Speaker 1: It's night with Dan Ray. I'm telling you easy.
Speaker 2: Power number three is underway if you would like to participate.
Speaker 2: The gentleman I am about to introduce to you has
Speaker 2: written a number of books, but his book on thirty
Speaker 2: Years on the Strip is the book that we're going
Speaker 2: to be focusing upon. He has another Vegas related book
Speaker 2: within the year and a half two years. He keeps
Speaker 2: busy and I always enjoy speaking with him. He and
Speaker 2: I had a wonderful conversation earlier today because I needed
Speaker 2: a guest. I had to get three guests for tonight's program,
Speaker 2: and he helped me by saying yes to me. Bill.
Speaker 2: Good evening to you, and thank you for saying yes.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2: Let's we're going to talk about the Vegas book, but
Speaker 2: I also want to mention some of the thirties subjects
Speaker 2: that we touched upon earlier, because at the time, one
Speaker 2: of the biggest construction jobs in America was the Hoover Dam,
Speaker 2: Hoover Dam, Boulderdam, Hoover Dam. We know if they settled
Speaker 2: on Hoover, but they ran shifts twenty four hours a
Speaker 2: day and they brought that whole project in years early
Speaker 2: do you want to talk about that project.
Speaker 3: You said it was enormous. It is a site that
Speaker 3: beholds still today. And the strip as we know it
Speaker 3: today was built on what was in the west side. Obviously,
Speaker 3: the town's grown tremendously, so it's in the heart, but
Speaker 3: it was then in the west side. The Boulder Dam
Speaker 3: was on the east side, and when the people got
Speaker 3: off work, I knew a number of people that had
Speaker 3: worked on it, and between the heat and of course
Speaker 3: they were up very high. This thing was built very tall.
Speaker 3: On all there was was the river there and that
Speaker 3: the huge water behind it didn't occur till the dam
Speaker 3: was completed and they were be exhausted, and so many
Speaker 3: of them wanted to drink or gamble afterwards. And so
Speaker 3: the original strip was built on the east side of
Speaker 3: town on built Boulder Highway that people didn't want to
Speaker 3: drive as far to get downtown. So there was a
Speaker 3: string of bar casinos there and the people would come
Speaker 3: in and drink and gamble and then they'd go back
Speaker 3: to work. Well, they needed all of these workers, so
Speaker 3: the laws as we know them today didn't apply when
Speaker 3: the workers pulled up to get back in. They lived
Speaker 3: there on the property. The guards smelled their breath and
Speaker 3: if they had any sign of alcohol. They had a
Speaker 3: big parking pen right there. They'd send them in it
Speaker 3: and tell them to go to sleep until they woke
Speaker 3: up and didn't smell, and they wouldn't let them get
Speaker 3: up on that high rise dam until they were sober.
Speaker 3: But for the entire ten years that thing was built,
Speaker 3: that pen was every shift the guys pulled in and
Speaker 3: they said, nah, you go over there till you're ready
Speaker 3: to go to work.
Speaker 2: If you've been to Vegas recently, you live out there.
Speaker 2: But I'm talking to my audience. We hit thirty eight
Speaker 2: states and parts of Canada with our signal right now.
Speaker 2: And if you've been to Vegas anytime over the past ten, fifteen,
Speaker 2: maybe twenty years, you've noticed because it is a town
Speaker 2: built for foot traffic. They even put walkways over the street.
Speaker 2: So if you want to go from the Flamingo to Caesar's,
Speaker 2: you don't have to cross the street. You go up
Speaker 2: there's an elevator where you can walk upstairs, go across
Speaker 2: the street on the pedestrian overpaths, and they've done that
Speaker 2: various places on Las Vegas Boulevard. But as you walk
Speaker 2: from hotel to hotel to hotel, you will notice a
Speaker 2: lot of people on the street that, for lack of a
Speaker 2: bit of term, are bums. They are homeless. They're holding
Speaker 2: a up and asking for donations, and you just learned
Speaker 2: to accept that as part of the landscape. But tell
Speaker 2: people what an enterprising casino owner did back in the
Speaker 2: forties with that sort of circumstance to make sure that
Speaker 2: we didn't have bums on the street.
Speaker 3: Well, it was actually during the depression, twenty five percent
Speaker 3: of the workforce was out of work, and we developed
Speaker 3: a group that were called hobos. And they're usually shown
Speaker 3: as movies as just being bums that were on the railroads.
