A Look Back

In 1970, when Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson debuted the Kings Castle resort in Incline Village, Lady Godiva, naked and atop a horse, greeted visitors at the property’s arched entrance.

Five years later, Hyatt Hotels Corp. acquired Kings Castle. The new owner removed and auctioned off all of the themed décor and donated the proceeds to charity. Godiva was among the items.

William “Bill” Anderson, who owned the now defunct Ponderosa Ranch, snatched her up. Sadly, he passed away in 2008, and what happened to Godiva, if anything, between that time and when she moved to the capital city, is a mystery.

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Do you know where she was during that period?

Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino (Incline Village, NV)

Tahoe Biltmore (Crystal Bay, NV)

What do you think about these acquisitions?

Calvin Kovens

1924-1995

A Miami, Florida businessman and convicted felon, involved with at least one Nevada casino in the 1960s, later got special consideration from President Richard M. Nixon.

Gambling History

Calvin Kovens bought The Sierra Tahoe hotel-casino in 1966, defying Nevada gambling authorities’ order that he not become involved with the resort. He acquired the property with a James “Jimmy” Riddle Hoffa-approved loan from the Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas Pension Fund of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

Having debuted in 1964, The Sierra Tahoe comprised a set of buildings, one on Lake Tahoe’s shore, the other across the street, in Incline Village. After several iterations, the property became the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino.

Kovens made an undesirable gambler, in the eyes of the Nevada Gaming Commissioners, as he was Mafia connected, was twice convicted of crimes and was due to serve prison time pending appeal. Though he couldn’t get a Silver State gambling license as a result, he remained the landlord of The Sierra Tahoe for three years. (During that time, he renamed the hotel Lake Tahoe Hotel, and lessor of the casino Arthur “Art” L. Wood renamed the gambling house Incline Village Casino.)

In 1968, the Nevada Gaming Control Board suspected Kovens had a hidden interest in the Carousel Casino in Las Vegas. He denied it, and the agents couldn’t prove it.

Criminal Background

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Kovens served in the U.S. Army during World War II and moved to Miami in the early 1950s. Later in the decade, he launched two commercial real estate businesses: Ruedd Inc., a development company, and Cal Kovens Construction Corp., a building firm.

In 1962, he was fined $12,000 ($103,000) and placed on probation for loan fraud. He’d used Federal Housing Administration financing earmarked for a Miami shopping center for other purposes.

Subsequently, he became an expediter for the Teamsters pension fund. In 1964, he, as well as Hoffa and six others, was found guilty of mail fraud (five counts) and wire fraud (one count). The group had been providing false or inflated information to obtain loans as well as requiring and pocketing kickbacks. Kovens was sentenced to three years in federal prison and a $5,000 ($42,000 today) fine. (Hoffa got five years and a $10,000 fine).

Tit For Tat?

After remaining free for seven years, Kovens began his three-year stint at the minimum security Federal Prison Camp, Elgin in Florida. After his first parole request was denied in June 1971, he allegedly came down with a fever and “symptoms of heart difficulty,” for which he was hospitalized (Sunday Gazette-Mail, June 16, 1974).

Consequently, in December, the parole board, in a unanimous vote, granted Kovens the early release date of May 1, 1972 due to his supposed medical condition. By then, he would’ve served 15 months.

Three days later, Nixon ordered Hoffa be released from the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Pennsylvania.

About a week later, former Senator George A. Smathers (D-Fla.) intimated to Charles “Chuck” W. Colson, White House office of public liaison director, in a phone conversation that Kovens should be freed., Smathers relayed to Colson the following dialogue he’d had with Charles “Bebe” G. Rebozzo, a close Nixon friend (The Breaking of a President, 1975):

Smathers: “Bebe, It looks to me that this would be a pretty good thing to do. [Kovens is] the most popular Jew in Dade County, South Florida. … This I know would at least give the president, and those who are going to help in this area, a very strong basis for going to the Jewish community and saying: For God’s sake, the one guy that went to bat for him was the president.”

