If you walk to the end of...

If you walk to the end of the Santa Monica Pier today, chances are you will see sea gulls, sailboats and surfers navigating the waves. Half a century ago, if you had taken a similar stroll, you would also have seen the glittering gambling ships Texas and Rex, anchored just three miles offshore. If you felt lucky, you might even have been among the 50,000 patrons they drew each week.

In 1938, thousands of gamblers stood on the Santa Monica Pier each day waiting to be ferried out to the ships. Other floating casinos were anchored off Venice, Redondo and Long Beach. But Santa Monica Bay’s Rex was the fanciest--and most lucrative--of all the gambling dens, taking in an estimated $20,000 a day from 300 slot machines, six roulette wheels, eight crap tables and a 500-seat bingo parlor.

Rex’s owner, Anthony Cornero Stralla--better known as Tony Cornero--maintained that volume by catering to middle-class gamblers, as well as Hollywood celebrities.

Cornero’s career had begun during Prohibition, when he reputedly made $1 million smuggling liquor from Canada into the United States. But his foray into the import business ended in 1928, when federal agents caught him trying to sneak 1,000 cases of foreign whiskey aboard the Johanna Smith, an opulent gambling ship moored off Long Beach.

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At his trial, Cornero said he was just trying to save 20 million to 30 million Americans from poisoning themselves on domestic bathtub booze. He was convicted anyway.

Never one to accept fate, Cornero escaped from the train taking him to prison. He spent two years in Europe continuing his profitable, lifesaving adventure, shipping more whiskey ashore before he decided to surrender.

Two years later, when Cornero emerged from prison, he and his two brothers, Frank and Louie, sank their liquor money into a Las Vegas resort called the Meadows. But Cornero still had the sea in his blood. When Prohibition ended in 1933, he left the desert to invest his profits in Santa Monica’s gambling ships.

In May, 1938, Cornero paid $23,000 for a 51-year-old fishing barge that he spent $200,000 to remodel and renamed Rex. To assure the public of his honest intentions, he placed a full-page ad in newspapers offering $100,000 to anyone who could prove any of the Rex’s games were fixed. He also asked the FBI to check the fingerprints of his employees, and said he would fire anyone with a criminal record.

Cornero hired stunt pilots to advertise the ship in the then-exotic medium of skywriting. A newspaper article said the two-mile-high letters over Downtown promised that the “Rex surpasses all the thrills of the Riviera, Monte Carlo, Biarritz and Cannes combined.” Another story said the Rex “lured thousands with the Goddess of Luck.”

When reformer Fletcher Bowron (also known as “Old Chubby Cheeks”) became mayor of Los Angeles in 1938, he promised to clean up the town’s graft and corruption. Bowron, a former judge and newspaper reporter, knew Cornero hated Los Angeles’ dominant gambling syndicate because it always had barred him from operating in Los Angeles. So the mayor asked Cornero to meet with him at his home, high on a hill near the Hollywood Bowl. Cornero handed the mayor a list with the names of 26 of the Police Department’s highest-ranking officers, who Cornero said were being paid off by the syndicate. The mayor had all the officers’ phones tapped to gather the evidence he needed to fire them.

Bowron’s gratitude was short-lived. Two months later, he picked up a newspaper and saw the headline: “New Vice Setup in Los Angeles.” A trusted employee of the mayor’s had reported that Cornero and Bowron met “in a secret midnight meeting at the mayor’s house.” To save his neck, Bowron quickly released a copy of an allegedly predated letter to Atty. Gen. Earl Warren seeking his help to put Cornero’s gambling ships out of commission.

Warren ordered an illegal wiretap on Cornero’s phone and came up with a nuisance abatement charge, which stated the casino “induced people to lead idle and dissolute lives.”

On July 28, 1939, authorities in water taxis surrounded the Rex. The crew, under Cornero’s command, erected a steel door over the gangway and fought off the invaders with fire hoses. During what became known as “The Battle of Santa Monica Bay,” Cornero held out for nine days before law enforcement officers boarded the ship and began smashing gambling equipment and confiscating money.

During the battle, Cornero was heard to shout: “I will not give up the ship!” But, finally, he surrendered, explaining that he needed a haircut. None of the material gained in Warren’s wiretap was used in Cornero’s trial, and he was cleared of violating state gambling laws.

Warren didn’t sink the flamboyant Italian immigrant for long. Cornero launched a new ship called the Lux in 1946, but was only able to keep it open a few days before Congress outlawed gambling in U.S. coastal waters.

The Rex was used as a supply ship during World War II, until it was sunk off the coast of South Africa by a German submarine.

On Feb. 9, 1948, Cornero survived an attack by an unknown gunman who shot him at his Beverly Hills home, where he was living with his third ex-wife. Ultimately, he returned to Las Vegas to await the opening of his $6-million Stardust hotel. On July 31, 1955, Cornero died at a Desert Inn crap table. He was down $10,000 at the time.