1950

In late 1948, Hollywood movie producer, Frank N. Seltzer — known for the movies, Jungle Patrol and Let’s Live Again, which debuted that same year — began research for his next project, 711 Ocean Drive, starring Edmond O’Brien and Joanne Dru.

He intended for it to expose the “bookie racket,” or “wire service as a new industry for the hoodlums who lost out through repeal” of Prohibition,” he said (Nevada State Journal, June 15, 1950).

He planned to film in a handful of California and Nevada cities. However, Lieutenant William “Bill” Burns, with the Los Angeles Police Department, warned Seltzer he was “walking into a bear trap” in Las Vegas.

In 1949, after the script was ready, someone from the public relations firm that represented the City of Las Vegas told Seltzer they could make available famous hotel-casinos on the Strip for filming. A separate hotel owner directly offered his property for the Sin City sequences. Further, a city councilman and Chamber of Commerce member assured the producer they’d cooperate fully with production.

Obstruction, Harassment Begin

Two months later, however, when production manager, Orville Fouse, went to Las Vegas, the hotel-casino owner who had offered his property for filming asked him to his office, where there were three “bruisers leaning against the wall,” Seltzer described. The hotelier told Fouse the trio believed making the movie would be “harmful to the best interests of the city.” The PR company also reneged. Seltzer’s cameramen were denied a rental car and city airport facility services and told to return to Los Angeles where they belonged.

A false rumor that Seltzer was working on a biopic of the late mobster, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, spread around Sin City. The bogus story that Seltzer was filming for a story about mobster Mickey Cohen was perpetrated in Palm Springs.

“We are going to stop you in any way we can,” Las Vegas gamblers made clear to Seltzer.

“Frank didn’t realize what danger was in this flicker until some mobsters from Las Vegas threatened

to run him out of town — loaded with lead — when we went there on location,” O’Brien said (Lubbock Morning Avalanche, Aug. 17, 1950).

At that point, LAPD’s Burns assigned himself and four of his Gangster Squad men to escort Seltzer and the cast throughout filming.

Despite the warnings and obstructionism, Seltzer moved forward with his cinematic project as best he could. He and his production team were prevented from filming in Vegas, at Lake Mead and a well-known Los Angeles restaurant. He was nearly stopped from shooting in Palm Springs.

When attempts were made to block them from shooting scenes near Boulder Dam, Seltzer had his attorneys ask the Secretary of the Interior, Oscar L. Chapman, to intervene, which he did. Consequently, U.S. forest rangers were assigned to the crew, and filming took place but allegedly remained fraught with danger.

For instance, O’Brien, the movie’s leading man, recalled what really happened during the final sequence when his character, Eddie, was supposed to be shot with blanks by 20 riflemen during a chase through Boulder Dam, “After the take, I turned around and there were three bullet holes in a car windshield — about a foot from my head” (Lubbock Morning Avalanche, Aug. 17, 1950). “The cops cleared out all spectators including a few hoods in their midst. We had to do that scene over three more times — and, believe me, I ‘died’ each time.”

The International News Service reported, “As police know, 711 was in constant danger from hoodlums and was protected by a battery of police and plainclothesmen … 711 almost cost the lives of a few persons connected with it, including O’Brien’s.”

Seltzer presumed the gamblers’ main objection to his picture was that it revealed how past posting — faking odds and placing bets after races occurred — could beat the bookies.

Reactions Upon Movie Debut

Upon 711 Ocean Drive’s 1950 release, some critics claimed it fell short of being a hard-hitting, revelatory movie about the gambling industry. Instead, they said, it was a modest melodrama at best, “no more than an average crime picture with some colorful but vague details thrown in,” reported the Los Angeles Times (July 20, 1950).

Others lauded it for being the first to portray “the inside story of the infamous syndicate and its hoodlum empire, with its terror and violence,” and “forcefully reveal[ing] the many facets of the bookmaking business which takes millions of dollars daily from thousands of small bettors: housewives, mechanics, office workers, students,” according to Utah’s Salt Lake Tribune (July 31, 1950).

