Mobster Bugsy Siegel opens the Flamingo Hotel - December 26th, 1946

On this day in 1946, notorious gangster Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel opened the glamorous Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and Welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that rolls the dice on history seven days

(00:20):
a week. I'm Gabelusier, and today we're talking about one
of the most feared gangsters in American history and how
he got involved in the legendary Flamingo Hotel. The day
was December nine. Notorious gangster Benjamin Bugsy Siegel opened the

(00:47):
glamorous Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. The
grand opening featured entertainment by singer and comedian Jimmy Durant
with music by Cuban band leader Xavier Kuga. The event
was attended by some of Siegel's famous Hollywood friends, including
actors Clark Gable, George Sanders, and Joan Crawford. Despite the

(01:13):
glitzy guest list, the hotel's opening weekend was a total bust,
and the fallout from that failure ultimately caused siegell his life.
Benjamin Siegel was born in Brooklyn, New York, on February
nineteen o six. He got involved with neighborhood crime as

(01:33):
a teenager and eventually partnered with future mob Syndicate leader
Meyer Landski. The pair formed a criminal gang on Manhattan's
Lower East Side called the Bugs and Meyer Mob. They
mostly dealt in bootlegging, but eventually the gang joined forces
with the Syndicate, a unified group of mobsters from the

(01:54):
city's various national gangs. In the nineteen twenties, Siegel made
a name for himself as one of the founding members
of Murder Incorporated, the so called enforcement branch of the Syndicate.
In his role as a hitman, he allegedly murdered more
than thirty people and orchestrated the killings of countless others.

(02:16):
Fellow gang members gave Siegel the nickname Bugsy because they
said his quick and vicious temper often made him act
quote crazy as a bedbug. Siegel hated the name because
it reminded him of the poverty he had experienced as
a child. Anyone who dared call him bugs to his
face quickly came to regret it. By the mid nineteen thirties,

(02:40):
Murder inc. Had attracted enough heat that Lansky had to
send Siegel out of town. The displaced mobster set up
shop in Los Angeles, where he helped expand the syndicates
drug trade. Siegel had no problem adapting to a West
Coast lifestyle. He began hosting lavish parties at his mansion

(03:00):
in Beverly Hills and befriended celebrities like Carrie Grant and
Virginia Hill, an actress who later followed Siegel to Las Vegas.
In the early nineteen forties, Vegas wasn't the tourist destination
we know it as today. What would later become the
iconic Las Vegas Strip was simply Highway ninety one at

(03:22):
the time. The change began in nineteen forty one with
the opening of the L Rancho Vegas Resort and then
the Last Frontier Resort a year later. Both establishments offered
deluxe accommodations, top tier entertainment, and of course, legalized gambling.
It was the latter, in particular that caught the attention

(03:44):
of the mob. In nineteen forty five, Landsky sent Siegel
to survey the prospect of building their own hotel in
casino in downtown Vegas. When he arrived, Siegell liked what
he saw and quickly purchased a six thousand dollar steak
in the L. Cortes Hotel on Fremont Street. Meanwhile, not

(04:06):
far away, a man named Billy Wilkerson was trying to
build a new resort on Highway ninety one. As the
founder of the Hollywood Reporter and the owner of several
popular nightclubs in l A's Sunset Strip, Wilkerson wanted to
bring the glamour of Hollywood and Europe to Las Vegas.

(04:27):
Unlike the other resorts, this one wouldn't be themed to
the Western frontier. Instead, it would have a cosmopolitan style,
complete with an upscale restaurant, a Monte Carlo style French casino,
and bdays in all the bathrooms. The only problem was
that Wilkerson's vision far exceeded his wallet. The high cost

(04:50):
of building materials immediately following World War Two depleted his
bank account faster than expected. That's when Bugsy Siegel in
the New York Mob stepped into lend a hand. Siegel
sold his steak in the l Cortez, then pulled his
profits with the syndicate's money and delivered a one million

(05:12):
dollar loan to Wilkerson. The arrangement didn't last long, however,
with Wilkerson soon deciding that it was safer to just
sell his steak in the resort. Rather than stay in
business with the mob, Siegel took control of the project
and immediately started making changes to the blueprints. He tweaked

