The Stardust was the eighth and largest hotel-casino to be built on the incipient Las Vegas Strip in the 1950s and it possesses, perhaps, the most outrageous and scandal-scarred history of them all.
It all began as a Bugsy Siegel-type vision in the feverish imagination of Anthony Cornero Stralla. Tony Cornero wanted to build the biggest resort hotel in the world -- supported, of course, by a money-minting casino machine. Cornero was one of the most colorful characters ever to leave a legend in Las Vegas; he'd already survived an incredibly checkered career as a bootlegger, hijacker, smuggler, gambling-boat and freighter operator, even a legitimate Las Vegas businessman (see QoDs 5/5/06 and 5/6/06 for the epic story of Tony Cornero).
In 1954 at the age of 59, Cornero launched the Stardust Company with $10,000 in cash and two million privately printed stock certificates, which he failed to register with the Securities & Exchange Commission. He wanted to build a resort for the masses: 1,000 rooms, a low-roller casino, and cheap food. He didn't care to compete with the upscale Desert Inn and Sands nearby. He planned to charge $5 a night for a room and to hand everyone who walked in the door $5 to make their first bets. He wanted "the little guy" to feel comfortable and be able to afford a good time at the Stardust; he also wanted small investors to own points in what he believed would be the most profitable casino ever.
Cornero personally sold the stock to investors and bought 36 acres of vacant land on the west side of the Strip next to the Royal Nevada, which had opened and closed in 1955. He drew up grandiose blueprints that called for separate low-rise garden rooms, each named after a planet; guests would shuttle around the acreage on personal motorscooters.
But by the mid-1950s, after several decades of brushes with the law, Cornero was too notorious, and Nevada regulators, the federal Treasury Department, local law enforcement, mob bosses, and especially other casino owners all wanted to see him fail. In addition, 3,000 investors had contributed $6 million toward the Stardust, some of which was dropping into the lock boxes in the Desert Inn casino -- Tony just couldn't stay away from the DI crap tables.
As the pressures mounted, Tony Cornero, like Ben Siegel before him and Tony Spilotro after him, began to unravel and he suffered a massive heart attack in July 1955 while shooting dice at the DI.
Cornero's death, ironically, was only the start of the Stardust's decades worth of troubles.
To begin with, SEC auditors pieced together the financial puzzle of Stardust Inc., finding $4 million owed to contractors and suppliers and no cash in the till. In addition, the hotel was only half-finished, while the many investors, large and small, seemed to be all finished.
To the rescue rode John "Jake the Barber" Factor, cosmetics-magnate Max Factor's brother. John Factor was a well-known and well-connected gangster, a close associate of Arnold Rothstein (notorious for fixing the 1919 World Series, among other swindles and crimes) and Al Capone (who helped Factor fake his own kidnapping, then blamed it on Roger "Tough" Tuohy, a competing Chicago underworld boss who was subsequently convicted on false evidence and sentenced to 99 years in prison. But that's another whole story.)
Anyway, John Factor was not only the money man, he was the Stardust's front man for the Chicago mob; Factor's wife Rella fronted for John by signing the ownership papers in her own name. It was a perfect set-up for Chicago, which was planning to skim as much cash as it could when the casino opened, and if anything went wrong, the Factors would take the fall.
Factor paid off the largest investors (at dimes on the dollar), covered construction debts, and poured another $6 million into completing the already ill-fated behemoth. The Stardust finally opened in July 1958, with 1,032 rooms (largest hotel in the world at the time), a 20,000-square-foot casino (operated on behalf of Chicago by the Desert Inn’s Moe Dalitz), a 105-foot-long swimming pool called the Big Dipper, a landmark electric sign (also the largest in the world), and a drive-in movie theater.
The sprawling property also had Horseman’s Park, a rodeo arena with stable and bleachers, Las Vegas’s first casino dealer school, and the Lido de Paris, performed in the town’s largest dinner theater on one of the biggest and most high-tech stages anywhere. Donn Arden, the Desert Inn’s entertainment director, was hired to import the French nude floor show, prompting McCarran Airprot to set up a special customs facility to process the peformers, wardrobes, props, set design, and equipment. (The show opened the same day as the hotel and played there for 33 years; more than 25 million people saw Lido at the Stardust.
The Stardust also swallowed the shuttered Royal Nevada next door, using it to add another 300 rooms, turning the casino into a convention center, and opening the Aku Aku Polynesian restaurant (the whole wing was known as Stardust South).
The Stardust was a hit with the masses, exactly as Tony Cornero had foreseen. In 1960, the drive-in theater was expanded. In 1964, a nine-story tower was added, bringing the room count to nearly 1,500.
During that time, the Factors were the owners of record, though the Chicago mob pulled all the strings.
Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of the Stardust Saga.
