Renowned Boxers Maneuver Into Gambling-Related Businesses
This gambling history blog post discusses four famous boxers and their involvement with casino-related enterprises in the 1900s, in Mexico and Nevada. Learn more here.
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This gambling history blog post discusses four famous boxers and their involvement with casino-related enterprises in the 1900s, in Mexico and Nevada. Learn more here.
1932-1941 The original owners of The Tavern in Reno planned to open it on Nevada Day (October 31) in 1932, but the economic downturn in the state, caused by The Great Depression, forced them to…
1941 In the wee Sunday morning hours of May 4, employees closed The Tavern after a busy Saturday night of patrons gambling, dining and dancing to live music. The place was bereft of people except…
Hi Fabulous Subscribers, How are you all? I hope each of you is doing exceedingly well and life is good. As for me, I’ve been working on my next gambling history book, and today I’m…
1936-1950s The Palace Club introduced a new casino game to Nevada’s “Biggest Little City” on May 1, 1936. Renoites quickly discovered it, and its popularity soared, leading to a solid run over about a decade.…
1937-1947 More so than craps, roulette, 21 and slots, all on offer, tango enraptured gamblers at Club Fortune, then “the outstanding night spot in Western Nevada,” according to the Reno Evening Gazette (Jan. 12, 1953).…
1958 Myrton “Mert” C. Wertheimer was murdered, William “Bill/Curly” J. Graham ordered the hit and Frank “Frankie” Frost carried it out. This was hearsay from Los Angeles Mobster and made man, Aladena James “Jimmy/The Weasel”…
1953-1955 When sheriff’s deputies responded to a 10:45 p.m. call from Dixie’s Log Cabin* on January 11, 1953, they found a man, injured and lying in the parking lot there. He was Raymond “Bud” Dutcher,…
HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 1907-1945 Wanting to kick off 2021 with a positive blog post and being inspired by the $15.5 million jackpot win on Christmas Eve at Las Vegas’ Suncoast Hotel and Casino, we sought…
1936 A man walked into the Greenleaf & Crosby jewelry store in New York’s Rockefeller Center at about 11 a.m. on Monday, January 6. Two others followed through the other entrance. “This is a stickup,”…
1906-1967 Frank “Frankie” Frost (1898-1967) spent about two decades working in Reno’s gambling scene and had close relationships with those in power locally, including gambler-Mobsters William “Bill/Curly” Graham and James “Jim/Cinch” McKay and banker and…
1907-1958 Wertheimer was their name. Three of these four Michigan-born brothers became full-fledged, successful gambling operators in the first half of the 1900s, their reach spanning five states: Michigan, Ohio, Florida, California and Nevada. “As…
1923-1945 Reno, Nevada’s Third Ward city councilman during the 1920s and 1930s was “owned by” the local Mobsters, acted in their interests and protected them, contended Harold S. Smith, Jr., Harolds Club co-owner, in his…
1929-1941 In the early decades of legal gambling in Nevada, Reno’s McKay/Graham combine expropriated legitimate business owners’ casinos in Washoe County. The local Mob, headed by William “Bill” Graham and James “Jim” McKay, strove to…
1931-1948 Gambling and cheating at gambling go together like, well, coins in a slot machine or cards in a shoe. Seemingly, they always will despite various efforts — violence, laws/rules, surveillance, firings, procedures, technology and…
1920s-1930s It’s undisputed that Mobsters ruled early gambling in Reno, Nevada’s 1920s and 1930s. Two club owners who offered games of chance in the city courageously wrote, in their memoirs roughly two decades later, about…