Mildred Jenkins, 1947

1947

Hollywood actress Mildred Jenkins testified in court about her wedding night in Nevada. After marrying A.Q. Bonner, Jr., a Northern California rancher, the two had breakfast and went to a casino.

“A.Q. lost all his money then insisted I give him mine because, he said, it belonged to both of us now,” she said. “When I repeatedly refused, he said I took the marriage too seriously and that he thought it was just a good gag” (Los Angeles Times, July 26, 1947).

The judge granted Jenkins an annulment.

1895

When two small boys appeared in a San Francisco, California court for shooting craps, the arresting officer testified. Then this transpired:

Judge: “Are you sure the boys were shooting craps?”

Officer: “Of course, I am.”

Judge: “How many dice were they using?”

Officer: “Four.”

Judge: “Case dismissed. I would advise you to study the game of craps before you make any more arrests. Only two dice are used in shooting craps.”

Louis Tom Dragna

1960-1967

Los Angeles mobsters, Louis Tom Dragna and John “The Bat” Battaglia, conversed in a hotel-casino cocktail lounge on the Las Vegas Strip one day in February 1960. But their visit was cut short when Nevada Gaming Control Board (NGCB) agents appeared with local police who arrested the two.

They charged them with vagrancy and threatened to arrest them the next time they appeared in Sin City (they soon after dropped the vagrancy charge).

Gaming authorities didn’t want either man in any Nevada casino, which they formalized via the “Black Book” two months after the undesirables’ arrest. The black book, whose creation had been in progress prior to the Dragna/Battaglia incident, contained the names of individuals casino operators had to keep out of their facilities or lose their gambling license.

The NGCB strictly enforced it, having those on the list kicked out of gambling clubs. Repeat offender Johnny Marshall (aka Marshall Caifano), triggerman for the Chicago syndicate with 18 arrests on his record between 1929 and 1951, found himself booted out several times.

“I agree with any measures necessary to keep the hoodlums out of Nevada,” said Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer. “The operators have a great responsibility to cooperate. We might as well serve notice on underworld characters right now that they are not welcome in Nevada and we aren’t going to have them here” (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 2, 1960).

Hashed Out In The Courts

That year, Dragna tested the constitutionality of the black book in the courts. He sought a federal court injunction against it and the members of both state gaming agencies. He claimed they caused Las Vegas hotels to refuse him entry, depriving him of his rights as a U.S. citizen.

Marshall also sued each gaming regulator along with Governor Sawyer for ($100 apiece) and the Desert Inn (for $150,000), whose staff had kicked him out.

In 1961, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed Dragna and Marshall’s suits on the grounds that gambling isn’t a protected federal civil right and the matter was a state one.

Marshall Pursues The Cause

Within the following year, Dragna dropped his appeal upon being sentenced to five years in prison for extorting the manager of a boxing champion.

As for Marshall’s case, the appellate judges remanded it to federal district court for trial. One justice suggested that “Nevada has as much right to keep suspect persons out of its casinos as Texas ranchers have to ban cattle with hoof and mouth disease” (Nevada State Journal, May 13, 1962).

Subsequently, Marshall lost in federal court and again appealed. In 1966, six years after gaming authorities distributed the black book, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld its use. It noted that neither being put on the list nor being denied entry to casinos was unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in 1967, refused to hear the case, finally answering the civil rights question.

Sources

1935

When two United States state governors made a friendly bet, neither knew it would become problematic.

They wagered each other their state would win the upcoming football rivalry between the Minnesota Golden Gophers, a national powerhouse, and the Iowa Hawkeyes, the loser having to award the other a prize hog.

Minnesota beat Iowa, 13 to 6, leaving Governor Clyde Herring to make good on the wager. He set out for St. Paul, accompanied by a 320-pound, thoroughbred porker named “Floyd of Rosedale” in honor of Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson and the pig’s birthplace — Rosedale Farms. (Floyd, the pig, was the brother of “Blue Boy,” an Iowa State Fair grand champion boar and actor in the 1933 Will Rogers film, “State Fair.”)

“I’ll drive the pig into Governor Olson’s office and if the police arrest me for violating an old city ordinance, I’ll get an immediate pardon from my host,” Herring said (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 13, 1935).

Herring delivered the bounty to Olson.

“The boar refused to pose for pictures until the executives pulled him from under a desk, slapped his sleek sides and tugged on his ears to steer him into position,” wrote the United Press (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 14, 1935).

Herring In The Crosshairs

The Iowan governor learned a man named Virgil Case had obtained a warrant to be served on Herring upon his return to Des Moines. The document charged the governor with unlawful gambling, a misdemeanor punishable by a fine up to $500 and a prison term of one year. Case was active in the Des Moines Social Justice Club and an editor of the monthly Des Moines Times-Examiner.

“I raise hell with public officials — and governors too — because they should be the first to set an example for others,” he said (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 14, 1935).

The governors found the charges amusing. Herring asked Olson to be his attorney in the matter, as he’d been district attorney of Minneapolis previously. Olson jokingly reassured Herring that if he remained in Minnesota, he’d be safe from extradition.

Back in Des Moines, the assistant county attorney, C. Edwin Moore, filed a motion to have the charges against the governor dismissed and to have Case’s motives for filing the action investigated. Then the publisher of the weekly Des Moines Post News, Ray McAndrews, filed a petition asking that Moore’s motives be investigated as “nothing in the Iowa code book authorized the procedure being followed” (Oelwein Daily Register, Nov. 23, 1935).

About two weeks after the troublesome wager, the court addressed the matter. Judge J.E. Mershon vacated the charges against Olson on the grounds of no jurisdiction as the wager had been consummated in a different county. Mershon ordered that information Case had filed be released and McAndrews’ motion be removed from the records.

In Memoriam Of Floyd

Unfortunately, “Floyd of Rosedale” died from swine fever a few years later. However, a Minnesota artist memorialized him in bronze, and the Iowa and Minnesota teams have wagered that coveted statue every year since.

Sources