Rebozzo: “I think [Nixon] ought to do it.”

Smathers: “I agree. There’s no negatives on this; it’s all pluses. … I’m sure the president can do it, and I’m sure, actually, [parole board] Chairman George Reed would probably approve of it.”

Colson sent to White House Counsel John Dean a transcript of this phone call with Smathers with the note: “The attached is much too hot for me to handle. … Obviously, [Smathers] makes a very good point, and I would assume if there is anything we can do properly, we should. On the other hand, in view of the personalities involved here, I would think this has to be handled with extreme care.”

Kovens got paroled eight days later, on Jan. 6, 1972. He’d served 11 months of his 36-month sentence. He was 47.

“The past and present chairmen of the parole board in Washington denied contact or behind-the-scenes pressure in the release of Kovens,” reported The Daily Review (April 9, 1974).

Shortly thereafter, Kovens delivered $30,000 ($187,000 today) in cash, reportedly a campaign contribution, to John Mitchell, Nixon’s campaign manager.

Referring to this secret donation and financier Robert L. Vesco’s $200,000 cash payment, columnist Andrew Tully wrote, “If you think these cash transactions have a Mafia flavor, you said it, I didn’t” (Albuquerque Journal, Oct. 9, 1973).

A new law required that Nixon disclose all campaign monies he’d received and from whom, however, he left Kovens’ $30,000 off of the list.

End Of Life

The ex-convict lived another 23 years as a free man, until February 1995, when he passed away, not from cardiovascular disease but from complications related to myelodysplastic syndrome, a type of bone marrow disease that may evolve into cancer. He was 70.

In his obituary he was lauded for his philanthropy, including having raised $20 million for Miami’s Mount Sinai Medical Center and $5 million for Florida International University. Among numerous other honors, the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce named Kovens Man of the Year in 1990, and the Florida International University and Tel Aviv University awarded him honorary doctorates.

—————————————-

Sources

Ad in the Nevada State Journal, June 26, 1935

1929-1941

In the early decades of legal gambling in Nevada, Reno’s McKay/Graham combine expropriated legitimate business owners’ casinos in Washoe County.

The local Mob, headed by William “Bill” Graham and James “Jim” McKay, strove to dominate and control gambling in Reno without competition. Thus, anyone who wanted to open a gambling club had to seek their permission first, and the duo may or may not have granted it. Those who failed to ask for entry into the exclusive fraternity suffered dire consequences. Most times, McKay and Graham stole the business outright, but sometimes they infiltrated it and caused its demise.

Here are the stories of some gambling clubs that fell victim to Graham and McKay:

1) Country Club (in Reno)

With the backing of an ex-Nevada investor, Charles Rennie opened the Country Club in June 1935 on Plumas Street (between what today are Moana Lane and Urban Road).* At the time, Rennie was the gambling licensee for the Town House in downtown Reno.

“It was one of the most dazzling, exciting, and glamorous clubs ever opened in Reno,” wrote Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City.

The $250,000 (a $4.7 million value today) establishment featured a restaurant, dance floor, polo grounds and tennis courts. The Bridge Room casino offered  roulette, craps, 21 and slot machines. Following a debut for which 600 people made reservations to attend, the County Club was doing great business.

Graham and McKay sent one of their henchmen, Jack Sullivan, several times to tell Rennie he should talk to the duo, but Rennie refused, according to Al W. Moe in The Roots of Reno.

Then, only 1.5 months after the Country Club’s premier, Rennie announced he was abandoning it and returning to the Town House full-time. Eighteen days later, the Country Club closed. It reopened soon after with a Graham/McKay man, James Merrell, as the new general manager.

The next year, Rennie tried to take back his Country Club from the Mobsters, without success. Subsequently, on May 15, a fire erupted at 3:40 a.m., under a serving table in the kitchen according to the steward, the only person on the premises at the time. Fueled by strong winds, the conflagration reduced the facilities to rubble within two hours. The fire chief said the fire looked to have been set, but it never was proven. Despite promises by Merrell that the Country Club would be rebuilt, it wasn’t.

