MEXICO: Hot Water Off

Sordid, vicious Tijuana, just across the Mexican border, was a place for Californians to get roaring drunk during most of Prohibition. Seven years ago a syndicate of U. S. hotelmen went two miles deeper into Mexico, to a hot springs oasis and there built a complete, lavish money-spending plant, charged high prices, black-listed the Tijuana riffraff and called their settlement Agua Caliente (“Hot Water”). Repeal killed drab Tijuana, merely boomed the horse & dog racing, the Casino gambling, swimming, drinking at Hot Water. Natives of Hollywood, only an hour and a half away by plane, got in the habit of weekending there. Cineman Joseph Schenck bought into the Hotel, was delighted this year when Warners used his place for exterior shots in In Caliente (TIME, June 3). Into this playtime idyl last week crashed Mexico’s ascetic President Lázaro Cárdenas.

President Cárdenas had already stopped gambling in the rest of Mexico last December; even in the Mexican politicians’ fabulous Foreign Club at Mexico City. Last week he clamped down on Agua Caliente. Drawing most of their huge income from the gambling concessions, Hot Water’s proprietors knew at once that a beautiful dream was over, shut up shop. Guests, croupiers, gamblers, horse trainers, horses, whippets, barbers, masseuses, all started trailing back to California.