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In Las Vegas, a good idea and a decent bankroll can get you far, but having the right friends is more important. Or, in some cases, not having the wrong friends.
Case in point: Mack Kufferman. He was the sort of man who Las Vegas, circa 1951, should have loved, with the indistinct background that seemed tailor-made for investing in a casino: He was variously described as a “New Jersey liquor kingpin” and “Palm Springs millionaire.” Kufferman established himself in Southern California in the 1940s and by 1950 was a fixture on the Palm Springs social scene, with his family written up in the society columns and his house’s landscaping featured in newspaper spreads on xeriscape gardening.
In general, though, Kufferman had mastered an art dear to Las Vegas casinos owners of that era—the art of being as unobtrusive as possible. Even his appearance seemed calculated to avoid scrutiny. He was tall but not too tall, stocky but certainly not fat, his hair receding but not enough to say he was a bald man, or even balding. He had the broad, doughy face that would have perfectly fit a deliberately bland character actor of the era. You’ve seen this guy, but you can never remember him.
Being unmemorable was a virtue in Las Vegas during those years because for casino owners, most press tended to be bad press. For that matter, as far back as Prohibition, any news about gamblers was, by definition, bad news. In matters outside of officially sanctioned public relations, Las Vegas adopted this same attitude since national news about Nevada gambling was rarely positive.
The powers that be in Nevada—in those days a mixture of state legislators, Clark County commissioners, and the Tax Commission, which licensed gaming operators and ostensibly policed the industry—were particularly leery of media attention in late 1951. The previous year, an ambitious junior senator from Tennessee, Estes Kefauver, had focused the nation’s eyes on what he believed was a growing problem that deserved the kind of serious inquiry that could force changes in public policy or, at the least, get him into the White House. The United States Senate’s Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, which met from May 1950 to September 1951, indeed delivered publicity to its chairman. Around the nation, Americans huddled around television sets and even crowded into movie theaters to watch the Kefauver Committee, as it was popularly known (no doubt to the delight of its attention-seeking chair).
In its open sessions, the committee’s modus operandi was to elicit testimony from a range of witnesses, from police officers to reputed mob chieftains like Frank Costello, who famously refused to allow his face to be broadcast on television. That the cameramen focused instead on his hands somehow made his testimony all the more menacing. One year later, the committee could be said to have accomplished its goals: The public knew more about organized crime, and Estes Kefauver was named by his countrymen as one of the ten most admired men in the world, putting him alongside Albert Einstein, the pope, and General Douglas MacArthur.
By the time the committee had called the last of its more than 800 witnesses, a picture had emerged of a country whose domestic prosperity and tranquility were being threatened by a nationwide criminal conspiracy called the Mafia. This group was far more dangerous than could be imagined. Fueled chiefly by money gambled illicitly by otherwise law-abiding citizens, the Mafia, which was also a major narcotics trafficker, fostered political corruption in cities across America, and, what’s worse, had begun to infiltrate legitimate businesses. Even though they might not be bootlegging liquor or gunning down rivals as in the Prohibition days, the Mafia was deadly.
Las Vegas did not emerge unscathed. Kefauver conducted one day of closed hearings in the post office building (today the Mob Museum), during which his committee solicited testimony from a handful of witnesses, some forthcoming, some exasperatingly vague, and held three press conferences. Given that the committee’s starting point was the harmful effects of gambling on society, it took a dim view of Nevada’s curious experiment with legalizing and taxing gambling. In the press conferences that preceded and followed the day’s closed testimony, committee members expressed their dismay that Nevada had given criminals the cover of respectability. It was no surprise, then, that when the committee issued its report on the Nevada hearings, it concluded, “As a case history of legalized gambling, Nevada speaks eloquently in the negative.”
Ironically, Kefauver helped Las Vegas more than anyone else. The spotlight his committee focused on illicit gambling forced the closure of many illegal operations around the country, which was a boon for Las Vegas: Those who had worked and invested in those operations brought their talents and checkbooks to the desert. Their players were not long in following. But still, the threat of Congressional action that could throttle Nevada’s gaming industry was very real. State officials kept this in mind as they reviewed applications for new casino investors.
