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The Nacional Hotel was the most upscale hotel in Cuba. Before Castro it was THE hotel for high society. When Batista invited Meyer Lansky into Havana to oversea the casinos in an attempt to make Havana the "Monaco" of the Americas, Lansky eyed the Nacional as a preferred location for his own casino. Lansky took over the ground floor of one of the wings of the Nacional and brought in Wilbur Clark, fresh from running Lansky's casinos in London, for the job. The "Wilbur Clark" name was so well known in the industry, that it was the name Meyer Lansky's chose for his casino in the Nacional Hotel. It was never called the Nacional Casino. There are no known real chips from Cuba with the name Nacional Hotel. These chips were made by ASM as a home set. I have a set of the chips that were a gift from the collector. And those chips are on the ChipGuide, listed as Fantasy Chips under Wilbur Clark's Casino at the Nacional Hotel.
BTW ... in Godfather II there was a meeting on the roof top of a Cuban hotel, that hotel was the Nacional. The movie scene mimicked an actual Mafia meeting that took place years before. In the movie, the scene took place right before the revolution in 1958. In real life, the Mafia's Havana Conference took place during the week of December 22, 1946. The entire hotel was rented out and heavily guarded. Entertainment was provided by none other than Frank Sinatra. The major topics of discussion were dividing up the casino business in Cuba and what to do with Bugsy Siegel with his failed casino in Las Vegas, The Flamingo. Bugsy met his demise shortly thereafter.
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