Dondino on set in LA with Rosa Lowinger, author Tropicana Nights

Rosa Lowinger was born in Havana and grew up in Miami.  A writer and art conservator, she first visited Tropicana in 1998 and, as she put it, was "struck dumb": by its beauty.  She lives with her family in Los Angeles.

 "Tropicana is to Cuba what the Bolshot is to Russia, the Moulin Rouge to Paris, or the Blue Note to New York: an enduring cultural mecca.  Part casino and part cabaret, it was all Cuban-the only nighclub owned and run by Cubans rather than by the American mob.  

Nat "King" Cole, Liberace, Josephine Baker, and Carmen Miranda performed there before audiences that included Ernest Hemingway, Marlon Brando, and Joan Crawford.  Tropicana Nights not only brings back the days and nights of the club's greatest glory, when it was the brightest jewel in 1950s Havana nightlife, but also vividly portrays the cultural richness and rolling social problems of pre-Revolutionary Cuba.