***
SO, NEEDLESS TO SAY, everyone in Nevada was eager to avoid any further scrutiny, and being adept at not being noticed was good if you wanted a casino license. On the surface, this boded well for Mack Kufferman who had not only no police record, but not much of a public history at all. So it was with some confidence that Kufferman bought the closed LaRue and began a substantial renovation of the property. Kufferman planned an enlarged casino and a new showroom, with an adjacent apartment complex to be built by Californian Paul Truesdale.
There was just one problem. Kufferman had, in some quarters, a lingering odor on him. He might effortlessly charm the local power brokers at the Palm Springs Racquet Club, but no one in Nevada wanted to read headlines about a former Garden State liquor magnate buying into the casino industry. The state’s official policy was that past association with alleged mobsters was not an inherently disqualifiable act; gambling-based offenses were considered especially innocuous. Even convictions for having masterminded illegal gambling operations could be hand-waved away.
“The man gambles. That is no sign he shouldn’t have a license in a state where it is legal.” Last Frontier owner and Tax Commission member Bill Moore told the Kefauver committee in reference to Detroit’s Mert Wertheimer, who had been granted a Nevada gaming license despite his notoriety elsewhere. This was, he said, the “basic policy” of the state, much to the consternation of the committee.
A bit of notoriety for having run a craps game or ten was one thing, but being tarred with the brush of “undesirable associations” was another. Joseph “Doc” Stacher learned this even before Kefauver shined the light of national attention on Nevada gaming. He was denied, in 1950, a license to buy a Reno gambling hall because, as Moore explained to the Kefauver Committee, he had questionable “associates in New Jersey.” To openly say so would be the height of indiscretion, but Moore plainly meant Stacher had mob ties.
Indeed, Stacher had, since the Prohibition days, been not only an accomplished rumrunner and gambling operator but an intimate of Meyer Lansky. Lansky, dubbed “the chairman of the board of organized crime” by the Miami Herald, was indeed a figure whose power, like his wealth, could only be estimated and never directly measured.
Stacher himself, however, was no slouch. Nicknamed “the Professor,” “the Judge,” and “the Brain,” his counsel was widely sought by a range of underworld movers and shakers. And, unlike Lansky, he generally succeeded in keeping himself out of the papers.
“Go ahead—hold another press conference,” he would tease his lifelong friend and business partner.
But Stacher couldn’t make himself completely invisible. So, when it came out that he and Kufferman were friends, all bets were off. The Tax Commission, which licensed all gaming operators, demanded to know just who was really behind Kufferman’s ambitious plans when he applied for a license in December 1951.
“I’m the sole owner,” he insisted. “Stacher has no interest at all. Yes, I know him, but he’s not involved in LaRue at all.”
This wasn’t at all what the commissioners wanted to hear. Moore, still smarting from his grilling by the committee a year earlier, wanted nothing to do with anyone who even knew Doc Stacher’s name. On the other hand, the possibility of someone opening LaRue, putting Nevadans back to work, was inviting. The commission didn’t outright deny Kufferman a license; it simply deferred action on his application, with a message—which its members thought was crystal clear—that he would have to find a way to distance himself, and Stacher, from the project.
Kufferman, confident he had done nothing wrong (after all, he was a respected citizen in Palm Springs), reapplied the next month. The commission, almost without comment, again deferred the application—ironically, on the same day that a “Kefauver for President” club was announced in Las Vegas. Kufferman threatened to sue if he was denied a license without cause.
In April, after what it called a thorough investigation, the Tax Commission formally denied Kufferman a license, just as Kefauver was beginning a West Coast swing to wrap up primary votes ahead of the summer’s Democratic National Convention. As was usual, the commission made no public explanation of its denial. Kufferman continued to insist that he would ultimately be vindicated and pledged to continue work on LaRue, which he had enlarged from a $500,000 remodel of Wilkerson’s original restaurant to a $2 million resort-casino.
Kufferman’s struggles with the local authorities grew as quickly as his budget. Only three days after he announced his attention to appeal the Tax Commission’s denial, the Clark County Planning Board denied his request for a 10-foot variance that would have better aligned his “club,” as the project was now described, with the Los Angeles Highway.
“I’m the one who’s hurt in all this,” a crestfallen Kufferman told the board. “It’s going to cost me $20,000 to change the plans.” In proportion to the $2 million project cost, that might not seem like a deal-breaker, but for Kufferman, it was just another slap in the face.
“That’s tough,” is all he could say when the board turned him down. The following day, he pledged to appeal this decision as well.
