New Year’s Eve 1947 at the Lake Club. Co-owner Hugo Giovagnoli is in the dark suit at left; next to him is doorman and maitre d’ Carl Turvey. (Sangamon Valley Collection)
NOTE: This entry has been edited. See below.
The Lake Club, 2840 Fox Road, brought top national performers – Mickey Rooney, the Mills Brothers, Guy Lombardo, Pearl Bailey, Lawrence Welk and many more – to Springfield in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s. But make no mistake. The Lake Club made its money from its back room, where gambling reigned supreme.
“How do you think they afforded the big names?” Ted Pleshe, who worked in the gambling room, told The State Journal-Register in 2004. “The town was wide open back then.”
The Lake Club, managed by Hugo Giovagnoli and Harold Henderson, opened in April 1941 in a building that had been the site of a series of previous entertainment venues. The builder and first owner was Gertrude Joy (1884-1972), already known in Springfield as the proprietor of Joy’s Café, a Chinese restaurant in the 100 block of North Fifth Street. Joy spent $75,000 to build the O’Joy Inn on part of a farm she owned at the southeast corner of Bunn Park.
Portion of O’Joy Inn grand opening ad, 1926 (SJR)
In addition to a restaurant, the inn could accommodate as many as 2,000 dancers, according to Roy G. Gooden’s “Making the Rounds of Nite Clubs” column in the April 12, 1926, Illinois State Journal:
It is the only place of the kind in the middlewest, an elaborate Chinese garden within doors, for winter and summer merry-making.
The formal opening of O’Joy Inn will be held two evenings with a round of events afterwards.
This evening Shuster’s orchestra will play during the dinner hour and for dancing. Tomorrow afternoon, Hodalski’s orchestra will hold forth, and tomorrow evening Gene Bradley’s orchestra will play.
The dance hall apparently was unsuccessful, and in 1929, the O’Joy converted its dance floor to a 62- by 180-foot roller-skating pavilion. “Music is furnished for skaters by a Wurlitzer military band organ,” the Illinois State Journal reported. Skating lessons were free.
The O’Joy remained in operation until 1933, when, with Prohibition over, the Peacock Inn– “a cabaret of distinction” – briefly took over the building. The Peacock closed in February 1934, when remodeling began for a new nightclub, the Villa Valencia.
The Villa, managed by Joe Bardi and Nick Campo, lasted until 1939. Despite the Spanish name and décor, Villa Valencia dinners leaned to Italian cuisine and later, Chinese dishes (cooked by one of Gertrude Joy’s former Fifth Street cooks, Chin Wing).
Campo (1894-1982) discussed his years at the Villa Valencia in an oral history interview conducted by Barbara Herndon in 1974. (This excerpt includes a question from Herndon, in boldface.)
I run the Villa Valencia for about six years. And things were going bad because we had too much expenses. We had to have floor shows for the people, no cover charge. You had to have a band. Fact, one time I had two bands. One for the floor show and one for the dance … people called the Four Cliffs (sic – the band was the Four Clefs). They were well known around here, four colored fellows – real good music. …
The last year that I was there, I lost money. Then I quit. That’s the end of it. …
Well, wasn’t there gambling then at the Valencia?
Yes, but my expenses were too heavy to overcome whatever … See the gamblers, what they were doing at the Villa Valencia was they was paying my rent for the room they were using for the gambling. You understand? That’s all I was getting – just to pay the rent for the building as a whole. As I said, I closed the Villa Valencia. I got out of there; I wasn’t doing anything.
Villa Valencia ad, 1936
Bardi and Campo staged elaborate floor shows, but the performers weren’t as well known as the Lake Club’s later headliners. A 1937 show, for instance, was headlined by “sky dancers” Betty and Benny Fox, who performed on an 18-inch disc atop a pole. The rest of the evening’s entertainment included:
Betty Jane Brimmer, “World’s Most Beautiful Acrobatic Dancer;” the Stuart sisters, regarded as one of the nation’s leading dance teams; and Joe Seely, popular Columbia Broadcasting system announcer.
