Promising Paradise

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 Pérez 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.