“I don’t get it,” Kufferman groused to his attorney, Cal Cory. “Moe Dalitz got a license here, and plenty others. I’ve never done anything wrong.”
***
IN TRUTH, IT WASN’T anything Kufferman had done that squashed his chances in Las Vegas. It was where he was from. The powers-that-be, who affected cowboy dress and mannerisms even when they had never actually roped cattle for a living, didn’t want the stench of New Jersey hanging over their state. It’s not that they minded East Coast money. But, with the new attention brought by Kefauver, a former liquor dealer from New Jersey wasn’t the best face to put on a substantial new development.
“And bosom buddies with Stacher, for crying out loud,” Moore fumed to his fellow Tax Commission members. “Frankly, there’s no way that fellow can get a license. Not with Kefauver running for President.”
Kufferman was further hobbled by his choice of local representation. Cal Cory was a well-liked local attorney who would rise to the position of general attorney for Nevada for the Union Pacific Railroad, a major employer.But he wasn’t connected to the real power elite, the cowboys who decided who could do business with them and who couldn’t.
As Ben Siegel, Moe Dalitz, and several others had learned, there was a right way to approach the cowboys. First, you made it clear that you would be far in the background—there was a reason that Wilbur Clark’s name was on the Desert Inn and not Moe Dalitz’s. Second, before you started building, you reached out to the right people. Clifford Jones, for instance, was an essential man to befriend. When Kufferman applied for his license, Jones was both the sitting lieutenant governor and a part-owner of the Thunderbird casino hotel. He earned the nickname “Big Juice” because of his connections. If you wanted to enter the Las Vegas gaming fraternity, to do so without Jones’s approval was foolhardy.
The real money behind the LaRue project, however, which came not from Palm Springs or even New Jersey but from New York and Florida, was not to be denied. Meyer Lansky, a major part of the coalition that was coming together to fund the new casino, had, after all, consented to take on Jones as a partner in the Thunderbird, which he secretly had a major interest in.
“Too many New Yorkers,” Lansky said. “We’ve got to give them a cowboy.” The problem was, he needed someone they could trust, both to properly run a multimillion-dollar casino and not to get any ideas about who was really in charge.
Luckily, a man who fit that Stetson, was an adept gambler, and no stranger to Lansky and his associates could be found: Jake Freedman.
Freedman was an improbable cowboy. Born in Odessa, Russia, he emigrated to the United States with his family as a teenager, settling in Texas. Not happy as a street corner banana vendor, Freedman gravitated toward gambling as both a pastime and a profession. He first worked with a group of operators on Galveston Island, Texas, which was at the time notorious for its gambling. Freedman then shifted his focus to Houston.
As a bellhop at Houston’s Rice Hotel, Freedman did more than tote luggage: He organized a sophisticated array of ostensibly illegal games, developing a client base that appreciated both his discretion and his eagerness to both take and place bets on just about anything. When one of his customers, news publisher William Hobby, ran for governor in 1918, Freedman helpfully organized the city’s bellhops in his support. Hobby’s victory certainly didn’t hurt Freedman’s prospects.
Freedman, who became a citizen after serving in World War I, prospered in Houston despite his propensity for gambling, partially by taking advantage of investment tips shared by his customers, which included advice about oil wells. Thus the diminutive gambler added “oilman” to his resume. By the 1930s, Freedman was nationally known for owning a stable of racehorses that competed across the country. He was esteemed as “the prince of Houston gamblers,” with such influence that by not withdrawing his funds from Judge James Elkins’ First National Bank during the Great Depression, he was credited with saving it.
The wealthy, politically connected Freedman reached his zenith with the Domain Privee. Opened in 1940, the Domain was an illegal casino housed in a Southern colonial mansion on a section of Main Street just outside Houston’s city limits. Surrounded by a high fence and landscaped series of gardens and lawns, the Domain—which doubled as Freedman’s home—had a strict admissions policy: Only the richest and best regarded members of Houston society were allowed entrance, and never more than 50 at a time.
Columnist George Fuermann described “Little Jakie” as walking around with as much as $100,000 in his pockets, using thousand-dollar bills as his “calling card.”
