Parts of the following were taken from the book The Players, edited by Jack Sheehan. This book was personally recommended to me by Jay Sarno's son, Jay C. Sarno. All pictures of the Cabanas were donated by Jay C. Sarno. Thanks Jay for all your help, kindness, and patience!!!

Jay Jackson Sarno was born in 1922, in St. Joseph, Missouri to Polish-Jewish parents, the next to the youngest of seven children. His cabinetmaker father, and his homemaker mother helped their seven children go to college. One child became a doctor while Jay and one of his brothers became hotelmen buying hotels in New York, Toronto, and the Hollywood Knickerbocker. As a child Sarno sold hot dogs and newspapers.

Sarno attended the University of Missouri where he majored in business. While in college he started a laundry delivery service and sold corsages for campus events. While at college Sarno met classmate Stanley Mallin, who would become his lifelong business partner.

"He would pawn his clothes for gambling money. One of his older brothers, who was a doctor, would bail him out every few months, let him get his clothes back." - Stanley Mallin, 1999

During World War II, Sarno had a government job operating the communications system on an airplane but on the side he cut hair and ran a crap game, sending money home for his nest egg. He saw service in the Air Force in New Caledonia and the Philippines. Friend Mallin also served in WWII.

After the war, Sarno and Mallin returned to finish college then teamed up as tile contractors in boom Miami.

"If the season was good you got paid it if wasn't, you didn't." - Stanley Mallin, 1999

"They (Sarno and Stanley Mallin) went into the tile business together. He got in on the building boom in Miami Beach, then the building boom in Atlanta. Sometimes he'd help install the tile himself." - Joyce Sarno

The paid then went to Atlanta, building government-subsidized housing. Working with Sarno could be both an up and down experience. The up being seeing the opportunities in motor hotels, merging drive-up convenience with luxury accommodations and service formerly associated with traditional hotels.

"Once we needed a truck to haul tile, and he took the money we had for that a bought a convertible. . . . Jay had kind of grown up in the hotel business, working summers for his brother. - Stanley Mallin, 1999

In the late 1958, the 36 year old Sarno met Joyce Cooper, the 23 year old operator of a beauty and charm school, who was vacationing in Miami Beach with her parents. They were engaged for four and a half days. Since both sets of parents were there on vacation, too, there was quick approval to the marriage.

A lot of what made him tick was recoiling from his youth. He didn't like being poor." - Jay C. Sarno

Sarno was friends with Allen Dorfman, the money manager for the Teamsters Union, and Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. Through Dorfman Sarno and Mallin met Hoffa. The first loan Dorfman ever arranged from the Central States Pension Fund was to build the $1.8 million Atlanta Cabana Motor hotel in 1958. This was the first loan ever granted by the Central States Pension Fund.

"Jimmy and Jay just hit it off. They were different in some ways; Jay lived high while Jimmy lived in the same house he bought for $7,000. But they were both hard-driving guys, impulsive, almost compulsive." - Stanley Mallin, 1999

"He was better pals with Dorfman because Dorfman's lifestyle was more similar: He liked to gamble and play golf. Hoffa wasn't like that; he never had any fun. But he loved my father all the same; he wouldn't take calls from most people, but he would from Dad." - September Sarno

Located on the corner of Peachtree and 7th Street, Sarno hired Georgia Tech architecture graduate Jo Harris. The married Harris wanted to be hired for her ability.

"Jay said, 'I like your work but if anybody is going to work for me I expect her to be my girl.' I said, 'I've been to Miami and I know that if I wanted to be a prostitute I could earn six times what you're offering me. So that was the end of that, but two weeks later he called and said I wouldn't have to be his girl. He offered me $100 a day, which was all the money in the world." - Jo Harris, (she would design for Sarno as long as he lived)

Together they designed the 200 room complex with fountains, statues, and mirrors. At ground level, a curvilinear flow of lounge, restaurant and ballrooms flanked the motor court and pool, while a modern "L-configuration" of balconies allowed for numerous viewing opportunities of guests and passersby.

Decorated extensively with tile, the Cabana incorporated the eye-candy qualities of mid-century strip design -- notably large forms and bright colors. A monolithic seven-story turquoise tile wall faced Peachtree announcing, "I am here," and perfectly served as a billboard for the car culture redefining Peachtree in the 1950s.

