Vegas Myths We COULDN’T Bust in 2023
We’ll commence turned 2024 with an admission … No matter how practically we tried and tried again, we didn’t e'er succeed. Though we are fair certain that the oft-repeated Las Vegas stories at a lower place are all baloney, we have in time to amount up with the goods to turn out it.
Maybe, with your help, we put up bust these myths this year.
Manson’s Million
Charles Manson and his followers in one case mugged for the photographic camera in breast of the Million Dollar Display, a famous photo-op at Binion’s Horseshoe (now Binion’s Gambling Hall) since 1954. That’s at to the lowest degree according to a Jan. 20, 2000 story published in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Sun. It’s been repeated past dozens of publications and websites since.
The story, which quoted only when Binion’s then-owner Becky Behnen, noted that the photo no more longer exists because the FBI came past with a hunting warrant and seized it.
“To this day, the FBI allay has the only if copy of Manson’s photo with Binion’s meg dollars,” wrote former Sun reporter Jacques Louis David Strow.
“This claim assumes a lot,” as the Twitter/X calculate Vintage Las Vegas noted. “The cassino kept an unionized archive of a zillion holidaymaker photos. The FBI knew Manson visited and took a souvenir photo, and (knew) almost the souvenir pic archive. They wanted it (why??) and the casino knew exactly where to chance it.“
Nevertheless, Casino.org’s possess Vital Vegas blogger Robert Scott Roeben spent months communicating with the FBI, trying to rails land the allegedly seized photo. His thanks was a big, rich goose egg.
“Potentially responsive records were identified during the search,” the FBI replied to Roeben’s Freedom of Information Act bespeak on Nov. 30, 2022. “However, we were advised that they were non inward their expected locations. An additional hunting for the missing records also met with unsuccessful results. Since we were unable to review the records, we were unable to learn if they were antiphonal to your request.”
In a since-deleted response, Strow himself tweeted: “My seed on that one (way support inward 2000) was Becky Behnen, but i didn’t fact tab her on it. I’d chalk it upward as I of those Las Vegas legends that adds to our mystique, still if it’s concentrated to prove today. Think it was as simple as Becky Behnen apprisal me a third-hand story that I (foolishly) reported verbatim as fact.
“Rookie mistakes are practically to a lesser extent interesting than wraithlike secrets.”
Still, none of this is evidence proving that 1 of the most notorious mass murderers of the 20th century didn’t grinning and say cheese with a zillion dollars at a casino.
Quite unsurprisingly, Behnen did non return several messages we left wing for her.
How the Las Vegas Strip Got its Name
Former L.A. cop Guy McAfee is widely credited with naming the Las Vegas Strip. The story — repeated past dozens of books, articles, and websites devoted to Las Vegas history — is that, when McAfee purchased the Pair-O-Dice casino inward 1939, he referred to the route it stood on as “the Strip.”
It was supposedly a sarcastic comparing to the bustling Sunset Strip he left hand behind. McAfee’s casino, which he expanded and renamed Club 91, was situated approximately where the north terminate of the Fashion Show mall stands today. Back then, however, Highway 91 looked similar a route to nowhere.
This story is deep suspect, however. For unity thing, it was non publically recorded until McAfee’s widow woman asserted it during an interview after her hubby died inward January 1960. Thomas More importantly, McAfee wasn’t exactly known for his honesty. As a chieftain on the the LAPD’s vice squad during Prohibition, for example, his job was to target illegal bars, gambling saloons, and brothels.
McAfee ended upwards co-founding several of each, on with members of unionized crime, who paid him off to apportion in their spoils.
Bugsy Siegel Named the Flamingo
We already busted the myth that Bugsy Siegel fathered Las Vegas. That grave thug didn’t even male parent his Flamingo. The resort was the vision of Hollywood Reporter father and publishing company Billy Wilkerson. In 1945, ace of his friends suggested that, instead than just losing money inwards casinos, he should establish his own, so he could e'er win.
All Siegel did was submit o'er the Flamingo inward 1946 — past some accounts, using threats of violence — when Wilkerson’s daydream went binge before he could over(p) its building because he reportedly gambled outside his cash.
But the head is who named the joint. According to the “official” story, Siegel named it after his girlfriend, Old Dominion Hill, who was nicknamed “Flamingo” because of her long, lean legs.
Most likely first-class honours degree spun past Hank Greenspun — who served as the Flamingo’s pressure broker inwards 1947, before he founded the Las Vegas Sun — this story appears inwards Andy Edmonds’ 1993 Benny Hill bio, Bugsy’s Baby, and 100 other places.
Much to a greater extent likely, Wilkerson, who visualized it as a Miami Beach holiday resort inward the desert, named it after the magnificent ping bird he felled seam in passion with during a spark off to Florida.
“He had a specific liking for exotic birds and named several of his projects after them,” Wilkerson’s son, William R. Wilkerson III, told Casino.org in 2023. One was his Beverly Hills restaurant, L’Aiglon (young eagle).
“After considering several ideas, all variations on exotic birds, he eventually settled on the Flamingo Club,” Wilkerson said. “That was the main working title of respect until Siegel entered the picture.”
Wilkerson added that he was told this in strict trust by his father’s attorney, Greg Bautzer.
But what well-nigh a smoking gun? Something that would shew that the project was Flamingo-monikered before Siegel, Moe Sedway, and Gus Greenbaum became involved by path of a regrettably recognised $1M delay inwards February 1946? Perhaps there’s a dated drawing by vivid artist Bert Charles Frederick Worth of his archetype Flamingo logo?
“There were documents that attested to that,” Wilkerson said, “but they were ruined inwards my dad’s 1951 business office bonfire.”
Unfortunately, ace man’s word doesn’t a myth bust, no more affair how surmise that myth is.
If you canful facilitate us bout any of these myths, delight email corey@casino.org. Look for “Vegas Myths Busted” every Mon on Casino.org. Happy New Year!
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