the brim with boozy sacks. The boat was so weighed down that water was spilling in through the sink outlets. After counting, there were 806 sacks full with 9804 bottles of Canadian Whiskey. They had to bring in a fire truck to move it all to evidence locker and it took more than ten hours to get the job done. At some point, somebody noticed a man standing near the base of the dock who was absolutely fixated on the unloading process. Some detectives considered the man suspicious and brought him in for questioning. He said his name was Louis Donalds, claimed to reside at a real address in San Pedro, and he casually answered all their questions. Assured that this Donalds fellow was some legit looky-lou, they let him go. A day later after federal agents showed up. It was while the agents questioned the owner of the yacht with pictures of possible suspects the Long Beach cops realized that they had just picked up none other than the “King of the Rumrunners” himself, Tony Cornero, at the scene of the crime. And they had cut him loose. Also they never knew that while the cops were all patting themselves on the back for the big bust, only a few miles away, Tony’s men were unloading four times as much whiskey onto the beach, completely unmolested.
Now indentified by the boat owner and the local PD, Tony was officially a wanted man, Tony met his brother Frank at Los Angeles’s Union Station with a $150,000 in a suitcase to flee to Canada with. Unfortunately, the feds were at the train station too, spotted Tony and followed him onto the train to Seattle, waiting to bust him in hopes he would lead them to source of whiskey smuggling in Vancouver. Getting the biggest bootlegger in L.A. was nice, but if they played this right they figured they could shut down liquor trade on the whole of the West Coast. However, just like in the movies, Tony easily made the g-men on his tail. Near the town of Redding Cornero got up, seemingly to use the bathroom, went between cars, and jumped off the moving train. After dusting himself off, Tony ran to a near by airfield and chartered a plane to take him to Portland where he bought a ticket and boarded the same train he’d jumped off earlier that day- his cash filled suitcase was still onboard in the luggage car. His plan all hinged on the assumption the feds would notice he was gone and then get off themselves, but upon reboarding the train, he found them still sitting in the same seats, totally unaware their suspect had been off the train for half the ride. So, left with few options, Tony bribed the porter to retrieve his suitcase from the luggage compartment and for the second time that day Tony jumped off the same moving train as it slowed going into the Seattle station. Then, cool as a cucumber, the King of the Rumrunners blended into the crowd and disappeared. Are you in love Tony Cornero yet? Because this is the point where I started imagining what a Tony Cornero screenplay might look like.
A little more than a year later, 1927 now, Tony reemerged in Hamburg, Germany chartering a boat to take one hundred thousand gallons of various types of alcohol and the machine parts for a still, to sail from Hamburg to Vancouver. At least, that’s what the manifest said; the captain was actually under orders to off load at a meeting place forty miles off the coast of San Diego. Thinking himself clever, the captain stopped in New Orleans and tried to turn in the contents to U.S. Customs agents and collect a generous reward. However, within a day Frank Cornero and some attorneys made it to Louisiana and successfully argued that if the manifest said Vancouver, this ship was going to Vancouver, and this greedy kraut captain was full of crap. A new captain was hired, the barrels of booze were reloaded, the ship sailed on through the Panama Canal, and stopped of the coast of San Diego, just like the German captain said it would. That’s where Tony, who had been cooling his jets in Ensenada, Mexico, met his cargo with a fleet of speedboats. On the last load, the Coast Guard discovered them, but they were no match for rumrunners fastest-money-could-buy boats and all the liquor eventually reached thirsty Southern California lips. Still, this endeavor involved too many hassles and close calls. Tony missed the United States and decided shortly after it was time to face the music.
On October 29th, 1929, Cornero walked into the Special Intelligence Unit of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles and calmly explained he’d like his day in court to clear up this whole “King of the Rumrunners” business. The marshal in charge was certainly surprised his most wanted criminal just cruised right in the front door, but with equal calm to match Cornero, the marshal reached into his desk drawer and presented the three year old warrant for Tony’s arrest. The newspapers ran stories about the incident, and on any other day it would have made the front page of every Californian paper, but October 29th 1929 also happened to be Black Tuesday, the day the stock market crashed, marking the beginning of what became known as the Great Depression.
Tony would spend the next two years in prison, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him from investing big in his next big venture. And just because he planned on going legit, didn’t mean he wanted out of the vice business.
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| The Meadows Resort outside Las Vegas |
In 1855, Mormon pioneers built a fort in the spot where Las Vegas currently stands, but abandoned it only two years later after realizing they had been trying to grow crops in the middle of one of the hottest deserts in the world. Seems to me they would have picked up on that sooner. Fifty years later, the Union Pacific railroad needed a way station on the route between Salt Lake City and Los Angles and this barren patch sand seemed a decent as any other, thus the city of Las Vegas was born. Gambling had been legal in Nevada since it became at state in 1864, but when progressive politics swept through the West in the early 20th century gambling was outlawed in the Silver State in 1911. The thing was Nevada remained pretty hardcore Old West, even their Golden State neighbor to the left was ever faster becoming a cosmopolitan beacon of modern American innovation. So when Nevada’s enforcement of the anti-gambling laws waned, none of the miners, cowboys and tumbleweeds complained. In 1931, getting pummeled by the Depression, legislatures in Nevada figured if gambling was going on anyway and everybody was cool with it, they might as well make some money off of issuing licenses, collecting fees, and maybe even attracting some out of state tourism. Most people assumed that Reno, the closest thing to an urban center in Nevada, would be hotspot, but a few people saw potential in the dusty boondock of Las Vegas. One of those people was Tony Cornero.
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The United States government just begin this little public works project they were then calling the Bolder Canyon Dam about forty miles southeast of Las Vegas. Eventually, the dam would take on the name of the president who signed the actual work order, making it the Hoover Dam. I’m not going to get into all the dealings, and back dealings, and controversies concerning the construction of the dam and it’s relationship to Las Vegas, but let’s just say no small part of it had to do with what kind of access the massive labor force building the dam was going to have to gambling, booze and hookers. The Cornero brothers sought to make their mark by building Nevada’s first luxury casino, resort and hotel about halfway between Las Vegas and the dam site. They would name it The Meadows, because Las Vegas means “The Meadows” in Spanish, and when you think of Las Vegas, well don’t you naturally think of meadows? Seeing the potential for big bucks on the horizon the Clark County politicians wanted to clean up the city a bit, so when they gave Frank Cornero his gambling license, part of the deal was to take all the prostitutes in the red light district with him to The Meadows outside of town. When conducting business deals, and one side needs to get rid of all their prostitutes, and the other side needs to gain a whole bunch of prostitutes, that is what you call a “win-win”.
