Claudine Williams, Las Vegas casino legend, dies
John Smith at the Las Vegas Review Journal remembers the woman who reached for the glass ceiling, Las Vegas style:
Claudine Williams, a hard-working Louisiana girl who grew up to become a top Las Vegas casino executive and community philanthropist, has died after a lengthy illness. She was 88 years old.
Williams is recognized as the first woman in Nevada to lead a major casino, operating the Holiday Casino on the Strip for many years following the death of her husband, gambling pioneer Shelby Williams. In a rare husband and wife partnership, Shelby and Claudine operated the Silver Slipper until they sold it at a handsome profit to Howard Hughes in 1969.
After Shelby’s death in 1977, Claudine emerged as president and general manager of the Holiday, a first in Nevada for a woman.
Claudine took her first job in the casino business at 15 in an effort to support her family. She soon did that and more and left high school before graduation. Many years later she would become known as one of UNLV’s most reliable donors.
He life at times was rough and tumble. She operated an after-hours night club before coming to Las Vegas, and once told me in an interview that she’d had to hock her own jewelry on more than one occasion in order to hold a piece of real estate.
According to Nevada’s official online encyclopedia, Williams in 1981 became the first woman in Nevada history to chair a bank board of directors when she took over the helm at American Bank of Commerce. More recently her generous donations to UNLV created dormitories and provided scholarships for a generation of students who received the educational break life’s circumstances denied her in youth.


It's Helldorado Time!!!
Helldorado Celebrations begin this week so here's your easy to find schedule. And yes, we expect to see many of you along the parade route on Saturday evening cheering us on. Drop by Mickey Finnz after the parade and join us for drink!
Wednesday, May 13
Helldorado Roundup Party
Fremont Street Experience
6 to10 p.m.
First Street Stage - Randy Anderson, 8 to 11 p.m.
Third Street Stage - Third Town, 8 to 10 p.m.
Food, drinks and entertainment
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Thursday, May 14
Carnival Midway opens 5 to 11 p.m.
Kids & Kowboys Locals Rodeo, 7 to 9 p.m.
Downtown Rodeo Grounds
Featuring mutton busting, media events, bull riding and local barrel racers
First Street Stage - Scotty Alexander Band, 8 to 11 p.m.
Third Street Stage - Third Town, 8 to 11 p.m.
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Friday, May 15th
Whiskerino Contest Finale 4:45 p.m.
Fremont Street Experience, 3rd street stage
$10 entry fee
Preservation Association of Clark County Yearly Event
PACC is once again holding their annual event. This year it is taking place at the historic 5th Street School. Stoney Douglas from the City of Las Vegas will be giving tours and a brief presentation about the restoration of the building.
6:30 pm
5th Street School
401 S. 4th Street
Admission is free but RSVPs are required.
RSVP to Corinne Escobar at CorinneEscobar@pacc.info
Light Refreshments will be served.
Carnival 5 p.m.to midnight
PRCA Rodeo 7to 9 p.m.
Downtown Rodeo Grounds
First Street Stage - John Encino Band, 8 to 11 p.m.
Third Street Stage - T.J. Weaver Band, 8 to 11 p.m.
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Saturday, May 16th
Helldorado Hold’em Texas Hold ‘em Poker Tournament
Binion’s Horseshoe Hotel & Casino, 9 a.m.
Helldorado Parade
Once again we are joining forces with Jack LeVine at VeryVintageVegas and Dr. Lonnie Hammagren to celebrate Helldorado! We will be using Dr. Lonnie's truck float filled with some cool Las Vegas historical artifacts.
If you would like to join us along with the parade route and help out, contact me or Jack. Last year we finished the parade and celebrated at Micky Finnz. Look for us to do something similar this year!
7:00 - 9:00 pm
Fourth Street (between Charleston and Ogden)
Fireworks Show, 9 p.m.
Carnival
noon to midnight
PRCA Rodeo 9 to11 p.m.
Downtown Rodeo Grounds
First Street Stage - John Encino Band, 8 to 11 p.m.
Third Street Stage - T.J. Weaver Band, 8 to 11 p.m.
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Sunday, May 17
Carnival
Noon to11 p.m.
PRCA Rodeo7to9 p.m.
