Benjamin Siegel was born on February 28, 1906, in Brooklyn New York. He was one of five children of Jewish-Austrian parents.
At the age of 9, he was on the streets of Brooklyn setting fire to vegetable carts as part of a protection scheme. At 15, he had already earned the nickname "Bugs," a pseudonym that meant he was a crazy bastard. Benny hated the nickname and typically beat the shit out of anyone who called him by it. He had no fear, and would fight at the drop of a hat.
He soon fell in with two other young thugs, Meyer Lansky and "Lucky" Luciano. Meyer and Bugsy became very close friends and formed an unstoppable crime partnership.
By 1919, Bugsy, Meyer, and Luciano controlled the lower east side of Manhatten.
As prohibition descended upon America, Bugsy, Luciano and Lansky made a fortune in the bootleging buisness. By the time prohibition came to and end, the three of them had made enough money and expanded into other areas of illegal business.
By 1933 Siegel had already begun to surround himself with Hollywood bigwigs, so that year he officially moved to the west coast. Benny had grown up in Brooklyn with a kid named George Raft, who later went on to become an actor in hollywood. Benny hooked up with Raft again, and before long Raft begun introducing him to all the biggest names in the business. The stars loved meeting Siegel: his reputation, good looks and smooth attitude made him popular in Beverly Hills.
While living in California, Siegel was given a job from his cronies back east. He was told that "Big Greenie" Greenbaum, another mobster iving on the west coast, had to go. So Bugsy wacked him. A day later, Siegel was picked up and charged with the murder. He was out of jail before sundown, but the newspapers had a field day. Headlines referred to him as Bugsy Siegel. He was infuriated. Siegel was cleared of all charges.
Eventually Siegel moved in on the gambling wire operations of the west coast. He built up a new wire service that could alert gamblers across the country to horseracing results. This netted the Syndicate millions of dollars a year, but Siegel was largely cut out of the take. He raised quite a stink over it, and eventually used this fact to help him fund a dream that he had involving a remote desert town called Las Vegas.
Now this is where the Bugsy Siegel and Las Vegas story gets interesting. It has been said, for many years, that Siegel was the founder and inventor of Las Vegas. That is the first myth. While there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Siegel had a vision of a resort gambling area consisting of numerous casinos and hotels, and truly believed that his dreams and visions would work, he was not the "inventor" of Las Vegas as many stories claim that he was. There was a history of gambling out in Nevada long before Siegel ever even went there. Meyer Lansky also had a casino in Nevada way before construction even started on The Flamingo hotel and casino. Which brings us to the second myth that we've been told over the years. The Flamingo hotel was not founded or thought of by Bugsy Siegel.
Enter Billy Wilkerson.
Wilkerson was a successful Los Angeles nightclub owner and was the publisher of the powerful trade journal The Hollywood Reporter. However Wilkerson had one downfall; he was a compulsive gambler who lost huge sums of money. Wilkerson finally decided to better his odds by building and owning a casino. He wanted something different, a tasteful place that would appeal to wealthy Hollywood types. So he designed and began construction on a Hotel/Casino, which would later turn out to be The Flamingo.
Some accounts say that Wilkerson had already named it The Flamingo long before Siegel came on the scene, and other accounts claim that Siegel named it The Flamingo, after his love, Virginia Hill. I personally believe that Siegel was the one who named it The Flamingo because recently, two stock certificates were found by The Nevada Historical society, and the stock certifactes were listed under "The Nevada Project Corporation." They have a face value of about $50,000 each, and are in the name of a Ben Siegel.
Wilkerson habitual gambling habit would just get him into more financial trouble, so at some point when Wilkerson could no longer afford to keep up with the construction costs of the Hotel/Casino, he allowed some mobsters from the east coast to buy into his project, in hopes that he could still keep his dream going of building his hotel/casino. Big mistake. Wilkerson would never have his dream come true because eventually Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel forced Wilkerson to turn over all his remaining interest in the hotel/casino project, and took over the project of building the hotel/casino. Desperate for money to finish construction, Siegel oversold worthless shares in the hotel.
When the Flamingo finally opened after many construction delays, and millions of dollars over budget, it was an unqualified failure. Nobody came to the opening ceremony and it had to be shut down.
On June 20th 1947, Bugsy Siegel was murdered while sitting in Virginia Hill's house in Beverly Hills, where he was living. Two slugs tore apart Bugsy's face as he sat on a chintz-covered couch. One bullet smashed the bridge of his nose and drove into his left eye. The eye was later found on the dining room floor, fifteen feet away from his dead body. The bullet was found in an English painting on the wall. The other entered his right cheek, passed through the back of his neck, and shattered a vertebra, ripped across the room.
On that very same day of Siegel's murder, two hoods with gambling backgrounds, Moe Sedway and Gus Greenbaum, walked into the Flamingo and announced over the intercom system, that theye were "taking over."
The Flamingo was eventually completed and enlarged from 97 to two hundred rooms. By the end of the year the casino posted a $4 million profit. (Who knows how much was skimmed off the top before the $4 million dollar prfit was reported.)
Siegel's vision of a resort area consisting of many different hotels and casinos along a strip of desert eventually became a reality. To this very day, The Flamingo still stands amongst the multitude of Las Vegas Hotels and Casinos on what is known as "The Strip."
Unfortunately Bugsy did not hang around long enough to see his vision take shape, or his dream come true.
Don Cardi
Two points:
