1969

For a week in May, the leader of a group of U.S.-based gamblers rented the Villa Casino, which overlooked Hyde Park in West London, along with two craps tables, the latter for $2,500 (about $17,000 today) and 10 percent of the profits.

They offered a gambling trip to England for $960 ($6,500 today) for roundtrip air fare, a week’s hotel accommodations and $960 worth of chips. Such packages, or junkets, to that country had been popular. Travelers paid one amount for airfare, meals and lodging but individually covered all wagers beyond the allotted amount.

The gambling syndicate’s guests, 40 American high rollers, mostly from the Boston, Massachusetts area, flew into town by charter on Monday, May 12.

Suspicious Activity

During the many games of craps the vacationers played, the croupiers, at crucial points, swapped the dice for misspot ones, in this case dice with two sides bearing the same number of spots. One of these dice men was Clayton P. Gatterdam, a 48-year-old ski school proprietor from Fort Worth, Texas. Gatterdam* was a reputed crossroader, a hustler who traveled around, cheating others at gambling for money.

By using crooked dice at the Villa Casino, the operators fleeced the players out of about $26,400 ($181,000 today) over three days! 

Caught Bang To Rights

On Thursday at around 1 a.m., police burst into the pink, cottage-style building and arrested seven of the hosts. They were charged with involvement in the management and organization of unlawful gaming and conspiring to cheat and defraud. Gatterdam was charged also with possession of seven pairs of misspot dice. (Gambling was legal in England at the time, but cheating by those who ran it wasn’t.)

Undercover police agent and gambling expert, Detective Constable Brian Gillard, 26, had infiltrated the Villa Casino crowd and had watched the games for days before requesting the raid. It’s unknown how initially he’d become aware of the shady goings on.

Intended To Swindle

In a preliminary hearing the following Wednesday, the seven arrestees pleaded innocent. The magistrate agreed to bail of 15,000 pounds, or $36,000 ($247,000), apiece provided they give their passports to police and check in with them daily.

“The bail is the highest set in London for some time,” reported the Orlando Sentinel (May 16, 1969).

At their trial in mid-July at Old Bailey, officially called the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, all of the defendants pleaded guilty. They admitted to having conspired between April 1 and May 15 to obtain property belonging to others dishonestly through deception with dice in craps games. They also admitted to being involved in conducting games in such a way that the odds weren’t favorable to all players equally.

Gatterdam was sentenced to three months in prison. The six others were fined $4,800, $6,000 or $7,200 ($33,000, $41,000 or $49,000), for a total of $33,600 ($230,000). All were discharged on the condition they don’t cheat at gambling again in England in the subsequent two years.

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* About 1.5 years earlier, in October 1967, Nevada Gaming Control Board agents caught Gatterdam using misspot dice in craps games while working as a stickman at the Incline Village Casino at Lake Tahoe.

Sources

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

1949

“Eight the hard way!” “It’s the Big Dick!” “Next shooter, please!” “Seven, you lose!”

When translated into the French language, these common phrases shouted by stickmen during craps lose their pizazz and bite, their je ne sais quoi, so to speak: “Dix difficile!” “C’est le gros Richard!” “Au suivant, s’il vous plaît!” “Le sept est perdant.”

This was the quandary Louis Ceresol faced when he set out to import the American dice game to the Casino de Monte-Carlo in Monaco in 1949. “C’est impossible,” the director of gambling said, referring to achieving a similar effect in the language of love. Ultimately, Ceresol opted to have his croupiers banter in English.

After all, he was instituting craps at the 80-year-old gambling house primarily for its American patrons, who were more familiar with it than with the French games it offered then: single-zero roulette, baccarat, chemin de fer and a high-low card game.

“Too often, Ceresol says, the American tourist comes into the Monte Carlo casino with his hands in his pocket and goes out with them still in his pocket,” reported the Nevada State Journal (Feb. 20, 1949).

The casino operation needed reviving after losing $450,000 (about $4.6 million today) in fiscal year 1947-1948. Ceresol hoped its American guests and craps would be the antidote, as about 200,000 tourists from the United States were expected to visit Europe in the coming year.

