This year, Aaron Sorkin’s Being the Ricardos, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, is nominated for acting categories at the Academy Awards. The film is drawing a lot of attention towards The Gabriel South Beach, a new hotel that opened in October. Located at the historic Park Central Hotel at 640 Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. The property is where Desi Arnaz was discovered. The Park Central was the scene of the first “conga line” in America on New Year’s Eve, 1940, thanks to a young band leader named Desi Arnaz.
Today, the hotel remains in its true historic form and guests can revisit the exact place that started it all. Reimagined as The Gabriel South Beach, the hotel presents travelers with the classic Art Deco design and architecture synonymous with Miami Beach. This historic property has 132 guest rooms and suites and two pools, including a show-stopping, glass bottom pool on the roof overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
Desi Arnaz at the Park Central Hotel
During that era, Arnaz met with Bobby Kelly who was opening a 200-seat nightclub inside the hotel. Kelly hired Desi to perform but, unfortunately, Desi had lied about having a band. When the musicians he hired showed up, he discovered they couldn’t play any Latin numbers. Desi was desperate. Then he remembered a hypnotic rhythm from Santiago, Cuba, that was played at all-night parties and he quickly taught the musicians to play the ‘One-two-three-KICK!’ cadence and as they played he began beating his conga drum and shouting to the audience to follow him. They did!
Desi marched everyone around the bar, through the Park Central lobby, outside and then down Ocean Drive, then circled back through the Park Central lobby and back to the bar. Desi Arnaz started ‘The Conga Craze’ in America on December 30, 1937 — and that started him on a path that would lead to Broadway and Hollywood to ‘I Love Lucy’ and to his transformation of television. Here’s a clip of a young Desi Arnaz playing the conga in the film Too Many Girls, where he would meet Lucille Ball.