2) Monte Carlo (in Reno)

The Monte Carlo opened on June 19, 1931 at 216 N. Virginia Street and boasted varied casino games, 12 in all, including hazard, roulette, big six, craps, 21, draw and stud poker, panguingue, klondike and chemin de fer.

By the end of that year, it was shuttered. According to Harold Smith, Sr., who co-owned nearby Harolds Club, “No warning went to its owners. The clique simply infiltrated its thieves among the employees and stole the bankroll. The Monte Carlo Club was broke in three months.”

3) La Boite Amusement Palace (in Reno)

Clarence Shockey launched La Boite Amusement Park, a keno-pool parlor, on July 21, 1932, to great success. Three days later, a fire broke out in the garbage behind the building but was extinguished quickly, saving the business. On the eighth day after opening, Shockey uncharacteristically failed to show up at La Boite that night, and he never was heard from or seen again. The club re-opened under new management three days later. The full story is here.

4) The Cowshed (in Reno)

Shortly after Belle Livingstone opened The Cowshed, a nightclub offering gaming (21,  roulette, craps), dining and dancing, Graham and McKay sent in their goons to drive her out. They did. The full story is here.

5) Harolds Club (in Reno)

Graham and McKay tried to close down Harolds Club in 1937, about two years after it opened.

One day, William A. Justi, third ward city councilman and police committee chairman, showed up at Harolds with two other councilmen, Harolds co-owner Harold S. Smith, Sr. described in his book. “They were there to examine our big roulette wheel hanging from the ceiling,” Smith, Sr. wrote. “The city’s ordinance imposed a tax on each gaming wheel. The Third Ward councilman was trying to persuade his colleagues to collect the tax instead on each of our 43 roulette layouts since they were placed from a single wheel. Fortunately, he wasn’t able to sell his plan. Forty-three licenses would have put us out of business.

“The real showdown came just before 10 AM a few days later when Raymond [Harold’s brother and co-owner] and I were alone in the place. Seven men sauntered in, all big, all sashaying from side to side to knock over whatever, or whoever, got in their way. I had heard through the grapevine our place was going to be wrecked. I was ready, though I would have liked to have had more witnesses. The men headed straight for Raymond standing behind the crap table, when I reached under the roulette counter for my loaded .38.

“‘You’re not going to shoot any dice,’ I declared, ‘so just turn around walk out that door.’ Not a tremor of vibrato was in my voice. I simply couldn’t stand there, aware of Raymond’s vulnerable mastoidal ear, and let them tear my brother apart or wreck the store. Had any of them taken another step, I’d have put a bullet near his feet and the next one into him.

“They halted and turned to face me. Anyone, I believe, knows when an armed man means to use his gun. They could see by the line of my lips I would use mine. They knew, furthermore, as I knew, that unless I faced them down, Harolds Club was through in Reno. Every hoodlum in the area would take his turn at clobbering us.  We would be their mirth, out in the street dodging our furniture. If, on the other hand, they retreated before a gun, the psychological advantage was ours. We would have made our stand and the word would be all over town by noon. Public opinion might save us from further rough stuff. The seven men put their heads together in solemn pow-wow, turned stiffly and marched out the door. I took my clammy hand off the pistol grip and murmured a silent prayer.

“We were in Reno to stay though I continued to carry the gun and watch every shadow as I drove home nights.”

6) Cal-Neva Lodge (in Incline Village)

“Graham and McKay swept over Cal-Neva at Lake Tahoe in 1929,” Moe wrote in Nevada’s Golden Age of Gambling. As soon as they did, they offered gambling there, which was illegal until 1931.

The Cal-Neva also burned down in a blaze thought to be arson, in mid-May 1937, just before the start of the summer tourist season (the enterprise typically was closed between September and June). It was rebuilt and quickly, however. If Graham/McKay had the fire set, why did they choose that time? It may have had something to do with the opening of the nearby Ta-Neva-Ho.

