When the Mob Ran Vegas

by Steve Fischer

Overview

What is it about Las Vegas that captivates us? Is it how the skim worked at the Stardust and how millions of dollars walked out the door uncounted? Or what really happened when Frank Sinatra threw a chair at the casino boss of the Sands? Did you ever hear the story about how some very bad Vegas guys rigged the gin rummy games at the Friars Club and took a bunch of famous people to the cleaners? Howard Hughes had some weird notions about the Silver Slipper and put his money where his paranoia was. It's all Vegas, and it is fascinating history.Vegas in the '50s and '60s was indeed another world. Those were the days when small-time gamblers like me, in town with my wife for a weekend of shows and great food, could ride down the elevator at one of the Strip hotels with Lucille Ball, have an A table at the Versailles Room at the Riviera to see Rowan and Martin, with Edie Adams opening, and laugh until it hurt when Buddy Hackett played the old Congo Room at the Sahara.Behind the scenes, the Mob ran Vegas in those days. And stories abound. Through years of study and interviews and just talking to people from all strata of Las Vegas comes this book, a glimpse into the money, mayhem, and murders of early Vegas.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606710760
Publisher:	MJF Books
Publication date:	05/13/2011
Sales rank:	265,141
Product dimensions:	5.63(w) x 8.51(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

A few years ago, when Omaha-based historian Steve Fischer retired from a career in sales and advertising, he began listing his Vegas memorabilia on eBay. From those listings evolved colorful stories of the people and places Fischer knew so well during his early years in advertising, living in LA and driving on weekends across the desert to Vegas where he amassed a priceless collection of Vegas postcards, vintage hotel keys, menus from all the showrooms, signs, autographs and memories. The stories in this book, now in its fifth printing, tell true crime tales of the desert city he has seen grow and change over the last 40 years.