1935-1965 Tony Accardo, né Antonino Leonardo Accardo (1906-1992), is credited with reviving and expanding the Chicago Outfit’s gambling business in the 1940s after the organization’s head Paul “The Waiter” Ricca named him underboss. Accardo himself had his hand in various gaming enterprises before and after, too. Accardo is the great-grandfather of the National Football League’s…
1965-1969 In its July 1966 raid of Kress Manufacturing Co. in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents seized a treasure trove of crooked gambling equipment that seemed headed to various Nevada casinos. The haul included “hundreds of decks of marked cards and hundreds of pounds of crooked dice” (Nevada State Journal, July 27,…
1941 The brief union between Tony and Dorothy Stralla ended in a suspicious tragedy. Antonio Cornero Stralla was a colorful, law defying, Southern California rumrunner turned gambler. He was involved, most often as the owner/operator, in a string of casino enterprises, including the: • Meadows (Las Vegas, Nevada) • S.S. Rex (Las Vegas, Nevada) •…
1969-1971 Patron Alvin Glasky sat in the Stardust hotel-casino’s showroom in Las Vegas, Nevada, watching Lido de Paris on a Saturday evening in 1969. As one of the topless showgirls was being lowered from the ceiling over the crowd, she fell off the platform and landed on him. Two years later, Glasky filed a lawsuit,…
1945-1955 In the late 1940s, three bookies — or commissioners, as they preferred to be called — operated on California’s Sunset Strip in West Hollywood under the name, Golden News Service. Hy Goldbaum, George Capri and Edward Cooke, all in their late 40s or early 50s at the time, specialized in assuming large bets that…
1958-1961 The debut of topless showgirls in Las Vegas roused disapproval — not surprising given it occurred early in the Leave it to Beaver era. The Stardust was the first to abandon bras and tops, doing so when it unveiled a show featuring the Bluebell Girls for the hotel-casino’s 1958 grand opening on The Strip.…
1958 Sixteen glamazon, primarily English dancers from Paris’ Lido Club troupe were imported to open Las Vegas’ Stardust hotel-casino. The Bluebell Girls’ show broke all attendance records; about 1,400 people left the gaming tables and bars each night to see it. “The celebrated dancers have been hailed as one of the most popular imports from…