The Tropicana Gets the Moe Greene Treatment

 

 

THE TROPICANA IS ABOUT TO GET MOE GREENE’D

The Tropicana (Las Vegas) is about to get the Moe Green treatment. It’s scheduled to close this week. At some point it will be imploded. Keep an eye out for the breaking news.

The Tropicana, which first opened in 1955, has a legendary role in cinema. It was Moe Greene’s hotel in (the original) The Godfather. (1972)

In the original film’s opening sequence to the Moe Greene meeting, we see “Fredo” (the late great John Cazale) bringing Michael (Al Pacino) into the Tropicana entrance. Moe is played by Alex Rocco, who typically portrayed villains (recall the grossly underrated The Friends of Eddie Coyle), who actually won an Emmy for a comedy series many years later.

During the making of The Godfather Part II, (1974) the “Tropigala” sequence in Las Vegas was also filmed in front and inside the Tropicana hotel, although some of these scenes were deleted from that final film. During the production of The Godfather Part II the name of the hotel was also changed to “Tropigala” to avoid any legal issues.

In reality, the truth wasn’t very far from fiction. During its first few decades, the Tropicana was a mob-controlled hotel, first by Frank Costello and later by the Kansas City crime family that was exposed in the 1995 film Casino.

The Tropicana deserved a better fate. It’s a shame this spot will be replaced with an absurdly-placed gridlock of a sports stadium housing a horrifically-run baseball team that a majority of locals do not want. John “Fredo” Fisher signed the deal.

Moe Greene would never have allowed this shit to happen.

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Note: Click to watch the 5-min. scene below, with so many outstanding lines and performances. Also, this screen shot is somewhat misplaced–it’s NOT Moe Greene. It’s “Johnny Fontane,” who was loosely based on Frank Sinatra.

 

WATCH THE MOVIE SCENES FILMED AT THE TROPICANA HERE: