After Florida legalized slot machines in 1935, casino operator Myrton “Mert” Wertheimer, 53, devised a way to also get craps and roulette, unlawful at the time, allowed under the new rule. (Previously, only dog and horse race betting were legal, as of 1931.)

Capitalizing On Wording

Wertheimer, who ran the gambling at the Royal Palm Club in Miami,* had coin devices attached to his roulette wheels and to his craps tables, at considerable expense it was reported. The only difference in playing those games versus traditional roulette and craps was that guests first had to insert a 50-cent piece to be issued a ball or dice. A single coin got a player one roulette wheel spin or a full craps turn, until they hit or missed.

“There is no connection whatsoever between the mechanics of the wheel and of the slot,” or of the craps table and of the slot, The Courier-Journal reported (Jan. 13, 1937).

Before Wertheimer pursued his idea, he sought the advice of counsel, who advised him that games with such an add-on should be covered under the new slot machine law. That was due to the wording of the law’s slot machines definition, specifically the included phrase, “and similar devices of this type.”

Slot machines constituted “coin-operated skill machines (commonly referred to as pin-games, marble tables, and similar devices of this type which have a skill feature) which may or may not pay a reward for skillful operation or upon which operation, premiums may or may not be given for a high score or making certain combinations,” according to Chapter 17257 of the 1935 Florida Laws, 1085.

Subsequently, Wertheimer procured the requisite licenses for five of these adapted games, at $500 apiece ($8,900 today), for a total of $2,500 ($44,500 today). They were pricier than licenses for regular slot machines, which cost $120 ($2,100 today) apiece.

Controversial Rollout

Wertheimer then debuted his coin slot device-rigged craps and roulette in the Royal Palm Club at the start of the 1937 winter tourist season in place of his usual slot machines. His doing so caused public officials, from the local police chief to the state attorney, to question the games’ legality.

“The casual observer found little difference in what the management claimed was legal gambling and the old fashioned variety that generally brought the sheriff’s men with their axes,” noted The Daily Democrat (Jan. 13, 1937).

Florida Attorney General Cary D. Landis opined that since Wertheimer’s machines had been licensed, they were considered lawful. Conversely, State Attorney G.A. Worley and State Comptroller J.M. Lee deemed them illegal, and the latter sought to get them banned officially through the court system. While that process went on, other South Florida establishments copied Wertheimer and started offering coin-operated roulette and craps games. Lee’s efforts failed.

Subsequent Actions

All of the hoopla came to an abrupt end, though, when the state legislature, in 1937, repealed its 1935 slot machine law and banned those devices and all variations thereof.

“The vote for repeal in the legislature was overwhelming,” David G. Shields wrote in a Florida Bar Journal article (September/October 2013). “The repeal statute … was authored and vigorously championed by a young representative and future Florida governor named LeRoy Collins, who called the two-year experience with slot machines ‘a dose of moral poison.'”

Another 69 years would pass before slot machines again became legal in Florida, in 2004, this time by citizen vote. That referendum, however, only allowed slots in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, at certain parimutuel facilities there and with conditions.

Subsequently, in 2009, the state legislature would adopt an amendment that “ostensibly expands the possibility of slot machines to all pari-mutuels in South Florida and the rest of the state,” added Shields.

—————————————————

* The Royal Palm Club, located in the Royal Palm Hotel, was owned by Miami City Councilman Arthur Childers.

From from freeimages.com: by Richard Styles

Sources

From left to right, Mert, Lou and Al Wertheimer

1907-1958

Wertheimer was their name. Three of these four Michigan-born brothers became full-fledged, successful gambling operators in the first half of the 1900s, their reach spanning five states: Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California and Nevada.

“As gamblers, Al, Mert and Lou became almost as well-known Detroiters as the automobile pioneers. However, the only thing the Wertheimers built was their reputation as being fabulous spenders and operators of plus gambling establishments here and in other cities,” wrote Ken McCormick in the Detroit Free Press (June 9, 1953).

The brothers, from eldest to youngest, and their birthdates were:

Myrton “Mert”                    June 12, 1884
Louis “Lou”                        September 19, 1887
Alfred “Al” John                January 30, 1889
Lionel Abraham                 May 30, 1890 (he wasn’t involved in gambling)

Today, Mert’s 136th birthday, we take a chronological look at most (20) of the threesome’s gambling enterprises over five decades.

1900-1910s

The Wertheimers began their careers with offering illegal gambling in Cheboygan, their hometown, using billiards/pool halls as their front.

In 1907, Al and Lou opened and operated the New Cheboygan Billiard & Pool Hall, renaming it the Model Billiard & Bowling Parlor a year later. After a 1911 fire there, Al moved to Detroit; Mert went, too, in 1915. Lou stayed put until 1925.