Casino de Monte-Carlo representatives, Albert Jauffret, left, and Louis Ceresol, intently view a dice polishing machine

Nevada Delivers Model

To learn the ins and outs of craps, Ceresol and his associate, head croupier Albert Jauffret, visited the States in February for a firsthand education. Their first stop was Las Vegas, Nevada, specifically the Flamingo.

“I am here to be taught the new dignity of modern gambling,” Ceresol said (Reno Evening Gazette, Feb. 15, 1949).

Next was Reno, Nevada, where they spent time at the Golden and other major gambling clubs. With a tape recorder and movie camera in hand, they recorded numerous games to later use to train their croupiers.

While in Nevada, Ceresol placed an order with George R. Weinbrenner, president of B.C. Wills & Co., a Detroit-based gambling equipment manufacturer, for a craps layout called the Improved Idaho Style Double Side Dealer.

Can’t Get Enough

The next stop for Ceresol and Jauffret was Sun Valley, Idaho. Subsequently, the duo continued their craps tutorial, stopping in numerous U.S. cities, including Boise, Idaho; Los Angeles, California; El Paso, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; Detroit, Michigan; and Cincinnati, Ohio. In doing so, they took in numerous games, many operated illegally, and even spotted some occasional cheating, Ceresol said. The Monte Carlo representatives arrived about a month later than originally planned in Jersey City, New Jersey, from where they set sail to Europe.

“They have wired home that they are bringing home the doctrine of the hard eight, the boxcars, Petit Joseph, come betting and the field,” reported Bob Considine (Stars & Stripes, May 28, 1949).

Sources

Photo from LIFE magazine, March 28, 1949

1946

A tastefully attired gent in his 40s sat at a craps table around 7 p.m. on a March Tuesday and began to wager with bundles of $1,000 ($12,000 today).

After betting Harolds Club’s house limit for a while, which yielded $7,500 a point on a win, management waived it. The game lasted 36 hours, during which the mystery man drank coffee but never ate. His playing drew the attention and awe of other guests of this Reno, Nevada casino. Who was this man?

He was a “gambling fool — a gentleman, win, lose or draw — who takes it like a man,” described a Harolds representative (Nevada State Journal, March 16, 1946).

Rumors identified the craps marathoner as R.L. Carnahan from Wichita, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri, as a person with such a name was registered at Reno’s Riverside Hotel. It’s unknown, though, if that was his real or fake identity.

At one point, Carnahan won $76,000 on a hand and on another, lost $100,000. At 7 a.m. Thursday, after just winning $150,000, Carnahan wanted to stop. He was down $360,000 ($4.4 million today).

He proposed to Harold Smith, a club co-owner known to participate in high-stakes gambling, a final, $500,000 bet. Each would roll a single die; whoever landed a higher number would win. If Carnahan lost, he’d pay $500,000. If he won, he’d remit $220,000, the difference between $360,000 and $140,000, the latter being $500,000 minus what he owed. Smith agreed.

Both men tossed the ivories, each showing a snake eye. Smith took his turn and got a deuce. Carnahan followed and landed a trey, or three spot, winning the wager but owing $220,000 ($2.7 million today). The men shook hands, had a drink together and parted ways.

While Harolds Club executives wouldn’t address the events, give the man’s name or specify if he won or lost and by what amount, they offered this: “The man from Kansas City is a man to be respected” (Nevada State Journal, March 16, 1946).

Sources

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.”

1949-1953

Only months after Cleveland bar owner, Norman Khoury’s 1949 acquisition of Club Savoy in Las Vegas, Nevada, Allen Smiley, an associate of the then-deceased Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, unexpectedly approached him.

He introduced Khoury to Bob “The Fixer” Smith, who’d been prominent in Vegas’ gambling industry in the 1930s. Subsequently, Smith allegedly purchased a 50 percent interest in the casino from Khoury for $100,000 ($1 million today). However, Smith was broke at the time, a fact perhaps unknown to Khoury. 