Adding a touch of the tropics to the atmosphere will be Rita and Manuel Mandoll, the Hawaiian strollers. … The Missourians, a popular dance band, will furnish music throughout the night.
In the later interview, Campo said the Villa’s timing was simply bad. “I got out of business at the wrong time – just before the war broke out. Then these people, they went in there and the war broke out. They must have made a million dollars in that place.”
Harold Henderson, left, and Hugo Giovagnoli, owners of the Lake Club, with Mickey Rooney, 1953 (SVC)
“These people” were the Lake Club’s Henderson (1908?-1977) and Giovagnoli (1912-88). Giovagnoli, who had promoted dances in Taylorville, Henderson, from Streator, and a third partner, Joe Chlebus, put up $3,000 each to start the club, according to a 1973 retrospective written by State Journal-Register reporter Mick Cochran. (Chlebus sold out to his partners early in the Lake Club’s existence.)
“From the first dance it seemed like we almost always played to a capacity crowd,” Giovagnoli told Cochran.
The famed nightclub ultimately succumbed to television, changing tastes in music and a back-tax debt. And there was one more factor, Cochran wrote.
But ask Harold or Hugo why the Lake Club closed and they’ll say immediately, “Gambling was taken away and the people didn’t support the club.”
Gambling supported the club’s entertainment in the same way that the cover charge did. … But even if gambling didn’t pay for the entertainment, it still would have drawn crowds, Hugo said, because people enjoyed it.
Even in a wide-open Sangamon County, the Lake Club stood out as a gambling den. In a 1948 exposé, St. Louis Post-Dispatch investigative reporter Roy Harris identified four full-fledged casinos operating in and around Springfield. Three of the clubs paid $250 a week to Frank Zito’s mob organization for law enforcement bribes, Harris wrote. The Lake Club’s tab reportedly was $500 weekly.
Authorities began to tighten their enforcement of gambling laws in the late 1940s, but The Lake Club avoided a shutdown for at least another decade. Henderson refused to testify before a Sangamon County grand jury in 1953, and it wasn’t until 1958 that two Illinois State Police investigators finally managed to infiltrate the notorious back room. Authorities raided the club in December 1958, the Illinois State Register reported.
Two troopers said they spent some time in the Lake Club and finally were invited to a “game.”
The room raided was behind a steel door which was behind a panel in the club office …
A billiard table, which officers said was used for a dice table, was confiscated, weighed over 750 pounds and was completely taken apart before it could be moved by a transfer company.
Also confiscated were several pairs of dice and a box of notes, “IOUs,” and records were taken by the state’s attorney’s office.
Giovagnoli, Henderson and Pleshe were charged with gambling violations, but the outcome of the charges doesn’t appear in newspaper records. In any case, the Lake Club remained open.
Big-name acts became fewer, perhaps because gambling receipts no longer subsidized the club’s performers. Every once in a while, however, a national act, such as then-popular comedian George Gobel in 1963, would still appear on the Lake Club’s Little Room stage.
The Lake Club during its heyday (troytaylorbooks))
The Lake Club never officially closed, hosting local club meetings, fundraisers and dinners into at least 1970. The last big name to play the Lake Club, however, probably was fan-dancer and striptease artist Sally Rand, who, at age 65, appeared at the club during the 1969 Illinois State Fair.
Giovagnoli owned the club building until his death in 1988.
The Lake Club had one last flurry of publicity in 1980, when it was disclosed that three Catholic priests had been called in the year before to soothe “the restless soul” of a former bartender who had killed himself in the club. New operators of the club claimed a series of odd occurrences – an eerie chill, spectral footsteps, doors opening on their own – had convinced them the building was haunted. They blamed the ghost of Albert “Rudy” Cranor, who shot himself in the chest in the club on June 27, 1968.
