1903 “Accommodation for Johnny Ox,” a gambling-related headline in the Nevada State Journal, March 17, 1903, puzzled us. Curious (read: obsessive), we set out to decipher it. The brief news item relayed two gambling saloons in Reno — the Louvre and the Oberon — planned to build an upper level onto their one-story building in which…
1894-Today In his paintings depicting dogs as humans, Cassius “Kash” Marcellus Coolidge (1844-1934) brilliantly captured the nuances of poker playing and gambling. The dogs’ expressions are spot on and the details, comedic. Perhaps Coolidge himself had some experience in that world. Along with Poker Game (above), here are the paintings, all oils on canvas, created…
1888 It was the “very finest … the world has ever seen … a masterpiece,” wrote John Nevil Maskelyne in his 1894 book, Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. It was the “most complicated, ingenious and successful contraption in the history of crooked gambling,”…
1968, 1969 Bally Manufacturing Corp. got its name from Ballyhoo, the first coin-operated pinball machine (a penny got you seven plays) created in 1931 by Raymond Moloney, owner of Chicago, Illinois-based Lion Manufacturing Co. Lion became Bally in January 1932. The company also made slot machines, video poker machines, video games and state lottery games…
1963-1964 Mobsters Marshall Caifano (aka Johnny Marshall) and Charles Delmonico were arrested in Las Vegas on a federal warrant in July 1963 for conspiracy to commit extortion and engaging in interstate transportation in the aid of racketeering. The latter charge was because the two supposedly schemed in California to commit the crime and then tried…
1940 After some angry husbands in Los Angeles, California complained their wives were gambling away the grocery money, two vice squad officers raided the Monday night birthday party of Ann Dicker, a 73-year-old great-grandmother, at which she and seven guests were playing poker. (The policemen had climbed up the drainpipe to stealthily reach her second-floor…
Although Texas-born Lester B. “Benny” Binion (1904-1989) no longer is with us, he remains a legend among Las Vegas casino owners and operators — gamblers, in industry parlance. Iconic even in his appearance — large in girth and ever clad in a cowboy hat and boots — Binion was complex. The dichotomous traits he embodied…
1931 Twenty-six miles southeast of Las Vegas, the United States government, in 1931, developed Boulder City as the place to house men working on the Hoover Dam (originally Boulder Dam). The Bureau of Reclamation required the town to be a model community that afforded a clean living environment. To achieve this, federal legislators officially designated…
1913 During this year, the tail end of the second wave of massive Polish emigration, about 3.5 million people, primarily peasants from poor rural provinces, was taking place. Looming on the horizon was the outbreak of World War I, when Poland would become the locale for much of the Eastern Front’s operations. Gambling had become…
1938 Esquire* Harry T. Clifton was a wealthy Englishman who owned racing stables and often visited Southern California. During his visit there in April 1938, he gambled with Lew Brice and Tommy Guinan in a Long Beach hotel. Brice was the brother of comedienne Fanny Brice, and a former stage dancer and comedian in his…