Gambling casinos existed before the Mafia got to Las Vegas. Gambling was legalized in 1931 by the state of Nevada. The early casinos were more like rowdy honky-tonks and cowboy hangouts than the modern casinos that would soon spring up in the desolate wilderness. Who would have thought that a bunch of immigrant kids from New York's Lower East Side would become the power brokers and robber barons in the Wild West? When the Mafia decided to “enter the western market” they sent an emissary to the Promised Land and, so the legend goes, he put Las Vegas on the map.

Bugsy

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was a member of the New York mob. A Jewish kid from the mean streets of immigrant New York City, he was also a charismatic and good-looking guy who had ambitions to be a movie star. He was born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, but cut his teeth running nickel-and-dime crap games and extorting pushcart operators on the Lower East Side, where he fell in with upcoming Jewish mobsters Meyer Lansky and Moe Sedway and moved into the lucrative bootlegging racket. It was all uphill from there for the young gagnster. Siegel strove to rise above the street-level thug image that was portrayed in the movies. He wanted to leave a legacy that would ensure his place in history.

While most hoods kept a low profile, Siegel was one of the first of the celebrity gangsters. Tall, dark, and handsome, he became a darling of the Hollywood set, many of whom got a vicarious thrill from flirting with danger. Starlets who went for the “bad boy” type needed look no further than a psycho mobster murderer. Bugsy's name came from his mercurial temperament and tendency to fly off into violent rages, which in the parlance of the underworld was called “going bugs.” He did not like the name but would prove its validity by pummeling the poor soul who called him “Bugsy” to his face.

B“ugsy” Siegel

Courtesy of AP Images

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel poses after apprehension in Los Angeles on April 17, 1941, in connection with an indictment returned in New York charging him with harbouring Louis “Lepke” Buchalter.

A Change in Plans

Siegel also had a crackpot plot to personally assassinate Italian dictator Mussolini. He hated him on two counts — as a Mafioso and a Jewish man. Mussolini had jailed many Sicilian Mafiosi and adversely impacted business, and he was an ally of Adolf Hitler. Even before the concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war, there were stories about what was happening to European Jews under Hitler's tyranny.

Siegel planned to ingratiate himself with members of the Italian aristocracy, get invited to Italy for an audience with Mussolini, and whack the dictator the good-old American Mafia way. It never happened, and the rational Meyer Lansky was deeply concerned whenever his friend would ramble on about this crazy scheme.

When Dewey turned up the heat, the gang split up. Meyer Lansky went to Havana, Cuba, to open and operate casinos in conjunction with the government of the island's dictator, Batista. Bugsy Siegel went off to Las Vegas.

There were several thriving casinos in the downtown section of Las Vegas: the Apache, the Northern, the Boulder, the Las Vegas, the Golden Nugget, the El Cortez, and the Horseshoe. Siegel looked toward the outskirts of town to an area called “the Strip.” The Strip only had a few casinos at that time, including the El Rancho. But these casinos were sawdust-floored hangouts for locals. Siegel was going to build his dream casino. It was to be a touch of urban sophistication in the middle of the desert. His vision became the Flamingo Hotel and Casino.