Speaker 3: What it was was men would become unemployed and they
Speaker 3: couldn't find any jobs in their towns, and they hopped
Speaker 3: on box cars and rode to the next city and
Speaker 3: tried to find jobs. And there was one of the
Speaker 3: strip was started, or the downtown casinos were started nineteen
Speaker 3: or legalized in nineteen thirty one, and one of the
Speaker 3: owners there, because it was a very small town of
Speaker 3: five thousand people, then one of the owners he had
Speaker 3: his casino downstairs and his offices and everything, and nothing upstairs,
Speaker 3: and this was a man who was a very dishonest man.
Speaker 3: His tables were completely dishonest, ripped everybody off. I've never
Speaker 3: liked anybody like that, but this guy won me over
Speaker 3: because he had another side. He put cots across his
Speaker 3: whole second floor, and when these guys would arrive in town,
Speaker 3: he'd give him a cot for the night. He had
Speaker 3: a shower and bathroom there for them to clean up.
Speaker 3: And he he didn't have food. He made a deal
Speaker 3: with a nearby restaurant and when they arrived that afternoon
Speaker 3: or evening, he'd give him a dinner pass and they'd
Speaker 3: take it to the restaurant. When they got up in
Speaker 3: the morning, give him a breakfast pass. And many of
Speaker 3: these people hadn't eaten for three four days, and they'd
Speaker 3: try to find a job that they couldn't find it.
Speaker 3: They were on the rails again. And he was one
Speaker 3: of the most helpful people I ever met my life
Speaker 3: to those in need. But anyone who got a job,
Speaker 3: if they came in, he was going to try to
Speaker 3: rip off every penny. He had these two different sides
Speaker 3: to him, and because he had this good side, I
Speaker 3: got to know that I really liked him as a
Speaker 3: human being, but I would never want to do business
Speaker 3: with him.
Speaker 2: The casino owner giveth and the casino owner taketh away.
Speaker 2: Tell you what I've got to take a break, and
Speaker 2: when we come back, I want to talk about the
Speaker 2: movie Bugsy, that Warren Beatty film, and they toyed with
Speaker 2: facts and truth, and I want to find out the
Speaker 2: real truth of the history behind the Flamingo being erected.
Speaker 2: And when I know you know the stories, you put
Speaker 2: it in a book. And I also want to talk
Speaker 2: about some of the legends of Vegas. Joey Brown, many
Speaker 2: people that we've either heard of or know a little about.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about them when we come back. Okay, you
Speaker 2: got it, Thank you. Time and temperature here on wbz's
Speaker 2: Night Side ten fifteen forty four degrees.
Speaker 1: Now that to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: night Side Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Dan is auf tonight. I'm Morgan filling in and I've
Speaker 2: been here since eight o'clock. Hopefully you have as well
Speaker 2: for this hour up until eleven o'clock. Bill Friedman is
Speaker 2: here and he wrote a book. Book came out within
Speaker 2: the past eight nine years and it's Bill. Why don't
Speaker 2: you give the exact title, because I don't want to
Speaker 2: miss it out.
Speaker 3: It's it's called thirty illegal Years to the Strip, and
Speaker 3: what it's on of the strip started with high rolling
Speaker 3: casinos in nineteen fifty and these resorts, eighty percent of
Speaker 3: them over the next ten well actually twenty years, were
Speaker 3: built by people that had been major illegal casino operator
Speaker 3: around the country. Most had been in prohibition before, and
Speaker 3: this is their history. Because these men were tied together,
Speaker 3: they not only knew each other, but when guys had
Speaker 3: illegal casinos, you couldn't. There was no case I ever
Speaker 3: found where someone had a casino in a city they
Speaker 3: didn't live in. The Law enforcement and the prosecutors who
Speaker 3: took payoffs to let them operate wanted them write there
Speaker 3: under their thumb, so they had control over them. But
Speaker 3: what would happen if they got shut down? They lost everything.
Speaker 3: So these guys came up with an interesting system. I'll
Speaker 3: give you an example. But they had a partnerships of
Speaker 3: various financial arrangements, but it typically was five guys in
Speaker 3: five major cities, generally in different states, would go together
Speaker 3: and they'd each own twenty percent of each of the
Speaker 3: other four people in every single case, and I investigated
Speaker 3: and studied the history of each one. The owner that
Speaker 3: lived in that city had absolute control. The other partners
Speaker 3: were nothing but investors. They ran the show, and once
Speaker 3: a year they'd get together and they'd all share their
Speaker 3: profits in cash with each other. And that way, if
Speaker 3: one of them got closed down, the guy lost his
Speaker 3: whole business, but he still kept eighty percent of his income.
