Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an American gangster, popularly thought to be the impetus behind large-scale development of Las Vegas.

He hated the nickname, Bugsy (said to be based on the slang term "bugs", meaning "crazy", and used to describe his sometimes erratic behavior), and wouldn't allow anyone to call him that to his face. His extraordinary partying earned him the title "King of the Sunset Strip."

The beginning

Benjamin Hymen Siegelbaum was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor Austrian Jewish family, one of five children. As a boy, Siegel joined a street gang on Lafayette Street in the Lower East Side and first committed mainly thefts, until, with another youth named Moe Sedway, he devised his own protection racket: pushcart merchants were forced to pay him five dollars or he would incinerate their merchandise on the spot.

During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, forming a small gang whose criminal activities expanded to include gambling and car theft. Siegel reputedly also worked as the gang's hit man whom Lansky would sometimes hire out to other gang bosses. In 1926, Siegel was arrested for raping a woman who had turned down his advances in a speakeasy, but Lansky coerced the victim not to testify against Siegel.

In 1930 Lansky and Siegel joined forces with Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Siegel became a bootlegger and was also associated with Albert Anastasia. Siegel was used for bootlegging operations in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. During the so-called Castellammarese War in 1930-1931, they fought the gang of Joe Masseria; Siegel reputedly had a hand in Masseria's 1931 murder in Coney Island and later had a part in the formation of Murder, Inc. In 1932 he was arrested for gambling and bootlegging but got away with only a fine. Lansky and Siegel were briefly allied with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis and Joseph Amberg in 1935.

To California

In 1937 the East Coast mob sent Siegel to California to try to develop Syndicate gambling rackets in the West alongside Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Siegel also recruited Jewish gang boss Mickey Cohen as his lieutenant. Siegel used Syndicate money to set up a national wire service to help the East Coast mob quicken their returns.

Siegel married his childhood sweetheart Esta Krakow, sister of hit man Whitey Krakow, on January 28, 1939. He eventually moved her and their two daughters to the West Coast after his bosses had sent him there, but kept them in the dark about his many extramarital affairs. Four of his mistresses were actresses Ketti Gallian, Wendy Barrie and Marie "the Body" MacDonald, and Hollywood socialite Dorothy DiFrasso. With the aid of DiFrasso and actor friend George Raft, Siegel gained entry into Hollywood's inner circle and is alleged to have used his contacts to extort movie studios. He thereafter always lived in extravagant fashion, as was his reputation, and on his tax returns Siegel claimed to earn his living through legal gambling at the Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles.

Siegel became enamored with a sharp-tongued moll and courier, Virginia Hill. They began a torrid affair. Hill helped Siegel establish contacts in Mexico. The Alabama-born Hill was wealthy in her own right and had bought a mansion in Beverly Hills from Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett, where Siegel frequently stayed. Hill became Siegel's paramour. Later, there were rumors that they had secretly married in Mexico. Their affair, however, did not keep Siegel from continuing his compulsive womanizing. Hill's reaction to Siegel's infidelities is unknown, but the long-suffering Esta finally reached her limit; she went to Reno and obtained a divorce in 1946.

On November 22, 1939, Siegel, with his brother-in-law Whitey Krakow and two others, killed Harry Greenberg, who had become a police informant, on the orders of Murder, Inc. boss Lepke Buchalter. Siegel was arrested and tried for the murder (by that time, he had also killed Krakow). He was acquitted, but newspapers referred to him for the first time by his nickname "Bugsy." Siegel was not pleased, especially when his gangland past was revealed.

On one return trip to the East, Siegel drove through the small town of Las Vegas, Nevada. Legend has it that Siegel suddenly had a vision of turning Las Vegas into a gambling mecca. Others said he had merely stopped there for a call of nature.

Las Vegas venture

According to popular myth, Bugsy envisioned building a large casino and hotel to which gamblers would flock. His vision was fueled by the fact that Nevada had legalized gambling in 1931. In Las Vegas, gambling was concentrated in downtown casinos along Fremont Street, whose clientele largely consisted of members of the construction crew building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River 48 km (30 miles) to the southeast.

Bugsy came to Las Vegas in 1941, backed by Al Capone to establish the Trans America race wire service.

Back in the East, Siegel captivated his fellow mobsters with the idea of building a gambling mecca in the Nevada desert, complete with a casino, hotel and entertainment. Siegel returned to the West Coast and began working on his dream to construct a hotel-casino complex on what later would become known as the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel called the place "The Flamingo", his pet name for Virginia Hill.

