I knew Paul Harvey, and played in the poker game with he, Doc Ramsey, and Johnny Moss at Pinkie Roden's Inn of the West in Odessa. I was in Harvey's house but not when it was a casino. He was a huge gambler, book maker. He and Moss once played heads up five days. McManus says wrongly that Pinkie was from my home town of Lubbock when he was from Odessa. Pinkie had been a bootlegger and owned a chain of liquor stores. When I was there, Pinkie didn't play in the poker game, but he came. We played Hold 'em, Seven-Five low ball, gin rummy. I got broke. I traveled down there with Bill Smith, main event champ of 1985 and James "Tennesee Longgoodie" Roy and my partner. They all lost. I guess Pinkie and Harvey were the big suckers. Harvey took advantage of a Texas law that allowed gambling in your home. It had double entry doors, men's and women's rest rooms. Benny Binion loaned Harvey money and had a piece of the joint. Benny also owned parts of two fabulous casinos, Top of the Hill in Arlington and the Four Deuces in Ft. Worth. I think and am not sure that Harvey testified before some Texas gambling commission and Benny was mad at him. At Top of the Hill, customers included some of the world's richest men: Howard Hughes, H.L Hunt, and Sid Riohardson. Benny said Howard Hughes didn't lose much. This place was on several acres and had an armed guard on horseback with a rifle. It was a real carpet joint, fancy, dinner on fancy dishes, crystal. Much fancier than what Benny found in Las Vegas. The owner invested hugely in horses, and horse racing. I DO NOT KNOW if Benny got a piece of these joints because of muscle, but I guess so.
Jim McManus and countless others say Benny put $2 million in the trunk and fled to Las Vegas with all his legal troubles. Benny had tens of millions, five policy wheels, the numbers racket, and controlled all the dice games in downtown Dallas, because he paid off the laws and the joints gave him 25 per cent of the profits, approximately. He upped the take on Cat Noble and started their blood feud. My mentor, Curly Cavitt, was good, close friends of them both. He was fading with the Cat, and they'd cut up the bankroll every night because the Cat might get killed.
When Benny got to Las Vegas, it was a town of 18,000 people. Bugsy Siegal had a party at the swimming pool of the Flamingo and invited everyone to bring their families and kids. Bugsy say a guy he didn't like that had badmouthed the Flamingo. He chased him around the swimming pool, pistol whipping him in front of his wife and kids. None of this was in the Las Vegas newspapers.
Benny had taken his family to see the U.S. Mint and all the money. He saw all the crowds, and got the idea to 1. have a big match in public showing the money and 2. to display $1,0o00,000 in ten thousand dollar bills. I THINK, HEARD FROM CURLY, BUT AM NOT SURE, that the million was a challenge to the Mafia and anyone else to try to steal it.
Vegasskip, you are knowledgeable, but I will write about what I want to.
Ted Binion has said Benny lost $400,000 playing poker right after he first got to Las Vegas. I think the long ring game and match with the Greek was mostly for the money. He was backing Moss, Moss got off winner. Binion was a showman, and not secretive like nearly all other gamblers of the era. He liked fame in Dallas. At one of his dice joints in Ft. Worth, over a Mexican Food Restaurant, they had a pet burro, donkey. They'd take it to downtown Ft. Worth and let it out with a sign on its side, and it would walk home, like a homing pigeon. Benny was a huge dice fader in his twenties. When Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down, Benny hired an airplane to fly over Clyde's funeral and drop a large wreath of flowers. Clyde was most unpopular with the laws because he killed so many.
A survey showed that Nick the Greek was the top tourist attraction in Las Vegas, ahead of the Hoover Dam. The Greek would go from mob casino to mob casino shooting dice and drawing a crowd. He was broke and that was kept secret while the Mob sold the Greek and the fake stories of him to draw the tourists. Cy Rice, his biographer, says he borrowed all the money he could in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and his word and markers were never good again. The crunch year was 1949..the matches with first Moss and next, Ray Ryan. In the introduction to his authorized biography, on the dust cover, Cy Rice wrote,"From 1928 to 1949 Nicholas Dandolos feigned as the undisputed gambling monarch of the world.." Rice tape recorded the Greek for a month before he died. The parts about his last years in Vegas are the most accurate. The Greek didn't tell of his poker losses to Arnold Rothstein, in several books, or any poker losses, such as to Ray Ryan, well documented by trial transcrips, or to Johnny Moss.
Mickey Cohen, number two to Bugsy Siegel, portrayed in the movie by whom? came to Odessa since they did some business witt Paul Harvey. I guess laying off big football wagers, horse bets from oil men. The Texas Rangers called Harvey on the phone and told him to get Cohen out of Texas fast. Paul Harvey said, "Why? Is he some kind of outlaw?" Cohen drove to Wichita Falls where the Rangers grabbed him and put him on a plane.
Ctaig's statements that was no high stakes poker at that time is way false. He did NOT READ, Benny's oral history which he said wrongly didn't mention Johnny Moss, the Greek's eulogy which he says didn't mention Benny, or any of the Arnold Rothstein biographies, or the countless articles that refer to the Greek as "the Aristotle of the don't pass line." The Greek was a fader and therefore had a percentage advantage in the open shoot and fade dice games back east. He won and lost millions. However, being a fader in Las Vegas with boxcars barred, is a sucker bet.
Everyone wondered where the Greek got the, maybe, $5 million he arrived in Las Vegas with. He told Cy Rice that Dutch Shultz gave him a big suitcase with the money to hold. Then Shultz was killed. I think Benny had heard of the huge sums the Greek had lost at poker to Rothstein and others in New York. He thought Johnny Moss could beat him. I think he did it for the money and to relieve the boredom of a town of 18,000 people. Benny was a showman. He knew how to draw a crowd. NIck the Greek went broke in 1949 and never told about that.
Last edited by Johnny Hughes; 08-20-2011 at 09:35 AM.