Speaker 3: And so I didn't know how to write the history
Speaker 3: of all these individual places when their backgrounds were so
Speaker 3: tied together. So this book is the history of the
Speaker 3: biggest Prohibition gangs, the biggest illegal casine operators in the
Speaker 3: twenty From nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty four, they had
Speaker 3: by far the biggest Prohibition gangs. And instead of what
Speaker 3: you see on TV where they're creating very cheap booze,
Speaker 3: these guys did nothing but sell the finest liquors from
Speaker 3: around the world in the finest restaurants, all illegally, of course.
Speaker 3: And then after thirty four prohibition ended, they had to
Speaker 3: make money and they opened these incredible casinos. And I
Speaker 3: write about them because some of them were just unbelievably
Speaker 3: elegant and beautiful and all the rich showed up and
Speaker 3: they catered to the rich, not to the average person,
Speaker 3: did they.
Speaker 2: Let's back up, what are the five cities? I remember Cleveland,
Speaker 2: naturally New York. What are the the five cities where
Speaker 2: these individuals operations?
Speaker 3: Okay, well, the three biggest gangs. The biggest gang, uh
Speaker 3: was one of the biggest two gangs were in uh Manhattan.
Speaker 3: Manhattan had over half the wealthy people of the country
Speaker 3: living there, so the income there was phenomenal and so
Speaker 3: uh uh the there was The biggest group by far
Speaker 3: was five equal partners, and that would include uh Meyer,
Speaker 3: Lanski and Ben Siegel, who were Jewish. It included two
Speaker 3: Italians Joe Adonnas and Vincent Ollo, and Vincinalo opened up
Speaker 3: fabulous places outside of Miami. Later Donna's had one of
Speaker 3: the most incredible casinos in New Jersey, right across from Manhattan.
Speaker 3: And although they were equal partners, Charlie Luciano was so
Speaker 3: incredibly respected. He was a very quiet man, but when
Speaker 3: he spoke, everybody listened, and I felt it when I
Speaker 3: got into the casino business. When his name came up,
Speaker 3: it was like everybody stood because if he said something.
Speaker 3: And these were the guys. All the casinos were dishonest
Speaker 3: at that time, and these guys said, this is crazy.
Speaker 3: All you're going to get is the addicted gamblers. We
Speaker 3: want people that are out for entertainment regularly, and they're
Speaker 3: the ones that brought honest gambling to the illegal casinos
Speaker 3: and then brought it to Nevada. The second gang was
Speaker 3: one man Frank Costello. He is famous because he had
Speaker 3: the most famous nightclub in America called the Copa Cabana
Speaker 3: in Manhattan. He'd never had his name on the ownership
Speaker 3: because he had this background as a hood and then
Speaker 3: he ran illegal slots in bars all over Manhattan and
Speaker 3: then moved down just outside of New Orleans. He had
Speaker 3: all the slots in New Orleans and this incredible casino
Speaker 3: outs and showroom outside of it. And he built the
Speaker 3: Tropicana in Las Vegas, which just came down. And the
Speaker 3: third group was a group of five men forward Jewish
Speaker 3: and one was I. And the only reason why I
Speaker 3: mentioned that is most of the crime criminal groups you
Speaker 3: hear about start as street gangs and they generally are
Speaker 3: all of the same group. And all of these groups
Speaker 3: were mixed and they dealt with everybody and that's why
Speaker 3: they spread so powerfully. And he was in Detroit and Cleveland,
Speaker 3: and he brought in the legitimate boost for Capone in
Speaker 3: Chicago and sold it to him, and he became the
Speaker 3: most powerful criminal that ever lived in Las Vegas. In
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty he opened the Desert in which was the
Speaker 3: first high rolling casino in Nevada. It was a luxury resort.
Speaker 3: And then eight years later he opened the Stardust, which
Speaker 3: was at the time the war world's biggest hotel and
Speaker 3: the biggest casino, and that catered to everyone. And in
Speaker 3: my whole life, I'm not talking about what has existed.