The following scans were all donated by Jay C. Sarno:

"My dad liked to design his hotels with a screenblock facade because he didn't like the broken-up appearance of a building that was all mixed up from some windows open and some closed, various curtain positions, and the like. Before Caesars, he used standard block patterns, but wanted to create his own that had a more elegant and lighter feel.

After working on the idea for a time, he had styrofoam models of what would ultimately come be known as the "Sarno Block" made that were full scale so he could stack them up and get a sense for how they would look. He had dozens of them in his office at the Atlanta Cabana. I remember going there when I was five or six years old and having a wonderful time with dad's big toy blocks. I would stack them up in his office and use sofa cushions for roof panels to build forts. He had a high tolerance for this sort of thing, possibly because he thought it was fun, too.

Sarno blocks seen on the Atlanta Cabana

Dad's Atlanta's Office with sofa seen

We moved to Las Vegas about the time I turned seven. Within several days of arriving there, the whole family went to the Caesars construction site to see the new hotel's progress. The first time I saw a real Sarno block I was thrilled because they were so much fun and there were thousands of them. I was startled to discover that they were not made of styrofoam, and weighed about 50 pounds apiece. Nonetheless, it was exciting to see this enormous expanse of them taking shape.

After thirty years or so, the owners of Caesars Palace decided that the place needed a fresh look, so many of the original Sarno blocks came down.

What I built in my backyard is a circular bench around a fire pit using twelve Sarno blocks recovered from the demolition scrapheap when Caesars rebuilt its facade. My sister Heidi got them from the construction workers. She got me four and my mother eight. My mom didn't get around to doing anything with hers before she died, so I wound up with twelve to work with.

So, I have seen the evolution of the idea from conception to implementation to demolition." - Jay Sarno, February, 2003

An additional $3.6 million loan helped build the Dallas Cabana in 1959.

Then the Cabana in Palo Alto was opened in 1962 with singer Doris Day being Sarno's partner. This would be the prelude to Vegas' Caesars Palace.

While flying in the course of the management of their motel hotel chain, the Sarnos would often stop in Las Vegas where Sarno played craps. It was during one of these trips that Sarno had an idea:

"I had travelled to San Francisco by way of Las Vegas from Texas, and had noticed that when the plane left Las Vegas it was almost empty. That prompted me to investigate building a hotel there. The Flamingo was sick - like an old storage room. The Desert Inn was a stable. There I was busting my hump building slick, gorgeous hotels to make a living, and these bad hotels were making huge sums. I decided I was building in the wrong towns. Las Vegas in the early sixties had done the western motif to death. What it needed was a little true opulence. . . . It was time to do something more refined. A Roman-Grecian motif was something new." - Jay Sarno

Also during this year, a tower was to be added to the Atlanta Cabana but was never completed.

Sarno and his family moved to Las Vegas in 1965.

"But those desert themes couldn't be extrapolated into the kind of luxury he wanted. He adopted a different theme for the hotel he began building in 1964. The Roman theme at Caesars fit his fantasy of life." - Jay C. Sarno

Sarno was a serious student of architecture.

"He read about it constantly, and when we went to Europe, that was what he went to see. I don't think he ever went anywhere without a camera. He was always saying, 'Stop the car. I want to take a picture of that cantilever.' I don't think any architect ever presented him with an idea; they took his idea and made it work. - Joyce Sarno

Caesars opened on August 15, 1966 and it made money from the start. The Sarno family which consisted of children, September, Jay C., Heidi, and Freddie, were treated as royalty. Unfortunately, running the hotel cost the Sarno family some closeness.

"He knew my birthday was in April, and that was about it." - Heidi Sarno Straus

Jay C. Sarno credits the hotel business as giving him the experience to become a successful designer of slot machines and biomedical equipment, but a normal home life was not feasible.

"The business did not peak between nine and five. When Dad came home from the office, he was on the phone constantly, because something important was happening at the hotel. He was not a delegator, so it constantly pervaded his existence. The family would go to see Dad because it wouldn't work the other way around. We would go live in the hotel about a month every summer, on holidays, on weekends. We would run into his office and jump on his lap and draw on his papers, and it did not distract him from whatever he was doing." - Jay C. Sarno

Sarno was cordial to other businessmen but informal to a point many found disconcerting.