(05:32):
the design to better resemble the resorts in Havana, Cuba,
where Lansky and the syndicate had been investing. There's a
long standing rumor that Siegel named the resort after his
Hollywood girlfriend, Virginia Hill, whose nickname was the Flamingo on
account of her red hair and long legs. It's true

(05:53):
that was her nickname, and the actress certainly spent a
lot of time at the casino. However, Billy Wilkerson had
been using the Flamingo name well before Siegel and Hill
came into the picture. Apparently the shared Flamingo nickname was
pure coincidence. Siegel relished his role as supervisor, but he

(06:14):
wasn't very good at it. Construction dragged on and went
millions of dollars over budget, leading his partners in New
York to wonder if Siegel was skimming money from the project.
He kept them at bay by promising major profits that
would more than make up for the money spent, but
unfortunately for him, that big money never came. After months

(06:37):
of hype, the Flamingo finally opened on December, but almost
nothing when As planned, Siegel had reserved multiple private planes
to fly in a list celebrities like Lucille Ball, Ava Garner,
and Veronica Lake. However, due to bad weather, most of

(06:58):
the guests stayed home. To make matters worse, the majority
of the hotel rooms were unfinished, so even though twenty
eight thousand people came to the Flamingos opening weekend, most
of them had to find a room somewhere else, and
they took their winnings with them. As a result, the
casino ultimately lost between three hundred thousand and five hundred

(07:22):
thousand dollars during its first week of operation. The response
was so bad that within a month of opening, the
Flamingo ran out of cash and had to close down. Amazingly,
Lansky went to bat for his old friend and was
able to convince the other syndicate leaders to give Siegel
a second chance. After borrowing money from his fellow mobsters,

(07:47):
Siegel made some renovations and reopened the resort in March
of ninety seven, this time calling it the Fabulous Flamingo.
Things went better the second time around, and April, the
hotel had finally turned a profit. Sadly, the turnaround came
too late to save either Siegel's reputation or his life.

(08:10):
To the syndicate, the hotel's newfound success was further proof
that Siegel hadn't been straight with them in the first place.
They were convinced that he had pocketed money from the
project and then lied about the hotel's troubles to account
for what he stole. The exact details of what happened
next are unknown, but it's widely believed that Siegel's partners

(08:33):
had him killed for his alleged betrayal. What we know
for certain is that on June twent an unknown gunman
shot and killed Siegel as he sat reading the newspaper
in Virginia Hills living room in Beverly Hills. A few
minutes after the hit, three syndicate leaders strolled into the

(08:55):
lobby of The Fabulous Flamingo and assumed control of the
whole oppera ration. Despite its checkered past, the Flamingo continued
to rake in cash for the syndicate and helped establish
a new standard for over the top luxury in Las Vegas.
Its success inspired further investment in the city, and pretty

(09:16):
soon the modern Las Vegas Strip was born. As for
the Flamingo, it changed hands several times over the years
and is currently owned and operated by Caesar's Entertainment. Nothing
remains of the original architecture, with the last of its
original structures being demolished in It said that Seagel's private suite,

(09:39):
including his bulletproof class and secret escape tunnel, was among
the last things to be destroyed, like the ship of Theseus.
Even though the original Flamingo is long gone, its present
form is still considered the oldest operating hotel and casino
on the Las Vegas Strip. Today. Management tends to downplay

(10:02):
the resort's connection to a ruthless killer, and understandably so,
but they haven't completely forgotten their founder either. Bugsy's bar
inside the Flamingo still churns out cocktails in his honor,
and if you look hard enough, you'll find a plaque
dedicated to him in the hotel garden. Siegel's legacy is

(10:23):
bathed in blood and neon light, sickening and captivating at
the same time, All laid out. It doesn't make for
the prettiest view, but it's a perfect fit for Sin City.
I'm Gabe Louzier and hopefully you now know a little
more about history today than you did yesterday. If you

(10:45):
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have any comments or suggestions, you can always write to
us at this day at I heart Media a dot com.
Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show, and thanks
to you for listening. I'll see you back here again

(11:07):
tomorrow for another Day in History class. For more podcasts
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