Unfortunately, the political winds would change against the Cornero brothers when the U.S. Sectary of the Interior came to town and expressed concern about these known criminals using gambling, sex and booze to corrupt the dam workforce. He wanted the town around the worksite to be a family friendly, all-American, white-picket-fence type place, completely ignoring the fact that the vast majority of labors pouring in were grown men without families. Or perhaps he sincerely believed that when single young men get off a shift of backbreaking and extremely dangerous work, there is nothing more they want to do than till their gardens and read the Bible. Further, 42,000 people showed up for only 6000 jobs at the dam, and times being what the were, many of them just wound up staying in the area, not working for the Federal government.
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The Meadows opened successfully enough in 1931, in a Spanish Mission style complex with 100 hotel rooms, a casino, a nightclub, a ballroom, all lavishly decorated. The Cornero’s hosted all the big Nevada hotshots, Hollywood celebrities and loads of reporters. A later historian of Nevada described the event as, “The opening that set the stage for all future resort hotel openings in Las Vegas.” But only four months later there was a fire, likely arson, and when they Las Vegas fire department was dispatched they stopped at the city limit, saying they were under orders to go no further. A city official admitted in the local paper the next day they would offer no protection outside the city limit. The message was clear, they had withdrawn support of the Meadows and Tony Cornero knew full well he would not get a gambling license within the city because he was a convicted felon. And that was the very last time Las Vegas politicians were in cahoots with men with criminal pasts. No, I’m kidding, obviously. Thus was born the long, proud tradition of using legit front men in order to mask mafia activity, which would also one day supply my grandfather, a Los Angeles tax attorney, with job he needn’t ever show up for at the Fremont Hotel. Tony’s problem was that he was ahead of the curve, the example to be made, out in the open, which set the template for all future shady dealings in Sin City.
The Meadows missed its mark in another way as well: The swanky resort had no real customer base away from the growing city. Even though it was closer to the dam site, the working stiffs didn’t feel comfortable in a setting designed to appeal to movie stars. The Meadows was the place you might run into your boss or your boss’s boss. It made more sense to them to make the extra fifteen minute drive into Vegas, which unsurprisingly grew a whole new population of prostitutes along with the influx of construction workers. In 1935, the Cornero brothers closed the doors to Las Vegas’s first luxury resort, but Tony was by no means done with casinos. Why try to recreate Los Angeles in the desert, when he could make a little piece of Las Vegas off the coast of Los Angeles?
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| The Meadows Resort |
We all know very well by now that Tony Cornero did not then go invent the Southern California gambling ship. In 1935, Cornero was actually coming pretty late to the game, but many of his old bootlegger contacts gone into the gambling ship biz and he had kept close watch on how those ships had been skirting the law for last eight years. Sure, law enforcement was after them at every turn, but that hadn’t stopped the owners from making ridiculous amounts of money. At this point the Johanna Smith and the Monfalcone had both burned at sea. The Monte Carlo was on her way to San Diego, where she would soon have a fateful meeting with a Coronado beach. The Rose Isle became the Johanna Smith II and I haven’t found a clear reason why that ship was sold and scraped in 1935, but it couldn’t have helped business she was scene of notorious murder by a unrepentant career criminal that been widely described in pulp magazines. Thus as the first generation was dying out, Tony Cornero arrived just in time to get in on the second generation gambling ships were appearing in the Pacific Ocean.
The offshore gambling industry had steadily been maturing over the years. Or more accurately, the authorities had run out of fresh ideas of ways to shut the ships down, so this legal impasse allowed methods of maintaining a quasi-legal business to solidify. Prohibition was thankfully dead and gone, meaning the new ships could actually be built with real bar and nightclub facilities. The worst of the Depression had subsided, meaning more money could be spent on larger ships and made to be more lavish. On a whole, the gambling ships took on a certain air of legitimacy. The usual decriers went on decrying, but those people decry everything that’s fun. For a man who experienced in vice, but was determined to stay legit, investing in a gambling ship must have seemed a natural fit to Tony Cornero. Further, with his many years as a bootlegger in Southern California granted him plenty of knowledge and experience with coastal waters and the local criminal element.
After things went belly up in Nevada, Tony and a business partner named James Lloyd paid fifteen thousand dollars each to join the syndicate that was about to open the grandiose S.S. Tango (by the way, I didn’t know what the S.S. meant when applied to ships, all I knew is some of the gambling ships used it wrongly when they added it to names because they thought it sounded fancy. I also assumed it was some official designation, but it turns out it just means “steam ship”, like the way a recreational vehicle is called an RV. So now we know- if it has a steam engine it can be called an S.S.). For three years on the Tango, Cornero worked closely alongside Clarence Blazier, the long time veteran of gambling ships who managed the Johanna Smith’s for the old Spring Street Gang. However, Tony had his own way of doing things and constantly bristled under Blazier. Eventually during an argument over where to set the betting odds Cornero challenged the older man to bet to settle things once and for all.
“Let’s roll the dice,” Tony declared, “Winner take all. My share against yours.” The normally cautious Brazier must have been sick of the young man constant defiance and accepted the bet. So they rolled. And Tony lost. He was done on the Tango, a share worth somewhere in the ballpark of $100,000. Never one to wallow on mistakes, Tony left with no anger and even was known to brag about the incident, later saying, “I’ve got to be the boss of everything I touch, so I’m sure things go right.”
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Once his own boss, Tony purchased an old Alaska Packers vessel named the Star of Scotland and renamed her the Rex, the Latin word for a reigning king. Tony endeavored to do everything above board and in the open, even going as far to making sure every employee was an American citizen and had each one finger printed, with copies mailed to the police. When he hired sky-writers to draw a giant R-E-X in the sky, he gave instructions for them to do three miles in the air, just incase California law enforcement considered the three-mile limit to extend vertically. In written advertisement, he offered $100,000 to any person who could find illegal activity aboard the Rex. Prudently, he then warned his employees that if that reward claimer turned out to be the friend of one of them, well, they’d both find themselves taking a late night swim in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean.
Parking the Rex three and a half miles off the Santa Monica Pier, the ship almost instantly became the most successful gambling ship in Southern California history. Cornero knew full well about the imaginary line a judge had drawn back in 1927 that declared California’s legal boundaries in the Santa Monica Bay between the two peninsulas- this was the ruling that caused the proto-gambling ship, Barge C-1, to voluntarily close up and the owners to move down to Long Beach- but Cornero also knew the public’s attitude towards gambling ships had evolved. If the people of Los Angeles came out to the Rex and felt they weren’t being cheated, safe from muggers who patrolled the docks of some of the old ships, if they could build a relationship with the casino and its employees, well they would embrace the Rex, even defend it. The more the public supported the Rex, the harder it would be to shut down. And Tony had ideas of how to make people love the Rex, it would make them love Tony Cornero.
