Las Vegas Tales

Favorite Sites

Early Vegas
Great old publicity pics

Quotes

"I hope to break even this week. I need the money." - Veteran Las Vegas Gambler

"Why otherwise would that dignified fellow dressed like a banker be sitting at a machine murmuring; "Talk to me baby, I know you understand my needs." - Roger Fleming

"He had the calm confidence of a Christian with four aces." - Mark Twain

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.
- American Proverb

"I am sorry I have not learned to play cards. It is very useful in life. It generates kindness and consolidates society." -Samuel Johnson

"You cannot beat a roulette table unless you steal money from it."
-Albert Einstein

"Suckers have no business with money anyway."
-Canada Bill Jones,
Legendary Three-card Monte Dealer

"Who are these people, these faces? Where do they come from? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas, and sweet Jesus, there were a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning, still humping the American dream, that vision of the big winner somehow emerging from the last minute pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino."
- Raoul Duke: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

A Short Vegas History

1931 - The Pair-O-Dice is opened. Gambling becomes legalized in Vegas. Even the New York City papers excoriate Vegas for it's red light district and open gambling and 'wild women'. Scared yet?

1939 - The Ninety-One Club opens for a year and a half.

1941 - Tom Hull of California opens The El Rancho Vegas. The first hotel on the strip. It burned down in 1960 and was never rebuilt.

1942 - Hollywood producer DW Griffith opens the second hotel on the strip, The Last Frontier. You can still see this hotel, now the Frontier, located at 3120 S Las Vegas Blvd.

1946 - Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel opens the third, and probably most famous, hotel on the strip, The Flamingo. The Flamingo just recently had a nice facelift and an addition of Jimmy Buffets Club Margaritaville -(imagine a mixture of old Carmen Miranda movie sets, wild women from Pawtucket, toss in a little LSD, mix well with blaring J.B. music...and you get the picture)

Lee Marvin vs. Vegas Vic

We all know Vegas Vic, the neon cowboy on top of the Pioneer on Fremont Street. His original "howdy, pardner!" voice belonged to Bud Weil, a local government employee.
His last voice was that of Dexter Smith, one of the Pioneer Club's long line of publicists.

Actually, old-timers recall Vegas Vic didn't say Howdy, pardner!  His machinery made it sound like "Howdy, Poh-Nuh!".
Columnist Herb Caen once suggested that Vic ought to say, "Howdy, sucker!"

On a hot summer's night in 1966, when the stars of the movie The Professionals,  had finished shooting some scenes at Valley of Fire, they  were trying to get some sleep in their 16th floor room of the Mint.

The movie featured Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Burt Lancaster, Jack Palance,  Ralph Bellamy, Woody Strode, and Claudia Cardinale. A Few of the actors were quite drunk and as it turned out they resented hearing "Howdy Poh-Nah!" every 30 seconds... all night long.
So the men in The Professionals unprofessionally sent a few barrages of steel-tipped arrows  and bullets in Vic's direction (many of the rumors state it was Lee Marvin alone sending the arrows at Vic with a bow he got from the Props Department).
City Commissioners decided some noise abatement was necessary to prevent future violence toward neon structures, so they shut Vic up.

His voice was stilled, but Vic's arm kept waving through a succession of owners until the early 1990's, when the arm just stopped. You can visit Vic and his gal Vickie under the flashing lights of the Fremont Street Experience. If you look realy close, you can see a few wayward holes in his plastic hide.

Mobsters & Molls

Gambling was legalized in Nevada in 1931, but it remained pretty much a local amusement appealing to itinerant cowboys and ranch hands who poured into Reno, the "Biggest Little City in the World," on Friday nights for a weekend of carousing and hell raising in the local "buckets of blood." In Vegas , the El Rancho and the Last Frontier catered to Army recruits from the nearby gunnery school. Strictly small time stuff.

It took Ben Siegel, backed by Lansky and Frank Costello's financial where-with-all to build a casino with a touch of class - a place to gamble in a majestic setting with pretty showgirls, cocktail waitresses, plenty of gourmet food, and big-name entertainment. The Flamingo was the first world class Las Vegas resort built by the hoods of America. It was not to be the last.

Here is an FBI investigative memo referring to the bribe made to Pat McCarran to unfreeze a construction lockdown on the Flamingo while it was struggling to be built. Which just goes to show that not only do Mob Bosses build Casinos- they occasionally have International Airports named after them. There is still a 'Pat McCarran' section in the McCarran Airport Museum..unfortunately it doesn't mention McCarrans mob-ties. It would be a lot more interesting if it did.

THIS is what Vegas was built on- and part of what people come here for. You clean the Lady up too much and no one will recognize her. This is NOT Disney in the Desert.

Anyway, the Siegel-inspired pleasure dome opened on December 26, 1946, but it was not the immediate success the impatient eastern "backers" hoped for. A torrential downpour ruined opening night, and triggered a run of bad luck for Benny "Don't Call Me Bugsy" Siegel.
His girlfriend, one Virginia Hill, had been salting away mob money ear-marked for construction for some time, and her penchant for skimming ultimately cost Bugsy his life. Five bullets fired from a .30-.30 carbine ripped through Siegel as he read the paper in the living room of Virginia's Beverly Hills home the night of June 20, 1947, ending Bugsy's party for good.. on earth anyway.

Howard Hughes Wandering Eye

Howard Hughes loved Las Vegas, but he was not enamoured of the Mob. Strangely enough, Hughes did not smoke, drink or gamble. But he was a liberal and loved the freedoms of the City. Howard bought a home in Las Vegas but took up full time residence in the Desert Inn, 7th Floor. When his attitude toward the mob caused the Desert Inn owners to try to evict him, he simply bought it. From this vantage point, Howard began to buy every bit of large property that he could view from his window, starting with the North Las Vegas Airport plus nearly 1,500 acres of attached land.

Hughes went on to buy the Silver Slipper, the Sands, Castaways,  and the New Frontier. Hughes put an end to the under-the-table call girl system in these places and also took wonderful care of his employees, ordering that they be fed for free and nearly doubling wages. He also provided free health and life insurance and a good pension plan. Hughes said that any business owner who could not afford to do that much for his employees was not a businessman and "should take up street sweeping".

People say that Howard was strange in his reclusiveness in his last years, but there are explanations for his actions that lend them normality considering the circumstances. Many mobsters wanted Howard dead. Also Howard was ill from long term injuries incurred when his experimental jet crashed- including partial deafness and a blood condition that made him sensitive to sunlight.. Regardless, Howard Hughes brought respectability to Las Vegas and was a truly good man. Hughes was great for Las Vegas, and Las Vegans loved him for it.

Be sure to get...
Las Vegas FREEBIES Part 1
and the continuation...
Las Vegas FREEBIES Part 2