"He was capable of waking up from a deep sleep and immediately talk business. There was no transition. He would run straight from his bed to a breakfast meeting with his hair going off in these Einsteinesque directions. He was a diabetic and had to give himself shots. And in the course of breakfast, without stopping to explain, he'd rub a little alcohol on his tummy and just jam the needle in. That would distract people." - Jay C. Sarno

Sarno would watch ball games with friends in the hotel's health club. Everybody was sitting around nude, or nearly so -

"He'd have a cocktail waitress sent in there to order us a round of bitter lemon sodas. He didn't know whether any of the other guys minded a woman coming in there, or whether she wanted to come in there. He simply did not think about it." - Jay C. Sarno

In 1967, Sarno travelled to Lebanon and Iran where he was a consultant on a casino design for the Iranian Government. Also during this year Sarno purchased at $15,000 painting for Caesars Palace and was planning to built a great art collection at the resort. Sarno was also a prominent member of the Temple Beth Sholom and Saints and Sinners.

Sarno's wife Joyce was active in the Rose de Lima Hospital and NCCJ Golf Tournament.

Sarno was not only a visionary but he was an active gambler.

"I would say in one evening, at craps, he could swing a quarter of a million one way or the other. I remember once he had won almost $100,000, lost it all back and left owing $100,000." - Joyce Sarno

Two years after Caesars opened, Sarno went on to build a family themed resort and on October 18, 1968, Circus Circus opened its doors. This time success didn't follow as it did with Caesars. Sarno failed to realize that many high rollers did not want the distraction of trapeze acts. Some dealers also were unable to keep their eyes off the acrobats only a few feet above their heads, and card cheats soon learned to make their moves when the dealer looked away. Sarno had sold midway concessions and had not been particular who bought them. Some of the midway games were dishonest.

Sarno enjoyed basketball and once won $10,000 off a guy who said Sarno couldn't sink a long shot on the basketball toss at Circus Circus.

"During the promotion of Circus Circus prior to its opening, we were in the Playboy Mansion in Chicago. Hugh Hefner shows us the first video game I'd ever seen in my life, and Sarno says, 'I'll bet you $10,000 my assistant can beat you.' I said, 'Jay, I don't even know what I'm looking at!' But I won.

We'd go to the Gourmet Room at Caesars and get a bucket of steamed clams and sit there and eat and keep the shells and see who had the highest pile. If it was close, he'd want to count them." - Don Williams, Jay Sarno's assistant

Sarno borrowed money from the Teamsters for both Caesars and Circus Circus. He was asked about these loans.

"All the loans were 100% legitimate. They were approved by the Gaming Control Board and they were always paid on time, and in those days Teamster loans were repaid at 12% interest, at least five points above the bank loan rates." - Jay Sarno, 1972

After losing money for more than five years, in 1974 Sarno leased Circus Circus to William Bennett and William Pennington, and sold it to them in 1975. Sarno had sold Caesars in 1968 for $60 million.

"He built the No. 1 high-roller joint, which made a fortune. He turned around and built Circus Circus and took the cream at both ends of the tourist market. As a result, he spawned the family entertainment concept for Las Vegas. Caesars Palace is totally Roman, Circus Circus is totally circus. These other places built since then are mishmashes. He was the first one to appreciate the total concept, right down to the matchbooks. Everything was thematic, and we had a lot of help from Disney people on Circus Circus. Jay should have been in marketing and architecture. He was a piss-poor administrator. We had ideas for six more places. If he'd just kept out of administration, Las Vegas would have been spectacular today. We'd argue like crazy - always in private, never in public - and he'd give in if he thought I was right. Sarno was the first to envision a casino filled with thousands of slot machines and gaming tables. One of his goals was to have a place with thousands of slot machines." - Don Williams, Vegas publicist, 1994

Also during this year Sarno tried unsuccessfully to turn the Queen Mary ocean liner, docked in Long Beach, California, into a family entertainment center with electronic gaming machines and pinball machines.

Unfortunately, Sarno's marriage did not last, and he and Joyce were divorced in 1974. Sarno then lived at Circus Circus.

"When we were married, I couldn't have a boyfriend, but he wanted me to play golf with his girlfriends. I had to divorce him so we could double date." - Joyce Sarno

In the divorce action, Joyce Sarno claimed he had lost more than $2.7 million gambling at three casinos between 1969 and 1971.

In the 1970's Jay C. Sarno remembered his parents taking him for a charity auction because the items being auctioned included a number of authentic mementos from American's space program, with which he was fascinated.