The Rex was infused with Cornero’s gregarious personality. He seemed to be everywhere at all hours, day and night, in impeccable suits and his trademark white Steston hat. He seemed to know every person who ever came aboard the ship, able to remember the names of patrons who had only come once, months ago. He seemed to know every transaction that went on aboard the Rex, almost able to give tallies and earnings as they were happening. He was known to give money to strangers having rough nights and even once fully reimbursed a woman who’s husband had lost a week’s earnings at the tables. Reporters were not only welcomed onboard, but schmoozed, wined and dined. Tourists coming to L.A. soon considered the ship a must-see attraction in Los Angeles. It was known, you could trust the Rex to treat you right, and despite his criminal past, you could trust Tony Cornero.
Unfortunately, law enforcement and the city council did not feel the same way. Santa Monica politicians were not at all happy about a must-see attraction for their fair city being a floating casino, along with the giant red neon X in the harbor that marked the water taxi dock. So, even though there was minimal public outcry against the Rex, law enforcement went after her with a series of raids in 1938. This time citing a Fish and Game law that marked the water in Santa Monica Bay as part of the legal jurisdiction of California. Never one to be deterred, Cornero leased a dock in Redondo Beach and moved the ship three and half miles off the coast there, but still being north of Point Vicente, the Rex was still clearly operating in the bay and outside the law. Still, Tony sought popularity over legal status. He wrote an open letter to Redondo Beach residents in their local paper explaining how many great jobs would be available, how much tourist revenue they could expect to see, how much money he would personally spend in the community.
Patrons followed the ship south and the tiny beach community in Redondo thrived. When Tony opened up an account with a Redondo Beach bank they had to buy an extra truck just move all the Rex’s cash and coins coming in. But, just as the customers followed the Rex, so did the Los Angeles County District Attorney and whole new round of raids and court injunctions kicked off. In one instance, as raiding vessels approached they found the Rex already being towed out to sea. As they got closer high-power hoses sprayed them as the rest of the crew brandished baseball bats, taunting the officers. The District Attorney got on the bullhorn and promised to tear gas both the Rex and the tugboat unless this nonsense came to an end, at which time the tugboat cut the line. Next the D.A. announced he was more than ready to set up a blockade around the Rex and starve out Cornero, his crew and the hundreds of patrons still on board. Tony was not ready for a siege at sea and surrendered. Not yet. Tony and his crew submitted to arrest, were booked for gambling violations, and then released on bail.
I don’t want to get bogged down in the courtroom dramas going back and forth during this time, with hung juries, appeals, accusations of corruption, but Cornero’s main line of defense throughout was that the Santa Monica Bay was not a bay at all. His defense team actually used Cornero as an expert witness because great oratory abilities. Tony kindly explained that the Spanish explores, beginning with Juan Cabrillo, never called the geographical feature a bay. A bay had to offer protection of ships from the open sea elements, to at least remotely enclose the waters within; picture the San Francisco Bay, with it’s relatively small opening and the massive bay hiding behind it. The area near Santa Monica was just a bight with a curve in the coastline, according to Tony and it wasn’t his fault some mapmakers didn’t know the definition of the word “bay” when the mislabeled the body of water. Therefore, the imaginary line between Point Dume to Point Vicente was invalid, therefore California had no jurisdiction more than three miles off the actual beach, therefore gambling was completely legal.
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| Cornero on the the Rex |
Right now, please allow me to take a narrative intermission here to clear something up. This has nothing to do with the Cornero story, or gambling ships, but as a hotel concierge in San Francisco I see an endless amount of confusion concerning the name of the opening to San Francisco Bay: The Golden Gate. Most people assume it is simply the name of the famous red suspension bridge, completed in 1937, and other Bay Area sites with the Golden Gate moniker came after. Many people ask me for directions to Golden Gate Park, when they really want to get to the Golden Gate Bridge, about three miles away from the park. Often when I explain this to tourists, I’m given an annoyed look, as if to imply I played some part in giving municipal landmarks misleading names. So a little history on the Golden Gate name: first of all, the mouth to the large bay is so small, just over a mile and a half, that the first European explorers completely missed it for a couple hundred years. Both Juan Cabrillo and Francis Drake sailed right passed it and parked their ships in lesser bays nearby. It wasn’t until friend of the show, Jose Francisco Ortega led a scouting party on Gaspar de Portola 1769 land expedition up the coast, did Europeans first lay eyes on sixty mile long bay. Remember those fellas from the episode on Spanish Missions and the Swallow’s Inn? When Ortega reached the end of the peninsula, looking across the hills that would one day be Marin County, he could either go for a long cold swim, he could backtrack and take the few hundred mile trip around the bay, or he could say, “Fuck it. That’s enough exploring for Spain today,” and go back to meet Portola in Monterey. He chose the latter. So did Ortega name it the Golden Gate? No, he didn’t speak English, dummy. Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you dumb, you’re a smart person, you’ve already figured out the gold in Golden Gate came from the California Gold Rush, right? I mean, consider San Francisco’s major role in Gold Rush and how people came through that strait seeking gold and how much gold was shipped out of there, right? Wrong again, dumbass. But, to be honest, that is what I always thought too. It turns out the name came from John C. Fremont, an American explorer, war agitator and all around crazy man, who I promise we will talk about some day. In 1846, two years before the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, Fremont dubbed the strait “Chrysopylae” which is Greek for “Golden Gate”, after the strait on which served the city of Constantinople, which was called “Chrysoceras”, or the Golden Horn. That bay lay at the seat of the Byzantine Empire was a major source of their economic success and one of the reasons why they remained unconquerable for a thousand years. Today it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, but the name the Golden Horn still endures. Seeing such potential in the magnificent San Francisco bay, Fremont gave it a name recalling the majesty and legend of old. In one of the weird coincidences of history, there is no way John Fremont would have known the etymology of the name California, but also if you remember back to the Spanish Missions episode you’ll recall the name likely came from a Spanish novel that referenced the island of Amazons, with no metal on it except for gold and ruled over by the Queen Calafia. What I didn’t mention before is that Queen Calafia entered that story because left the island of California to join the Muslim invaders who eventually conquered Constantinople and took control of the Golden Horn. So basically, by pure serendipity, in the state that bears Calafia’s name, the most famous landmark is named after her greatest triumph. What does that mean? Absolutely nothing, but imagine you just asked the guy in your hotel lobby how to get to the Golden Gate Bridge and he comes at you with all that. Usually, I just tell people to get on the number 30 bus, then transfer to the 28. One final note here, before we get back to Tony Cornero: Golden Gate Park was built in the 1870s, inspired by New York’s Central Park and taking it’s name from the legendary strait, about 60 years before the Golden Gate Bridge.
