The Club Bingo part of this question is similar to a query we received and addressed in this column on Sept. 19, 2005. You'll find that answer reproduced below.
The Bert Quinn part of your query proved to be as tricky to tackle as the original Club Bingo answer was, not least because we eventually discovered that the correct spelling is "Burt." However, that one significant vowel discrepancy actually only made the difference between finding zero references to the gentleman and a grand total of ... one! And you'll never guess in a million years what that one reference was and where it came from. So, we'll tell you.
The solitary lead we got on Burt Quinn was from issue #42 of a publication called Update, a newsletter produced by the University of Kansas Department of English. This particular issue paid tribute to a number of English professors, among them Arvid Schulenberger, George Worth, and Dennis Quinn.
Professor Quinn began his teaching career at the University of Kansas in 1956 and was a specialist in the work of John Donne, in particular, and Renaissance literature in general. He retired in 2007 after 55 years in the job and this issue of Update contains a glowing testimonial written by Richard L. Harp, Professor of English at UNLV, to whom Quinn had been a mentor and later a colleague.
But what does any of this have to do with Burt, you ask? Well, here's an extract from the tribute:
"When I eventually received an academic appointment at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, Dennis told me that his father, Burt Quinn, ran the Club Bingo in Vegas, had also an interest in the downtown El Cortez –- run by the still-influential Gaughan family -– and would be glad to put me up there for my first few nights in town. Burt had come to Vegas from Omaha a very long time ago, was quite charming (he still featured penny slots in the Club Bingo in 1975), but I don't think had the interest in books that his son had."
Probably not. And that, we regret to inform you, is all we've got. Dennis Quinn retired last year. And if the not-so-flattering reports posted on ratemyprofessor.com are anything to go by, he was no spring chicken. So we're assuming that his father has probably passed on by now, although we have no confirmation of that. If anyone knows anything, do let us know.
In the meantime, here's what we know about Club Bingo, courtesy of the QoD archives:
The answer to what at first seemed like a pretty simple question has actually taken considerable sleuthing, involving both the Architecture Studies Library and Special Collections departments of UNLV, the Clark County Assessor’s Office, the Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club, and Vintage Vegas, among other sources. Here’s what we were able to find out.
First, to clear up any possible confusion, there have been two Club Bingos in the history of Las Vegas. The original was, along with the Pair-O-Dice, El Rancho, Last Frontier, and Thunderbird, one of earliest casinos on what’s now the Strip, but back then was known as Highway 91. This Club Bingo opened on July 24, 1947, with its main attraction being a 300-seat bingo parlor, although it offered other casino games as well. In 1952, owner Mel D. Close sold the land Club Bingo and the property was demolished to make way for the Sahara Hotel & Casino, which opened in October of the same year and has occupied the site ever since. But that’s not the Club Bingo referred to in the question.
The other Club Bingo, which as far as we can tell was entirely unrelated to the original, opened on Aug. 24, 1962, at 23 E Fremont St., which from 1951 had housed the Westerner, and prior to that had been the original home of the Las Vegas Club, before it moved to its current location across the street.
According to an ad in the Dec. 22, 1962, issue of Fabulous Las Vegas, it seems that the original owners were Bert Quinn, Les Jones, and longtime Vegas casino figure Sam Diamo
