• Lake Worth Casino Building Wedding
• Lake Worth Casino Building
• Lake Worth Casino Building & Beach Complex
• Lake Worth Casino Building Beach Complex

Casino Ballroom Dance Floor” – Imagine this room of the Casino Ballroom in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s occupied with more than 2,000 people listening and dancing to Big Band music.

This 3,000 square foot ballroom that offers breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean with wrap-around terraces and provides a perfect location for weddings, special occasions and other events. The new casino building remains true to the original 1920's architecture; and while there is no gambling, the name Casino remains as a reminder of the history and importance of the building. On the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, The Lake Worth Beach Casino Building and renovated Beach Complex officially opened to the public on March 1, 2013. It has quickly become the new travel destination in South Florida.

“Casino Ballroom Goes Up 1927” – Here sits the Casino Ballroom in 1927 with the outside mostly completed and before all the inside accessories were installed.

By Joe McDaniel —

The Casino Ballroom attracted plenty of attention in size alone in the Lake Worth community. Standing at more than 31,000 square feet, the ballroom was a grand structure that was like a huge welcome sign to entertainment seekers approaching the shores of Lake Worth.

“Casino Beach Partygoers” – This is a typical scene at the Casino Ballroom on any Wednesday night in 1958. That’s when the ballroom’s flourishing “Over 30” Club gathers, a boon to lonely strangers in the city and to married couples who refuse to surrender to the rocking chair. Membership in two years has soared to 3,500.

But add a band of musicians and a couple of thousand people who came to listen, dance and socialize and the ballroom became the liveliest venue in Tarrant County for 45 years.

The Casino Ballroom was a tour stop for many popular singers, musicians, and bands and was packed with revelers night after night. The ballroom had an open-air dance area that could hold 2,200 people. It cooled off warm nights with light breezes blowing in from the waters of Lake Worth just a short walk from the ballroom.

Couples swooned, swayed, juked and jived to some of the greatest music ever heard just a few hundred yards northwest of the Lake Worth city limits from 1928 to 1973.

And some couples were on their way to falling in love at the ballroom.

“My memory of the night is that I got to dance with Gary for the first time,” Lake Worth High School graduate Mikell Pruitt Robinson, who recalled her first dance with her future husband before they dating in the early 1960s. “It wasn’t a date, but we were both there with groups of friends. Maybe the stars in my eyes are why I don’t remember anything else.”

With the ballroom’s opening, suddenly the tiny Lake Worth community had a booming business that carried more than 500 jobs. The little town’s population at the time could not fill all the positions. But the ballroom’s popularity brought a population boost as employees sought housing near their jobs. This spurred the development of the Indian Oaks neighborhood in the community.

Lake Worth Casino Building Wedding

The Casino Ballroom’s heyday was during the late 1920s through the early 1950s. It attracted many of the big-name bands in the nation and had its own nationally known radio show. The ballroom could seat 2,200 people for partying and offered a hot meal for $2.00 brought from its full-service kitchen.

Patrons could order adult beverages from two bars in the ballroom. Underneath the ballroom, there was an icehouse on one end that Fort Worth Ice Company owned. On the other end was the boiler room. In the middle were the tracks from the Bug-A-Boo train that started its run from the Casino Beach Amusement Park next to the ballroom.

But the heart of the ballroom was the often-crowded dance floor. Couples showed off their dancing moves on a smooth floor made of 2-foot-by-2-inch strips of solid oak. The bandstand and stage were lively with the likes of marquee performers whose hit music flowed on national radio airwaves.

C.C. Smith, a retired railroad man, is well past the minimum age of the Casino’s “Over 30” Club, but nobody out dances him. Above, Smith swings Mayme Corley through a foxtrot to the music of the Guy Woodward, Jr. Orchestra.

Over the years, guests enjoyed the tunes of singers, musicians, and bandleaders that were the marquee names of their day. There were Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Herbie Kay, Rudy Valle, and Ted Weems.

Then there were Wayne King, Jan Garber, Artie Shaw, Bob Crosby, Ozzie, and Harriet Nelson, Art Castle, Ray McKinley, Hogan Hancock, Ben Bernie, Tex Beneke and movie stars Frank Sinatra and Dorothy Lamour.

Since the best performers played the ballroom, it was expected that the customers be dressed at their best. Men wore coats and ties and ladies wore dresses. In the 1920s, “flappers” with silk stockings rolled below their knees snapped their fingers to the Charleston. Men in bell-bottom trousers could show off their moves on the Lindy Hop.

And this was not a place to start a brawl. Former heavyweight boxer Sully Montgomery headed a group of bouncers who kept the peace. It was common to see Montgomery on Monday nights at a boxing ring at the end of the 400-foot Casino Beach boardwalk for the Monday night boxing matches. Montgomery later served as Tarrant County Sheriff from 1946 to 1952.

But back to the ballroom music. The melodies began filling the air in 1928 with a musician named Hogan Hancock leading the first band to play at the ballroom. Hancock had a trumpeter in the band that blew his horn with such force it aggravated ballroom owner George Smith.