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| The Golden Gate, circa 1891. |
Back in Los Angeles, in 1938, the District Appeals Court ruled in favor of Cornero’s argument that the Santa Monica Bay was not actually a bay at all. This kicked the case up to the California Supreme Court, but in the meantime, Tony had the legal standing to reopen the Rex, and off of Santa Monica no less, because for the time being. It was at this point in which the rising political star and native-born Angelino, Earl Warren, got involved. Yeah, Earl Warren, as in future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during the Civil Rights era, Earl Warren. At this stage in his long and illustrious career, Warren served as the California Attorney General and he was downright sick of how pitiful the Southern California law enforcement departments had been at shutting down the moral cesspool that was the gambling ships. He was also extremely suspicious that it had been mere incompetence or legitimate legal basis had allowed the gambling ships owners to keep winning court cases for more than a decade, which is why Warren kept most of his plans secret until he was ready to strike. And it was true, Tony Cornero and the other gambling ship owners had plenty of people in law enforcement on the take, so his clandestine approach was probably his smartest move.
Earl Warren, for all his great deeds we remember him for today, was not always the great civil rights crusader. If his career had ended in 1948, when he was the vice-presidential candidate alongside Thomas Dewey, who famously lost an extremely close election the Harry Truman, history would likely remember the man in a much darker light. Not many people remember his battle against the gambling ships, and questionable legal tactics he deployed during this fight. In a dirty fight, he got his hands a bit dirty and we’ll get into more of that in a moment, but it’s what he did after the gambling ships were shuttered, stripped and sold that would haunt Warren for the rest of his days. When Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, it was Warren who spoke the loudest in calling for the internment of all Americans of the Japanese Empire ancestry on the West Coast. It was more or less his plan that the federal government executed in forcibly removing 120,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes, with zero evidence of wrong doing, and sent them to inland prison camps for the duration of the War, many of those camps being in harsh desert areas. For all the tangents I’m willing to take in the episode, the internment of American citizens on American soil based on nothing more than ancestry is not one of them. It’s just too big. Aside from the wrongful imprisonment and humiliation, many of those people lost property that had been in their family for generations, and it’s fair to say it one of the darkest hours in American history. At the time though, Warren’s plan was extremely popular in California and it played a large part in electing him to the California governorship.
However, Warren’s career did not end in 1948. After unsuccessful bids for higher national office, Warren was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953. It was here that Warren presided over the most famous civil rights cases in the Twentieth Century: Brown Vs. Board of Education, which dispensed with the “separate but equal” doctrine and broke Jim Crow segregation laws in the South. It was also his court’s ruling on Miranda Vs. Arizona that required police officers to explain the rights to any person arrest, hence the Miranda Rights that you hopefully mostly hear on cop shows. In Civil Rights, voting rights, free speech rights, separation of church and state, Earl Warren stands as a pivotal figure in breaking the antiquated and backward thinking that allow unequal treatment under the law, bringing us closer than ever to the promise of America that we never seem quite able to live up to. But in our story here, the point in time in which we meet the man, he was not there yet.
In his memoirs, published in 1977, Warren expressed that he “deeply regretted” his role in the Japanese-American interment, saying that he acted impulsively and not in keeping with “the American concept of freedom.” Obviously, he was less generous in speaking about Tony Cornero in this book, calling him, “a notorious rumrunner and underworld character” who was really just a front from “the Al Capone crowd in Chicago.” In the telling about the raid on the Rex and the other gambling ships, Warren speaks plainly, but offers a few variations on facts and timelines than Earnest Marquez offers. I’ll talk about those in a little bit, but I’m inclined to believe Mr. Marquez’s version of events for two reasons: 1) Marquez looks on these events with an historians eye and poured over hundreds of primary source documents from multiple points of view. Chief Justice Warren wrote about these events from only his view, thirty years after the fact. I’m sure he had notes and wasn’t writing from pure memory, but this was one small part of an illustrious career. I doubt he thoroughly researched all the events surrounding the summer of 1939. 2) Though I’m sure Marquez is every bit as enamored with the charms of Tony Cornero as I am, he ultimately has no dog in this fight. Where Warren’s version of events, well… it removes any legal gray area he may have been swimming in during his pursuit of the gambling ships.
[9]
You see, for Attorney General Warren to get involved in the fight against the gambling ships at all was risky because the Tony Cornero’s case was still up for review in the state Supreme Court in 1939. If he shut the ships down and then the courts ruled in favor of the ships being legally outside California’s jurisdiction, Warren’s other charges against the ships would become a lot flimsier, and his entire case, perhaps any conviction obtained, would have been called into question. Not to mention, the whole mess would have put a damper his rising political momentum. But Warren intensely hated the gambling ships and sincerely felt they prayed on citizen’s most base instincts, leading to finical and moral bankruptcy. So he devised a plan to shut down all four ships at once, before the courts could weigh in on their fate.
The first stage was a PR attack that aimed to shift public opinion against the casinos. Whenever possible he used the word “nuisance” when referring to the ships. If speaking to speaking to a chamber of commerce he talked about the economic nuisance that drew money away from legit sectors. If speaking to a crowd or a church he might speak of the state’s duty to protect citizens from a nuisance that compelled family members away from decent lives and toward destitution. If he could firmly establish the ships were in fact a “public nuisance”, they could act to shut them down without seeking an injunction. Think of it this way, if a café on your block suddenly started playing live music at three in the morning. You call the police, they show up and shut the cafe down. But then owner decides to take his case to court, claiming he has the right to play live music at all hours because he says it’s a part of religious ceremony or he’s actually in an unincorporated part of town or something. Because the café and the noise is considered a public nuisance, they don’t get to keeping playing live music at three in the morning while the case spends months in court getting decided. Make sense? The dilemma here was, Warren had to establish that a ship three and half miles off the coast, in which people only visit voluntarily, was somehow troubling the people who live on land. Warren’s argument was the ships enticed citizens to go out the through advertizing, they remained connected to the land by the water taxis, and, in the case of the Rex, there was an illegal phone line running from shore to ship, which gave the results of horse races as they came in.
Under this logic, Warren ordered local cops go around at night and take down any signs that advertised the gambling ships and hid them police station, labeling them as “found property held as evidence”. They tried to take down the giant X that advertised the Rex and the giant T to for the Texas, but they were on the water taxi docks, which were private property and watched 24/7.
