1931 Catalyzed by unexpected circumstances, Colorado-born Clara Antoinette Rowan (née Beggs) became the first woman to own a legal casino in the United States. Her husband, Thomas “Tom” George Rowan and his partner Leo Kind obtained one of the first gambling licenses issued in Clark County after Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, for the Rainbow…
1938, 1946 Notorious mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, borrowed money several times from his friend, actor George Raft, according to the biography George Raft, for which author Lewis Yablonsky interviewed the subject on numerous occasions. Siegel first asked the man he’d known since childhood for a loan in roughly 1938, in the amount of $20,000 ($364,000…
1958-1959, 1966-1967 Having grown up in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen with various mobsters-to-be — Meyer Lansky, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and others — he remained cordial with them throughout adulthood. He had deeper relationships with two, first Owney Madden, who’d encouraged him to try acting, and later Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, when they both lived in…