Question of the Day - 18 January 2024

The answer isn't as cut and dried as the question might imply. Mobsters owned casinos outright, had partial ownership with frontmen partners, had hidden percentage points in seemingly Mob-free casinos, ran the casinos for legit owners, etc. But we took a stab at it and here's what we came up with. 

In the earliest days, the downtown casinos weren't controlled by the Mob when they opened. The El Cortez, downtown's first carpet joint that opened in 1941, was built and owned by Marion Hicks and John Grayson, two gambling boat operators who'd been run out of southern California in the late 1930s, with no Mob connections, at least overtly. Even when Benny Binion arrived in the late 1940s, he didn't have to muscle any mobsters out of the way to open his Horseshoe (of course, he was a gangster himself, but not affiliated with any traditional Italian mob families). 

The earliest casinos on the fledgling Strip -- the El Rancho Vegas (1941) and Last Frontier (1942) -- likewise, were independent of any underworld ownership. But only a few years later, Meyer Lansky, Ben Siegel, Minneapolis boss Isadore Blumenfeld, and one of his enforcers, Davie Berman, bought the El Cortez from Hicks and Grayson for $600,000, mostly to lay the groundwork for the Flamingo. Even then, the Flamingo was originated by Billy Wilkerson, whose worst nightmare was Bugsy Siegel. 

The Flamingo (1947) opened the Mob door wide. The Thunderbird (1948) was another Marion Hicks project; one of his partners was Clifford Jones, then lieutenant governor of the state. But a construction loan that Hicks took out was sold to Jake Lansky, Meyer's brother, without Hicks' knowledge, or so he claimed. That ballooned into a scandal in 1954 and led to the Nevada Tax Commission, the forerunner of the Gaming Control Board and Gaming Commission, to start having to deal with organized crime.  

The Desert Inn (1950) was definitely Mob controlled; Moe Dalitz was directly connected to "associates" in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and others.  

The Sahara (1952), as far as is known, was squeaky clean, devoid of any known or even suspected Mob ownership.

The Sands (also 1952) was definitely Mob owned; Meyer Lansky, Doc Stacher (who, along with Lansky, was instrumental in merging Italian and Jewish crime interests), bookmaker Mike Shapiro, Ed Levinsion (long-time associate of Lansky's), Hyman Abrams (high-ranking Boston gangster), and Jack Entratter (also Mob connected through New York) were all involved in financing and running the Sands. 

The Showboat (1954), which opened out on Boulder Highway, was built by long-time downtown juiceman J. Kell Houssels, but the casino operations were managed by Moe Dalitz's crew. What deal they had is unknown, but it's clear that at least some Mob bosses were business partners with non-mobsters. 

The Riviera (1955) started out as legit, built by Miami hotelmen, but quickly got into trouble with cost overruns and competition; the New Frontier, Dunes, Royal Nevada, and Mint downtown opened up right on the Riv's heels. The Chicago Outfit moved into that breach and came away with a front seat in the counting room. 

And we'll continue this history tomorrow.