The Flamingo set the vision for the big casino-hotels that shaped the Strip’s big years. 'Guests would not be able to go anywhere without passing through the games,' writes Bob Pajich for Card Player. Siegel preferred to attract wealthy clients who dressed with 'class' in formal attire while in the casino.'Īt the center of it all was a casino that had no clocks and no windows.
The desert town 'had never seen such opulence before,' writes Online Nevada Encyclopedia: 'The Flamingo featured a trapshooting range, nine-hole golf course, tennis, squash, badminton and handball courts, as well as extensive landscaping with imported Oriental date palm and Spanish cork trees. With mobster Bugsy Siegel as a silent backer, he built a casino and hotel that would suck gamblers in and retain them, setting the stage for Las Vegas's midcentury casino boom. Wilkerson's idea was an unprecedented development that helped to shape Las Vegas and the model that modern casinos operate under. So he picked the Flamingo, naming his improbable postwar venture after a gaudy bird that doesn't spend time in the Nevada desert. Billy Wilkerson, founder of the Hollywood Reporter and gambling addict, knew his audience.
