Oct 06 2005

Book Review: When the Mob Ran Vegas

by Megan Edwards
When the Mob Ran Vegas

When the Mob Ran Vegas: Stories of Money, Mayhem, and Murder, by Steve Fischer

One unexpected but delightful feature about moving to Las Vegas is meeting the locals. Even if they’ve only been here a decade, they have stories about the good old years to tell — like back in 1998 when the Bellagio opened. Better still are the folks who’ve spent a lifetime here, and still remember watching the original Ocean’s Eleven being filmed on the Strip or seeing Liberace at Carluccio’s before he was a ghost.

Hearing Las Vegas tales from the fifties and sixties is far more fascinating than hearing stories about other cities during the same years. This is mostly because the players all have nicknames like “Bugsy,” “Icepick,” and “The Ant,” and their real life activities were more outrageous than the endless fiction they continue to inspire. If The Sopranos is entertaining, true stories from the years when the mob ran Vegas are downright enthralling.

This is, perhaps, why Steve Fischer chose the phrase as the title of his new book. A retrospective of the Mafia era, When the Mob Ran Vegas has its own interesting story that began — unlikely as it may seem — on Ebay. A longtime collector of Las Vegas memorabilia, Fischer decided it was time to share the wealth. What he didn’t realize, when he posted his first items for sale, is that the stories behind them were at least as fascinating as the articles themselves. His descriptions drew email response that gave him a new retirement project, writing the tales that grew into this book.

Beginning with his own vivid reminiscences of the Estes Kefauver hearings and the legendary moment when Bugsy Siegel’s girlfriend Virginia Hill revealed on live network television the erotic talent that paid her rent, Fischer recounts scores of stories about all the major players and quite a few lesser-known ones. Mixed in are his own Vegas experiences, and those of friends and relatives.

By the time I finished reading, I had the feeling I’d been sitting in the coffee shop at the Sands with Fischer, which is quite an accomplishment on his part. The Sands was long imploded by the time I arrived in town. Even so, I felt as though I, too, had witnessed Jerry Lewis being a jerk to a waitress and enjoyed an endless parade of celebrities and mobsters from a table in the back. I’d also been with him at a performance by Buddy Hackett it’s hard to believe really happened. Hackett walked on stage wearing nothing but black shoes and socks, which really puts Janet Jackson’s more recent “wardrobe malfunction” in proper perspective.

When the Mob Ran Vegas is a unique glimpse into the past that shaped Las Vegas into what it is today. Whether you find it nostalgic or shocking, whether you wish those days could return or are happy they’ve vanished into the past, Fischer has created a picture of an era that preserves not only faces and facts, but also a personal impression of a city he clearly loves.

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