In addition to Alphonse (“Al”/”Scarface”) Capone, a handful of men separately involved in illegal gambling in the States wound up confined in the United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island for another crime. The maximum security, federal prison opened in 1934 on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles from the coast of San Francisco, California. The facility housed 1,576…
1920s-1960s Joseph “Doc” Stacher (né Gdale Oistaczer)* was a New Jersey-based Mobster who made his foray into organized crime with Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Meyer Lansky’s Bugs and Meyer Mob in Manhattan, N.Y. and then with Abner “Longie” Zwillman’s Third Ward Gang in Newark, N.J. Eventually, he teamed up with local Mobsters, including Zwillman and…
1906-1967 Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and businessman, George Wingfield, Sr. Frost had a checkered past, which eventually got him blacklisted from Nevada’s gambling industry. Here we…
1947 “The Flamingo Hotel, one of the nation’s most elaborate establishments, was [Benjamin] Siegel’s baby and was set to be the operating headquarters for his syndicate which embarked on a program to control gambling in Nevada as well as Los Angeles, San Francisco and other spots in the west,” read a Nevada State Journal op-ed…
Meyer Lansky, né Maier Suchowljansky (1902-1983), just may be the U.S. icon of 20th century gambling, illegal and legal. After being instrumental in creating the National Crime Syndicate, an amalgam of Italian-American Mafia and Jewish-American Mobsters, he worked his way up to its top position of chairman. His role, self-chosen, was facilitating the development, overseeing…
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…
Allen Smiley “was one of the most powerful gangsters in [California],” wrote author Gerald Horne in Class Struggle in Hollywood, 1930-1950. He was Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s partner and best friend and subsequently, Johnny Rosselli’s* right-hand man. Somewhat in the shadow of these famed men and a private person, his story is less well known. So…
1946 Which famous hotel-casino debuted in Las Vegas, Nevada the day after Christmas in this year? Hint: Jimmy Durante was the grand opening star; while on stage he destroyed a $1,600 piano (a $20,000 value today).
1860s to 1960s “The loose buckle in the Bible Belt” and “Las Vegas before Las Vegas had water” — these were Hot Springs, as described in the press (Hot Springs, 2013). This Central Arkansas city boasted illegal, yet wide-open, gambling for about a century, from the late 1860s until the late 1960s, making it the…