7) Ta-Neva-Ho (in Crystal Bay)

When John “Johnny” Rayburn opened the Ta-Neva-Ho,** the Cal-Neva Lodge fire had raged two weeks earlier. “The opportunity to own his own club and enter the Nevada gambling scene caused Rayburn to sell the Buckhorn [restaurant]” at North Lake Tahoe,” wrote Bethel Van Tassel in Wood Chips to Gambling Chips.

However, suddenly McKay’s people were running not just the gambling at the Ta-Neva-Ho but the entire place. McKay himself got a gambling license for the casino for 21, craps, roulette, panguingue, slots and a race book.

The Mobsters’ thinking behind taking over the Ta-Neva-Ho likely was that gambling revenue from it would make up for monies lost during the Cal-Neva Lodge rebuild.

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* On the former Country Club property today is the Classic Residence by Hyatt senior living community.
** Rayburn later renamed the Ta-Neva-Ho the Crystal Bay Club.

Sources

First, I’d like to thank you all for your readership and support. It means a lot.

On another note, the gambling history book, A Bold Gamble at Lake Tahoe: Crime and Corruption in a Casino’s Evolution, is finally here! I offer you the first chapter below.

The nonfiction book now is available for purchase as a paperback ($14.95) and an e-book ($7.99) in both EPUB and Kindle formats. To buy, click here.

Here’s a glimpse again at the story:

Their new, nature-inspired hotel stood amid a Northern Nevada township of more trees than people. The raw beauty of that lakeside spot on the cusp of development portended enormous getaway potential. The owners, legitimate businessmen, strove to add a casino, but no one would finance it.

Then Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters pension fund wormed its way in. The locals objected to a gambling house in their neighborhood. Shady characters usurped the enterprise. Lives were threatened. State agents witnessed an employed stickman using misspot dice. Felonious crimes occurred on the property, allegedly. Lawsuits by and against one owner crept into the double digits. And those events were just a handful of a mounting pile of troubles.

This is the story of a gambling business’ journey from concept to stability during the 1960s and ’70s, a time when the industry was Mob infiltrated, often volatile, theft and cheating prone, and unpredictably policed.

That once fledgling inn now is the Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe Resort, Spa and Casino.

I wish you all a fantastic winter holiday season and new year.

Take care,

Doresa

——————————————————————————————————————————————

CHAPTER 1: 

DIP INTO THE UNDERWORLD

1964

With Jimmy Hoffa and the fund’s co-trustees waiting inside their headquarters to meet him and seal the deal, California businessman Bill Swigert told the broker his company now was refusing the proffered loan.

“You are finished with the Teamsters, and you better get out of Chicago,” Norman Tyrone said while dragging a thumb across his own throat.[i]

“We got the hell out of there,” said Swigert, referring to himself and his attorney.[ii]

Desperation for financing is what had spurred William “Bill” G. Swigert, Jr. to the Windy City that autumn. He and his two partners — collectively Pacific Bridge Company & Associates (PBC&A) — recently had built and opened The Sierra Tahoe, the premier hotel in a new, sparsely inhabited, developing community on the north shore of Lake Tahoe[1] in Nevada, U.S.A. Four months later, they still needed money to cover the construction and other incurred expenses and to fund the project’s next phase, adding a casino and more guestrooms.

A few months before, Swigert had received a telephone call from Norman B. Tyrone, who’d introduced himself as a financier and had asserted he could arrange a Teamsters Pension Fund (TPF) loan for PBC&A for The Sierra Tahoe.

By that time, the TPF had underwritten more than $20 million in loans ($163 million)[2] in Nevada, for hotel-casinos, including the Riverside in Reno, and the Dunes and the Desert Inn in Las Vegas, as well as other facilities.

The TPF — formally the Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas Pension Fund of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters — collected and managed employer contributions for retirement, disability and death benefits for its unionized truck drivers and warehouse workers in about 20 states.

