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THE MOB AND LAS VEGAS From a Vegas entertainer: The entertainers and folks I know who worked in Las Vegas pre-1980 liked it better than what came after, When the big hotel chains muscled in on Sin City the mobsters, even with the skim, didn't have the money to compete. They were eventually marginalized and Vegas became a corporate playground. But in the days of the mob it was a much more personal place. You went to one person and they could give you an answer, comp a room, book a night spot. You didn't have to go through layers of corporate lackeys like you do today and apparently pretty much left everyone alone to do the best job they could. Of course, there were those who felt the sting of the Mob - if someone ran afoul of the wrong people or they tried to rip off a casino.
The casinos were go-go-go from the late-1940s on, and there were rivers of cash to be made on all sorts of gambling schemes - slot machines, card games, In the 1950s big name entertainers were the lure that brought in the suckers, that and the chance to hit it big if you bet the right numbers on the Roulette wheel or hit a lucky streak in Blackjack. It was also an elegant place where men wore coats and ties to the casinos, ladies were decked out in their finest with glittering jewelry and designer dresses. Beginning in the 1980s, just as mob influence was waning, slovenly tourists were arriving wearing tacky vacation wear, short shorts, jeans. Las Vegas lost that high class edge it had. Time magazine cover story, May 16, 1977: Helen Costa, wife of Frank Sinatra’s musical arranger Don Costa:
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THE MOB AND LAS VEGAS
YOUR GO-GO HOST: Billy Ingram
The original 1970s Dark Shadows movies Walter Murphy's 1970s
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