Downtown Rodeo Grounds
Third Street Stage - Hazard County Rebels, 8 to 11 p.m.
Rodeo tickets available from noon to 6 p.m:
Elk's Lodge, 4100 W. Charleston Blvd.
http://www.elkshelldorado.com/
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Saturday, May 23rd
Clark County Centennial Day
Clark County Museum
10:00 am - 3:00 pm
Carey Burke and I will be there selling and autographing copies of "Las Vegas Postcard History: 1905-1965"
If you live out of state or can't make the book-signings but would still like an inscribed and autographed copy of "Las Vegas Postcard History: 1905-1965", here's the link for you:
www.classiclasvegas.com/coolstuff/coolstuff.htm
So there is plenty going on! We hope you will join us in celebrating all month long! Check back for added events as the month goes on!


Something you wouldn't hear about in classic Las Vegas
It's a sad story but not one you would have found in the local papers forty (even thirty) years ago. Today it reads like the police blotter:
The body of a young man was found among the bushes at a bloody scene near the Caesars Palace loading docks early Monday.
The slaying was the second homicide in less than a week to occur at a resort on the south end of the Strip.
Las Vegas police said the victim was a white man in his 20s.
Homicide Lt. Lew Roberts said the victim suffered blunt-force trauma to his head. Police did not release the victim’s identity, but a source who asked to remain anonymous identified him as Brad Flamm.
Police found the body about 7:30 a.m. Las Vegas police spokeswoman Barbara Morgan said he may have been beaten to death.
A woman who said she was Flamm’s friend told the Review-Journal that he worked at the resort as a waiter and had been missing since Sunday night. The woman said Flamm regularly walks near the area where the body was discovered. She said he had a dragon tattoo on his shoulders.
Roberts said the victim’s body showed no apparent signs of stab wounds or gunshots.
As of Monday night, police had not made an arrest but were pursuing leads, Roberts said.
“We’re asking for the public’s help,” Roberts said. “We’re continuing an attempt to find video or locate witnesses.”
Roberts said the man’s body was found on the east end of the property near the Forum Shops.
“It’s an unusual area,” Roberts said. “If you didn’t know exactly where it was, you wouldn’t pay any attention to it.”
Police didn’t classify the case as a homicide until well into the afternoon. That is when the Clark County coroner removed the body from its location, which was kept intact for hours so evidence wouldn’t be altered, Roberts said.
Roberts said there was a possibility that someone had attempted to hide the victim’s body under the bushes.
This is the second slaying to happen on the Strip in consecutive weeks.
Las Vegas police arrested 18-year-old Tanner Rousseau Friday in connection with the stabbing death of a 35-year-old Cleveland man in a Tropicana parking lot.
The victim, Gregory Dominique, suffered cuts to his abdomen and legs, according to Rousseau’s arrest report.
The stabbing happened about 4:16 a.m. after Rousseau and Dominique began fighting during a botched drug exchange. According to the report, Rousseau and Dominique agreed to trade six dollars and a small amount of marijuana for a unspecified drug.
Dominique handed Rousseau an empty envelope and refused to return Rousseau’s money and marijuana, which started the fight, the report said.
Dominique died of his injuries at University Medical Center.
The arrest report said Rousseau admitted to the stabbing to a police officer about 30 minutes after the altercation. The officer, who was attempting to establish containment of the hotel’s property, initially thought Rousseau was kidding. He told Rousseau he didn’t have time to joke around, he was looking for a suspect.
According to the report, Rousseau walked out of a black Honda Civic, “put his hands up from his waist and told the officer ... “You got me.”
Rousseau then told police where the bloody knife was.
Deadly violence on the Strip is infrequent but does happen.
In October 2008, a California woman used a broken bottle to kill a man who was distributing handbills in front of the Hawaiian Tropic Zone. Desiray Ortiz was indicted in January for fatally stabbing Martin Antonio Guadalupe in the shoulder area. He died from his injuries at UMC about an hour after authorities found him bleeding on the ground.
The same year, two prostitutes fought inside Bally’s over their pimp. Latrovia Reed stabbed and killed 20-year-old Taleasha Jamerson in the reception area of the resort. Reed was sentenced to three to 10 years for the slaying.
