In the indexes of every book written about Las Vegas for the past 20 years, you’ll find a listing under the "W’s" for Steve Wynn.
Two Huntington Press-published books are among them. The First 100 -- Portraits of the Men and Women Who Shaped Las Vegas ends with a four-page profile of Wynn. Fly on the Wall -- Recollections of Las Vegas’ Good Old Bad Old Days contains a number of stories from the old days.
The late Las Vegas historian Hal Rothman’s book, Neon Metropolis -- How Las Vegas Shed Its Stigma and Became the First City of the Twenty-First Century has extensive background on the man.
However, only one book (that we know of) has been devoted entirely to the Las Vegas developer and casino mogul: Running Scared -- The Life and Treacherous Time of Las Vegas Casino King Steve Wynn. This is a 352-page unauthorized "investigative biography" written by Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist John L. Smith and published in 1995 by Barricade Books.
Running Scared has been highly controversial since it was first released in hardback nearly 12 years ago. It contains some background detail on Wynn’s early life, growing up on the East Coast as the son of a bingo-parlor operator, attending school in Florida where he met his wife Elaine, and his move to Las Vegas. However, it focuses on Wynn’s alleged ties to organized crime, his relationship with junk-bond king Michael Milken, and investigation of Wynn by Scotland Yard, which produced a confidential report preventing him from opening a casino in London. Other coverage in the book places Wynn on a luxury boat on Lake Mead where a young Las Vegas woman died under highly mysterious circumstances, alleges drug use (particularly cocaine), and cites numerous sources who paint Wynn as a philanderer.
Running Scared was heavily criticized for being a "relentless slam job," having an "anti-Wynn take on every story," and using a "National Enquirer grade of journalism." On the other hand, it was also praised as "courageous" and "well-researched truth." A quick perusal of reader reviews on Amazon.com gives you the range of reactions, everything from, "Smith seems content try to pull every skeleton out of Wynn’s closet, no matter how big of a stretch it is, to bring down his image," to "How many writers have had the guts to approach this subject head on?"
For his part, Steve Wynn sued Smith and Barricade for libel, after the publisher used wording in the book’s promotional material taken from the Scotland Yard report, alleging that Wynn "has been operating under the aegis of the Genovese [organized-crime] family since he went to Las Vegas in the 1960s." When it came out in the 1997 jury trial that Scotland Yard itself had determined its own report was "substandard and unsubstantiated," the jury awarded Wynn $3.2 million in damages and bankrupted Barricade. The Nevada Supreme Court later overturned the ruling.
The lawsuit ultimately didn’t involve John L. Smith and had nothing to do with the accuracy of the book itself. Smith was dropped from the suit and Running Scared was reissued in paperback in 2001.
So that’s the background on the book. Of course, given that you’ve read so many books about behind-the-scenes Las Vegas, you should be able to come to your own conclusion about the accuracy, blatancy, and possible bias of Running Scared after you’ve read it.
