Las Vegas and the Mob

It's a common belief that Las Vegas was a far better city to visit when the mob was in control and there's significant evidence available to support that theory. Entertainment in the city was influenced heavily by the mob when world-class entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Diana Ross, Liberace, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Ike and Tina Turner and Elvis Presley were regulars at Strip hotels. It was the place of $1.98 buffets, $7 prime rib dinners and hotel rooms on the cheap. Players were treated like royalty, given room and food comps, pulled out of line for better tables and tipping the host at star-studded shows in the grand rooms of every strip hotel guaranteed you a front row seat.

Mobsters were a part of the community, unlike the corporate heads of today who always live somewhere else, their casinos in Vegas ran by business school graduates who are only interested in the bottom line. Moe Dalitz and partners built, with a Teamsters loan, the Sunrise Hospital in Vegas and Dalitz also gave UNLV money for the first furniture in the first building of what came to be the UNLV campus. They also paid the hospital bills for sick children of their employees.

And then there was the 'skim'. 7 million dollars was skimmed from the take at the Stardust Hotel every year, 36 million dollars was skimmed at the Flamingo from 1960 to 1967, and $150,000 a month was taken off the top from the Tropicana Hotel. All of this was sent back to the mob bosses in the East. In spite of that, everybody made more take-home money back then because the IRS wasn't collecting on tips made by the employees and the people who worked there were paid a livable wage.

Certainly there was violence but the violence was committed almost exclusively against low-level mobsters who had gotten out of line. If they had their hand in the till, or if their behavior put their bosses in a bad light, or they were having an affair with someone they weren't supposed to, they were taken care of mob-style. This was in direct contrast to the way players were treated because the bosses knew the players were the ones who were responsible for the huge amounts of money made every year in the casinos. The only players who ever felt the evil hand of the mob were the cheaters. They were seldom killed but often left Vegas minus a finger or two with specific orders to never come back.

I started going to Vegas in the late '60s and have gone regularly ever since. And, at least from my own personal experience, I can say that the modern Vegas has almost nothing in common with the old Vegas. My games in Vegas were Baccarat and Blackjack and I remember going back to my usual Baccarat table at the Sands Hotel after a two year absence and when I approached the table, the croupier looked at me with a big smile, addressed me as Mr. H and asked me how I had been. I have no idea how many players he had dealt with in the two years since he last saw me but he remembered my name and that was the rule rather than the exception back then. No one knows your name today unless you play there all the time.

Another time, also at the Sands, I was in line for dinner at the hotel's upscale dining room and the manager walked all the way back to where I was, pulled me out of line and seated me at a premium table inside. I had noticed that the manager did this on a regular basis, always taking care of good players at the casino.

I guess the bottom line, as far as the player was concerned, was that you were treated like you were special. You were 'somebody' in Vegas because the mob knew that was a desire that every player felt when they flew into McCarron airport. They were coming from boring jobs and loveless marriages to Sin City to rejuvenate themselves and the mob did an exceptional job at doing just that.

To commemorate the mob influence in Vegas, the Mob Museum was built in 2012 and every visitor to Vegas should visit it. It's quite the place.

Today even though the hotels are bigger and brighter than ever, the personality is gone and what the pencil pushers and the bottom-line guys fail to understand is that it was the personality of Vegas that created the dream world that players desired and that made them always come back for more.