Speaker 3: I'm talking what I've been exposed to. I never heard
Speaker 3: of anyone who had the best of the high end
Speaker 3: and the best of the low end simultaneously. And he
Speaker 3: was the most powerful criminal out there, although he did
Speaker 3: a great deal of good for the town. All the
Speaker 3: there was twenty four mafia gangs in America, and the
Speaker 3: Godfathers had control over their gang and anyone they could
Speaker 3: be with. Daylitz had an ability. I knew him well
Speaker 3: and couldn't be more impressed with them. As a man,
Speaker 3: he had an ability to win people over, and he
Speaker 3: had more professional hit men ready to kill for him
Speaker 3: even after he got in Vegas than any godfather ever did.
Speaker 3: And it was all one on one out of loyalty,
Speaker 3: and it was just amazing to been pardon seeing all
Speaker 3: of that.
Speaker 2: I've got a break to take for news, and when
Speaker 2: we come back, I want to talk about the history
Speaker 2: of the Flamingo through Bugsy, Siegell and beyond. And I'm
Speaker 2: not saying it because I have my comp through the Flamingo,
Speaker 2: which I do, but it's such an interesting story and
Speaker 2: it got its name from the nickname of Virginia Hill,
Speaker 2: Seagull's girlfriend at the time. There's so many interesting facts
Speaker 2: about that property. So when we come back, can we
Speaker 2: delve into that.
Speaker 3: You got it?
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bill. Bill Friedman is my guest. If you
Speaker 2: want to call in, trust me. No one knows more
Speaker 2: about Vegas than this gentleman. Phone number six one, seven, two, five,
Speaker 2: fourteen thirty or eight eight, eight, nine to nine, ten
Speaker 2: thirty Here on night Side with the time is ten
Speaker 2: thirty forty four degrees.
Speaker 1: Night Side with Dan Ray on WBZ, Boston's news radio.
Speaker 2: Dan is off tonight. My name is Morgan White Junior.
Speaker 2: But I have strong guests for you to be entertained.
Speaker 2: They will entertain you, inform you, and do the best
Speaker 2: they can to keep your attention. Riveted to WBC Nightside.
Speaker 2: Bill Friedman is my guest, and we're about to We've
Speaker 2: talked about the history of Las Vegas as the gambling
Speaker 2: community which it has become, and we're gonna talk about
Speaker 2: the history of the first major hotel casino. And Bill
Speaker 2: take us from the architects drawings to the construction to
Speaker 2: the completion of that hotel casino, The Flamingo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Flamingo was actually started by a man in
Speaker 3: La that had a daily newspaper about what was going
Speaker 3: on in Hollywood, and he also had many fine restaurants
Speaker 3: and all the Hollywood celebrities went there to make him
Speaker 3: feel good about them. And he decided he was a
Speaker 3: addicted gambler and he would come up to the two
Speaker 3: casinos in Vegas. But there was some really great places
Speaker 3: in and around La illegal places, and one in Palm
Speaker 3: Springs that he had and he decided, rather than playing
Speaker 3: other people's casinos, he'd build it. And he started building
Speaker 3: it and lost his money gambling. He'd come up to
Speaker 3: look at it and loses money at the two other
Speaker 3: properties and it went into auction and that's when Sieagel
Speaker 3: bought it. So there's always this big debate who really
Speaker 3: had it? Do you have enough facts? And I went
Speaker 3: down to the county and to the men who drew it,
Speaker 3: and all the documents do not have Seagull's name, for
Speaker 3: the Flamingo have this man's name. So Siegel he got
Speaker 3: involved in Nevada gambling because in nineteen forty one they
Speaker 3: legalized sports books and it was the only state and
Speaker 3: union that had legal sports gambling for decades, and that
Speaker 3: fascinated him. And they called them sports books, but the
Speaker 3: fact was until the mid to late fifties they did
Speaker 3: nothing but book horse racing. When you hear that the
Speaker 3: horse racing was kings, that is where the wealth went
Speaker 3: when you went to racetracks in America. This was a
Speaker 3: hangout for the wealthy. Enormous sums were bet. The biggest
Speaker 3: gambler of the time, and boy, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: remember his name now because I haven't thought about it
Speaker 3: for years, but the biggest gambler you would know it
Speaker 3: if you can think back of his time. I knew
Speaker 3: two different men who were horse race of bookers, and
Speaker 3: one traveled with this man for five years and another man.