[10]
It was no secret the hammer was coming, Tony just didn’t feel need to be worried. A great irony to Warren’s public attacks on the ships was they became busier than ever because everybody was afraid they’d get shut down soon. Warren even sent out the emissary to parlay named Oscar Janhsen, who Cornero knew personally because Janhsen was a federal officer who once arrested Tony in the bootlegging days. Tony greeted the man like an old friend, saying, “Jahnsen, don’t be silly. I have the best mouthpieces in the country, and they tell me I’m legal. Come along with me, I’ll show you what we’ve got.” Tony proceeded to give him a tour of the ship, while Jahnsen diligently recorded everything he saw. Jahnsen took note of an employee he recognized that was standing on the gangplank, paying close attention to faces of the law enforcement party. His name was Mike Connally, the former chief investigator of the state’s liquor administration, who was brought down by none other than Earl Warren when convicted of bribery charges in Alameda County. I like this little fact because, though it is literally just a footnote in Warren’s memoir, it shows when corrupt former officials were punished, they didn’t just disappear afterward. Each one was a potential addition to the criminal intelligence gathering team, able to spot their former collogues, point out who the weak link might be, and what leverage could be employed on him. Further, as we see with Connally here, they didn’t feel the need to be sneaky about it. Cornero might have even been sending a message: “I know you. I have eyes everywhere.”
This is why Warren played his cards so close to his chest, only giving pieces of the larger plan and single assignments to various agencies, and his job was made more difficult because of it. Warren had the support of the Los Angeles mayor, but the city police defiantly had no jurisdiction into coastal waters. Both the Los Angeles county District Attorney and sheriff repeatedly resisted being involved with Warren’s plans, until he eventually strong-armed them by threatening to, in Warren’s words, “invoke new powers of the attorney general” in which they would basically be neutered from the power of their office. Once the raid ensues, a Coast Guard commander calls Warren’s office and says, “You tell that blankety-blank to take those boats away from the Rex or he will land in jail.” The commander eventually backs down when Warren drops the name of a vice-admiral who endorsed the raid. A lot of people did feel Warren’s fleet of boats was looking a lot like what might be called a “state navy”, which would absolutely be illegal because according to the United State’s Constitution individual state’s cannot have their own navy’s. That’s why we have the Coast Guard. But I do find it interesting the commander said stay away from the Rex in particular.
[11]
So, Warren rightfully feared there might be a corrupt man on the payroll in every office and their ability to plan counter-attack before law enforcement ever made their move. This is why he tapped the phones of the owners and anybody he suspected might be feeding information to the owners. This was not at all legal, which is why none of that information was ever used in court, but it did given Warren and his team a heads up on whom they could trust. Again, I don’t want to get hung up on details, read Noir Afloat for that, but it was a rather remarkable feat of logistics, carrying out Warren’s operation, which utilized at least a half a dozen law enforcement agencies, at different governmental levels, and hardly anyone knew how or when the strike against the gambling ships would occur. Warren himself said, this operation, of all the law enforcement operations he had been involved in, was “by far the most intelligently planned and successfully carried out”. Giving due shout outs to his chief investigator Oscar Jahnsen and the chief of attorney general’s Criminal Division, Warren Olney III.
[12]
On July 28th, 1939, Earl Warren released his official announcement that he would be treating the gambling ships as a public nuisance along with a list of reasons why, mainly focusing on the monetary and public safety cost that came with so many people who turned to a idle or criminal life because of the presence of gambling. On July 31st, two fleets of Fish and Game boats, full of county deputies and D.A. detectives, suddenly and simultaneously converged on the Mount Baker and the Tango, with a team of wielders standing by to cut the chains to the anchors. Each boarding party even had two accountants from Price Waterhouse to count the money in the casinos and give the shift manager a receipt for the confiscated cash and goods, which would be immediately swept away to a secure and undisclosed bank vault. The Mount Baker fell quickly and without incident. The Tango however snapped shut its steal door at the foot of its landing platform, blocking any chance to board. Warren Olney simply told the crew of the Tango that they would come back later. After disappearing, Olney held all but this own boat back, but packed in as many deputies as he could below deck. When he reappeared, to the Tango it appeared as if there were only two men on board, and Olney claimed he only wanted to parlay. As soon as the steel door opened, the Olney dove in, blocking the door with his shoulder as the deputies poured out of the hold and onto the gambling ship. The Tango was done for, and the Spring Street Gang, the mafia organization who had introduced California to free and easy offshore gambling, was now and forever out of the gambling ship racket.
I don’t have any account of how the Texas was taken out the next morning, apparently too much attention was being focused on the big fish that was being hunted on the afternoon of August 1, Tony Cornero’s U.S.S. Rex.
[13]
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| Earl Warren, 1942 |
So now you understand while Cornero felt completely legitimate and justified when he declared into the megaphone that the oncoming sheriff’s were, “just a lousy bunch of pirates!” From his perspective, the most recent appeals court decision was in his favor, the case was still pending before the California Supreme Court, this public nuisance thing Warren cooked up was corrupting Cornero’s right of due process under the law and it was in fact the California Attorney General who was acting outside the law. Feeling secure that the law, public opinion and history were on his side, Tony was ready to take the stand he had not be prepared for in past altercations.
The ship was locked up tight, any boat that approached the Rex was met with a deluge from the high-pressure water cannons, Tony had even stocked up on supplies that would allow the Rex to sustain itself for months, but since the siege was an act of protest aimed to bringing to public to his side, Tony had the small problem of the patrons who were unlucky enough to be onboard gambling when all this went down, lest they be perceived as hostages. Cornero insisted on only talking to a Sheriff’s captain he judged to be fair to make a deal where the civilians would taken off and the boarding parties would not attempt to board. By the time the 600 customers were getting back to shore, leaving behind a seventy-five-man crew on the Rex, news had spread at crowds were gathering on the beach to witness the event.
Ever the generous host, that night Tony tossed bottles of fine Scotch overboard for the sheriff’s to pick up and warm their bellies with. There were plenty of reporters out on the water and for them Tony came out with his bullhorn and announced, “Warren’s navy is nothing but a bunch of pirates… If we had shot them down, no court in the world would have held that they were justified in boarding a ship on the high seas… Warren and Fitts (the LA district attorney) are just looking for political build up… (they are)… in contempt of the California Supreme Court.”
The next morning many papers did indeed portray Tony Cornero as “a tough little guy” who was standing up to bullying government, but as the days wore on Tony began to realize the media war, Warren was standing on the Santa Monica Pier, and he was on a ship three and a half miles in the ocean. Warren was all too happy to remind the world of Cornero’s criminal past as bootlegger. Further, he was set to appear in court on August 11th on the felony bookmaking charge and he did not want to be deemed in contempt of court at this critical moment. So ten days into the siege, Cornero appeared on the deck and announced that he would turn himself into the sheriff’s department, but the crew of Rex would carry on without him. Tony returned looking fresh, smiling and waving to reporters. When they asked why he surrendered, he replied, “I needed a haircut, and the only thing we don’t have on the ship is a barber!” Also ready to meet Tony was his lawyer and a bail bondsman, so he was released as quickly as he was booked. Before leaving, Tony shook the tired sheriff’s hand and cheeringly reminded him, “You guys are violating the Constitution by maintaining a State Navy.”