The blessing – the priests emphasized it was not an exorcism – apparently worked. People working in the club said they experienced no more strange phenomena after the priests’ appearance.
Several attempts to revive the spirit of the old Lake Club, including a disco named the Sober Duck, failed over the next decade,
Gertrude Joy’s old building finally burnt down in the early morning of Aug. 16, 1992. Investigators said they found evidence that the fire was caused by an arsonist, but no one was ever accused of the crime.
Note and hat tip: While the Lake Club’s roster of entertainers over the years was certainly extraordinary, newspaper files may not reflect every star who played the club. For instance, Lake Club ads make no mention of appearances by Bob Hope, as SangamonLink’s original entry said. However, reader Runyon Henderson (see comment below), a relative of Harold Henderson, says stars appearing at the Illinois State Fair often would go to the Lake Club afterwards, as guests, and then do impromptu late-night shows there. Hope may have done so after any or all of his three state fair appearances during the Lake Club’s existence — in 1950, 1960 and 1967. Thanks very much to Runyon for the information.
(However, another supposed Lake Club performer, Ella Fitzgerald, apparently never played the state fair, and a check of newspaper clippings turned up no evidence that she ever performed elsewhere in Springfield, either. SangamonLink would welcome any reader information to the contrary.)
Another hat tip: This entry originally said the New Year’s Eve party shown in the top photo was in 1957. However, sharp-eyed reader Bob Cavanagh pointed out that the hat of the reveler on the right says “1948,” indicating the party took place on Dec. 31, 1947. The photo caption has been corrected. Our thanks to Bob.
And one more: Thanks also to commenter Mary Ann Edwards Tiedemann, niece of Hugo Giovagnoli, for identifying Carl Turvey in the top photo.
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Looks to me like the fella’s hat in the pic reads 1948; maybe it is New Year’s Eve 1947? Anyway, good story.
Bob: Yeah, it does. The tall guy’s tie looks more like ’47-’48 to me too. I have some more photos. I’ll see if there are any more clues. Good catch.
Nice article and well documented. Just one correction; Bob Hope played at the Lake Club after he finished performing at the IL State Fair. A car from the Lake Club was set out to the Fair to pick him up. He would come to the Club as a guest and than perform in the late hours of the night. Just document when Bob Hope played the Fair also possibly Ella Fitzgerald. This was typically done with performers at the State Fair who when they finished playing the night at the State Fair, they would be guests for dinner and perform impromptu at the Club.
Thanks for the information, Runyon. That would explain why the club never advertised appearances by Hope. I’ll do some editing on the entry.
Mike Kienzler
P.S. I have to ask: Are you related to Harold Henderson?
Runyon Henderson’s reply to my question above:
Yes! I am related to Harold Henderson. I currently live out of the country and enjoy reading the historical information and the local news in my free time.
Hi Runyon I don’t know if you remember me but I met you at Dino’s house on Stanford. A lifetime ago. When I heard your name I instantly flashed back when I was a kid. Hope all is well.
Thanks for printing this story about my dad, Hugo Giovagnoli, The Lake Club and Harold Henderson. Once in awhile I type my dad’s name or The Lake Club in a search engine, to see if there are any new articles. My father had a very interesting life to say the least.
My name is Melissa Giovagnoli,and I am the youngest of my siblings, and live in Texas. My brother David, lives in Urbana, Illinois and my sister Jane Hopper lives in Kenilworth, Illinois.
My dad’s grandson, David, lives in Los Angeles. I think he knows more about my dad than I do. David adored my dad and as a kid, would sit and listen to all of his stories. He had a big impact on him, as my father once had a screen test in Hollywood. Later David moved to LA after graduating college and is now a film editor out there.
My dad was my hero at one time. He was so handsome to me. And as a kid I had so much fun running and hiding in the club. My favorite act was The Deep River Boys.