The Flamingo fiasco

However, Siegel knew little about construction; many of his plans were unreasonably lavish, such as his insistence that each room have its own private sewer line. Under his oversight, the construction costs ballooned from $1 million to $6 million. The Del Webb company, which was in charge of construction, is alleged to have driven building materials onto the site before simply driving them out the back gate and billing Siegel for the work, though materials shortages owing to the recently-concluded Second World War also increased costs. When Webb told Siegel of his fears that he would come to harm, Siegel reputedly joked: "Don't worry, Del. We only kill each other."

The Mafia members on the East Coast who had invested in Siegel's project began to suspect that Siegel was stealing money from them. Because Hill had been making frequent trips to Zurich, the mob worried that Siegel might be putting the money into Swiss bank accounts.

In December 1946, several of Siegel's business and crime partners flew to Havana, Cuba, for a meeting with Luciano, who was now directing American Mafia operations from Italy after being paroled from prison in the United States and deported. One of the main topics for discussion at the Havana Conference was whether they should order a hit on Siegel, who was kept in the dark about the meeting. Lansky, who remembered fondly how Siegel had saved his life on various occasions when they were young, took a stand against the hit and asked them to give Siegel a chance by waiting until after the casino had opened. Luciano, who believed that Siegel could still make a profit in Las Vegas and pay back what he owed the Mafia investors, agreed to cancel the hit.

Siegel opened his still-unfinished casino on the star-studded night of December 26, 1946, although he did not have as many Hollywood celebrities with him as he had hoped. Soon the Flamingo ran dry of entertainers and customers, and the casino closed after only two weeks in order to complete construction. The fully operational Flamingo re-opened in March of 1947. That spring, the casino's gangster investors once again met in Havana to decide whether to "liquidate" Siegel. But, luckily for Siegel, he had turned a profit for the month of that second meeting, so Lansky again spoke up in support of his old friend and convinced Luciano to give Siegel one last chance.

The last act

Eventually, Siegel's business venture in Las Vegas failed. Hill stole the money Siegel owed the mob and fled to Paris, then Sweden. Even Siegel's boyhood friend Lansky now abandoned him. Hill was not at home on the night of June 20, 1947, when, at 10:45 p.m., a mob hitman, allegedly Eddie Cannizzaro, hid outside the couple's mansion at 810 N. Linden Drive in Beverly Hills and shot Siegel several times with a U.S. military M1 Carbine as he sat near a window reading the Los Angeles Times. The force of the gun's heavy-hitting .30-caliber ammo blew Siegel's eye 4.5 meters (15 feet) from his body. The assassin got away with it, since no one was ever charged with this bloody murder. Apparently the matinee-idol handsome 41-year-old Bugsy Siegel died instantly. The bullet-through-the-eye style of killing became popular in Mafia movies, called the "Moe Greene Special"^* after the character Moe Greene was killed in this manner in The Godfather. Other references to this form of demise come from The Sopranos, where the character of Brendan Filone is also executed with a bullet through the eye.

Cultural references

In 1991, the life of Bugsy Siegel was the subject of the highly fictionalized motion picture Bugsy, with Warren Beatty in the title role.

Also in 1991, there was a film, Mobsters, about the early years of Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello starring Christian Slater as Lucky and with Richard Grieco as Bugsy.

The character of Moe Greene in The Godfather, who was murdered by a clean shot to the eye, was based on Siegel.

Siegel was also portrayed by Harvey Keitel (who himself appeared in the Bugsy film as Mickey Cohen), in the 1973 TV movie The Virginia Hill Story and by Armand Assante in the 1991 film The Marrying Man.

The title of the song Mr. Siegal by Tom Waits refers to Bugsy Siegel.

In the show The Sopranos, Brendan Filone is also executed with a bullet clean through the eye.

In the movie Once Upon A Time In America (1984), the character of Joe Minaldi (Burt Young) is killed after being shot in the eye, similar to Siegel (the death scene was based on a postmortem photograph of Bugsy). Also, the character of Max (James Woods) reacts violently whenever someone calls him "Crazy", similar to Siegel's reaction to his nickname of Bugsy. There is also a minor character named Bugsy (played by James Russo).

Tim Powers imagined Siegel as a modern-day Fisher King in his award-winning novel Last Call.
In the 1981 NBC mini-series, The Gangster Chronicles, Joe Penny was cast as Bugsy Siegel.
The 1999 HBO made-for-TV movie, Lansky, the character of Bugsy Siegel as a adult was played by Eric Roberts.

In the DC Comics universe Siegel killed the young partner of the first hero called The Vigilante and was pursued by him for years; it was Vigilante who finally shot him dead.

External links

Biography and Pictures
Copy of Death Certificate
Other Stuff
FBI files on Siegel (2,421 pages, heavily censored) From the FBI Freedom of Information Act.
Bugsy Siegel's Gravesite

There is a monument to Bugsy Siegle in the Widlife Habitat at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. It is low-key, near the wedding chapel. Might want to ask directions.