Speaker 3: They didn't have a big club they had back in
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties. They played every night of the wealthiest
Speaker 3: player of poker players in the country showed up in
Speaker 3: one game. And it was nothing for people back in
Speaker 3: the nineteen thirties to win or lose three hundred to
Speaker 3: six hundred thousand dollars a night, all in cash, and
Speaker 3: they just stand there and book the horses from these people.
Speaker 3: But that's how big the horse betting was. And so
Speaker 3: when Nevada legalized legalized it, Siegel had a huge horse
Speaker 3: betting operation, illegal of course, and with one of the
Speaker 3: best bookies there was. And he decided, why not come
Speaker 3: to Nevada where it's legal, and we can do it
Speaker 3: there too. He bought two small casinos downtown and he
Speaker 3: had them, and when this property came up for auction,
Speaker 3: he said, I'm going out on the strip. There was
Speaker 3: two places built at the beginning of the war and
Speaker 3: World War two, and he built his right after World
Speaker 3: War two, when there was a big boom in the economy.
Speaker 3: Our soldiers had gone into the Pacific and there was
Speaker 3: nowhere for them to spend their money on the boats.
Speaker 3: So they all came home with everything they had earned.
Speaker 3: And the men who fought, and I used men because
Speaker 3: we did not have women fighters. Then when the men
Speaker 3: came back from the European theater, most of them didn't
Speaker 3: have much exposure to spend their money. They were out
Speaker 3: in the battlefields. So there was just a huge amount
Speaker 3: of cash. The greatest economic boom in history occurred, and
Speaker 3: so Siegel decided to build the Flamingo. But it and
Speaker 3: the reason was he was the biggest celebrity in Hollywood.
Speaker 3: After Prohibition ended, he moved to Hollywood, and here you
Speaker 3: had all of these Hollywood actors that were great celebrities,
Speaker 3: and so where normally someone would love to have a
Speaker 3: Hollywood celebrity for dinner, what did all the producers and
Speaker 3: the directors and the stars do. He for fifteen years
Speaker 3: was the most popular guest on demand for all these
Speaker 3: big Hollywood dinners that they'd have at their homes or
Speaker 3: at the clubs. And he was the one everyone wanted.
Speaker 3: He was a real charming, very nice guy, and everybody
Speaker 3: wanted him there. And he thought, you know, I can
Speaker 3: get all those people to come to Nevada and make
Speaker 3: all this money. Where he miscalculated was the roads were
Speaker 3: not paved at the time, so it was a dirt road.
Speaker 3: The highway was a two lane road, dirt the whole way.
Speaker 3: There was limited plane service. And gamblers are very impulsive people.
Speaker 3: They don't want to plan a trip. They want to
Speaker 3: go to the place down the strip, down the street.
Speaker 3: And there was these great casinos that I write about
Speaker 3: in La and so he couldn't draw them. He never
Speaker 3: got high end play because of it. He did make
Speaker 3: a living at it, and the image of him he
Speaker 3: was a first class businessman. Remember it was a small casino.
Speaker 3: I knew very very well, his general manager, his accountant,
Speaker 3: three of his key executives and hosts in the casino,
Speaker 3: and everybody there just thought the world of him. Thought
Speaker 3: he was just the opposite of everything you see, and
Speaker 3: hear thought the world them. When he was killed, his
Speaker 3: attorney was named Lou Wiener, and Lou was very important
Speaker 3: to my research. Spent incredible hours interviewing him with all
Speaker 3: the people he was involved with, and being Siegel's attorney.
Speaker 3: When Siegel was killed in Hollywood, the sheriff came up
Speaker 3: to see Lou Wiener first, he said, I want to
Speaker 3: find out who killed him, and Lou Wiener said, look,
Speaker 3: I don't know anyone in this town that didn't love
Speaker 3: the guy. He said, I guarantee you no one here
Speaker 3: did it. And three days later the sheriff came back.
Speaker 3: He said, I'm on my way out of town. I've
Speaker 3: talked to every key business person, every key politician, all
Speaker 3: the casino people, and the one thing I've learned is
Speaker 3: everybody in this town loved him. I know that whoever
Speaker 3: killed him didn't come from here.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna throw a name at you. You were trying
Speaker 2: to think of a name of a major player back
Speaker 2: in the thirties. Was it Damon Runyon?