One of the fund’s eight trustees was James “Jimmy” R. Hoffa, who, as the Teamsters union president, allegedly had ordered bombings, arsons, beatings and murders and had aligned himself with Mobsters nationwide.

Tyrone had arranged for PBC&A to receive $2.6 million ($21.2 million) in financing from the TPF. The loan was PBC&A’s last resort, as Swigert had exhausted all other potential options over the prior 2.5 years. Swigert and his counsel, Frank E. Farella, had flown to Chicago to finalize the transaction.

On Friday, September 25, the two men convened with Tyrone in the new riverfront, 36-story, downtown Executive House hotel, about seven blocks from the TPF’s building. Tall but portly, the man wore expensive apparel.

“Tyrone just looked dishonest,” Swigert said. “He looked like a big, tall gangster, like Al Capone[3] on steroids.”

In Tyrone’s suite, piles of papers lay strewn across the furniture. The loan liaison darted around and made and answered several calls supposedly to and from Elliott Roosevelt, who was said to be waiting in the TPF’s boardroom to meet Tyrone and his loan applicants from the West Coast. Tyrone had indicated this son of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, former United States president and first lady, was his business partner.

“God, it was almost like a show,” Swigert said about Tyrone’s behavior.[iii]

Swigert and Farella reviewed the loan papers. As a condition of the financing, PBC&A previously had agreed to pay 1 point, or 1 percent of the loan amount, which equaled $26,000 ($212,000), to the TPF for appraisals, estimates and other costs. It also had agreed to pay 2 points, which was $52,000 ($424,000), to Tyrone as commission for brokering the deal.

However, among the documents, Swigert spotted a letter that committed PBC&A to giving an additional $208,000 ($1.7 million), or 8 points, as a subsidiary loan to the International Mortgage and Statistical Corporation, supposedly Tyrone and Roosevelt’s company in the Bahamas.

“What’s this? What’s it all about?” Farella asked.

“To Swigert and Farella … the Bahamas loan had an imme-diate and unmistakable stench,” reported the Oakland Tribune.

The additional $208,000 meant PBC&A would pay 11 versus 3 points on the loan. Tyrone defended it as “a hell of a good deal”[iv] and said all TPF financings were transacted at a 10 point-minimum.[4]

Frank Sheeran, who once had been Hoffa’s right-hand man, explained to author Charles Brandt how the TPF loans worked: “Jimmy’s cut was to get a finder’s fee off the books. He took points under the table for approving the loans. Mob bosses would bring customers. The bosses would charge the customers 10 percent of the loan and split that percentage with Jimmy.”[v]

If this were to have been the case with the loan to PBC&A, then $104,000 of that $208,000 would have gone to Hoffa, the rest to Tyrone. (Tyrone wasn’t a Mob boss, but like one, he connected loan candidates and the TPF.)

When Swigert asked him what his corporation did, Tyrone explained that it was somewhat of a startup, aiming to computerize global information about potential loan sources. Farella requested the business’ latest financial reports, but Tyrone said they weren’t and wouldn’t be available. He admitted that no paper trail documenting the $208,000 disbursement would exist.

“We said that if this was a legitimate loan [to Tyrone’s firm], then there was a legitimate business reason for doing it,” Swigert recalled. “Otherwise, this clearly would be immoral and illegal.”[vi]

About then, it was time for Swigert and Farella to rendezvous with the TPF’s trustees at their 29 E. Madison Street offices. Swigert told Tyrone he and Farella would catch up with him there with a final decision on the loan. First, Swigert had to discuss with his partners the surprise term just thrust upon PBC&A, by phone. He did so.

“It didn’t take us long to decide we wanted no part of any deal like that,” Swigert said.[vii]

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[1] Often called the “Jewel of the Sierra” or “Big Blue,” Lake Tahoe straddles the California-Nevada border. With a surface area of 191 square miles, it’s North America’s largest alpine lake.

