Cocoanut Grove Fire #4

The club’s owner Barney Welansky (who was in the hospital at the time of the fire) was later convicted on 19 counts of manslaughter and sentenced to 12-15 years in prison. (To escape a similar fate, Ringling president Robert Ringling went into hiding following the Hartford fire in 1944, checking into a hotel under a false name. Someone once said that the Ringling family appealed to President Roosevelt personally to keep Robert out of prison. Perhaps this is why only the show executives who were on the lot that day went to prison and Robert did not.)