Speaker 3: No? No, this was there was a pure player, and
Speaker 3: I just can't think of it because I haven't thought
Speaker 3: about it for decades. He was the greatest gambler of
Speaker 3: that era and never held a job, and no one
Speaker 3: ever figured out where his money came from. I tried
Speaker 3: for years, and everybody that had any closeness to him
Speaker 3: I interviewed, and when everyone told me they had tried
Speaker 3: to figure it out and couldn't, I gave up. Okay, Noah,
Speaker 3: do you know it real well?
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter to the story but let me a
Speaker 2: separate name. Did you ever run into a Sunny Risner?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, a sunny I had. When they legalized sportsbooks
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty one, they got they were nothing but races,
Speaker 3: both legal and in Nevada and the illegal people until
Speaker 3: the mid to late fifties. Television got rolling around nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty and they started playing the Super Bowl and the
Speaker 3: World Series and things like that, and all of a
Speaker 3: sudden there was an interest embedding on those and so
Speaker 3: they became popular. And I'm the only person that ever
Speaker 3: ran two casinos on the strip at the same time.
Speaker 3: There's companies that own multiple casinos, but I'm the only
Speaker 3: person that ran to of them. They were all independently
Speaker 3: operated and they stayed allowed for the first time after
Speaker 3: I took over my first casino sportsbook betting as well
Speaker 3: inside the casinos, and I was the first one on
Speaker 3: the strip to open a sports book. And Sonny Reisner
Speaker 3: was an unknown guy that had impressed me, and he
Speaker 3: became my sportsbook manager, and he was the greatest odds
Speaker 3: maker of his time. And we had even though Caesar's
Speaker 3: Palace and all these places had very elegant sports books.
Speaker 3: He was so famous that we were the most successful
Speaker 3: book in town for all those years. And he set
Speaker 3: the odds, and every day at nine am he put
Speaker 3: the odds on the board. There was about thirty five men,
Speaker 3: I don't know who they were, that were standing there.
Speaker 3: And on sportsbook betting, you have all the games listed
Speaker 3: and there's a master plan that everybody had. Today, of
Speaker 3: course everything's on internet, but back then there was no sources,
Speaker 3: and everyone had their page game one, two, three, four five,
Speaker 3: and as he wrote them down, they all wrote them down,
Speaker 3: ran the telephones, called all of the major illegal bookies
Speaker 3: in the country. And so at nine o'clock our time
Speaker 3: in Vegas, he put it up and at twelve noon
Speaker 3: on the East coast you could bet the games that
Speaker 3: were going to be played at one o'clock, and it
Speaker 3: was all Sunny. Everybody in the country used Sunny's odds.
Speaker 2: I loved that man. He and I became very good friends.
Speaker 2: First came aware of him when he worked at the Castaways,
Speaker 2: and they built a sportsbook for him with his own design.
Speaker 2: Requests at the rio, I'm late for my break. Let
Speaker 2: me take my break, and when we get back, we'll
Speaker 2: pick up. From this point time ten forty seven temperature
Speaker 2: forty three degrees.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan ray Lie from the Window World
Speaker 1: Night Sex Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Dan is off tonight, he should be here tomorrow. Across
Speaker 2: our fingers am Morgan filling in for Dan. Bill Friedman
Speaker 2: is my guest's guest with a tea, and we are
Speaker 2: talking Las Vegas. It's history going all the way back
Speaker 2: to the Dam and we're now talking about the history
Speaker 2: of the Flamingo and some other major notables in the
Speaker 2: world of Las Vegas. And I brought up the name
Speaker 2: Sunny Reisner, who I met I'm going to say in
Speaker 2: the mid eighties. He was working as the sportsbook director
Speaker 2: at the Castaways no longer around. Good grief. There's so
Speaker 2: many places in Vegas that help make Vegas Vegas. Like
Speaker 2: we mentioned the Tropicana a while ago, and the Tropicana
Speaker 2: has been leveled to make a baseball field for the Athletics.
Speaker 2: Oakland Athletics will soon be the Las Vegas Athletics. And
Speaker 2: I remember Bill, when you couldn't bet on any game
Speaker 2: that was taking place in Las Vegas, any team that
Speaker 2: was taking place in Las Vegas. And now we have
Speaker 2: teams whose home is Las Vegas, the Golden Knights, the
Speaker 2: Golden Knights Las Vegas based team, the Raiders, our Las
Speaker 2: Vegas based team was so going to have a baseball
Speaker 2: Las Vegas based team, and the only thing left is basketball.