Smith gave sharp orders to Hancock, “You either put that trumpeter in the back row of the band or hide his horn! He’s driving me nuts!”

Hancock hastily moved the trumpet player to a chair completely behind the band. Not many years later, Smith was more than happy to have the young trumpeter back at the Casino and pay him very well. This time the trumpeter led his own band and was a star. He was Harry James. James later guest starred on television shows and movies and had his own television show for a short time.

Bernie, who led a band of 14 musicians and two vocalists, was the Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt Liquor man of radio who made “yowzah, yowzah” a national catchphrase.

In the ‘20s, L.O. “Bud” Irby, was a youngster when he earned $2 a week as a helper at the ballroom. As an adult, he later managed the ballroom and went on to become the City of Lake Worth, city manager.

“At first we had taxi dances, 10 cents a dance,” Irby said. “Wednesday night was bargain night, 40 cents a person. You could hear the biggest name bands for $2. And all through the 1930s, we had a package deal, a five-course dinner and dancing all evening for $1.50 (per person).”

Trumpeter Armstrong, affectionately nicknamed “Satchmo”, was the first Casino Ballroom performer to take lodging in the Lake Worth community. He was a guest at the Bearden Boarding House that was located on what is now Wells Drive, just off Foster Drive.

The Bearden family warmly welcomed Armstrong to sleep in an upstairs room of the house and take meals in the family dining room. However, because he was black the musician feared that Fort Worth law enforcement would come and arrest him for sleeping and dining in the home. Instead, he chose to sleep and eat in the family’s screened-in porch. So Irskin Bearden, the head of the Bearden family, ate his meals with Armstrong on the porch to keep him company.

Strangers meet at the “Over 30” Club and sometimes they get married. Club membership brought wedding bells to the couples above. At left are Mr. and Mrs. E.P. Williams and, at right, are Mr. and Mrs. E.L. Webb.

Lake Worth Casino Building

By the ‘30s, the Casino Ballroom Orchestra was formed to entertain crowds when a more popular performer could not be booked. The orchestra filled in admirably as many of its members once played in big-name bands.

Beneke and McKinley began performing at the Casino Ballroom at this time and treated their appearances like homecomings. Both grew up in Fort Worth. Beneke’s father was a Fort Worth Star-Telegram print shop worker. McKinley’s father, Ray, Sr., was a chief deputy for Tarrant County District Clerk Lewis Wall. Before that, the elder McKinley managed the Daily Livestock Reporter and the North Fort Worth Sunday News.

Lake Worth Casino Building & Beach Complex

The 1940s were ushered in with Woods Moore leading the Casino Ballroom Orchestra. By the late ‘40s, Wayne Karr led the house orchestra as Joe E. Landwehr took over for Smith as ballroom manager until a permanent manager could be found.

During the ‘40s, Fort Worth Star-Telegram entertainment writer Jack Gordon wrote about cowboy and singing star Gene Autry’s unscheduled visit to the ballroom. Autry and Casa Manana summer bandleader Larry Lee showed up as surprise visitors on a night when Count Basie and his orchestra were the featured guests.

Gordon wrote that Autry and his personal representative, George Goodale, originally had flown from Hollywood to Dallas to meet with the president of Republic Pictures to haggle over a movie salary.

Autry and Goodale showed up at the Republic offices to find the president was late for their meeting. Autry left in a huff and suggested that Goodale and he go to Fort Worth to blow off their frustration. They ended up at the Casino Ballroom. They ended up parking on the wrong end of the ballroom, had to climb two fences and entered through the kitchen.

What a pleasant surprise for the ballroom crowd to see Autry walk-in clad in a blue-gray gaberdine suit and a bandana tied tightly about his neck. Autry and Goodale were warmly welcomed to sit a table with ballroom manager Smith and his guests. Autry showed his appreciation as he danced twice, sang a couple of songs in Spanish and signed a tablecloth for the Smiths: “Rootin’, shootin’, always, Gene Autry”.

Lee appeared that night with Norman Steppe of the Music Corp. of America. Lee and his band had just completed an engagement at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee and had upcoming dates scheduled for Austin and Denton.

By the late ‘40s, brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey were nearly Casino Ballroom regulars. They had played the ballroom several times. In the ‘30s, they first appeared as members of other bands. They returned with each other to play with the Casino Ballroom Orchestra. In the ‘40s, they returned on separate dates as leaders of their own bands.

On Oct. 17th, 1949, Tommy Dorsey arrived at the ballroom in his brand new $40,000 luxury bus. Dorsey and his band lived on the bus. His bedroom on the bus included a mobile phone, radio and filled icebox. The icebox was filled with cans of tuna as tuna sandwiches were his passion.

Big Band star Glenn Miller had been sought numerous times to play the ballroom, but his schedule repeatedly would not allow it. Ballroom management was close to a deal with Miller just before his plane disappeared overseas never to be found.

McKinley said of that fatal incident, “The weather was terrible. Even the birds were walking that day.”

