August 5, 1943 Help Wanted ad

1937-1970

Card dealing was a male-dominated profession in Nevada’s casinos until 1937, when Harolds Club, in Reno, put the first woman at a 21 table to deal.

Co-owner Harold Smith previously had been hiring women, mostly family members, for other jobs on the gambling club floor — chip stacking and roulette wheel spinning, for instance — but never dealing.

Smith’s concern had been that women would be too-easy targets for cheaters and, consequently, the casino would get fleeced. (A total of up to 10,000 silver dollars sat on the various tables during a typical night.)

Smith, though, soon realized women could hold their own, and both genders enjoyed gambling with a “pretty, smiling dealer” (Lima News, Aug. 4, 1943).

With World War II and the resulting shortage of men to employ, women filled the gap at Harolds Club. By that time, 90 percent of the employees there were female. Smith launched a school to train women to become professional dealers. They learned how to deal cards, spin wheels, rake in chips, compute payoffs and watch for cheaters’ tricks, among other skills.

Smith advertised in local newspapers’ Help Wanted sections for recruits in ads indicating, “Men Please Do Not Apply” (Nevada State Journal, Aug. 4, 1943). The pay was $25 per week while attending his school, then up to $60 per week when hired. Students ran the gamut, and included housewives, divorcées (women living in Nevada the requisite six weeks to get an expedited divorce), telephone operators, school teachers, sales clerks, stenographers and newspaper reporters.

By 1943, casinos throughout Northern Nevada were hiring graduates of Smith’s school.

Slow To Change

It was the opposite in Las Vegas. Although women worked as dealers in nearby towns such as Henderson and North Las Vegas, none did on the Strip or in downtown Sin City until 1970, nearly three decades later.

That year, the Silver Slipper, a Howard Hughes-owned casino, hired the first — 47-year-old Jean Brady, who had years of experience from dealing at other Silver State gambling houses.

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1944-1945

In the final year of World War II, three related mandates hampered Nevada’s gambling clubs, but, in general, casinos willingly withstood the hits out of a sense of patriotic duty.

These directives, imposed by the United States’ war mobilization agency, followed a national call for roughly 200,000 more “able-bodied men, willing to do hard work” between the ages of 17 and 35 (Nevada State Journal, Nov. 21, 1944). The requirements, listed chronologically, were:

• In January, all horse and dog racing in the country was to stop immediately, which it did. The federal government initiated this to combat absenteeism, as much as 30 percent, at war plants located near the racetracks.

The casinos offering betting on these sports suffered a decrease in business. Whereas customers no longer could place bets on races at U.S. places like Pimlico, Jamaica, Belmont and Narragansett, they still could get some action at certain local casinos that subscribed to a race track wire service that covered races held in Mexico and Cuba.

• In early February, more than 300 of Nevada’s gambling dealers, bartenders and other non-essential workers were to begin working at plants and industries in Nevada and on the West Coast, which were crucial to the war effort. Consequently, casinos lost key personnel.

• All U.S. entertainment spots were to close at midnight starting on Feb. 26. They included gambling enterprises, bars, night clubs, theaters, sports arenas, dance halls, roadhouses, saloons, bars and the like, public and private. Restaurants that served food only (no alcohol) were exempted. Affected businesses could reopen at 8 a.m.

“The action is the most drastic of its kind yet promulgated in Washington during the present war,” noted the Nevada State Journal (Feb. 20, 1945).

The reason for the midnight closing was to conserve coal, manpower and transportation and help boost morale of active military service members, all of whom had been prohibited from entering or being in those places after midnight. It also was to help reduce the rate of civilian workers employed in critical industries not showing up to work.

Not only did Nevada’s casinos experience a drop in business, but, also, those open around the clock had to lay off their graveyard shift workers.

Relief From The Dictates

The Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945. The following day, the U.S. director of war mobilization immediately abolished the midnight curfew and the ban on horse and dog racing.

Sources

Photo from pond5.com: “American Flag Background” by ozaiachin

1940s

1945-1946

Alfred E. Cushman entered the Palace Club, in uniform, shortly after 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 11, 1945. Prior to that, the recently discharged U.S. Army veteran participated in the Armistice Day parade in Northern Nevada. After the procession, he drank eight to 10 beers then shared three or four quarts of whiskey with five other people.

Violence Begets Injuries

An altercation took place inside the casino between Cushman and the bouncer, Frank Richardson. It ended with Richardson tossing Cushman out the back door into Douglas Alley and then allegedly kicking him several times when he tried to get up.

