The Claudine Williams you're thinking about is Claudine Longet Williams, a French singer and actress. In 1960, Longet was the lead dancer for Folies Bergere at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. According to legend, her car broke down on a Las Vegas street and the singer Andy Williams, also performing in Vegas at the time, stopped to help her. They were married in December 1961; he was 33, she was 19. They had three children together and remained married for a little less than 10 years.
In 1976, Longet was tried in a court in Aspen, Colo., for fatally shooting her boyfriend, Olympic skier Vladimir "Spider" Sabich. She was convicted of misdemeanor criminal negligence and sentenced to pay a small fine and spend 30 days in jail. She subsequently got involved with her defense attorney, who was married at the time; they later married and still live in Aspen. Longet was sued in civil court by the Sabich family; the case was resolved out of court and Longet agreed never tell or write about what happened.
The Claudine Williams who died on May 3 was, in Harrah's CEO Gary Loveman’s words, "a beloved member of the Harrah’s Entertainment family and one of the leading figures in Nevada’s gaming history." She was 88.
Born Claudine Barbara Williams in 1921 in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, her father was an itinerant oil worker who was long gone by the time Claudine arrived. She started working as a waitress at age 12 and when she was 15, she lied about her age and landed a job in a private casino in Bossier Parish; she’s believed to have been Louisiana’s first female dealer (1936).
A few years later, she and her mother moved to Houston, where she continued working at casinos. At one, she met a sports book writer, Shelby Williams, who later became her husband (and Claudine never had to change her last name). Shelby served in the Navy during World War II, while Claudine opened a restaurant and a supper club, both offering gambling. When she closed both joints and needed a job, a friend named Herman Williams (no relation to either Claudine or Shelby) called Benny Binion in Dallas, who not only employed her, but became her lifelong friend.
In Texas, Claudine also worked for Jake Freedman, who later built the Sands in Las Vegas, which Claudine and Shelby often visited. In 1965, they bought the small Silver Slipper Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, which they later sold to Howard Hughes, then bought a parcel of land across from Caesars Palace and adjacent to a hotel owned by Holiday Inns, where she opened the mom-and-pop Holiday Casino, which she ran for nearly 15 years.
Shelby died in 1977 after a long illness and in 1983, Claudine sold the Holiday Casino to Holiday Inn, "driving a hard bargain with Holiday Chairman Mike Rose," according to Gary Loveman; based on that negotiation, Rose appointed Williams chairwoman of the property. When Holiday Inns spun off its gaming operations under the Harrah’s brand, Williams remained chairwoman of Harrah’s Las Vegas, where she stayed active well into her 80s.
Loveman wrote, "Despite having only a ninth-grade education and competing in what was at the time an almost exclusively male-dominated industry, Claudine’s achievements were remarkable."
Those achievements included being the first woman owner of a Las Vegas casino and the first woman executive of a major casino, the first woman chairman of the board of a Nevada bank, the first woman to serve as president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, and the first woman inducted into the Gaming Hall of Fame. Williams also served on a couple dozen boards and commissions, including the UNLV Foundation (she was a founding member) and the Las Vegas Convention & Visitors Authority.
You can click here to listen to or download an interview conducted with Claudine by local NPR station KNPR in 2005.
