Another Divorce Ranch Moment
by Bill McGee
Reno Evening Gazette, December 10, 1947
RENO, DECEMBER 17, 1947 – The big news in town was Preview Night at the Hotel Mapes, the new hotel with its prime location at 10 North Virginia Street, across the street from the Riverside Hotel and Truckee River.
At twelve stories high, the Mapes was the tallest building in Nevada, eclipsing Reno’s Riverside and El Cortez hotels at six stories each. The Mapes was also the first skyscraper built in the Western United States after World War II.
Charles Mapes Jr. built the Mapes with divorce seekers in mind. In addition to 300 single rooms, there were forty suites with a living room, dining room, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms. Well-heeled divorce seekers could bring their children and-or their maids for the six weeks in town to get a divorce.
It was snowing on Preview Night and Allie Okie, the Flying M E ranch hostess, and I did the driving… Allie drove the ranch Woody and I drove the Chrysler Town & Country. Emmy Wood escorted the guests who wanted to dine and dance up to the twelfth floor Sky Room. Reservations weren’t taken that night, but Emmy was a V.I.P. and she and her group were seated immediately at a prime window table with floor-to-ceiling magnificent views of the Truckee River, Reno, and surrounding mountains.
Victor Orsatti was the lone male in Emmy’s group. He was a big talent agent and film producer in Hollywood, representing some of the biggest stars of the 1930s and ’40s. He was divorcing his second wife, the singer/actress Marie McDonald, known as “The Body Beautiful”. Before she was Orsatti’s wife, she was Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend. Joe Reichman, billed as “The Pagliacci of the Piano,” provided the dance music. Emmy said no lady turned down an invitation to dance with the suave Victor Orsatti.
Allie and I were in charge of the guests who wanted to drink and gamble in the ground floor casino-cocktail lounge. We had the informal dinner on the mezzanine for three bucks a plate.
Herb Caen from the San Francisco Chronicle and Jimmy Starr from the Los Angeles Herald-Express covered the event for their out-of-town papers. Wilbur Clark, owner of the El Rancho Vegas, was there to look over the new hotel-casino. He opened the El Rancho Vegas in 1941 and it was the first casino-hotel on what was later The Strip.
Allie spotted movie stars Bruce Cabot, Cleatus Caldwell, the boxer-turned-movie-star Maxie Rosenbloom, and Johnny Weissmuller of Tarzan movie fame. Weissmuller was easy to spot with his unmistakable physique, longish hair, and dark glasses. He had just started his six weeks on the Donner Trail Ranch to divorce his third wife, San Francisco socialite Beryl Scott. During his six weeks, Johnny Weissmuller spent so much time at the Mapes gambling and drinking, the Reno Reporter dubbed him “Tarzan of the Mapes.” In January ’48, five hours after Weissmuller got his divorce, he married Allene Gates, a twenty-two-year-old blonde golf star from Venice, California. “This is a take this time,” he said in Hollywood film jargon. They would divorce in ’62 and Weissmuller would marry his fifth wife in ’63.
As for Victor Orsatti, his ex, Marie “The Body Beautiful” McDonald, retained him as her agent. She told the press, “Husbands are easier to find than good agents.”
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Excerpted from The Divorce Seekers – The Intimate True Story of a Nevada Divorce Ranch Wrangler by William L. McGee and Sandra V. McGee.
