In the robbery of a jewelry store in Vegas, Cullotta’s henchman kills the owner of the store on a whim even though he was cooperative. In the terrific autobiography by the Vegas mobster Frank Cullotta and Dennis Griffin ( Cullotta, published in 2007 by Huntington Press), murder was always a consideration.
#Thanks for the memories movie#
The popularity of the book and movie Casino (and Nick Pileggi’s book is better than Martin Scorsese’s movie) has cemented the stereotypes of the era-the glamorous showrooms where high rollers are escorted to front-row booths the degenerate gamblers looking for one last score the gaming control board member whose brother is the sheriff the control of the casino by the Kansas City mob and all the other vignettes that were prominent parts of the story.īut the most egregious parts of the tale-the violence, burglaries and illegal activities-were not that exaggerated. While the museum doesn’t whitewash what happened in those days, it does sensationalize it and emphasizes the colorful and larger-than-life characters who “ran” the town at that time. The Mob Museum in Downtown Las Vegas has become a big tourist attraction in town, and actually plays into the nostalgia for that era. And anyone afflicted with a gambling problem had nowhere to go for help, and would usually be abused until the last penny was squeezed from his or her account. The regulators who looked the other way while some of these illicit events went on under their noses. I doubt they took note of the treatment of the players who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their markers that were so generously granted.
But of course they didn’t see the skimming of millions of dollars that went to organized crime for its other nefarious activities. Probably some of those memories got softer and more benevolent over time. They mean the attention to the customer, the comps they used to get without even asking, the great table game rules, and the general elegance of the surroundings in a Las Vegas casino. Of course they don’t mean the murders, the loan sharking, the racketeering and all the other things that come along with the mob. If you live in or even visit Las Vegas, it’s undoubtedly a phrase you’ve heard dozens of times: “Things were better when the mob ran Vegas.”
0 kommentar(er)