In the spring of 1949, Jerry Starnes took over as ballroom manager and directed renovations to some tattered parts of the inside of the building. And he kept the big-name performers coming back to play the ballroom. Sinatra, with Tommy Dorsey’s band, and Lamour made appearances. Bandleader King made return appearances and McKinley’s band again played to huge crowds.

The early 1950s were not as successful for the ballroom as the ‘30s and ‘40s, but still, some popular entertainers, including Perry Como, brought in crowds. A few years later television’s popularity soon put the Big Band era out of business and ballroom attendance declined.

Ballroom management tried to boost attendance with an “Over 30 Club” that attracted many middle-aged patrons looking for a dance partner or possibly a life partner. It was successful as membership reached as high as 3,500 members.

The mid-to-late 1950s brought the Rock and Roll era and the ballroom became more of a teen scene with a few popular performers such as Little Richard appearing. Conway Twitty also appeared as a rock and roll singer before his crossover to country music in the ‘60s. Then less stable ballroom management took over the ballroom, less popular performers drew smaller crowds and financial problems surfaced.

By the 1960s, popular ethnic bands dominated the Casino Ballroom scene. Irby left ballroom management to open “Guys and Dolls”, a 20,000-square foot ballroom on the South Freeway in Fort Worth. James Brown, the “Godfather of Soul”, appeared was about as big a hit as the ballroom drew in the ‘60s. Still, the ballroom was remodeled in 1965 at a cost of $90,000 with the hopes of reviving it to its former status.

Susie Stanford, another LWHS graduate, told a funny story of her parents’ dancing days there shortly before Stanford was born in January 1961.

She laughed as she said, “My mom used to tell me stories about me ‘going dancing’ with her and my Dad at the Casino Ballroom. I would’ve been in her belly at that time. She frequently joked that I was supposed to have been due in December but wasn’t born until January 11th because I was still sleeping off the Moslah Shriners Potentate Ball on New Year’s Eve!”

Another Lake Worth High School graduate, Ted Webb, recalled his visits to the ballroom in the early ‘60s.

“Casino Ballroom had a teen dance on Thursday night during my junior and senior years,” Webb said. “I was a ‘regular’. I don’t recall any bands there. Probably did have one on special occasions. (Radio station) KXOL had a disc jockey there.

“My dad would talk about going to the Casino Ballroom when he was a young man. Seems they sponsored some kind of a party boat where customers would go out on the boat and dance. I remember going into the Casino Ballroom office a few times. They had a lot of big-name band pictures hanging on the wall.”

Nevertheless, the ballroom’s popularity fell sharply in the late ‘60s. The performance fees that bands charged in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s made it impossible for ballroom management to break even on finances with a capacity of 2,200 people in attendance. In fact, it would have required 7,000 to 8,000 in attendance just to make the break-even point.

Starnes revealed that Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright on the television western “Bonanza”, had been prepared to donate $250,000 for repairs to the ballroom. That included the costly fire-prevention provisions that the City of Fort Worth required before it would lease the Casino. The two knew each other when Blocker was a college student who needed financial help. Starnes helped Blocker and they became close friends.

“I talked with Dan on the phone three weeks before his sudden death,” Starnes said. “He planned to fly to Fort Worth for a look at the Casino. He was ready to put up the money. Dan had so much money he had no idea what he was worth. He was a millionaire several times over.”

Sadly, Blocker fell ill before he could visit the ballroom and soon passed away. Starnes had run out of options for financial help. The Casino Ballroom’s time had run out.

On January 31, 1973, the wrecking ball arrived to begin turning the Casino Ballroom into rubble. Workmen in hard hats from the Hearne Wrecking Lumber Co. first ripped away parts of the roof. Later debris fell from the ceiling that covered much of the historic dance floor. But there was one more dance to be done there.

As the workmen took a break, Starnes brought a portable radio into what was left of the ballroom and set it on the dance floor. Then he and his partner, Reba Smith, danced a last waltz in tribute to the thousands of couples who danced away the hours at this nationally known ballroom.

Soon the ballroom’s bandstand was stripped of its carpeting. Then workmen tore away enough of the roof so that sunlight beamed on parts of the dance floor that only the twin rotating crystal balls had overseen for decades. Gone were the speckled multi-colored lights that hinted romance to many dancing couples.

Lake Worth Casino Building Beach Complex

As the roof was torn away, the heavy wooden girders beneath looked almost brand new. Workmen were amazed. All salvaged lumber was sold on the spot. When complete demolition of the building began, hundreds of people gathered at the site for one last look at the ballroom where they danced away many happy hours.

Within a few weeks, only the building’s foundation was left. With that, the treasured Casino Ballroom passed into Lake Worth history.

Lake Worth Historical Museum and Society

The Lake Worth Area Historical Museum is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Your membership in the Lake Worth Area Historical Society also is encouraged. The group meets the first Monday of every third month at 6:30 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Center room located behind the museum. These events include a potluck dinner, a presentation, and a brief business meeting. Plus in June a picnic may be held. For questions and further information call during office hours. 817-237-9756 – 7001 Charbonneau Road, Lake Worth, TX – Mailing Adress is P.O. Box 137222, Lake Worth, TX 76136