1920s

Mert and Al spent this decade plying their unlawful trade at various venues, mostly in Detroit. Later in the decade, though, Lou and Al opened a club in Cleveland, Ohio. Because police raids of their unlawful businesses were frequent, the gamblers simply packed up and opened elsewhere.

Grand River Athletic Club, Detroit, Mich. Mert and Al opened this bowling, billiards/pool and gambling club in 1922.

Monte Carlo, Detroit, Mich. Mert ran this club of his from 1922 to 1927.

Colonial Billiard Parlor, Detroit, Mich. Mert and his friend, Raymond Reuben “Ruby” Mathis, opened the Colonial in 1923.

Park Avenue Health Club, Detroit, Mich. One of Al’s gambling enterprises, run out of the Charlevoix Hotel starting in 1923.

Shawnee Club, Cleveland, Ohio. Al and Lou launched the Shawnee in 1925 with the county sheriff’s blessing despite gambling being illegal in the state. A public official closed the club in 1931.

Aniwa Club, Detroit, Mich. Al’s project starting in 1929, this was the Wertheimers’ first high-class nightclub, offering fine dining, dancing and entertainment. After numerous raids for alcohol and gambling, both illegal, he changed the club to members only.

Chesterfield Club, Detroit, Mich. Mert partnered and co-ran the club with Detroit gamblers Lincoln Fitzgerald and Danny Sullivan. The trio operated as the Chesterfield Syndicate with Mert in charge and Fitzgerald second in command. Consequently, that trio would be convicted in 1946 of illegal gambling there, in Macomb County.

The syndicate operated with the permission of the Purple Gang, which controlled the Chesterfield and other gambling operations. Another set of brothers, the Bernsteins — Abraham/”Abe,” Joseph/”Joe”, Raymond and Isadore/”Izzy” — led this violent group, also involved in bootlegging, murder, extortion, armed robbery and kidnapping.

Colonial Billiard Parlor

Aniwa Club

1930s

During this decade, Mert moved to South Florida, and Al and Lou relocated to Southern California. Then, casino gambling in Florida was illegal as were banking* and percentage** games in California.

Beach and Tennis Club, Miami, Fla. For the upper class, Mert opened this place in 1931 in The Shadows mansion formerly of Carl G. Fisher. It offered dining, dancing, illegal gambling and illegal alcohol, no tennis.

Clover Club, West Hollywood, Calif. Al and Lou’s first gaming establishment in California, they ran it from 1933 to 1936.

Dunes, Cathedral City, Calif. Al and Lou opened it in 1936 on 20 acres just outside Palm Springs. Al closed it in 1941.

Colonial House, Palm Springs, Calif. Al aimed to capture the elite as customers with its 1937 debut. “This one masqueraded as a ‘private hotel,’ but just about everyone in town knew there was a secret staircase hidden behind a cupboard in the pantry that led to an underground casino, bar and bawdy house,” Bob Schulman wrote in the HuffPost (May 15, 2013).

Royal Palm Club, Miami, Fla. Miami city councilman Arthur Childers owned the club, and Mert operated its gambling starting in 1937.

Kaufman’s Plantation, Hallandale Beach, Fla. Mobsters Vincent “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, Julian “Potatoes” Kaufman and Meyer Lansky owned the casino, which Mert helped run beginning in 1939.

Beach and Tennis Club

Dunes

Royal Palm Hotel

1940s

This decade took Mert and Lou to Reno, Nevada, where gambling had been legal since 1931, while Al remained in California.

Bonanza Club, Reno, Nev. Lou bought into the business in 1944 and ran it until the Mapes’ 1947 debut.

Colonial Inn, Hallandale Beach, Fla. Mert was involved with this Lansky-owned property only for the 1945 winter season.

Robbin & Robbin / Nevada Club, Reno, Nev. Around 1945, Mert, Fitzgerald, Sullivan and Mathis wormed their way into and took over Robbin & Robbin, renaming it the Nevada Club afterward.

Mapes, Reno, Nev. Lou and partners, Bernard “Bernie/Mooney” Einstoss, Frank Grannis and Leo Kind, leased and ran this hotel’s casino starting in 1947.

Mapes and Riverside hotels

1950s

This decade marked the end of the Wertheimer brothers’ gambling involvement and their lives.

Riverside, Reno, Nev. Mert took over the lease and operation of this hotel’s gambling concession in 1950. In 1951, Lou joined Mert at the Riverside and worked alongside him for a few years.

Al passed away in 1953 at age 64.

In 1955, Mert, Mathis and others bought the entire Riverside property from George Wingfield. In 1958, Lou died at 70 then Mert followed two months later at 74.

