Newsletter issued by the Las Vegas Rotary Club

Four women, Cynthia Cicero, Betty Brown, Tina Boag, and Jan Ravetti, recall coming to Las Vegas to obtain jobs during the period of mob ownership in the Las Vegas hotels. Each had a different reason for coming. A recession in Buffalo, New York, brought Cynthia and her husband to Las Vegas to obtain employment; Jan Ravetti’s family moved from Pennsylvania due to her father’s illness and possible employment; parents of Tina Boag, who was born in Paris, were entertainers who travelled and performed extensively; and Milton Prell, opening the Aladdin Hotel and Casino, encouraged Californian Betty Brown to work for him. Cynthia Cicero obtained a job with the City of Las Vegas, but the other three worked on the Strip in the casinos. Their experiences in the hotels show the differences between mob and corporate management since they were working there before and after Howard Hughes purchased six of the large Vegas hotels. The four ladies tell about their work on the Strip from Betty’s experience as a genie at the Aladdin to Tina’s position as a twenty-one dealer. They were acquainted with the casino owners and managers, entertainers like Sammy Davis, Jr. and Dean Martin, and show girls. They also knew first-hand the interactions between mobsters and the public. Food, for example, was a giveaway, an enticement for people to come into the hotel to gamble. They also knew stories about high rollers, the robbery of the baccarat tables at Caesars Palace, and the importance of “taking a fall” including the rewards attached. The ladies describe the shops on downtown Fremont Street and the Strip such as Nina Clark’s, Ronzones, Dillards and Chic Hecht’s as well as Penneys and Sears. A young woman shopped at Suzie Cream Cheese, for example, for the right outfit to wear to Pussy Cat A Go-Go, the rock and roll club on the Strip. Las Vegas also had many good gourmet and ethnic restaurants, piano bars, hotel lounges, and pubs with excellent entertainment. The ladies also describe the difference in the treatment of women during the 1960s and 1970s by men in clubs. Women rarely bought drinks nor did they pay for dinners when with gentlemen. Finally, the ladies compare areas where they lived including McNeil Estates, Heritage Square and the Chisholm-built homes in the Jones-Vegas Drive area. Not to be forgotten, however, are the terrible rain storms that flood streets and the Strip. Serious gamblers in the casinos refused to leave the tables while drenching rains washed cars from the hotel parking lots during the 1970s. Neither did they leave the MGM casino when the hotel caught on fire in1980.