"One of the items was a patch from the uniform of Jack Swigert, the commander of Apollo 13, and my Dad started bidding on it. The bidding reached $10,000 and the other bidder dropped out and he got it. I thought he was just trying to show off. I asked 'Why, did you buy that?' and he said 'To give to you.' [With that Sarno handed it over as nonchalantly as another man would present a lollipop.] That's the first time it ever hit me: 'My old man is crazy! I'm 12 years old and he spent $10,000 on this thing. My old man is crazy." - Jay C. Sarno

Now, however, he thinks it wasn't a bad decision. He has kept the historic patch clean and safety for all these years.

When daughter, September was 20, he entered the Miss Nevada contest. Being 5'3 Sarno was afraid she wouldn't win as tall girls won and offered to fix the contest. He guessed it wouldn't have cost him more than $25,000.

"But I told him I wanted to do it myself, win or lose. I made it into the Top 10 and won Miss Congeniality, so I'm really glad I didn't let him rig it." - September Sarno

Sarno had heart surgery at Sunrise Hospital in 1977. He then announced plans for another dream. This one so big that he called it "The Grandissimo" which would consist of 6,000 rooms. One of its key features was to be lots of waterfalls and fountains. It never saw fruition. Teamsters pension funds had bankrolled Sarno visions ever since the Atlanta Cabana but by the 1970s, were under heavy pressure to diversify. Sarno never found another source to fund something so big. It would have had fountains, waterfalls, moving sidewalks, and roller coaster rides in the casino. Sarno's dreams would later be brought to fruition by resorts such as Mirage, Excalibur, MGM Grand, Luxor, and most like his dream Grandissimo - Bellagio.

If anyone sees the comparison between Sarno's dreams and Wynn's realities, this could explain it.

"Steve often mentions my father in lectures. He says he learned a lot, such as how to use water and statues from my dad." - September Sarno

"His intention had been to build a dozen more places. Before he went down the tubes, before the Teamster money got shut off, he thoroughly intended to just keep building. . . . All the connected people, all the wiseguys, he was inextricably tied to Hoffa and Hoffa's machinery, and that was all going downhill. When you lose your luster, your muscle, your financial support, your place in the gaming fraternity, that's hard. You don't have a hotel anymore, so you can't grab some broad and say 'Let's go to my hotel.' The Grandissimo was a pipe dream he'd had for a long, long time. It never had a prayer from day one. But that was the only way for him. He had to keep working on it and doing things that appeared to be progress. But he knew it wasn't going to work." - Don Williams

Since he had no dream to build, Sarno turned his attention to women, food, golf and gambling. By this time, Sarno was in his 50s, stood 5'8 and weighed more than 200 pounds. Sarno was a bona fide ladies man. One woman stated that if most men met a woman and liked her, they would buy her a drink. Sarno would buy her a mink. Most said you could find Sarno at the craps table at Caesars where he once ruled. Even though he no longer owned the resort, the owners had always treated him like royalty. Not one but two of Sarno's brothers, hotelman Sam and doctor Herman dropped dead at these tables in the excitement of a craps game.

Sarno was a great athlete even though he was overweight. One of his passions were golf.

He was a club-buying maniac. In his suite at Circus Circus he had a walk-in closet, and he called it his pro shop. There was one bag in there with nothing but putters - about 30 in all. There was one with wedges, one with drivers. It was commonplace for him to win or lose $10,000 or $20,000 on a round. He was personally trustworthy at golf, but sometimes played with people who weren't because the action was good enough. He also said he felt sorry for people who played so badly they had to cheat. But I would say those guys probably got the better of him eventually."
He had wonderful hand-eye coordination, and was a great Ping-Pong player. He had played high school basketball, and I think he ran track. - Freddie Sarno

In his youth Sarno was a scratch golfer and won the state amateur title in Georgia.

Sarno lost heavily gambling in casinos, including the one he had built - Caesars Palace. In a lawsuit Sarno admitted losing $1 million between 1972 and 1974.

When Sarno went to Binion's Horsehose, Ted Binion would deal the game personally.

"It was the only way you could play as fast as he wanted to play. I mean, he didn't want the dice to quit rolling! We didn't pay every bet as he won it, like you normally do, we just kept track of it with table markers. You can't do that unless there's trust on both sides but you could trust him. He started out a $20 player, and he ended up a $2,000 player by '68 or '69. He'd win or lose $80,000, $100,000 or $150,0000 a night, and if it was lose, he'd pay you the next day. Sarno was a pass-line shooter. The odds are better on "don't pass," but Sarno did not like betting on failure." - Ted Binion

Sarno loved food as much as his other passions.

