Description

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An exploration of America's fascination with Cuba, featuring more than 150 rare photographs, movie posters and ephemera that promoted Cuba as a glamorous paradise

Midcentury America witnessed a frenzy for Cuba and Latin culture. Beaches, nightclubs and casinos lured tourists south to a tropical playground, while Hollywood celebrities and Cuban performers fueled a craze for rumba, mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz in the States. Stars such as Lucille Ball, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Cab Calloway and Desi Arnaz flocked to Havana to let loose and enjoy the music of P rez Prado, Celia Cruz and Chico O'Farrill, alongside writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Guillermo Infante Cabrera.

With more than 150 illustrations--rare photographs, magazines, advertisement, movie stills and more--from the Vicki Gold Levi Collection at the Wolfsonian-Florida International University, Promising Paradise offers visions of the people and places that made Cuba so important in the American imagination.