1961-1990s

“As a boy in Chicago, [he] learned to cook standing on a milk crate in his mom’s kitchen, where Mrs. Capone — Scarface Al’s mom — would join them,” reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal (May 8, 2009).

That youngster was Joseph D. Pignatello.

Once an adult, the nascent chef prepared meals for his boss, Sam “Momo” Giancana, then head of the Chicago Outfit, when they traveled together. Pignatello was his chauffeur and bodyguard.

Nicknamed “Joe the Cook” because of his superb culinary skills, he worked for years in the restaurant business in Illinois, even running and selling both a bakery and an eatery.

Chef Pursues Ownership

In early 1961, at age 35, he was working as a chef at Anjoe’s,* a popular continental restaurant on Highway 94 in Las Vegas, Nevada that had recently undergone a $100,000 remodel to reflect an Old World ambiance.

After some time, Pignatello expressed his desire to purchase half of the restaurant for $15,000 ($121,000 today).  The owner, Sam Baker, agreed but only if the buyer obtained liquor and gambling licenses.

The next month, the prospective restaurateur was arrested for working without the required permit. On his person, he had $16,000 in cash and cashier’s checks.

In April, Pignatello applied for a gambling license for 50 percent interest in the operation at Anjoe’s. A few days later, entertainer Frank Sinatra reportedly spoke to a Las Vegas official to facilitate the proper agencies’ granting “Joe the Cook” the necessary papers.

Later, when the FBI questioned the crooner about it, he admitted knowing the chef through his friend, Giancana, but denied intervening on Pignatello’s behalf.

The Dreaded Monkeywrench

Ultimately, in July, the Nevada Gaming Commission denied him a gambling permit because of his affiliation with Giancana, one of the first underworld denizens to be listed in Nevada’s “Black Book,” thereby banned from entering any casino in the state. Gaming regulators were concerned Anjoe’s would become a front and Pignatello the straw man for the Chicago Outfit, and Baker, which wasn’t his birth name, may have been connected to the Chicago underworld.

Perhaps their argument had merit as Johnny Rosselli had been spotted holding a meeting at Anjoe’s with eight other people. An organized crime strategist, he was in charge of the Outfit’s holdings in Las Vegas. Contrarily, the gaming at the restaurant consisted of four slot machines, not the setup size for major cash flow, but perhaps the plan, if one existed, was to dramatically expand the enterprise.

Going To Plan B

With the Anjoe’s deal dead, Giancana had an upscale eatery built for Pignatello using a loan from the pension fund of the Teamsters Union’s Central States, Southeast, Southwest Areas. Villa d’Este, which offered fine Italian dining, was located at 355 Convention Center Drive (Piero’s is there today).

“This will be our place, a multimillion-dollar restaurant,” the mob boss told the chef, reported the Las Vegas Review-Journal (Nov. 29, 2015).

In fact, it became a known haunt for mobsters, celebrities and other powerful people. For Giancana, obviously it was a favorite, Sinatra, too. He ate there whenever he was in town. Actor Joe Pesci fell in love with Pignatello’s food when he was in Las Vegas filming the movie, Casino.

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“Joe the Cook” ran Villa d’Este for nearly two decades.

* Anjoe’s originally was the Big Hat saloon and casino in which, in 1948, the owner Sam Baker shot a man. He subsequently changed the name to Villa Venice and ran it only as a restaurant. A few years later, Baker leased the facilities to other parties who operated both gambling and dining components. After an intervening devastating fire, Baker reopened the place in the late 1950s as Anjoe’s.

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1967 & 1970

Apparently, the beloved crooner had a temper, which he sometimes unleashed when casino operators denied him additional, excessive amounts of credit when gambling.

In one instance when Frank Sinatra lost control, he wound up losing two front teeth. That was in 1967, when he provoked a fight with Carl Cohen, the manager of the Sands in Las Vegas, Nevada, yelling obscenities at him and hurling a handful of chips into his face.

The 250-pound Cohen, who also got angry, punched the star in the mouth, knocking him to the floor. Sinatra tore up the hotel switchboard, drove a golf cart through a glass window and tried to call Howard Hughes, who’d just purchased the hotel.

