1963-1970s With assorted help from Mobsters starting in 1963, a small Chicago, Illinois-based pinball game maker, which had begun as Lion Manufacturing Co. in the 1920s, grew into the world’s largest slot machine developer, Bally Manufacturing Corp., by the 1970s. And those underworld relationships later would damage its image and jeopardize some of its existing…
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…
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…
1971 Actress Jane Fonda and renowned activists led about 900 people down the Las Vegas Strip on March 6, 1971, a Saturday, in protest of welfare cutbacks. “Today we launched a spring offensive and a national campaign against repression,” said participating civil rights leader Rev. Ralph Abernathy (Reno Evening Gazette, March 8, 1971). Starting…
1950-1956 A novel, animated gambling device began to appear in Nevada casinos in 1950. It debuted in the lobby of Reno’s Mapes hotel-casino in the fall and “got a big play from visiting Shriners,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Nov. 12, 1950). They were one-armed bandits, or life-sized outlaws whose torso was a slot machine…
Hi, Wonderful Gambling History Blog Subscribers, I hope all is well with you! I’m so thrilled to announce that It Really Happened! is back up, and I’m generating new posts for it. I apologize for the recent, lengthy period of inactivity and thank you for your patience during it. It was caused by efforts…
1938 Gambler Tony Cornero Stralla offered to donate a day’s worth of revenue from his Southern California casino boat, the Rex, to Zoo Park at 3800 Mission Road in Los Angeles. The attraction, then owned/operated by the California Zoological Society and formerly the Selig Zoo, was teetering on bankruptcy and its animals were facing starvation.…
1938 During a preliminary hearing on the felony charge of using a cheating device while playing cards at a Las Vegas gambling house, Walter Eccles of Los Angeles explained that he’d used a holdout worn on his arm for “protection against a crooked gambling game” (Nevada State Journal, April 24, 1938).
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…
1940-1941 In a series of raids in December 1940, Washoe County deputy sheriffs confiscated gambling-related paraphernalia from three Reno, Nevada locations: 1) Bank Club casino 2) Washoe Publishing Company (WPC) (room 311 in the Lyons Building) 3) Western News Company (WNC) (room 15 in the Fordonia Building). The equipment taken included teletypewriters,* Teleflash** units, telephones, switch boxes,…