“To say that Jakie’s place is first class,” the columnist wrote in his 1951 book Houston: The Land of the Big Rich, “is practically embarrassing to Jakie.” His casino was on par with those in Monte Carlo, Paris, and Palm Springs. “Far less than a tenth of one percent of all Houstonians have ever been inside the Domain Privee. Almost the only way to get in is to have so much money that you have to weigh it. A poor man simply cannot get in Jakie’s place. Not even a middling rich one. Just the Big Rich.”
“Mr. Freedman is not home,” visitors were politely told if they did not pass muster. The half-dozen armed guards known to be on the premises ensured their exit would be quiet.
And yet not even Freedman’s formidable position in Houston’s elite could protect the Domain Privee from the crackdown that followed the Kefauver Committee. So, when he heard that there might be opportunities in Las Vegas, he was all ears. Indeed, he had been coming to Las Vegas for years, but started raising his profile. In April, 1952, Fabulous Las Vegas reported that Freedman, an “oilionaire and sportsman” from Texas, had checked into the Desert Inn.
“There’s one man who has achieved many friends from his personality alone,” publisher Jack Cortez rhapsodized. “We hope he will someday settle here and become a staunch localite.”
At the same time, the Tax Commission became increasingly insistent that it wouldn’t license Kufferman.
“I own 13 corporations,” he complained to anyone who would listen. “Who are they to do this to me? I’ve got a Dun and Bradstreet rating of $8 million. I could buy and sell this whole town.”
Initially, Kufferman proposed hiring Freedman to run the casino. That, however, was not satisfactory to the cowboys. He then offered to sublet LaRue’s gambling operations to Freedman. Still not good enough. Meanwhile, work on the project not just continued, but expanded. It was now not just a casino and restaurant, but a full-fledged hotel, and it had a name: The Sands.
In June, Freedman officially applied for a license to run the Sands. He sat for a 90-minute interview by the Tax Commission in which he sketched out his history at the Rice Hotel and in Galveston, as well as his major horseracing stable and his ownership of several oil wells.
“The Domain Privee,” he explained, in his Yiddish-accented Texas drawl, “was a country club. Oilmen, cattle millionaires. Only the best.”
When asked why he had sold such a thriving concern, Freedman blamed the weather.
“The wind began to change,” he said. “There has been trouble at Ft. Worth and Galveston and I didn’t want to get in trouble at my stage in life so I sold out.”
The Tax Commission certainly appreciated Freedman’s honesty. Instead of Kufferman’s vague assurances that he was “only friends” with Stacher, Freedman was willing to name names and come clean about his partners. He was helped, too, by his choice of local attorney. The Arkansas-born Harry Claiborne had first come to Las Vegas as a military policeman at the gunnery range. Following the war, he became first a police officer and then deputy district attorney. He was only a few years into a private practice that would see him represent a range of high-profile clients, from Benny Binion to Frank Sinatra.
“This fella’s a thoroughbred,” Claiborne told the commission. “Nearly forty years a gambler, and not arrested once.” The seven commissioners agreed that this was their kind of man.
But neither Claiborne’s Arkansas drawl nor Freedman’s volubility got him a license—at least not yet. His application was deferred, the Tax Commission explained, because they hadn’t had time to conduct a thorough investigation. This would take some time. Even though Freedman had pledged to keep Kufferman completely at arm’s length—he proposed leasing the property from him and not involving him at all in operations—this wasn’t necessarily going to be good enough.
At its August meeting, the Tax Commission, almost reluctantly, denied Freedman’s license application.
“We can’t,” commission member Robert Allen told Freedman and Claiborne, “approve any license for this hotel as long as Kufferman is involved in any way.” The intimation was that Freedman would be merely a front for Kufferman and, by extension, Stacher.
“I’ve been a star all my life,” Freedman protested, though he was too much a gambler to lose his composure when the stakes were so high. “And I’m not going to be a stooge for anyone at this late date.
“I’ll tell you exactly who’s going to be working for me: Eddie Levinson, Ballard Barron, Sid Wyman, Jack Entratter. You say no at any of them, they never set foot in the place.”
Again, not good enough.
But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be made good. Freedman wrapped up negotiations to buy Kufferman out completely in September. The $789,850 purchase price allowed the millionaire a $70,000 profit, free and clear, after all of his expenses. And so he went back to Palm Springs, shaking his head at the unfairness of it all.
