Question of the Day - 24 December 2025

The Tally-Ho was the Tudor-inspired dream of a New York toy salesman and bingo promoter named Edwin Lowe, who wanted to build an elegant country-club-style hotel on the Strip that did not include a casino.

Ed Lowe was born in Poland, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. At age 18, he emigrated to New York, where his outgoing personality and instincts about people and their pleasures made him a natural as a traveling salesman. He founded a toy company that brought out Yahtzee (another interesting story), along with miniature and magnetized board games.

While attending a traveling carnival near Atlanta in 1929, Lowe saw a game called "beano" played for the first time and was amazed by the enthusiasm of the players. He brought the game back to New York and it was an immediate hit at church fundraising events. It's believed that Lowe changed the name of the game to "bingo," though the reasons for the rebranding are obscure. 

After making his fortune in “gaming” and on his way to a total of eight marriages (which produced only one daughter), Ed Lowe naturally gravitated to Las Vegas where, in 1962, he opened the $12 million Tally Ho Motel. It featured 420 rooms and 32 villas, six restaurants, four swimming pools, and a nine-hole golf course (some believed it to be the most challenging course west of the Mississippi). The one amenity it didn’t have was a casino -- and within a year, it had failed, proving that way back then even more than today (unless your name is Four Seasons or Waldorf Astoria), it was impossible to make any money in the lodging business on the Strip without craps, blackjack, and the bandits. Indeed, it was the only major lodging in Nevada at the time not to include a casino.

Lowe applied for a gambling license, but was denied; the Gaming Control Board was concerned that Lowe wasn't adequately capitalized. The Tally Ho closed at the end of the year and was sold to Kings Crown Inns of America. The chain reopened the property in one month's time, adding a showroom and the all-important casino, but that never opened. Once again, the Control Board didn't like Kings Crown's bona fides and the Tally Ho closed again. 

Finally, in early 1966, former Sahara co-owner Milton Prell took over and reopened the property -- now complete with gaming license and casino -- as the Aladdin. That, however, proved to be only the beginning of the next chapter in the long bumpy history of the center-Strip hotel currently known as Planet Hollywood.