Sources

Teletypewriters

1940-1941

In a series of raids in December 1940, Washoe County deputy sheriffs confiscated gambling-related paraphernalia from three Reno, Nevada locations:

1) Bank Club casino

2) Washoe Publishing Company (WPC) (room 311 in the Lyons Building)

3) Western News Company (WNC) (room 15 in the Fordonia Building).

The equipment taken included teletypewriters,* Teleflash** units, telephones, switch boxes, typewriters and a radio. Documents seized were racing forms and sheets, forms for recording wagers, client phone numbers and account records, and more.

Unlawful Business Segment

These three enterprises received and distributed horse racing information — entries, betting odds, parimutuel prices, results and the like — to western United States locales.

The problem was that bookmaking, pool selling (the selling or distribution of chances in a betting pool) and dissemination of horse race data were against Nevada law. All gross misdemeanors, each carried a penalty of a $500 to $1,000 fine ($9,000 to $18,000 today), imprisonment of one to six months or both. Betting on horse races held in Nevada, however, was legal.

Two information streams involving the Reno businesses occurred regularly:

1) Data from the East Coast were teletyped to the Bank Club, which then phoned them to the WPC. From there, they were forwarded to 900 bookmaking/pool selling places in Nevada, California and Washington.

2) Data from the West Coast were teletyped to the WNC, which passed them on to the Bank Club and Reno’s Palace Club. The flow then continued from the Bank Club as with the East Coast info.

Steps To Eradication

Washoe County District Attorney (D.A) Ernest S. Brown filed a charge of illegal distribution of horse racing info against Bank Club Inc. and eight people, including Jack Sullivan and Raymond J. Poncia.

Sullivan (né John D. Scarlett) was the Bank Club manager and co-owner with mobsters William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” C. McKay, who were serving time in the U.S. Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas at the time for conspiracy and using the U.S. mail to perpetrate fraud. Poncia was the casino’s book operator. The other defendants were linked to the WPC and WNC.

Brown also had phone service to the three entities disconnected and ordered the Bank and Palace Clubs to cease bookmaking immediately due to it being a public nuisance. The gambling houses complied.

The D.A. clarified that the county’s efforts in this regard were to “‘clean up’ a condition which gave Reno a bad name throughout the West,” not to quell horse race wagering, reported the Nevada State Journal (Dec. 2, 1940).

Ultimately, Sullivan and Poncia were arrested but released on $1,000 bail ($18,000 today) apiece.

Gambling Law Revisions

Roughly a year later, in April 1941, the Nevada Legislature legalized both bookmaking and betting on horse races occurring outside of the state. Once that occurred, the Bank and Palace Clubs restarted their bookmaking operations. Distributing horse race information, however, remained illegal.

The Defendants’ Fate

Later in the month, a hearing took place on the demurrer and motion to dismiss the charges against Sullivan and Poncia filed by their attorneys, George B. Thatcher and William Forman. (A demurrer is a response in a court proceeding in which the defendant acknowledges the truth of the allegation but claims it isn’t sufficient as a cause of legal action.)

Before Judge Benjamin F. Curler Jr. in district court, Forman asserted:

• the facts didn’t constitute a public offense
• the alleged offense fell outside the jurisdiction of Nevada’s Second Judicial District Court
• the horse race info law was unconstitutional in that it encompassed a topic not in the title
• the same law interfered with the freedoms of speech and the press.

Brown countered all of the defense’s points. He requested the judge overrule the demurrer and a preliminary hearing scheduled. Forman then responded to Brown’s arguments.

Six days later, Curler delivered his ruling. He ordered the charge against the two men and Bank Club Inc. be dismissed and the bond they’d paid returned.

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* A teletypewriter, teletype for short, was a character printer connected to a telegraph. Teletype also was a brand of teletypewriter.

** Teleflash was the brand name for a system that provided radio-type broadcast programming to commercial entities via telephone lines versus airwaves.

Sources