Despite the claims of Barry Levinson’s 1991 movie “Bugsy,” mobster Ben Siegel did not create the first casino in Las Vegas. As Corey Levitan explains, there were a half-dozen others that preceded the Flamingo by years.
He didn’t even create the Flamingo Hotel, which brings us to the myth at hand. The real story of the first casino to occupy the Strip is known to only a few nonhistorians. And it’s far better than the one in “Bugsy.”
The Las Vegas Strip, as UNLV history professor Michael Green told Casino.org, “has a founding mother, not a founding father.”
A whopping four casinos and two full-fledged resorts beat the Flamingo to Highway 91, as the main road from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles was known in 1946. The first was opened a full 15 years earlier by Alice Morris, whose nickname, “Ma,” was stunningly prescient.
On the other hand, the movie did have this scene, with word-perfect dialogue written by James Toback, impeccably spoken by Annette Bening and Warren Beatty…