It’s unclear what the kerfuffle was about. The media reported it was because Cohen closed the singer’s $200,000 (about $1.4 million in today’s dollars) line of credit. Others said it was related to Sinatra ending his 16-year professional relationship with the Sands and contracting with Caesars Palace instead. Maybe it was both. You’d think the dental consequences of that incident would’ve cured Sinatra of future behavioral eruptions, but they didn’t.

Tantrum Turned Assault

In 1970, Sinatra had just begun a three-week engagement at Caesars Palace when he got into an argument with Sanford Waterman, Caesars’ casino manager. Sinatra had been playing baccarat for $8,000 a hand at a table where the limit typically was $2,000. He asked Waterman to double the limit to $16,000 (about $98,000 in today’s dollars) and let him play on credit. Waterman refused.

Sinatra threw gambling chips, squeezed Waterman’s throat hard enough to leave marks and threatened, “The mob will take care of you.” In response, Waterman pulled a 0.38-caliber revolver from his waistband and pointed it at Sinatra, which ended the scuffle. But Sinatra cancelled the remainder of his scheduled performances at Caesars because, according to his spokesperson, Sinatra was suffering from exhaustion and a recent hand surgery. Sure.

Waterman was arrested but released, as law enforcement and the district attorney figured Sinatra had been the instigator. The local sheriff, Ralph Lamb, had enough of Ol’ Blue Eyes’ rudeness and antics.

“If Sinatra comes back to town Tuesday, he’s coming downtown to get a work card, and if he gives me any trouble, he’s going to jail,” Lamb said. “I’m tired of him intimidating waiters, waitresses, starting fires and throwing pies. He gets away with too much. He’s through picking on the little people in this town. Why the owners of the hotels put up with this I plan to find out.”

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Caricature: “Frank Sinatra” by Andy McDougall, ©2013 / License

1931-1965

Nevada’s early gambling industry was “wrapped in a segregated White Curtain” (Reno Gazette-Journal, Feb. 27, 2008).

Between 1931, when Nevada legalized gambling, and 1965, African Americans were banned from gambling or even being present in the Silver State’s Caucasian-owned casinos, for fear their presence would scare away white patrons. Typically, any black person who entered a casino would be asked to leave. The only exception was African American men in military uniform, who, in rare cases, were allowed to stay and play.

These hospitality businesses, however, employed blacks as restroom attendants, maids, shoe shiners, cooks, janitors and porters. Owners required African American entertainers who performed on the premises to come and go via the rear or side doors and use the service elevators to not be seen.

In contrast, Asian- and African American-owned casinos permitted blacks entry and gambling privileges. For instance, blacks made up about 90 percent of guests at Bill H. Fong’s New China Club, in Reno. The Asian-American-owned Cosmo Club and the black-owned Harlem Club were two other integrated gambling places in Northern Nevada.

In Sin City

In Las Vegas, prior to the debut in 1955 of the first desegregated hotel-casino, the Moulin Rouge, African Americans weren’t thrown out of gambling clubs on The Strip but were made “to feel unwelcome,” wrote Wallace Turner in Gamblers’ Money. The Moulin Rouge was owned by one black man — boxing champion Joe Louis  —and two white men — Alexander Bisno and Louis Rubin. Although wildly successful at first, the enterprise only lasted a few months, closing and going bankrupt later in the same year.

Frank Sinatra, using his influence, advanced the idea that African Americans should and must be afforded equal rights. He forced the issue when he refused to perform at Las Vegas places where a mixed audience wasn’t allowed and when, on behalf of the Rat Pack, he wouldn’t accept gigs at venues that prohibited Sammy Davis, Jr. from staying in its hotel.

Five years later, NAACP president, Dr. James McMillan, and Nevada’s first black dentist, Charles West, asked to meet with civic leaders and, if refused, threatened a march down the Las Vegas Strip in protest of racial discrimination.

Subsequently, Nevada Governor Grant Sawyer, city officials, local law enforcement and hotel owners convened at the Moulin Rouge’s coffee shop to discuss blacks’ exclusion from the Strip. Out of that tète-a-tète came a pact — the Moulin Rouge Agreement — to end segregation immediately, but only at hotel-casinos on the Strip.

Full Inclusion

It would be another five years before African Americans could gamble freely in any Nevada casino. That came with the 1965 passage of a revised state Civil Rights Act. The amended law expanded anti-discrimination to specifically encompass casinos and bars.

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