A stretch to chip collecting, but it excites me anyway.

Yesterday, I finally got completion (or near completion) of my search to identify the famous Xavier Cugat caricatures of Hollywood guest celebrities (1930s period) on the Agua Caliente menu!

It started, perhaps 10-15 years ago, with someone mailing me some chips of old Agua Caliente, Tijuana, Mexico (the famous Tijuana hotel-casino complex resort [1928-1935] where Hollywood celebrities and the rest of the world went . "From 1919 to 1933, alcohol and casinos and prosti_tution and horse racing were all forbidden or tightly restricted in California, and all were easily available in Tijuana. Because of that, great pleasure palaces were built, including the city's fabled Agua Caliente casino, and countless Hollywood celebrities and their imitators crept south by car, rail, ship and small plane. ....One Times reporter, surveying the Agua Caliente casino in 1929, concluded that "there isn't another place on the continent, outside of a U.S. mint, where you can see so much money piled up before your eyes at one time. Its only rival in the world is Monte Carlo.").

Then I made a web page to sell/promote the chips.

Then the pages grew and grew:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/AguaCalienteChips.htm
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/AguaaaaaaaTest.htm

One of the things I added to the page was this "menu art" designed by the famous band leader Xavier Cugat. He was also a well-known caricaturist, who drew the caricatures of Hollywood guests at the resort, which was eventually printed on the Agua Caliente menus. I tried identifying them (I even asked at this Chip Board). Yesterday, I got an email out-of-the-blue with identifications and pictures. Look and read all about it here:
http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/AguaaaaaaaTest.htm#menu

--visit my links (above) to see more pictures--

Enjoy,
Roberto 🏆 🇮🇹