Qualla: Catalina Casino

Catalina Casino: Introduction

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Spartan7W, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ferry from the mainland approaches Avalon Bay, and there it stands: a twelve-story white cylinder rising from the rocky point at the harbor's edge, its Art Deco crown catching the California sun. First-time visitors assume it must be a casino in the Las Vegas sense. They are wrong. The Catalina Casino has never hosted a single slot machine or poker table. Its name comes from the original Italian meaning, a gathering place, and for nearly a century this building has gathered dancers, moviegoers, and dreamers on an island twenty-two miles off the coast of Los Angeles.

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Image: Spartan7W | CC BY-SA 3.0

Catalina Casino: A Chewing Gum Empire Builds an Island Paradise

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SkyAlliance, CC BY-SA 3.0. When William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate whose name still adorns ballparks and gum wrappers alike, purchased the controlling stake in Santa Catalina Island in 1919, he saw potential in a rocky outcrop called Sugarloaf Point. The site had been graded for a hotel that was ...

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Image: SkyAlliance | CC BY-SA 3.0

Catalina Casino: The Palace That Rose from the Pacific

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. The new Catalina Casino opened in 1929, its circular form revolutionary in an age of rectangular ballrooms. The upper level houses a 20,000-square-foot dance floor, the world's largest circular ballroom without supporting pillars, capable of accommodating 1,500 dancers swirling b...

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Image: Ken Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Catalina Casino: Glamour, War, and the Changing Tides

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean McCulley, CC BY-SA 4.0. Through the 1930s and 1940s, the Casino ballroom attracted big band orchestras and Hollywood celebrities who made the crossing from the mainland. Mrs. Wrigley conceived a bird park nearby, incorporating the steel framework of the demolished Sugarloaf Casino into what became one o...

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Image: Sean McCulley | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catalina Casino: A Screen That Refuses to Go Dark

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Don Ramey Logan, CC BY-SA 4.0. By the 2010s, the theater faced the same pressures as movie palaces everywhere. In a town of just 4,000 residents, streaming services and satellite television drew audiences away from the single-screen cinema. Attendance became, in the words of one owner, upside-down. Yet the Ava...

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Image: Don Ramey Logan | CC BY-SA 4.0

Catalina Casino: Immortalized in Fiction and Games

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif., Public domain. The Catalina Casino has embedded itself in popular culture in unexpected ways. In 1984, the television series Airwolf used the Casino as a filming location, and a replica was dramatically set ablaze on screen. The theater appeared in an episode of California's Gold with Huell How...

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Image: Longshaw Card Co., Los Angeles, Calif. | Public domain