"He was not of the wait until everybody is served school of thought. He was more attuned to the don't let it get cold philosophy." - Jay C. Sarno

Sarno's preferred breakfast was filet mignon when he was dieting. When he wasn't he had salami.

"After he had open heart surgery, I tried to get him to take care of himself better but I'd see him down at Baskin-Robbins, with a double-dip ice cream cone. One in each hand, different flavors." - Lem Banker

Sarno had bought his wife Joyce a white Rolls Royce. Joyce would dress up as a chauffeur and pick up her friends with it. Donated by Jay Sarno.

In 1984 Sarno died of a heart attack in his suite at Caesars Palace at the age of 63. It is rumored that he was sharing the suite with a couple of girls - beauties less than half his age. Sarno didn't leave a lot of money when he died, and his children all work. At the time of his death, his golf handicap was nine.

"I don't resent that a bit. It was his to do what he wanted and if you knew him, you know that spending it was the only reason he took the trouble to make it. - Freddie Sarno

In recent years the original Atlanta Cabana lost most of its luster. During its last carnation as a Quality Inn, an architecturally unsympathetic "rejuvenation" covered the exotic tile work in plaster and adapted the swinging lounges for serving continental breakfast. A recent plan by Midtown developers George Rohrig and Charles Loudermilk to refashion the Cabana as a boutique hotel was not successful. It was demolished in early 2003.

In the early 1990s, Sarno was inducted into the Gaming Hall of fame. Steve Wynn said there is no one who taught him more about the sense of magic that remains vital to the Las Vegas image.

"Jay always came to Las Vegas. He helped make Las Vegas what it is. He was bombastic, a creator, an innovator. Shyness was not part of his makeup. He built Caesars Palace for the high roller. It was much too intimidating for the average family, so he built Circus Circus. Jay was the first one to put a cute costume on the cocktails waitresses." - Joyce Sarno

Joyce Sarno passed away in late 2002.

Even though Jay Sarno passed away, the owners of his dream never forgot their creator by passing along the royalty status to his children. Daughter September, when she goes to Vegas for a weekend, stays with relatives or friends, but stays, by choice, at Caesars at no cost.

"I walk through the same casino I did as a kid, and I see some of the same people. It's where I grew up. I feel happy here. I feel close to my Dad." - September Sarno

In February 2002, Atlanta reporter Jon Buono visited the demolition site which revealed many of the Cabana's original finishes, hidden for years behind masks of gypsum and carpet. Scattered were the remains of filigreed concrete screen block, outlining an enormous grid of canary yellow terrazzo that covered the lobby floor. A bulldozer rested on a sidewalk of blue-green tile; in the background a waffle pattern of intricate relief tiles are newly exposed behind furring strips and floral wallpaper. In many ways, these layers of building materials characterize the history of Peachtree, the prosperous post-war years leading to a decline highlighted by the infamous hippie squatters of the late '60s.

"He is something special. He is the Ringmaster, the Santa Claus, the Clown. He is the creative talent and the promoter supreme and, more than this, he makes his dreams become a reality by making others believe in him." - Percy Villa, Panorama Magazine, undated

Don Williams critized Sarno's copycats along the Strip in 1994"They fail to see his 'total concept' dream. That Chinese joint on the Strip [Imperial Palace] - Why, they have a car collection on the second floor. That place with the pirate ship - the building's a clone of the one next door. [Treasure Island]"

While visiting Jay C. Sarno's house in February, 2003, I saw what looked like a small Caesars Palace statue in the livingroom and asked about it.

"The little statue I have was a "trinket" my mom obtained when she and my dad went to Italy to commission the replica sculptures purchased for Caesars Palace. It is about 4 1/2 feet tall and weighs well in excess of 100 pounds. It is of a maiden holding a small bowl. I used to annoy my mom by filling the bowl with nuts or M&Ms; when we had parties. She said it was a statue, not a candy dish. The guests didn't seem to know or care." - Jay C. Sarno

On October 13, 2003, Jay C. Sarno attended the Global Gaming Business' First Annual Sarno Awards and received the Lifetime Achievement Award that was presented to his dad posthumously.

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