[2] With most of the dated dollar figures throughout this book, a corresponding current value is provided in parentheses immediately after. These amounts are based on 2019 United States government consumer price index data and adjusted for inflation.

[3] Alphonse “Scarface” Capone was the American Mobster who allegedly murdered his way to becoming Chicago’s organized crime boss during the U.S.’ Prohibition Era.

[4] That was true, but it was a high rate, as traditional lenders typically charged borrowers 1 to 4 origination points.

CHAPTER 1: DIP INTO THE UNDERWORLD

[i] Nevada State Journal, “Teamster Fund Trial Starts on Tahoe Loan,” Jan. 26, 1971.

[ii] Interview of William G. Swigert, Jr., June 24, 2010.

[iii] Oakland Tribune, “$200,000 Fee on Loan for Teamsters,” June 5, 1970.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Brandt, Charles. I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, Hanover, N.H.: Steerforth Press, 2005. Ebook.

[vi] Interview of William G. Swigert, Jr., June 24, 2010.

[vii] Oakland Tribune, “$200,000 Fee on Loan for Teamsters,” June 5, 1970.

1967

The North Lake Tahoe gambling house had been running smoothly for eight months since Arthur “Art” L. Wood, developer of the Incline Village master-planned community, had assumed ownership of it earlier in the year. He’d acquired it along with the lakefront restaurant and bar components of The Sierra Tahoe in Nevada from then owner Calvin Kovens and afterward, renamed the gaming entity Incline Village Casino.

Caught In The Act

On a day in mid-October, employee Clayton P. Gatterdam was working there as a craps stickman, responsible for calling the dice rolls and moving the dice around the table. While a game was in progress, he pulled misspot dice — ones without certain numbers — a few times from a hidden pocket in his apron and swapped them for those in play to increase the player’s chance of winning. One of his dice, for instance, contained two ones, two fours and two fives.

Two members of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB), the investigative gambling regulatory arm that reports to the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC), witnessed Gatterdam cheating! At the time, the NGCB happened to have been conducting a random, clandestine, undercover check of the Incline Village Casino.

Gatterdam had arranged in advance with an acquaintance to collude in the swindling and split the winnings. The co-conspirator was to bet at Gatterdam’s craps table, and Gatterdam was to insert the misspot dice to facilitate one or more wins.

“[We was] going to try to put the dice in and take the place off, shoot the bankroll. We was going to try to beat the house,” Gatterdam said in his statement to Wood’s attorney. He also admitted to having been a “crossroader,”* or cheater, for the previous 20 years. (About 1.5 years later, Gatterdam again would be caught using misspot dice but in London, England.)

Protocol Followed

Consequently, the NGCB closed the Incline Village Casino — standard procedure — and filed a formal complaint against its operators, Wood, who owned 90 percent, and Benjamin “Benny” Lassoff, the bartender there who owned 10 percent. Neither of them had been on the premises when the trickery occurred.

The NGCB recommended the NGC revoke Wood and Lassoff’s gambling licenses. That’s just what it did; it pulled them for a year.

“These procedures were established for two purposes, to protect players against cheating and to protect the reputation of the state,” stated an editorial published in the Las Vegas Sun (Nov. 3, 1967). “Should it ever become established that the state allowed a cheating operation to continue one minute after irregularities are detected or even strongly suspicioned, the fat’s in the fire for sure and there’ll be a field day for the ever-ready critics of our major industry.”

Business Left Hanging

Wood pleaded with the NGC to let him keep his license, saying he’d do whatever it would take. No dice. 

“I think this thing was handled unfairly,” Wood said. “But [the NGC] is the boss” (Nevada State Journal, Dec. 5, 1967).

Unable to run the casino, Wood sought to lease or sell his majority interest in it and even unload the restaurant and bar components he owned as well, if necessary.

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*A crossroader is a casino cheater; the term, which originated in the Old West, denoted someone who practiced their trickery at saloons located at crossroads.