At the behest of Richardson, Reno police officers arrested Cushman and charged him with disturbing the peace. He was taken to Washoe General Hospital, where he received medical care for a scalp wound, fractured thumb, swollen eye, chest tenderness, and bruises and abrasions on his head, face and neck. The hospital bill, which he couldn’t pay, was $1,000 (about $14,000 today).

He was released from policy custody on bail of $50 ($670 today), paid by local veterans many of whom rallied around Cushman then and in the ensuing months. Reno Attorneys Ernest Brown and Ralph Morgali, also former military service members, provided legal services pro bono to Cushman, who’d served four years during World War II in places such as the Philippines and Japan.

Cushman

The Disparate Stories

At the trial, which began on November 17, Richardson, a Missoula, Montana man who’d been employed at the Palace Club for 11 months, testified that Cushman had instigated the trouble and had thrown the first blow.

He said he saw Cushman ask a pit boss for money “nastily” and when denied, harass the women in the cashier’s cage, as reported by the Reno Evening Gazette (Nov. 17, 1945). He told Cushman to leave them alone and “take a walk for your own good,” he recalled. Then Cushman went to grab money from a roulette table, so Richardson took him by the shoulder and instructed him to leave or risk a call to the military police. Cushman then hit Richardson in the face twice. “Then I knocked him down,” Richardson said, “and he grabbed my legs.” Richardson ejected Cushman from the club but didn’t touch him in the alley.

Cushman, who’d pleaded not guilty, told his version of what happened, which was that Richardson had attacked and beaten him ruthlessly for no reason.

Cushman relayed that he went into the Palace Club to ask a faro dealer for money for a meal, as in the past a pit boss had given him $0.50 when he’d asked. The dealer directed him to a boss who then referred him to another. That pit boss told him to wait by the cashier’s cage as he’d be right back. When Richardson instructed Cushman to leave the bosses alone, Cushman responded he just wanted a meal and was waiting for the man to return, he said.

Again, Richardson said to leave; Cushman reiterated he would wait. Richardson grabbed Cushman by the thumb and bent it backwards. Cushman then punched Richardson, and a scuffle ensued. Richardson hit Cushman in the neck, at which point the latter fell unconscious. He came to in the police car en route to the hospital. Cushman denied reaching for money on a game table or bothering anyone.

Police Judge Guy Watts found Cushman guilty of disturbing the peace and fined him $5 (about $70 today). The outcome demonstrated that city police officers were permitted to arrest and jail casino guests at the request of a bouncer.

I Will Not Go Quietly

Cushman took on the Palace Club. On November 23, he sued the club’s owners — Archie Sneed, Elmer West, Ernest “Ernie” J. Primm and Joseph Hall — and Richardson. The veteran sought $15,000 in damages for having been “beat, bruised and battered — in [a] cruel, inhuman, shameful manner,” in an assault that was “unprovoked, unnecessary and without just cause,” read the complaint (Reno Evening Gazette, Nov. 24, 1945). It also noted Cushman hadn’t been able to defend himself in the casino due to his weakened condition brought on from his war service, and from the assault he’d suffered “heart and nervous injuries that diminished his ability to earn a living.

The next year, in mid-March, the trial of Cushman v. Palace Club Inc. took place. It was “one of the most widely-watched civil actions in Reno’s history,” the Reno Evening Gazette reported (March 27, 1946).

Deemed Punishable

After much verbal sparring on both sides, the presiding judge, A.J. Maestretti, ruled. First, he said this about the incident: “In the history of Nevada there are few parallels of the brutality used by Richardson in his treatment of the plaintiff. He did to a human being what an ordinary man would not do to a dog” (Nevada State Journal, March 27, 1946).

He ordered the defendants, Richardson and the club owners, to jointly pay Cushman $10,000 in damages ($128,500 today).

He castigated both Richardson for his actions and the owners for “tolerating conditions which would allow such a situation to exist.”

Not Quite Over

The five Palace Club men threatened to appeal the district court ruling unless Cushman accepted a smaller monetary settlement. Cushman refused.

The debtors filed a motion for a new trial, which if denied, meant an appeal could go straight to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Before the motion could be decided, however, both parties compromised. In court, on May 1, the Palace Club owners and Richardson handed $7,000 ($90,000 today) over to Cushman. That ended six months of litigation.

Sources

The HMS Sickle

1943

The British submarine, HMS Sickle, fired a succession of torpedoes during World War II, in May, sinking an enemy vessel in Cape Ferrat, southeastern France. But one of the missiles hit a cliff in Monaco, and on exploding, it blew out the top windows of the Casino de Monte-Carlo.

