Posted on: January 1, 2024, 08:01h.
Final up to date on: January 1, 2024, 12:26h.
We’ll begin off 2024 with an admission … Irrespective of how a lot we tried and tried once more, we didn’t all the time succeed. Although we’re pretty sure that the oft-repeated Las Vegas tales beneath are all baloney, now we have but to give you the products to show it.
Possibly, along with your assist, we will bust these myths this 12 months.
Manson’s Million
Charles Manson and his followers as soon as mugged for the digital camera in entrance of the Million Greenback Show, a well-known photo-op at Binion’s Horseshoe (now Binion’s Playing Corridor) since 1954. That’s at the least based on a Jan. 20, 2000 story revealed within the Pulitzer Prize-winning Las Vegas Solar. It’s been repeated by dozens of publications and web sites since.
The story, which quoted solely Binion’s then-owner Becky Behnen, famous that the photograph not exists as a result of the FBI got here by with a search warrant and seized it.
“To this present day, the FBI nonetheless has the one copy of Manson’s photograph with Binion’s million {dollars},” wrote former Solar reporter David Strow.
“This declare assumes loads,” because the Twitter/X account Classic Las Vegas famous. “The on line casino stored an organized archive of one million vacationer photographs. The FBI knew Manson visited and took a memento photograph, and (knew) in regards to the memento pic archive. They wished it (why??) and the on line casino knew precisely the place to seek out it.“
However, On line casino.org’s personal Very important Vegas blogger Scott Roeben spent months speaking with the FBI, attempting to trace down the allegedly seized photograph. His thanks was an enormous, fats goose egg.
“Doubtlessly responsive data had been recognized through the search,” the FBI replied to Roeben’s Freedom of Info Act request on Nov. 30, 2022. “Nonetheless, we had been suggested that they weren’t of their anticipated areas. A further seek for the lacking data additionally met with unsuccessful outcomes. Since we had been unable to assessment the data, we had been unable to find out in the event that they had been conscious of your request.”
In a since-deleted response, Strow himself tweeted: “My supply on that one (means again in 2000) was Becky Behnen, however I didn’t reality examine her on it. I’d chalk it up as a kind of Las Vegas legends that provides to our mystique, even when it’s arduous to show at present. Assume it was so simple as Becky Behnen telling me a third-hand story that I (foolishly) reported verbatim as reality.
“Rookie errors are a lot much less attention-grabbing than shadowy secrets and techniques.”
Nonetheless, none of that is proof proving that some of the infamous mass murderers of the 20th century didn’t smile and say cheese with one million {dollars} at a on line casino.
Fairly unsurprisingly, Behnen didn’t return a number of messages we left for her.
How the Las Vegas Strip Received its Identify
Former L.A. cop Man McAfee is extensively credited with naming the Las Vegas Strip. The story — repeated by dozens of books, articles, and web sites dedicated to Las Vegas historical past — is that, when McAfee bought the Pair-O-Cube on line casino in 1939, he referred to the highway it stood on as “the Strip.”
It was supposedly a sarcastic comparability to the bustling Sundown Strip he left behind. McAfee’s on line casino, which he expanded and renamed Membership 91, was situated roughly the place the north finish of the Vogue Present mall stands at present. Again then, nonetheless, Freeway 91 seemed like a highway to nowhere.
This story is deeply suspect, nonetheless. For one factor, it was not publicly recorded till McAfee’s widow asserted it throughout an interview after her husband died in January 1960. Extra importantly, McAfee wasn’t precisely recognized for his honesty. As a captain on the the LAPD’s vice squad throughout Prohibition, for instance, his job was to focus on unlawful bars, playing saloons, and brothels.
McAfee ended up co-founding a number of of every, together with members of organized crime, who paid him off to share of their spoils.
Bugsy Siegel Named the Flamingo
We already busted the parable that Bugsy Siegel fathered Las Vegas. That harmful thug didn’t even father his Flamingo. The resort was the imaginative and prescient of Hollywood Reporter founder and writer Billy Wilkerson. In 1945, one in every of his buddies urged that, somewhat than simply dropping cash in casinos, he ought to construct his personal, so he might all the time win.
All Siegel did was take over the Flamingo in 1946 — by some accounts, utilizing threats of violence — when Wilkerson’s dream went bust earlier than he might full its building as a result of he reportedly gambled away his money.
However the query is who named the joint. In accordance with the “official” story, Siegel named it after his girlfriend, Virginia Hill, who was nicknamed “Flamingo” due to her lengthy, skinny legs.
Most probably first spun by Hank Greenspun — who served because the Flamingo’s press agent in 1947, earlier than he based the Las Vegas Solar — this story seems in Andy Edmonds’ 1993 Hill bio, Bugsy’s Child, and 100 different locations.
More likely, Wilkerson, who envisioned it as a Miami Seaside resort within the desert, named it after the magnificent pink chicken he fell in love with throughout a visit to Florida.
“He had a specific liking for unique birds and named a number of of his initiatives after them,” Wilkerson’s son, William R. Wilkerson III, advised On line casino.org in 2023. One was his Beverly Hills restaurant, L’Aiglon (younger eagle).
“After contemplating a number of concepts, all variations on unique birds, he lastly settled on the Flamingo Membership,” Wilkerson stated. “That was the principle working title till Siegel entered the image.”
Wilkerson added that he was advised this in strict confidence by his father’s legal professional, Greg Bautzer.
However what a couple of smoking gun? One thing that might show that the undertaking was Flamingo-monikered earlier than Siegel, Moe Sedway, and Gus Greenbaum grew to become concerned by means of a regrettably accepted $1M examine in February 1946? Maybe there’s a dated drawing by graphic artist Bert Price of his unique Flamingo emblem?
“There have been paperwork that attested to that,” Wilkerson stated, “however they had been destroyed in my dad’s 1951 workplace bonfire.”
Sadly, one man’s phrase doesn’t a fantasy bust, irrespective of how suspect that fantasy is.
When you may also help us bust any of those myths, please e mail corey@on line casino.org. Search for “Vegas Myths Busted” each Monday on On line casino.org. Completely happy New 12 months!