——————————————

*Banking games = those in which bets are placed against a house, bank or dealer

**Percentage games = banking games with relatively disproportionate odds

Sources

Ed Robbin

1941-1956

The Nevada Club (1941-1987) in Reno exemplifies the stereotypic mobsters-and-gambling connection that pervaded The Silver State for decades during the 1900s.

The business began as Robbin and Robbin, opened by Harry Robbin, 65, and his son Isadore Edward “Ed” Robbin, 45, in April 1941, and boasted 21, craps, roulette, bingo and slot machines. Located at 224 N. Virginia Street, it had been Langley’s Tango Club previously. Today, it’s part of Harrah’s property.  In November 1941, the name was changed to Robbins’ Nevada Club.

Three or four years later,* mobsters allegedly wormed their way into the club and usurped the Robbins’ control. Despite no evidence they sought any, the two familial proprietors suddenly had these “partners” in 1946:

• Lincoln Fitzgerald, 52
• Daniel “Danny” W. Sullivan, 55
• Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer, 60
• Raymond Reuben “Ruby” Mathis, 55

These new Reno gambling house operators were former members of the Chesterfield Syndicate, which had owned and run resorts, casinos, clubs and speakeasies primarily in the Detroit area. They’d recently relocated to The Biggest Little City due to a crackdown on illegal gambling in Macomb County, Michigan, in which they’d been involved for two-plus decades. Wertheimer, however, had moved from Florida, where he’d run casinos for Meyer Lansky.

Robbins’ Nevada Club “was the foothold the Detroit syndicate needed to transplant the operators into the Reno area,” wrote Jeff Sunzeri in The Nevada Club.

Name Is Changed

In March 1946, Robbins’ Nevada Club underwent a $250,000 (about $3.2 million today) makeover, including a building addition and a remodel of the existing part, likely funded by the newcomers. After, it debuted as simply the Nevada Club, offering 21, craps, roulette, keno, chuck-a-luck and slots. The building was three stories, one underground.

Paying The Price

Five months later, in August 1946, a Macomb County grand jury indicted Sullivan, Fitzgerald and Wertheimer with illegal gambling and obstructing justice by paying bribes and requested their extradition back to Michigan. Wertheimer surrendered and, ultimately, paid a fine. Sullivan and Fitzgerald, however, successfully fought and delayed extradition for two years. The duo was extradited in August 1948 and paid fines.

By that time, Wertheimer and Mathis had left the Nevada Club to run the gambling concession at George Wingfield, Sr.’s Riverside Hotel in Reno. Also by this time, Harry Robbin presumably had bowed out as well, as he already was at retirement age when he and Ed had launched Robbin and Robbin.

Out of Commission

About three months after being extradited to Michigan, someone shot Fitzgerald in his home’s driveway in November 1949, about three months after he’d been extradited to Michigan. Critically injured, he didn’t return to running the Nevada Club until spring 1950.

Used As A Straw Man

Until this time, for nine years, all pertinent business applications, such as those for gambling licenses and building permits, had been in Ed Robbin’s name only. This suggests the syndicate members had used him as a front until they knew Nevada gaming regulators would approve them for a gambling license despite their tainted background.

That happened in 1952 after Fitzgerald, Sullivan and Ed Robbin formed the partnership, Nevada Club Enterprises Inc. Sullivan was the club’s general manager; Fitzgerald was the casino manager. Had Ed Robbin then become a co-owner in name only?

Move Made To Fly Solo

Four years later, Sullivan passed away at age 67 in September. Soon after, Fitzgerald bought Ed Robbin’s stake (Ed was 61) and became the Nevada Club’s only owner. Did Ed Robbin have any say in that?**

Fitzgerald continued to run the Nevada Club, along with his other casino properties, until his death at age 88 in April 1981. That event marked the departure of Chesterfield Syndicate members from the ownership and management of the iconic casino.

———————————

* A newspaper article noted the Chesterfield quartet began operating Robbins’ Nevada Club in summer 1946, but perhaps it was earlier because Sullivan and Fitzgerald, at least, had been living in Reno since May 1945.

** Note that Ed Robbin had a 20 percent interest in Lincoln Fitzgerald’s Nevada Lodge in Crystal Bay at Lake Tahoe when it opened in 1958. (The Nevada Lodge previously had been the Tahoe Biltmore, the name it again has today.

Sources

Dennis Day

1951

The Irish tenor, Dennis Day, was about to begin a singing engagement at downtown Reno’s Riverside hotel in the summer of 1951. Day is known for his appearances on the Jack Benny comedy show and his own television show, A Day in the Life of Dennis Day.

To promote his performances, he participated in a photo shoot for local media. Dashing in a suit and tie, he creatively posed for the cameras, sometimes with beautiful women, others without, but always beside a red wheelbarrow allegedly filled with 25,000 silver dollars, said to be his salary for the two-week gig.