The bookmaking charged was dismissed on grounds of lack of jurisdiction, citing the pending case at the California Supreme Court. Warren was furious, but he couldn’t make a move at that moment because the FBI was snooping around about some illegal wiretaps that somebody in the DA’s office tipped them off to. If he overplayed his hand, the state’s top cop would be ruined if it came out that his moral crusade was actually breaking the law itself.
The siege of the Rex lasted until November when the California Supreme Court finally issued it’s decision: The Santa Monica Bay was indeed a bay, and had been indentified as so for the last 400 years, serving as a protecting harbor for ships and shore alike. It was over. Tony Cornero had run out of legal avenues to pursue and he announced to the press that his position had become untinable. In a settlement, it was agreed the Rex would submit to being scrapped by state. Tony would get back all the money he had onboard the ship, but would also pay series of taxes and fees totaling about a half a million dollars. On November 21st, the crew of the Rex gave up without a fight and law enforcement poured onboard, with plenty of press in tow, to take lots of pictures of the victors smashing roulette wheels with axes and tossing slot machines into the Pacific Ocean.
[14]
Now, in Warren’s version of events, all four ships were raided at the same time on one day, rather than over two days. Warren says he wanted all of them to go down at once, so he couldn’t be accused to playing favorites. Okay, innocuous enough there. But when he describes the attack on the Rex, he mentions the water cannons and the stalemate, but says the whole thing was over by 3 AM the next morning! That the entire siege was over in a matter of hours, rather than months, and Cornero simply gave himself up and the ship was seized by the state of California. The three in the morning time could perhaps concede with time the customers onboard were taken back to land, but it seems strange that Warren would not remember Cornero stayed at sea for ten more days, or the crew of the Rex stayed aboard the Rex for more than three months. Additionally, Warren remembers Cornero and his lawyer came to a plea bargain soon after the raid to get out of the criminal charges of being a public nuisance. Then some time later the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state having jurisdiction in the Santa Monica Bay, which Warren only mentions as saying it validated his theory. He never makes any mention of Cornero attempting to argue his case legally, or accusing Warren of acting outside the courts.
[15]
I feel like Sarah Koenig on the Serial podcast, who doesn’t want to quite say right out that Jay is lying, because you know memory is a funny thing, but he does seem to have a lot of inconsistencies in his story that don’t add up with the facts. In this case, the Jay in our story is being played by behemoth of American history, Chief Justice Earl Warren. I also want to point out that, unlike the Adnan Siad case, we actually have plenty of evidence to discard Warren’s story. First and foremost, articles written by newspaper reporters describing events with dates at the top of them. I mean, on the most basic level, there is a picture of Tony Cornero coming ashore with the sheriff and it’s clearly daylight outside.
Again, he was writing this more than thirty years later and this section of Warren’s book is only five pages, but it seems worth noting that Warren’s narrative basically ignores the decision to act unilaterally when a jurisdiction matter is still in court, and the fact of maintaining what might be called an illegal “state navy” for months. But, there is something else about Warren's story that bothers me more than changing dates and omitting questionable practices. What gets me is, that by depriving Tony Cornero of his protracted siege, he deprives the man of not only of valid legal arguments, but of any arguments at all. Cornero considered the siege to be an act of public protest; he was shining a spotlight at the Rex because he wanted people to ask questions about Attorney General actions. But Warren paints Tony as little more than a two-bit gangster who rolled over instantly under the might of Warren’s brilliant plan. Sure, Tony Cornero was ultimately motivated by the desire to keep his profitable casino business running, but that should not detract from the injustice he perceived in certain government agencies acting arbitrarily, abusing the power of their office, and even willfully ignore the Constitution of the United States. If the California Supreme Court ruled the other way, who knows, maybe Warren would have been humiliated, with his career ending right there and we might have casinos filling the Santa Monica Bay today. But they didn’t.
The Rex was sold and stripped down, given new masts and it’s old name, The Star of Scotland. When World War Two broke out the ship was put to work hauling lumber to South Africa and was eventually sank in 1942 by German submarines off the coast Brazil.
And Tony Cornero? Did he just roll over and quit? What do you think? This was a man nicknamed after his favorite song, “The Wabash Cannonball”, about a relentless freight train that never stops. Tony moved to Havana and bought a casino so successful the local chief of police decided he wanted the place so he had Cornero deported from Cuba. Next, Tony returned to Las Vegas and opened a casino called the S.S. Rex Club, only to have the Nevada Gaming Commission revoke his license once again after some of the casino partners were caught with loaded weapons on the casino floor. Most men would have called it quits at this point, or more likely at some point years earlier, this was enough success and defeat to fill several life times. What did the Wabash Cannonball do? He took another roll of the dice at gambling ships off the coast of Southern California again, of course.
[16]
In April of 1946, the War had been over for less than a year, all of the former gambling ships had been sunk or repurposed into new careers, Earl Warren was now governor of California and more popular than ever, Tony Cornero is coming off a run of one expensive failure right after another, but did the people of Southern California stop enjoying gambling? The coastal cities, assuming Warren had taken care of this problem for good seven years earlier, had made no steps in the intervening time to further outlaw off-shore gambling or the water taxies that would potentially service such a vessel. Same goes for the federal government, who so closely guarded their Pacific territorial waters during the War and made laws to watch for everything twelve miles off the coast, everything except for gambling.
Cornero ran profitable legitimate business, like his shipping corporation called Seven Seas Trading Company, but one gets the feeling watching over invoices and receipts, importing and exporting dull goods and materials, would never be enough for someone like Tony. He liked to be among people, and if I may speculate with a bit of armature armchair psychoanalysis, I think he like how hot emotions ran when gambling was in the mix. When people gamble they are excitable, hopeful, desperate, exuberate, devastated- the full range of their humanity made raw and at the surface, and at his casino, he was at the center, the engine to a twenty-four hour a day party. And then, of course, I can’t help but think Tony Cornero just liked to stir the pot as well. You know he had to enjoy making the announcement that planned to reinstate off-shore gambling because he knew it would make a bunch of stuffy old men in starchy shirts all over state spit out their coffee and launch into tirades about this no-good bootlegger daring to rear his greasy head in the City of Angels all over again.
