Defending a City^s Image
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Bugsy on a similar mission to take control of the operations headed by a local
hood named Jack Dragna. Some have speculated that Dragna ordered the hit on
Siegel, as Mai Granger did with Mason. Moreover, Mason’s murderer fires a
carbine from the bushes, as did Siegel’s assassin. Given the wide coverage of
the Siegel murder, most viewers of 711 Ocean Drive would not have missed the
similarity.
Even though the Siegel murder was two years in the past when Seltzer
approached the chamber of commerce with his script in fall 1949, community
leaders were concerned about a growing national interest in gambling’s
connection with organized crime. For example, in the April 1949 issue of
American Mercury, author John Martin argued that the “Chicago Syndicate,”
already in control of gambling in their city was “striving to seize control of
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gambling all over the United States.” Early the next year, the Oakland Tribune
reported “the big combine—the old Capone gang of Chicago and the Cleveland
Mafia—took over Las Vegas last weekend” and these “big-time racketeers”
were planning to use their “newly established Las Vegas base” to move into
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California. These articles were part of a substantial investigation of the ties
between gambling and organized crime figures. Many cities had active crime
commissions. Former FBI agent Virgil Peterson headed the most important such
commission in Chicago. A prolific author and speaker, Peterson argued that
there was indeed a “Syndicate” that dominated organized crime and that
gambling was a fundamental source of the Syndicate’s income. His initial
concern was with illegal gambling, but by 1954 he had concluded that “elements
of the mob of the late A1 Capone have taken over at least partial control of a
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number of gambling houses in Las Vegas.’
As important as Peterson’s work was in shaping attitudes about organized
crime and gambling, the Senate investigation led by Estes Kefauver gave the
greatest visibility to the campaign against organized crime. As Frank Seltzer and
the leaders of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce traded charges about the
making of 711 Ocean Drive, Kefauver’s Special Committee to Investigate
Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce was in its second month, an inquiry
that would take committee members and staffers to 14 cities, including Las
Vegas, in a year-and-a-half investigation during which they heard about 500
witnesses. The committee ultimately agreed with Virgil Peterson concluding
“gambling profits are the principal support of big-time racketeering and
gangsterism.” In their report’s section on Las Vegas, committee members
described “an interlocking group of gangsters, racketeers, and hoodlums” which
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controlled the gambling business in the casinos. There was widespread
newspaper coverage of the investigation, and Senator Kefauver published both a
four-part series in the Saturday Evening Post as well as a book entitled Crime in
America about the committee’s work. When the committee chose to televise
their New York hearings, at least 17 million people tuned in at a time when there
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were fewer than 10 million televisions in the nation.