Consequently, the ship’s captain became known as “the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo,” and an ace of spades was added to the Sickle’s Jolly Roger.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons: by Stewart Bale, Ltd., Liverpool

1940-1943

The Barn Club casino’s existence during World War II was rocky and, therefore, cut short.

It began in December 1940, when Jack Fugitt, an entertainment machine business owner, and Walter Oswald, assumed the lease of the Northern Club in Reno and remodeled and reopened the place as the Barn Club. It was located at 207 N. Center Street.* “The club had a bar, gaming tables, pinball machines, and numerous other amusements,” described Dwayne Kling in The Rise of the Biggest Little City.

The Northern Nevada gambling house got expanded recognition through the owners’ sponsorship of the local baseball team in the Sierra Nevada league, as it, too, was called the Barn Club, formerly the Reno Club.

New Games Operator

It’s unclear why, but in August 1941, Otell Micheletti, who went by “Mike” and was from San Francisco, California took over running the gambling component. Soon after, he purchased the gaming concession from Fugitt for $23,000 (about a $386,000 value today), and offered poker, pan, 21, craps and slots. Prior to this endeavor, Micheletti had managed circulation of The Examiner (San Francisco), the San Francisco Chronicle and several other Bay Area newspapers.

Uncooperative With Authorities

The Barn Club immediately got into trouble with the Washoe County licensing board, which had given it 15 days to hang curtains on its street-facing windows and move back its gaming tables from the front of the business or face losing its gambling licenses. This mandate, applicable to other casinos as well, was to counter the perceived effect of the gambling houses making the streets look like a ‘Hollywood carnival’” (Nevada State Journal, Sept. 21, 1941).

The owners didn’t comply. The board — comprised of the county commissioners, sheriff and district attorney — rescinded the casino’s gaming permits, and deputy sheriffs closed the gambling there.

Three days later, a Barn Club representative, George Green, requested restoration of the licenses. The board members agreed to it, provided the management alter the front as requested and have its employees fingerprinted. To try to purge and keep ex-convicts and other “undesirable persons” out of the local gambling operations, the licensing authorities, the next day, made official the directive for fingerprinting of all industry workers in the county.

The Barn Club met both stipulations; fingerprints were taken of 70 staff members.

Money, Money, Money

In October, Micheletti stopped paying Fugitt the monthly rent for the space. (Fugitt would sue the Barn Club owners in June 1943 for 10 months’ worth of unpaid rent.)

In February 1942, two different lawsuits involving Fugitt and Micheletti came to light. Since purchasing the gambling concession from Fugitt, Micheletti had tried to withdraw from the bank the $23,000 he’d deposited for the acquisition. When he couldn’t, he sued Fugitt to recover the money, on unknown grounds. Fugitt counter-sued and won that battle; the judge ordered Micheletti to pay Fugitt the full amount.

Four months later, 16 slot machines were stolen from the Barn Club. Did Micheletti steal them to make up for some of the $23,000 he paid Fugitt? Or did Fugitt swipe them to recoup some of the $23,000 that Micheletti never paid him? Or was the thief an entirely different party?

The Doomed Relaunch

On August 14, Micheletti, along with two co-owners, “Larry” Brady and Irving Cowan, held a grand opening for the Barn Club. (By this time, the original co-owners Fugitt and Oswald had sold their ownership interests, which Cowan eventually had assumed.)

Brady, who sometimes went by William Lawrence Brady but whose real name was William Lawrence Hunger, had gotten paroled in 1937 from Folsom State Prison on felony charges and, previously, had served a term at the Preston School of Industry, a California youth reform institution.

Irving Cowan may have been the Irving Cowan who had a long rap sheet and was associated with Los Angeles mobster, Mickey Cohen, but this remains unverified.

If the requisite county-required fingerprinting was being done, how did Brady, and possibly Cowan, end up as co-proprietors of a gambling house?

In November, Cowan was arrested at the Barn Club for assault and battery. Ten days later, federal officers arrested Brady after he brandished a gun in the Barn Club during an altercation. He was charged with carrying a firearm across state lines (between California and Nevada).

Subsequently, Brady and Cowan sold their ownership interests, to Larry Tripp (who was associated with Chesterfield Syndicate member Louis “Lou” Wertheimer) and Joseph Scrivani, respectively.

By late 1943 and perhaps earlier, the Barn Club was shuttered.

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* The former Barn Club location now is part of Harrah’s Reno Hotel and Casino.

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