Sources

Hostess (princess)

1970-1975

The doorman was a knight in armor; the maître d’, a prince; the dining room hostess, a princess … Each and every one of the 900 or so employees at Kings Castle, even the phone operators, wore a costume while at work.

Kings Castle, the brainchild of Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson, debuted in Incline Village on Lake Tahoe in Nevada in 1970. The work uniforms were just another extension of the English royalty motif that permeated the resort.

Eye-Catching Fashion

The costumes boasted vibrant colors — deep orange, Gainsborough blue, gold and silver — and , according to their famous designer Michel Fresnay, a “mod-medieval” style  (Reno Evening Gazette, July 7, 1970).

Fabrics primarily were crêpes and an imported French silk cotton used on both its shiny and matte sides. Embellishments included pearls, brass, horsehair, gold braided headdresses for the men, tiaras for the women, faux chain mail and leather.

Maître d’ (prince)

Tommy Papagna recalled wearing a court jester costume, a long-sleeved lavender top with a large collar and cuffs shaped like crowns, both yellow. He was a roulette, 21 and baccarat dealer in Kings Castle’s casino during 1973 and 1974.

“I liked wearing the costumes because they were comfortable,” he said (March 2018).

Not Just Any Designer

Jacobson chose and commissioned Fresnay to create the costume series. Fresnay, age 39 at the time and a graduate of the Beaux Arts Academy in Paris, France, had become renowned after designing Marlene Dietrich’s gowns for her appearance at the Olympia Theatre in 1962. 

Sources

1975

When a notorious American stayed at the Hyatt Lake Tahoe, it was three months after Hyatt Hotels Corp. acquired the resort and a time when Nevada wanted to portray a clean gambling industry.

The infamous guest was Carmine “Lilo/The Cigar” Galante, boss of the Brooklyn, New York-based Bonanno crime family and, according to the U.S. Justice Department, then one of the country’s highest-ranked organized crime figures.

Mob Troubles

The 63 year old was on parole but allowed to travel. He’d been released from the U.S. Penitentiary, Lewisburg* in Pennsylvania 1.8 years earlier after serving 14 years of a 20-year sentence for a narcotics conspiracy conviction. Indeed, Galante had been responsible for trafficking heroin between the Bonanno family and the Giuseppe “Joe” Cotroni crime family in Montreal, Québec, Canada. 

Also at the time of his 1975 Lake Tahoe trip, Galante was “involved in a power struggle with Carlo Gambino, a New York crime boss, for the position of capo cli tutti capo — boss of all bosses in organized crime’s national high commission,” reported the Reno Evening Gazette (Aug. 18, 1975). As such, some law enforcement officials believed the true purpose of his West Coast excursion was to hold a summit with other underworld members.

Kept In Sight

Despite his criminal involvement, status and history, Nevada’s gambling regulators couldn’t kick Galante out of the Hyatt’s casino. Only those listed in their Black Book could be; it contained the names of personas non gratas in the state’s gambling houses.

Galante, however, could be watched, and watched he was. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Washoe County Sheriff’s Organized Crime Unit and others tracked his every move.

“Galante’s arrival in Nevada comes at a time when state and casino officials are stressing the crime-free aspects of Nevada gaming to members of the National Gambling Commission,” the Nevada State Journal (NSJ) reported.

The capo arrived in The Silver State looking like a “paunchy, retired janitor,” wearing a blue T-shirt, brown windbreaker and straw porkpie hat and “twisting, chewing and puffing on the legendary cigar which danced between his teeth below the gold wire-rimmed glasses which stayed halfway down his nose,” described the Nevada State Journal (Aug. 19, 1975).

After Galante checked in to the Hyatt Lake Tahoe in Incline Village, Tom Benham of the local organized crime unit, informed him that he and his activities would be scrutinized during his time in Nevada. “We want you to leave here as healthy as when you arrived,” Benham told him, according to the NSJ. Galante responded, “Thank you. I appreciate that very much.”

