Mob Museum Unveils Exhibit on Flamingo Casino, ‘Bugsy’ Siegel
The Mob Museum in Las Vegas unveiled an exhibit on Friday detailing the origins of the Flamingo hotel-casino, and gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s role inward its history.
“This exhibit and its artifacts direct to thrust the myths and localise the enter straight,” Geoff Schumacher, the museum’s vice chairwoman of exhibits and programs, wrote inwards a blog post.
The Flamingo opened under Siegel’s way inward Dec 1946 on the main road heading toward Southern CA from downtown Las Vegas.
That road, then a remote typewriter ribbon slicing through desert landscape, at present is the Las Vegas Strip, crowded with massive hotel-casinos. The Flamingo is at the same location, though none of its archetype buildings remain. Many later Mob-connected resorts on the Strip were razed o'er the years. These include the Desert Inn, Sands, and Dunes.
Siegel also briefly was component possessor of the El Cortez in downtown Las Vegas. This resort is stock-still inwards operation, with some of its archetype anatomical structure intact.
Siegel had taken check of the Flamingo from its pilot builder, Billy Wilkerson, who ran Hollywood nightclubs and published the Hollywood Reporter newspaper.
Wilkerson also was a determined gambler who missed a substantial amount in Las Vegas casinos and requisite aid funding the Flamingo. He turned to the Mob, and Siegel took control.
“Siegel, the Mob’s spot adult male in Las Vegas, worked side of meat by side of meat with Wilkerson for a few months, but disagreements ensued, and Siegel eventually forced Wilkerson out and seized full hold in of the project,” Schumacher wrote.
‘Front-Page Headlines’
Under Siegel, the resort hotel ran into ahead of time financial difficulties. Six months after it opened, he was stab to demise at his girl Old Dominion State Hill’s rented Beverly Hills home. No i has ever so been held accountable for his death.
Siegel’s legacy has added to the underworld glory that continues to pull in visitors to Las Vegas.
“The murder of Siegel, which generated front-page headlines crossways the country, finally contributed to the allure of Las Vegas,” Schumacher wrote. “Many visitors were drawn to the urban center on the chance — nevertheless realistic — that the guy cable posing next to them at the salamander tabular array or the exclude power be in the Mob. This sensation that Las Vegas offered opportunities to scratch shoulders with the underworld — without any existent complications — boosted the city’s ontogeny to a greater extent than any bingle cassino ever could.”
Siegel Artifacts
The Flamingo exhibit that opened Aug. 13 at the the Mob Museum includes a touchscreen with images and stories from the hotel-casino’s 75 years on the Strip.
Also on presentation is the archetype downpayment arrest that Wilkerson wrote to buy the set down where the Flamingo was built. The $9,500 check, written to Las Vegas businesswoman Margaret Folsom, is dated March 5, 1945. The total purchase terms for the 33-acre parcel was $84,000, or the eq of $1.2 meg today.
The exhibit also includes a written document that Siegel signed, removing Wilkerson from Flamingo operations. To purchase Wilkerson out, Siegel was to compensate $600,000. Before Siegel was shooter to last inwards June 1947, Wilkerson received half the money. He never received the remaining amount.
Among many other Flamingo-related items on video display at the museum are a partner off of shades that Siegel owned and a ceramic flamingo that guests were granted at the 1946 grand opening.