American Experience: Las Vegas - An Unconventional History (40 of 75)

American Experience: Las Vegas - An Unconventional History

MAN: Let's finish that cake!
MAN 2: People have been asking me, "Why such a big birthday cake?"
Well, you're only 100 once, 100 years old, and to have anything less than that would be very un-Las Vegas.
This has to be the biggest, the best, the greatest, the most exciting-- and that's what Vegas is.
This is symbolic of us.
(cheering) CROWD: Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, Las Vegas Happy birthday to you.
(people cheering, fireworks exploding) But we think we went over by several thousand pounds, because we went a little heavy on the frosting.

Oh, my God...
It 's a very big piece.
That's way too much! Now we have this terrific birthday cake and the biggest party, the greatest party for the greatest city in the history of the world.
ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, we are now closed.
NARRATOR: In 1960, Las Vegas enjoyed a national reputation as America's unofficial mobster metropolis.
No other place in America boasted such a rogues' gallery of city fathers.
And perhaps none had more clout than Moe Dalitz, a man sometimes known as "Mr.Las Vegas."
The onetime kingpin of Cleveland's bootleg whiskey racket, former operator of illegal gambling dens in Ohio and Kentucky and a reputed player in the national crime organization known as the "syndicate," Dalitz possessed a pedigree tailor-made for a place like Las Vegas.
At a time when no legitimate enterprise in America would have invested a dime in a casino, Dalitz had sunk some of his dirty money into a controlling stake in the Desert Inn, one of the very first mob-operated resorts to be built out on Highway 91, the road that ran southwest to Los Angeles.
Other mobsters followed, and together they transformed the desolate desert highway into the famed Las Vegas Strip, the self-proclaimed "Entertainment Capital of the World," the premier gambling center of the Western Hemisphere, and the undisputed hub of the place known to Americans as "Sin City."