Benign Agenda

During his stay, from Monday to Saturday, Aug. 18 to 23, Galante, along with his three female traveling companions aged 35, 45 and 50, merely acted the tourist. The group went to the usual Lake Tahoe attractions, including the Ponderosa Ranch, the Incline Village Golf Course and the various casinos. They ate at several area restaurants and attended a couple of dinner shows.

Before Lake Tahoe

To start their adventure, the quartet had flown from New York to Los Angeles. There rented a car, a white Ford LTD, which then they’d driven to San Francisco. After staying the night there, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, they’d made their way to Truckee, where they’d slept at the Gateway Motel. The next day, they’d continued on to Nevada and the Hyatt Lake Tahoe.

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* While at Lewisburg, Galante was housed in cell block G, or “Mafia Row,” with James “Jimmy” Hoffa; Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, member of New York’s Genovese crime family; and Vincent “Vinnie The Fat Man” Teresa, a former high figure in New Jersey’s Raymond Patriarca crime family.

Sources

1970-1975

More than nine centuries after her purposeful and likely shocking stunt* in Coventry, England, Lady Godiva provoked controversy at a hotel-casino on Lake Tahoe’s North Shore.

When Kings Castle debuted in Incline Village in 1970, a nude Lady Godiva astride a horse and flanked by two medieval, sword-wielding sentinels (all replicas, of course) welcomed guests at the resort entrance. Situated in the archway of a tall, stone wall, the long-haired beauty appeared to be about to pass through a gate and cross a drawbridge.

In Poor Taste

A contingent of Northern Nevadans considered the Lady Godiva statue offensive, presumably because the subject was naked. That sentiment extended to other elements of Kings Castle, too, including the nude revue FLESH featuring topless showgirls performed there and the “Thy Kingdom Come” sign outside the hotel.

The Nevada resort, inside and out, bore the look and feel of England’s royal architecture during its Tudor period, about 1485 to 1603, however, the real Lada Godiva had predated that by hundreds of years, having made her splash in 1040. As such, she wasn’t emblematic of the Tudor era, so why she was at Kings Castle in the first place isn’t clear. Perhaps the fact that both she and the Tudor dynasty were English was enough for then proprietor Nathan “Nate” S. Jacobson to connect the two.

Minimizing Her Effect

When Kings Castle came under new ownership, that of Jud D. McIntosh, in 1973, he sought to change the resort’s image to a family-friendly one and, thus, had Lady Godiva clothed.

Even clad in apparel, the English noblewoman only remained there two more years.

Doesn’t Fit In

After The Hyatt Corp. acquired Kings Castle in 1975 and renamed it Hyatt Lake Tahoe, it eradicated all signs of the royalty motif, transforming the facilities back to one that blended with the natural surroundings; their first iteration The Sierra Tahoe (1964 to 1966) had been designed with that very intent.

Only 1.5 months after assuming control of the hotel-casino, Hyatt auctioned off all of the medieval décor, including Lady Godiva, and donated the proceeds to the North Lake Tahoe Historical Society. As a result, Lady Godiva’s new home became Bill Anderson’s Ponderosa Ranch, a nearby theme park based on the television show Bonanza (it closed in 2004).

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* In 1040, Lady Godiva implored her husband Leofric, the Lord of Coventry, to reduce or eliminate the taxes he’d levied recently, as she found them oppressive. Knowing she was modest, he agreed to lift them if she rode her horse naked through the town’s streets. To his surprise, she did just that, after getting the local citizens to agree to not watch her carry out the challenge.

Sources

1968-1969

Can you imagine if Denny’s was in Nevada’s casino business? Well, it nearly happened. 

In 1968 Denny’s Restaurants, Inc. had reached an agreement to acquire Caesars Palace in Las Vegas but didn’t go through with it.

The next year, it negotiated to acquire the corporation that owned the Cal-Neva Lodge in Incline Village (at Lake Tahoe) and the Club Cal Neva in Reno, but that didn’t happen either.