The next week at 4 a.m. on Sunday, Smith appeared at the club with 10 men, plopped down $30,000 ($300,000 today) in cash and $1,400 ($14,000 today) of silver and informed the night casino manager, Pete Brady, Smith’s people were to replace Khoury’s dealers immediately, which they did. Khoury, the entity’s primary gambling licensee, wasn’t present. Under usual operating circumstances, with his own manager in charge and his own employees working the casino, he wasn’t required to be there.

Jack Durant, the casino manager at the Flamingo, a rival gaming house, showed about three hours later, flanked by widely known gambling figures. Among them were Smith, Smiley and Louis “Russian Louie” Strauss, who was believed to have murdered a man at a Lake Tahoe hotel-casino in 1947.

Durant played craps, starting with $5 chips and graduating to $500 ones. In 45 minutes, he won $67,000 ($671,000 today) but was paid only $20,000 ($200,000 today) in cash from Smith’s bankroll. Likely over the monetary shortfall, Durant and Brady got into a fist fight, which a bystander broke up.

When Khoury heard of the incident, he refused to pay Durant the remaining $47,000 ($470,000 today) of his “winnings” as he’d learned crooked dice, ones that only throw sixes and eights, had been used during Durant’s play. Because Khoury failed to pay the entire amount, the Las Vegas city commissioners suspended his gambling and liquor licenses, began a search for the crooked dice (which mysteriously went missing) and notified the state tax commission. Khoury was forced to close his establishment.

Khoury “charged that he was the victim of a fast shuffle involving a pair of dice that didn’t belong to the club, and he therefore is not obligated to pay off,” reported Long Beach, California’s Independent (Dec. 23, 1949).

When the city and tax commissioners tried to investigate what’d occurred at Club Savoy, none of the men present during the gambling spree, including Smith and Durant, could be found as they’d skipped town.

Possible Motive

Were these events, beginning with Smiley’s introduction of Smith to Khoury, a double cross by the Flamingo to force Khoury’s Club Savoy out of business?

If so, it worked.

In January of 1950, the tax commission revoked and suspended Khoury’s gambling license for six months for two reasons: 1) He let Smith’s people operate the games when Smith’s name wasn’t on the gambling license. 2) In allowing Smith, about whom he knew nothing, to take over operation of Club Savoy, and due to what ensued, specifically nonpayment of the debt, he generated negative publicity about the club and Nevada, as the story made headlines in numerous publications.

The suspension of Khoury’s gaming license, however, lasted longer than a half-year. When Khoury reopened Club Savoy as a bar in September 1951, the tax commission only allowed him a gambling license for slot machines.

Two years later, in 1953, Khoury closed Club Savoy for good.

What would’ve happened if Khoury had paid Durant the entire $67,000 at the time? Would he have kept his licenses and continued to run Club Savoy interruption free? Would the Flamingo have harmed Khoury and his enterprise some other way?

Sources

1931

Belle Livingstone wasn’t the typical Nevada gambling club owner.

She’d acted on the stage and screen in the 1890s. She’d mingled with royalty and wealth in Europe and the United States. During Prohibition, she’d operated a speakeasy on New York’s Park Avenue. During that stint, she’d been arrested three times and spent 30 days in jail for selling alcohol to her patrons. She moved to Reno, Nevada in 1931, the year the state legalized gambling.

“Reno, everybody said, was the obvious place for me; Reno was the widest-open town in America, where enforcement was a farce; in Reno the Truckee River sometimes ran dry, but never Old Man River Booze,” Livingstone wrote in her memoir, Belle Out of Order. “Besides, there was always the legal gambling!”

When Livingstone’s request for a gambling license came up for a county board vote, ranchers who lived near the location she’d chosen for her club objected. They said a casino in the neighborhood would be detrimental to the children residing there. They implored the board to investigate Livingstone’s “character and fitness to conduct such a resort” and ask her about her criminal record.