That month, the Tax Commission met once again to consider Freedman’s application. This time, they said yes—with two provisions. Freedman had to swear not to engage in gambling in any other state and not hire or accept investment from anyone the commission found undesirable. This was codifying Freedman’s earlier offer to vet all key employees with the state.
He (or Stacher) chose those employees wisely. Ballard Barron had come to Las Vegas in 1941 from Seal Beach, California, to run the gambling at R.E. Griffith’s under-construction Last Frontier. The Texas-born Barron prospered in Las Vegas, becoming a known and respected member of the community. He was always helping out, serving on the wartime Red Cross fundraising committee, buying a block of tickets to a Damon Runyon Cancer Fund benefit, throwing dinner parties along with his wife, Beatrice. Barron had left Las Vegas for Long Beach the previous year, but associating him with the project brought a measure of goodwill. Barron did not ultimately take a position with the Sands, but remained close enough friends with Freedman that, after Barron’s 1954 death, Freedman organized a memorial fund.
Ed Levinson was a veteran gambler, who had run gambling operations in Michigan, Florida, and a few other states, but had not even crossed paths with anyone involved with organized crime—at least on paper.
“I never got involved with any syndicates,” he insisted, and his lack of a rap sheet was all the proof the Tax Commission would ask for.
The Tax Commission duly licensed Levinson in December to own a nine percent share of the property. He would remain involved with the Sands until his departure to run the Fremont Hotel.
Sid Wyman, too, had an extensive gambling background. Considered the premier bookie in the St. Louis area, he had decided, in the aftermath of the Kefauver Committee, to move to Las Vegas, where he could pursue his trade without restriction. Wyman, a lifelong tennis player and sports enthusiast, was only briefly involved at the Sands. After getting his gaming license there, he held shares and management responsibilities at the Royal Nevada and Riviera before buying a major share of the Dunes, which he controlled for 17 years.
Barron, Levinson, and Wyman were all good hands. But none of them could run a showroom or build the kind of excitement needed to stand out in an increasingly crowded town.
Jack Entratter, at 6’4,” 240-plus pounds, stood out most places he went. Born in New York in 1914, he started in show business as a theater usher before working at the French Casino nightclub in Miami Beach. He then returned to New York, where he worked as a bouncer at the New York branch of the French Casino, then as a host at Sherman Billingsley’s acclaimed Stork Club before, in 1940, joining nightlife impresario Monte Proser as a part-owner of the Copacabana. Entratter soon became the club’s general manager, in charge of everything from hiring the entertainers to making sure the liquor was stocked.
Also a part-owner of the Manhattan nightspot was Frank Costello, the reputed boss of all bosses of the New York mob. While Costello’s interest wasn’t publicized, it was not unknown. Certainly, having Costello as a partner helped prepare Entratter for his career in Las Vegas, where silent partners often had major influence.
His twelve years at the Copa made Entratter a well-known show business figure, with connections that would be the envy of any theatrical producer. Certainly he was a man, like Jake Freedman, who was not stingy with favors, who knew the value of cultivating friends in high places, be they booking agents, police captains, or state senators.
But there was something else about Entratter that made him perfect for the Sands. On paper, a nightclub manager, dealing with prima donna entertainers and catering to the tipsy revelers, might seem like an effete, almost unmanly occupation in rough-hewn Las Vegas, especially to the cowboys, real and wannabe, who granted gaming licenses. What could a man who “worked” in a showroom have in common with men who sweated and labored in the brutal Mojave heat? In Entratter’s case, everything. His flat feet, for which he had special prosthetics made, betrayed the years he’d spent hustling his ample physique from table to table, making sure everything was just so. He had a warm smile, a firm handshake, and the solid bulk that quietly said that if things somehow got less than polite, he was perfectly capable of taking you into a back room and beating the ever-loving shit out of you himself. Not that it would ever come to that: This was a man who lived to see his fellow man happy. But Entratter’s physical prowess earned him, whether they realized it or not, the respect of the cowboys.
So, to run the restaurants and fill the showroom, Jack Entratter was a wise choice.
License in hand, Freedman could steer the project toward its opening. He promised a mid-November opening, although Stacher continued to call most of the shots, far out of earshot of the authorities. Costello, “Jimmy Blue Eyes” Alo, and other figures in the underworld also had interests in the project.
But, as far as the newspapers and tax commissioners were concerned, Jake Freedman was in charge. That was fine for all concerned. It was time to make money for everyone.