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Popular Culture Review
film, Seltzer included the following before the film’s opening credits: “Because
of the disclosures made in this film, powerful underworld interests tried to halt
production with threats of violence and reprisal.”^
Seltzer’s dramatically charged and exaggerated version of what happened in
his negotiations with gambling interests and the city of Las Vegas provides an
opportunity to see how the southern Nevada community sought to control the
images of their city presented in films, an effort that preceded Frank Seltzer’s
arrival on the scene and continues well into the 21st century.
In late 1948, Seltzer, who had produced three previous films, began
research on what he intended to be an expose of organized crime’s control of the
race wire, a service which transmitted racing information including track
conditions, the betting odds on races, changes in jockeys as well as results to
bookies around the country. At the time race track betting was legal in 27 states,
but off-track betting was legal only in Nevada. Seltzer’s story was the saga of
the rise and fall of a southern California telephone company technician named
Mai Granger, portrayed by Edmond O’Brien. Recruited by a bookie to upgrade
the teletype system for the Tri-State Wire Service, Granger assumes control of
the illegal business when a small time bookie kills the owner. Granger is so
successful that the national syndicate decides to take over his operation by
dispatching under boss Larry Mason to southern California. After ordering a hit
on Mason and then killing the hit man. Granger develops a scheme to take the
national syndicate for nearly a quarter of a million dollars by “past posting” race
results in the syndicate’s Las Vegas casinos. (He delayed the relay of the race
results until his henchman had bet their money as in the popular 1973 movie The
Sting.) In the classic mold of the film gangster. Granger’s success is short lived.
He wins the money, but the syndicate informs the police that Granger, now
wanted for murder, is in Las Vegas, and Granger dies in a shootout with the
police at Hoover Dam.
The original script was considerably different from this version, at least
according to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce. When Seltzer leveled his
charges against the community, chamber president Vem Willis responded
swiftly, calling the producer’s account “completely erroneous,” nothing more
than a “cheap publicity trick.”^ Within a few days, “fighting mad” chamber
officials had constructed an alternate version of Seltzer’s interaction with Las
Vegas. They argued that Seltzer had asked the chamber in September 1949 for
help in the on-location filming of the movie. Following a “long-established
policy,” the chamber asked to review the script. Maxwell Kelch, the former
president of the chamber and then chairman of the publicity committee, was
appalled by what Seltzer delivered. The script, he said, “contained a re
enactment of the ‘Bugsy’ Siegel shooting—^which occurred in Beverly Hills and
not Las Vegas,” as well as “a knifing on a plane,” the takeover of the race wire
service, “objectionable and untrue references to Las Vegas throughout, and an
overall inference that” a national syndicate controlled gambling in the city, as
well as the climactic shootout at Hoover Dam.^