Tony bought a ship called the Bunker Hill, unrelated to the contemporary of the Rex with the same name, and he named the casino the Luxurious, which quickly took on the nickname, the Lux. He promised this venture would be completely legal, which, as we know, had always been his firm belief about the Rex as well. All the proper paper was filled out and registered at proper office for the Lux to participate in “coastwise trade”. The vessel anchored five and half miles south of Long Beach, away from Santa Monica and a perfect spot to be just outside the both the Los Angeles and Orange country lines. Plenty of officials disputed the claim or proper distance or sought to shut the Lux down for selling booze without a license, but Tony bribed the right people once again and waited to stock his bar until the ship was out to sea (he reasoned he didn’t need a liquor license because he wasn’t selling alcohol in California). Tony poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the remodeling the ship with state of the art facilities, twelve roulette wheels, fourteen craps tables, twelve blackjack tables, five poker tables, 129 slot machines, a bingo parlor that could fit one hundred people, a fine dining restaurant, dance floor with orchestra stand, a 110 foot long bar with rare and important bottles of scotch and champagne.
The Lux was imminently a massive success; on opening night packing in as many as three thousand people, despite only have occupancy for two thousand. It did so again the second night. On the third night, the police made their move by arresting all the water taxi operators, stranding the over a thousand customers out at sea. At the dock, an angry crowd shouted obscenities at the arresting officers and refused to move their cars to allow the police to get, blocking all traffic for blocks around. The water taxies were up and running within the week by creatively circumventing the law, just like the old days. The boats were not allowed to solicit customers to visit gambling destinations, so they put up a sign denying any connection to the Lux- water taxis would take guests to any destination they requested. Of course, once on board, the fare to the Lux was fifty cents; anywhere else would be fifty dollars.
[17]
The police continued to arrest Cornero’s employees, but the Lux and the water taxis considered this simply part of doing business. Historically, this is how all purveyors of vice stay in business, be it for gambling, sex, drugs or alcohol: when the head of a crime ring can’t be brought down, law enforcement attempts to contain by arresting low-level employees, the boss pays the legal fees, the employees come out and go right back to work, or are instantly replaced by somebody else who wanted a high paying job for unskilled labor. Even today, after J. Edger Hoover’s FBI and the Cold War during the 40s, 50s and 60s linked crime syndicates to national security; and after the 1970s RICO laws, which allow for the conviction of mafia bosses who never picked up a gun; and after 1980s War-On-Drugs which led to mandatory life-ruining sentencing for minor infractions- even after all that, lawmakers continually understatement the risks poor people will endure for a chance to make decent money. Like most people, I’d argue at this point were ensuring people who make mistakes are condemned to a life of crime rather than reforming them from one, but that’s another digression altogether.
The difference with the gambling ships that favored the owners was their semi-legal status made the minor infractions so minor that worst most employees could expect was a night in city lock-up and the boss lost a few hundred dollars paying the bonds for their release. Even if he was paying ten or twenty thousand dollars a month to bail out employees, it hardly put a dent in Tony Cornero’s overhead. The problem for gambling ships was not back alley casinos, or secret brothels, or corners of handshake drug dealers, all those forms of vice could be ignored by polite society. Gambling ships were right out there, in the open, visible for miles around, with a line of people waiting on the docks- and Cornero’s strategy always involved making their presence even more notable. All his predecessors advertised through mailers or newspaper ads, but Tony courted the press, antagonized the police, the whole Battle of the Santa Monica Bay was an act of civil disobedience akin to a thundering protest march on the steps of city hall.
So was Tony's public relations strategy ever helpful to him? When push comes to shove, would the public he so desperately appealed to for all these years still stand by him? More importantly, did they ever stand by him at all? During Prohibition, even if most people didn’t frequent gambling ships, they understood them as some sort of extension of rebelling against the unjust laws regulating American citizen’s freedom of choice. But by 1946, government was no longer the tacit “frenemy” of the people, the United States government just beat the Nazis and the Japanese Empire, it protected the West Coast from attack. Roosevelt and the New Deal gave the country the most modern infrastructure in the world and supplied jobs when there were no others to be had. Soon the government would be rebuilding Western Europe with the Marshall Plan, while holding the Soviets at bay. Now it was sending the veterans who saved the world to college on the GI bill, allowing them better jobs in the future. From the Hoover Dam to the Atomic bomb, the United States government was the vehicle for proving the mighty and impossible feats Americans can do when they came together, rolled up their sleeves and went to work. My point is, it wasn’t exactly the time to thumb your nose at government institutions, or the extremely popular California governor, Earl Warren, who did so much to protect the West Coast against Japanese attack. Consider how this wave of patriotism would soon curl into the Red Scare of the late 40s and early 50s, when even minor acts of rebellion could call into question your loyalty to democracy itself. So while the Lux was an immediate commercial success, bursting at the seams with customers, those customers were only from a certain segment of the population, namely gamblers, who don’t exactly command a lot of clout from the public at large. The voices that had once heralded Cornero as the little guy standing up to government bullies were noticeably absent this time around.
Illustrating how big of an issue this had become since the Long Beach City Council went into fits trying to figure out some way to bring down the Johanna Smith, it was none other than the United States Attorney General, Tom C. Clark, who ordered to final seizure of the Lux. And his means for doing so was the citing of law Los Angeles County had tried back in the day. If you have an excellent memory, you’ll remember the attorneys for Johanna Smith and the Monfalcone were able to argue their ships that were licensed for coastwise trade actually engaged in coastwise trade because they switched spots every month. Cornero seemed to take this two decade old legal victory for granted. While it can be argued Tony’s greatest mistake was misgauging public support bucking the rule of law, the little mistake that took him down when he registered the Lux for doing business in “coastwise trade”. On September 17, 1946, the Feds seized the ship, claiming they had been watching for the six weeks and had not seen any sign of movement that would allow for claim she had been engaging in trade. Cornero attempted to argue she was technically moving the whole time because tides and waves carried the Lux back and forth, even while in anchor. It was the final plea of a desperate man. The AG didn’t buy it though and the United States government seized the ship, taking possession of anything of value, including the cash and silver coins, and dumped the rest, including some thousand bottles of liquor, into the Pacific Ocean.
[18]
This entire story has been series of municipal, then country, then state, then federal government agencies citing laws that were supposed to shut down the gambling ships for good. Each one was supposed to be the silver bullet that collapsed the whole industry, then the gambling ship owners and their lawyers found some new and creative way to dodge that bullet. The pattern was set at: “We’re not actually breaking law by doing X, because we’re actually doing Y and there is no law against doing Y.” So I find a certain poetic irony to the fact that the law that finally sunk the last gambling ship was the exact same law was first used and failed to stick twenty years earlier.