The licensing board, however, approved it in a 3-to-2 decision. In September, The Cowshed, Livingstone’s nightclub, debuted. The former cow-milking barn had been transformed into an entertainment hotspot offering gambling, dining and dancing, and it drew crowds, 1,700 people on opening night alone.

It was located on South Virginia Street, the main Reno thoroughfare, about two miles south of downtown. (For those who know the locale, it was at 2295 S. Virginia Street, which is about where El Pollo Loco is, across from the old Park Lane Mall site.) “You haven’t seen Reno if you haven’t seen Belle’s ‘Cow Shed [sic],’” advertisements declared (Reno Evening Gazette, Oct. 24, 1931).

Shortly thereafter, troubles surfaced for the owner/hostess. The newspapers reported that internal conflicts arose between Livingstone and her investors, and Prohibition agents raided the club, seized bottles of liquor and arrested its three bartenders.

The Octopus Rears Up

Livingstone, however, attributed the difficulties to the “four-headed Octopus which strangled every business that didn’t pay money into their till … no one could possibly operate without their sanction.” This tentacled animal that controlled Reno’s underground was financier George Wingfield and his three partners, William “Bill” Graham, James “Jim” McKay and an unknown third person, perhaps Reno Councilman William A. Justi.

“In spite of the fact that the governor had given me Nevada and the mayor had given me Reno, the underworld now gave me the works,” she added. “In the weeks that followed they installed in my place a man to provide my liquor, another to watch my cash register, others to stand back of my crap table and my roulette wheel. They carried out a campaign of psychological terrorism to the point where I felt obliged to hire a guard to watch my cottage while I slept. Finally came a complete blockage on my liquor, and what night club can exist without liquor?”

In a few months’ time, the Octopus successfully squeezed out Livingstone. In November, she headed to Dallas to run another club there.

A few days later, The Cowshed’s doors closed, and the entity became caught up in legal entanglements. In 1932, in abatement proceedings, a judge ordered the facility be locked for one year.

In May 1933, new management held a gala opening for The Cowshed, at which hundreds of attendees reveled. Success was fleeting, however, and the establishment closed and reopened a few more times before The Cowshed name was abandoned for good in 1937.

Sources

1947 Cadillac

1947

To keep players gambling at their clubs, Las Vegas, Nevada casinos boosted incentives with offerings such as double odds on craps, bingo prizes of $1,000 ($10,900 today), extra slot machine jackpots and brand new Cadillacs.

1905-1941

Imagine in the early 1900s, a block about the length of a football field, in the Mojave Desert in Nevada where gambling, drinking and prostitution prevailed free from law enforcement’s intrusion, and where fights erupted often and killings were common.

And because the days were so hot, it came alive at night when locals and passers-through pursued their vices and recreation, including billiards, bowling, music and dancing.

Such a place existed — the original Sin City.

“That part of Las Vegas looked like a rip-roaring, whiskey-drinking, gun-toting, gambling town, while the rest of the town was conservative and business-like,” wrote Stanley Paher in Las Vegas: As It Began—As It Grew.

This frontier area developed in 1905 after William Clark, who with his brother developed the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake railroad, founded the Las Vegas Townsite. He divided 110 acres into 38 parcels of land, each 1,200 square feet in size, which he auctioned. He designated only two of those — Blocks 16 and 17 — as places where liquor could be sold legally. Properties on the other blocks contained a “no liquor” clause in their deed.

Block 16 was located on today’s First Street between Ogden and Stewart avenues. While prostitution primarily was limited to that area and with the free flow of alcohol there,* Block 16 alone earned the name Sin City. The early brothels were located in the rear or upper rooms, or “cribs,” of some of the saloons.

“… riotous Block 16 was the only seat of pleasure. Nearly every night, including Christmas, it ran full blast. The Gem, the Red Onion, the Turf, the Favorite, the OO (Double-O), the Star, the Arcade saloons and the Arizona Club were continually crowded with sharp-eyed dealers and boosters and men standing around trying to solve the mysteries of gambling. All night long sounded the strains of music, the rattle of ivory chips and the clink of silver and gold coins on the tables of faro, roulette, craps, black jack and poker,” Paher wrote.

