The Sans Souci was a night club within a natural environment and located in the outskirts seven miles outside of Havana. It had a restaurant and floor shows nightly that attracted a great number of tourists. Its greatest profits came from an amusement arcade operating located in a small room next door to the Sans Souci that was not advertised since there was no official license for its exploitation.
1956 Cabaret yearbook
Sans Souci Cabaret, Arroyo Arenas Highway. "Usually run by Americans, Sans Souci Cabaret is located in a Spanish-type villa. Stage, dance floor and tables are under the moonlight. Shows, like at the other Big Three nightclubs, are production numbers with name acts. Good-looking U.S. showgirls are an added attraction. Sans Souci, as well as Tropicana and Montmartre, has a gambling room with roulette, craps and chemin de fer, etc. Located even further out than Tropicana, Sans Souci usually opens only for the winter season."
Remodel
Remodeling of the Sans Souci Cabaret started in 1955 at an approximate cost of one million dollars. The management of Norman “Roughneck” Rothman, a mafia member who was married to the Cuban Olga Chaviano, a star at the Sans Souci between 1953 and 1955, preceded the management of William G. Buschoff, known as Lefty Clark, from Miami Beach; one of the men of Santo Trafficante Jr.. A report by the Department of the Treasury written in Havana considered Buschoff a suspect of drug trafficking; Santo Trafficante was also a suspect.
American tourists
Because the Havana gambling tables are played mainly by American tourists, it was the tourists who were losing heavily. One American reportedly lost $30,000 in a single night. Another lost $17,000. Complaints poured into the American embassy and into the Cuban Tourist Institute. The Cuban government warned the night-club operators, but razzle continued. The warning took the form of a five-hour shutdown of all casinos on New Year's Eve, but still razzle continued. The Tourist Institute imported a U.S. gambling expert, Fred Freed, to clean up the casinos, but so much pressure was brought to bear that within a few days of his arrival Freed had to go into hiding. He soon fled the country, and the president of the Tourist Institute resigned. But the golden flood could not continue indefinitely. The cries against razzle inevitably reached the Presidential Palace, where the unfavorable publicity Cuba was getting was noted, and soon President Fulgencio Batista ordered the police to clean out razzle once and for all. This they did with rapid dispatch. Shortly afterwards eleven U.S. gamblers were deported from Cuba. So widespread was the effect of razzle that it even made the United States newspapers headlines. A political figure allegedly lost more than $4,000 at the game and paid with a bad check. A suit was filed in an effort to make good the check.When new management took over in 1955, it considered renaming the San Souci to Capacabana or Copahabana, in order to get away from the lingering taint. Finally it was decided, however, that Sans Souci is almost a Havana landmark, its name is a fixture, and the best way to restore it to respectability would simply be to operate it respectably.
Sometime in 1952 Sans Souci Cabaret installed a razzle game and it was so successful that within a few months virtually every Cuban nightclub in Havana had one. The game made as much money for the clubs as all their other games combined: an average of $7,000 nightly.