It might seem a small thing, a licensing technicality, to bring the final end to the nearly twenty year California gambling ship saga, but what are laws but lots and lots of tiny technicalities? In a modern liberal democracy, laws must be precise, so citizens know the exact line that must not be crossed or else be punished. A major justification for the American War of Independence, and many revolutions of the last three centuries for that matter, was that the ruling authorities enforced law arbitrarily and unequally. Most of the people of Southern California quickly got used to thinking of the gambling ships as smooth operators who narrowly glided from loophole to loophole, perhaps weaseling out of laws in the spirit they were written, but ultimately harmless. But to the people who made and enforced the laws, every time the gambling ships found a work-around in the courts, they exposed a weakness in the system. At best they were taking advantage lenient nature of a free society, at worst they were publicly exposing the vulnerability of corruption within the government and courts with bribes, blackmail, and muscle.
For their part, I doubt most of the gambling ship owners thought of their industry as anything more than another venture in which to make heaps of money. They defended their existence one legal battle at a time, and it seems to me, as quietly as possible, seeking to minimize any perception they were running anything but a legitimate business. But Tony Cornero preferred to argue broadly and loudly, speaking of his right to run an offshore business and the rights of the citizens to choose his business. In his mind, Tony was crusader, and maybe even something of a revolutionary. To my knowledge, he never made this argument to my knowledge but was Cornero so different than John Handcock, who was once painted as a criminal by the British government for bucking tariff laws he felt unjust and smuggling goods into the Colonies. I’m not the first to point out that connection in regards to bootleggers, and in his smuggling days Tony was proud to speak of the public service he was doing by offering fine Canadian whiskey, safely distilled and bottled, as an alterative to bathtub brewed rotgut. It seems that Tony not only had to be the boss of everything he touched, but he had to morally justify it on a near ideological level. And was he wrong to do so? Even though our society officially has frowns on gambling, we certainly allow for it in many places, weather that’s a craps table in Nevada and Atlantic City, or poker at an Indian casino, or at your local horse-racing track. Oregon allows slot machines at the gas station as part of the state lottery. So why not three and half miles off the coast?
Ignoring what is legal, what is deemed social acceptable changes over time and this was simply a different time. 1940s America is not 21st century America. Hell, as I’ve been pointing out over the course of this series, 1940s America was not even the same as 1920s America. This was long before Las Vegas became a family friendly destination and before somebody figured out we could bilk poor people of their dollars in hopes of matching up seven numbers in a Power Ball. If there is any doubt that the gambling ships existed in a completely different time than our own, let me ask you this, can you ever imagine having this conversation: “What are you doing tonight?” “Oh, I heard the Sinaloa Cartel is running a new party boat, so I’m going down to the pier, catching a ride out to international waters, cashing my whole paycheck out there, then maybe play some craps, get into that free buffet, have some drinks, who knows maybe I’ll run into Jennifer Lawrence out there.”? Hell no. That’d be insane. I admit there is a growing amount of disillusionment with the government and the police, but there are very few people these days who would willing put their lives and money in the hands of known criminals.
With the loss of the Lux, Tony Cornero finally gave on his dream of gambling ships. In April of 1948, due to the suggestion of Earl Warren and California Senator William Knowland , President Harry Truman signed an act prohibiting gambling in all U.S. territorial waters. This mean if a person wanted to run a gambling ship off Southern California, it would now have to be twenty-six miles from Santa Catalina Island, about fifty miles from Los Angeles. We do not know Cornero’s reaction to this development because a month prior to it he had been shot in the stomach, standing at the front door in his Beverly Hills home. During a meeting with some men about Mexican casinos the doorbell rang. He answered to find a deliveryman with a package who simply said, “We got something for you, Tony!” and fired a bullet into Cornero. Tony survived and told the police he did not recognize the shooter and claimed to have no knowledge of why anyone in the world would want to kill him for any reason.
While slowly recovering, Cornero decided to get out of Los Angeles all together and once again relocate to Las Vegas. He remained involved with various casinos over the next few years, but as always, Tony couldn’t help but dream big. In 1954, he announced that he would be building the world’s largest casino and resort in the area gaining traction as the Las Vegas Strip. He’d call it The Stardust. Since his previous two ventures in Nevada, the state gambling commission had become much more comfortable working with known mobsters, so as long as their names weren’t on the lease.
Unfortunately, Tony never saw the completion of the Stardust. On July 31, 1955, the Italian-immigrant, bootlegger, shipping mogul, gambling impresario, international fugitive, media darling, self-taught expert of law and history, and constant thorn in the side of the most powerful men in California, died of a heart attack while standing at a dice table at the Desert Inn Casino. Many suspected foul play because there were various accounts of how long it took Cornero to die, where he actually died, and if an autopsy had been preformed. Tony’s girlfriend claimed some men injected him with something and them simply slumped in over a craps table. I’m sure if Tony knew for certain what killed him, he probably wouldn’t tell us.
The funeral was held in Los Angeles to a veritable who’s who of the criminal underworld from around the country. Literally, who’s who- the police were there in plain clothes taking pictures of every person and car in attendance. Singer Dick Foote altered the lyrics to Tony’s favorite song, the “Wabash Cannonball,” about the relentless, mighty, rambling train:
Here’s to our pal, Tony, may his name forever stand
May it always be respected by his friends throughout the land.
His earthly race is over and the curtain round him falls
He’ll be carried up to Heavan on the Wabash Cannonball.
[19]
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| Tony & the Rex |
[1] Ernest Marquez, Noir Afloat: Tony Cornero and the Notorious Gambling Ships of Southern California (Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 2011), 70-87.
[2] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 18-24.
[3] Barbara and Myrick Land, A Short History of Las Vegas (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2004), 21-22 & xiv; Marquez, Noir Afloat, 25.
[4] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 25-30; Land, Las Vegas, 56-61.
[5] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 31-33; Ed Reid, The Grim Reapers: The Anatomy of Organized Crime in America, City by City (New York: Bantam Books, 1969), 125-26.
[6] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 34-39.
[7] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 40-70.
[8] Erwin Gustav Gudde, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names (Oakland: University of California Press, 2004), 147; Edward Everett Hale, “The Queen of California,” Atlantic Monthly 13, no. 77 (1964): 265–279.
[9] Earl Warren, The Memoirs of Earl Warren (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 149 & 132.
[10] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 74-83.
[11] Warren, Memoirs, 133-36.
[12] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 81; Warren, Memoirs, 136-137.
[13] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 80-83.
[14] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 84-97.
[15] Warren, Memoirs, 132-137.
[16] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 97-99.
[17] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 100-110.
[18] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 112.
[19] Marquez, Noir Afloat, 113-16.
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