Tolerance Fades

In the early 1940s, the U.S. Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) was considering an area outside of town for base facilities for an aerial gunnery school and told city officials that as long as Block 16 existed, servicemen wouldn’t be allowed to enter Las Vegas. Afraid of losing the potential economic windfall from those corpsmen, the city began eradicating Block 16 in 1941.

Law enforcement conducted a series of raids, during which they arrested numerous prostitutes. In 1942, the city revoked all gaming and liquor licenses of Block 16’s businesses. Consequently, income from these vices decreased, and proprietors soon after ceased operations, thereby killing off Sin City.

The facilities, particularly the brothels, later were used through the duration of World War II as inexpensive rooming houses until 1946, when the city deemed them inhabitable and razed them. The land eventually was paved to serve as parking lots, and it still does. They can be found behind Binion’s Gambling Hall & Hotel and just east of the California Hotel-Casino, in the heart of downtown Las Vegas.

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*Even during Prohibition, alcohol was available widely on Block 16.

Sources

Photo from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ University Libraries

1930

Silent film star, Clara Bow, spent one September evening in 1930 playing illegal gambling games at a Lake Tahoe, Nevada casino. Both winning and losing at roulette, craps, 21 and the dice game, chuck-a-luck, she requested a high roll. The Cal-Neva Lodge obliged, allowing her to play as high as $300 per roll or card.

When she was in the red for about $5,000, the casino manager, Elmer “Bones” M. Remmer implored her to stop, but she refused. Throughout the evening, she lost $13,900 (a $198,000 value today), which she covered with three checks.

Then she stopped payment on them.

Clearly, the red-haired siren hadn’t known whom she was tangling with at the Cal-Neva! The owners, James “Jim/Cinch” C. McKay and William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham, ran Reno then, controlling its illegal gambling trade (Nevada legalized open-wide gambling in 1931) and operating speakeasies, brothels and more. “Bones” was their trusted partner and enforcer who did whatever they asked.

“‘Bones’” rarely met a man he liked, or a meal he didn’t, and he was just as likely to finish either one off,” wrote Al Moe in “Roots of Reno.”

If Bow hadn’t been a star, she might’ve been physically harmed or worse for stiffing the casino.

Another Ballsy Move

At the time, gambling was mostly illegal at the time. Some games were allowed—poker, stud-horse poker, five hundred, solo and whist—along with slot machine play only for the sales of cigars and drinks and social games only played for drinks and cigars served individually or prizes not exceeding two dollars in value.  As such, the casino’s owners couldn’t sue Bow for the money she owed. McKay tried to get her movie studio, Paramount, to cover the debt, but its executives refused, saying it was the actress’ personal matter.

Soon after, Bow issued a statement about the matter. She claimed the casino lacked a “rightful claim” against her, insinuating it had cheated her, charging her for $100 chips when she’d played with 50-cent pieces and changing the amount on her checks.

“I will gladly accept service of any legal documents,” she said. “I always pay every honest debt promptly” (Reno Evening Gazette, Sept. 24, 1930).

The Cal-Neva’s attorney refuted her accusations, calling them ludicrous. He noted that Bow had cashed the checks with the casino, which gave her the money upfront to use as she wished.

Bow never paid what she owed.

Sources

1950

The $1.6 million Desert Inn resort had just opened in Las Vegas, and a gambling naif nearly put it out of business. A 22-year-old sailor, who didn’t know much about gambling, bet $1 on craps and had a run of 27 straight passes. During it, the people around him started winning, too.

“There was pandemonium. People were screaming and yelling. Those in the back were offering up to $500 (about $5,000 today) for a place to stand at the table so that they could get their money down,” Wilbur Clark, front man for the Cleveland’s Mayfield Road Gang and mobster Moe Dalitz, told the press 12 years later.

The hot streak cost the casino $260,000 of its $300,000 ($2.6 of $3 million today) bank.