Speaker 2: I'm sure somebody will cover that. What do you think about?
Speaker 2: And I've only got maybe four minutes of showtime left
Speaker 2: with you. What do you think of Vegas? Let's go
Speaker 2: from nineteen eighty to twenty twenty four. Give me your
Speaker 2: honest opinion of how it's grown and where it's advantages
Speaker 2: lay and where its mistakes are.
Speaker 3: The thing is, I focus on Vegas from nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: to nineteen ninety, when the casino was the big revenue
Speaker 3: maker and the big profit maker. In nineteen ninety they
Speaker 3: built a place where the Castaways was called the Mirage,
Speaker 3: which you told me then i'd see it come down.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have believed it, but it did this year.
Speaker 3: And then after that they focused on the shopping, on
Speaker 3: the other facilities, and gaming became a on amenity. And
Speaker 3: so my whole research goes from nineteen twenty to nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: So the time you're talking about you and I saw it,
Speaker 3: but I really didn't keep I don't have any inside
Speaker 3: information about anything that went on, because that was just
Speaker 3: no longer my world.
Speaker 2: All right, then let's stop at nineteen ninety. Let's say
Speaker 2: from nineteen seventy five, there were still families that owned property,
Speaker 2: but that was a dwindling proposition, and by nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: it was all corporate, all companies. None of the family's
Speaker 2: own Las Vegas hotel casinos anymore. They may have owned
Speaker 2: ancillary properties around hotel casinos. But tell me your feeling
Speaker 2: from let's say nineteen fifty to nineteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Well, that to me was the golden era. That's that's
Speaker 3: when modale It's opened up the desert in and from
Speaker 3: then on everything was fabulous. On the strip, rooms and
Speaker 3: food were cheap, and the entertainment was fabulous, where today
Speaker 3: they have people come in with long term residencies. Back then,
Speaker 3: the showrooms generally had three weeks with each star, so
Speaker 3: if you came every week, a few of the places
Speaker 3: had new names. So there was always these the best
Speaker 3: singers and comics of the time appeared in Vegas, and
Speaker 3: every time you came every week and or every week,
Speaker 3: there was new people there that were not there before,
Speaker 3: and it was just this wonderful place of refreshing entertainment,
Speaker 3: not just having major names that could be there for
Speaker 3: six months or two years, but constantly a new flow.
Speaker 3: Plus they had big lounges and they had really great
Speaker 3: entertainment in them too.
Speaker 2: What do you think is next for Las Vegas?
Speaker 3: Oh, I have no clue where it headed. It was.
Speaker 3: It's an industry I no longer understand.
Speaker 2: Well, as we were just speaking about, you could come
Speaker 2: to Vegas and go see the Red Sox play Oakland
Speaker 2: with a tropic canon. One stood, you come to Vegas
Speaker 2: and see the Bruins play the Golden Knights. And that
Speaker 2: was not even on the drawing board back in the fifties,
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies.
Speaker 3: No, they they they, In fact, the teams objected to
Speaker 3: our betting them. They didn't want any association with gambling.
Speaker 3: By the way, just before we end, I've sat here
Speaker 3: because I haven't thought of him for decades, because I
Speaker 3: wrote about him so many years ago. The gambler I
Speaker 3: was trying to think about was Nick the Greek Dan.
Speaker 2: Do good, That Jimmy the Greek Nick. No, Nick the
Speaker 2: Greek yeah.
Speaker 3: Man who never worked a day in his life, and
Speaker 3: he could bet a million dollars during you know, put
Speaker 3: a million dollars on the table every evening and nobody
Speaker 3: figured out where it ever came from.
Speaker 2: And you know what, they covered his pets. They were
Speaker 2: not worried about getting paid if he lost. Bill. Thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you for coming on. I hope you have a
Speaker 2: wonderful holiday season. And when you're of the book books
Speaker 2: come out, you've got my number call me.
Speaker 3: Okay, you got it, and thank you.
Speaker 2: All right, Bill, take care, good evening. Next hour. Ed Coleglely,
Speaker 2: who's he? You'll just have to stick around to find out.
Speaker 2: Time and temperature ten fifty eight forty three degrees