About 30 minutes into the shoot, Day suddenly upended the wheelbarrow and poured its contents into the hotel’s swimming pool. As the silver dollars cascaded through the green water to the bottom, casino manager Myrton “Mert” Wertheimer and hotel manager Arthur Allen sprinted over to Day.  

“What do you think you’re fooling with—hay?” yelled an outraged Wertheimer.

“It’s supposed to be my money. I’ve been kept waiting an hour for this deal, and I have an appointment with a doctor. My throat is sore,” Day said then quickly retreated.

Within minutes, Wertheimer had people diving for and recovering the coins from the pool for fear they’d rust.

“Proof that Day’s action wasn’t in the script was furnished by the photographers themselves, who were so flabbergasted, they didn’t catch a picture of the silver sliding into the briny,” wrote reporter John Burns (Nevada State Journal, July 18, 1951).

It wasn’t until much later that Wertheimer and Allen saw the humor in Day’s stunt. Though they probably wanted to, they didn’t fire Day, who likely received his pay in the form of a check.

Sources

Interior of the Bonanza Club in Reno, Nevada

1944

The debut of the Bonanza Club* on October 3, 1944 in Reno, Nevada, was doubly significant. Formerly the Barn Club, the new casino was regarded as one of, if not, the finest in the state; about $300,000 (roughly $4.2 million today) were spent on redecorating and equipping the place. It also was one of the first gambling houses in The Biggest Little City to have been funded and run by ex-Nevada mobsters.

Underworld Involvement

Financing to redo the property was provided allegedly by Moe Dalitz, Detroit mobster, and Frank “The Prime Minister” Costello, boss of New York’s Luciano (later Genovese) crime family. Their straw man, Wilbur Clark, who’d purchased and fronted the El Rancho Vegas in Las Vegas (1941) for Costello and mobster Meyer Lansky, bought the Bonanza Club in 1944 and ran it for only months. He would move on to open the Monte Carlo club in Las Vegas (1945), the Desert Inn, also in Vegas (1950), and the Tropicana casino and the International Casino, both in the 1950s in Havana, Cuba.

Mobster Louis “Lou” Wertheimer** officially took Clark’s place at the Bonanza Club the same year it opened. A former member of the Chesterfield Syndicate in Detroit, Michigan, he had numerous past arrests and gambling experience running casinos in home town Cheboygan and Detroit, Michigan; Cleveland, Ohio; and West Hollywood and Palm Springs, California. Wertheimer would sell his ownership in the Bonanza in advance and move to operating the Mapes casino when it debuted in December 1947.

A Look Inside

The elaborate Bonanza Club boasted a gaming section with two roulette, two craps, three 21 and one Big Six games along with 24 slot machines. It also contained a 58-foot bar with a full length mirror. In the 100-person dining room, lunch and dinner were served, and entertainment featured a two-piano ensemble or a violin-piano duo.

October 10, 1944 newspaper ad

Tom Douglas of California — designer of Ciro’s and LaRue’s, well-known Hollywood nightclubs — followed an 1890s theme to embellish the Bonanza Club’s interior and exterior. Inside, the walls and carpet boasted a “bonanza red” color, contrasted by the white ceiling frescoes. Lace curtains, gilded lamp fixtures from San Francisco’s Barbary Coast and plate-glass mirrors in heavy gilded frames further adorned the space.

“The most striking attribute of the Gay-Nineties motif club were the wall fixtures, eight-foot tall nude ladies who appeared to be holding the ceiling in place,” wrote Al W. Moe, in his Nevada Casino History blog. These busty figurines were custom made by a Beverly Hills firm, “which employed live girls to model and from whom were cast the delightful likenesses, completely charming as well as stunning, wrote Raymond Sawyer in Reno, Where the Gamblers Go!

The Architect

The club was built by Thomas E. Hull, the mobster-affiliated owner of Hull Hotels, which operated hotels it constructed, including the El Rancho in Las Vegas (until Clark and Detroit mobsters took over) and numerous non-gaming ones in California.

Initially, Hull, his sister Eunice Lewis and Larry Tripp co-owned the Bonanza Club. Tripp previously had helped open the El Rancho and, also in Southern Nevada, the Last Frontier Hotel (1942).

——————————-

* The Bonanza Club was located at 207 N. Center Street, Reno. The property today is part of Harrah’s Reno Hotel and Casino.

** Lou’s eldest brother, Myrton “Mert”  Wertheimer, ran the gambling at the Riverside Hotel starting in 1949 and bought, with a co-investor, the entire property from George Wingfield in 1955.

Photo from the University of Nevada, Reno’s Digital Collections

Sources