Becoming Respectable: A History of Early Social Responsibility in the Las Vegas Casino Industry
2015; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1531-0930
Autores Tópico(s)American History and Culture
ResumoEach year, millions of visitors to Las Vegas, NV drive, ride, or walk past a Catholic church located at 302 Cathedral Way, in the shadow of the Encore hotel-casino. For many, the church's brightly colored facade seems to pale in comparison to the towers of neon that line the Las Vegas Strip. It's likely that even those who do notice the Guardian Angel Cathedral have no idea about its origins or the significance of the church to Las Vegas's history.You might say, however, that the Guardian Angel Cathedral is one of the earliest examples of corporate social responsibility in the casino gaming industry. Those who have trouble with the idea of conflating gambling with social responsibility would be further puzzled to know that the man who donated land for this particular Catholic Church, Moe Dalitz, was himself Jewish. Furthermore, Dalitz, at the time a (mostly silent) part-owner of the Desert Inn Hotel and Casino, was - in a former life - a key member of the so-called Cleveland Syndicate, one of the Midwest's largest organized crime families (Green, 2002).This article examines the early history of social responsibility in Las Vegas, paying special attention to the early casino owners and operators who held connections to organized crime. It details a process of becoming respectable, whereby men otherwise known as mobsters and criminals (and, by extension, their wives and families) gained recognition and sometimes admiration for their efforts to improve the Las Vegas community. It also looks at joint efforts by several casinos to contribute positively to the community and demonstrates that the gambling interests that helped to build the city of Las Vegas were, in fact, inextricably intertwined with the community that they unwittingly generated.Gambling and organized crime: An unholy allianceAfter its founding as a town in 1905, Las Vegas grew slowly in its first two decades. Construction on the nearby Boulder Dam brought a boom to Las Vegas's notorious vice businesses in the early 1930s, as government workers were unable to drink or gamble in Boulder City, the government town that housed them. Once the dam was completed, however, the city's growth slowed.Contemporary lore on Vegas history likes to tell the city's next chapter in a dramatic, almost epic narrative: One man, seeking to build an oasis in the desert, creates in Las Vegas an almost-instantaneous gambler's paradise. While the man - notorious mobster Ben Siegel - and the oasis - the still-standing Flamingo hotel and casino - were certainly important parts of Las Vegas history, this myth doesn't come close to telling the whole story. In fact, two other casinos (the El Rancho and Last Frontier) pre-dated the opening of the Flamingo (McCracken, 1997), and Siegel's involvement in the hotel, though significant, was cut short after less than one year by his untimely death (Johnson, 2000).It remains significant, however, that the myth exists, and that it is told and re-told with such frequency and vigor (Gragg, 2015). While the Bugsy myth - and the more widespread history of mobster casino-owners in early Las Vegas - has always been maintained in popular culture, lately there also seems to be a desire on the part of the city to preserve its unsavory roots, and even exploit them when possible.1 Las Vegas has rarely tried to bury its mobbed-up past in the desert sand - a fate allegedly met by victims of the city's more notorious figures.In truth, many of Las Vegas's early gambling resorts were initially conceived and built by forward-thinking businessmen, primarily from Los Angeles, not by men with ties to organized crime. These businessmen included Thomas Hull, a hotelier; R.E. Griffith, who owned a chain of movie theaters; and Guy McAfee, a former LA police sergeant (Lillisview, 2001; Schwartz, 2012b). However, it didn't take long for significant players in organized crime families from the eastern United States - many of whom already ran extensive illegal gambling operations - to realize the opportunity that existed in Nevada, the only U. …
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