He loved The Lake Club so much that he missed out on other business opportunities because he would not leave the club. He did so much as a young person and was in his late late 20’s or early 30’s when he started the Lake Club along with Harold Henderson.
If you ever need to know more information about my dad, feel free to contact me, David, Janie, or my nephew David.
Thank you so much for printing this article. I learned many more things about my dad and the club.
Sincerely,
Melissa Giovagnoli
Melissa: The Lake Club is still fabled around here, and so is your dad. This was a fun entry to write. I’m just sorry I never visited the Lake Club or knew your father. Thanks for the kind words and, especially, for the personal insight.
Hugo was a great guy, and the lake club was and amazing place. with secret rooms,and the entry hall walls were lined with signed autografphed pictures of all the stars that
played there. I was a patron there from 1970’s till close, worked as a security officer
there for a year in the early 70’s and played there with a number of bands as a roadie
in the 80’s.
Dave: Thanks for the memories, and thanks for reading.
This was a fun walk down memory lane. Hugo Giovagnoli was my uncle, my mom’s (Tella Giovagnoli Edwards) older brother. We called him Uncle Boo because he loved to scare us. He would turn heads where ever he went—Hugo was very charismatic. I often wish I had gotten to know him and our Aunt Nora, the oldest of the Giovagnoli siblings, better than I did. I suspect they would have great stories to tell.
One more note about the photo: the ‘big guy’ at the bar next to Hugo is Carl Turvey. He would greet guests at the entrance—we called him the ‘doorman’—at the Lake Club and also served as maitre’d. I suspect he may have been a bouncer on rare occasions.
Ms. Edwards: Thanks for the comments and the additional information. I’ve added Carl Turvey’s name to the top photo and am crediting you in the entry itself.
The Lake Club did reopen as the sober duck Disco a mostly teenage crowd with no alcohol served BYO if you dared I’m glad I caught the short run it had many great memories
My uncle Ted Pleshe always told me that gambling that took place at the Lake Club would be legal today! I believe he also mentioned Frank Sinatra played at the club. Maybe it was Jr.
Frank Sinatra Jr. did play the Lake Club in July 1967; I’m pretty sure his dad did not. Thanks, David.
Met my wife there September 25th 1975 … still married and by the way, we celebrate meeting and our wedding anniversaries.
I went to high school in Springfield (SHS Class of ’75) and we went to The Lake Club in the mid to late ’70s when I came home from college. It was quite a disco (and NOT sober) back then!
I went to see Pinky Lee there as a child in 1957? Lake club was wonderful.
just watched the lake club on a haunting very interesting history of the club and enjoying reading stories of it i read it burnt to the ground in 1992 thank you for your stories marc uk.
In the early 1950’s high schoolers from nearby Taylorville would go to the Lake Club following the senior prom. I remember it cost 25 cents for a coke.
My father, jazz musician Val Eddy (Valentino DeCastris) performed at the Lake Club in the 40s and would say that it was quite the classy place. He also performed with George Rank. My father was a full-time musician, playing bass, mandolin and tenor banjo and he sang and arranged his long tenures at various elegant venues as the Val Eddy Duo and the Val Eddy Trio throughout the United States. He was with one piano player, Homer Carlson of Rockford for nearly 50 years, all over the country. His trio appeared live nightly on his hometown of Rockford’s Song Shop TV show in the 1950s. The late Gene Holmberg, husband of the late Senator Joyce Holmberg painted the TV station signs of the songs that appeared when they were performed. I still have them to this day. Dad learned the mandolin as a child by listening to his neighbor, Gabriel Giorgi, father of the legendary long-time State Representative Zeke Giorgi play his mandolin on his back porch. Our family still lives in that house in the old Italian neighborhood of Rockford, since 1923. RIP all. Its ironic that I worked at the IL Department of Public Health in another program when Pat Tavine did and I never knew he was associated with what my Dad called “the old Lake Club.”