In 2006, a California man killed a 22-year-old prostitute at Mandalay Bay and left her naked body in a 25th-floor hallway. James Flansburg, 40, was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison for the murder of Bridget Gray.
He was at the hotel for a convention when he met Gray. The two went up to his room and Flansburg told police he caught her going through his pockets. He told police he was drunk when he choked her to death.
In September of 2005, Stephen Ressa drove his car into a crowd on the Strip and killed three people near Bally’s. Authorities said Ressa stole his mom’s car after beating her unconscious in California. He told authorities he was consumed by thoughts of strangers trying to kill him.
Ressa was sentenced to three life sentences without the possibility of parole in 2007.
Anyone with information pertaining to the slaying at Caesars is urged to call the Las Vegas police Homicide Section at 828-3521 or Crime Stoppers at 385-5555.

Tanner Rousseau has been arrested in the Tropicana parking lot stabbing. The latest from our friend Mary Manning at the Las Vegas Sun:
The 18-year-old man who was arrested in the stabbing death of another man in the Tropicana hotel and casino parking lot will appear in court later this month.
Tanner Rousseau, of Arlington, Wash., is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on May 26. His bail is set at $50,000.
Metro Police officers arrested Rousseau after finding a man who had been stabbed several times in the resort's parking lot about 4:12 a.m. Friday.
The victim, 35-year-old Gregory Dominique of Cleveland, Ohio, was taken to University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead, police said.
Officers searching the area found Rousseau in a car near the Las Vegas Strip resort, police said. Rousseau was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of murder with a deadly weapon.
Police say they believe the two men got into an argument over drugs.
The Amazing Liberace Technicolor Cape
Do you recognize this guy in the Amazing Liberace Technicolor Cape?
You can tell we were having fun at the Culture and History Fair yesterday!
FCLV Historian (that would be me) and FCLV Secretary Judy Gabaldon-Dixon.
That's the award from the Historic Preservation Commission.
Also, my book, DVD and various postcards. All the postcard images you see on the table are in the book.
Shecky Greene returns to the Las Vegas Stage
Entertainer Shecky Greene is returning to Las Vegas later this week when he makes his first appearance in years. Shecky will be headlining at the Suncoast Hotel from Friday, May 15th through the weekend. So, if you have never seen Shecky or you want to see him again, here is a rare opportunity to see one of the legends from the days when Las Vegas was the Entertainment Capital of the World. The other upside, the showroom at the Suncoast isn't gargantuan so you'll get an opportunity to see Shecky in venue similiar to the old days.
From today's Las Vegas Review Journal:
For many comedians, where there is laughter, there is pain. But, few comedians have experienced as many highs and lows as Shecky Greene, who started performing in the 1940s while in high school and continues today, with shows this weekend at the Suncoast.
Many of Greene's highs and lows took place in Las Vegas, from rescuing two financially strapped hotels and kick-starting the lounge scene to developing drinking and gambling problems and landing a police number.
"You're the only one I am going to tell this to, Stevie. And you can put it in the Review-Journal," he said. "In the lounge, when I walked out on the stage, the curtain was down. And I would do sometimes five minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 15 minutes behind the curtain where I would talk to the musicians and make a joke. I would do this. I would sing a song. ... And you know why? Out of fear. Out of fear. Until I heard them laughing and everything else, and then the curtain went up. Now that went on for years and years and years. And nobody ever knew that."
During his long career, Greene has overcome and survived a nervous breakdown, alcoholism, various other addictions including gambling, bouts with bipolar disorder -- "I am bipolar, south-polar and north-polar," he joked -- two life-threatening surgeries and failed marriages, all of which took their toll.
But Greene is respected as a comedian, frequently listed among the top performers in the field. Bob Hope called him "truly a comedian's comedian," and Jerry Lewis said he is "the epitome of comic genius."
Greene was born Sheldon Greenfield in Chicago on April 8, 1926. He developed his humor early.
"I'd do comedy in high school. So many kids who did comedy did the same thing in high school. And I always did dialects," Greene recalled, noting the skill would serve him well throughout his career.
He spent three years in the Pacific during World War II.
"When I was in the service, I was in charge of an ice cream stand onboard the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard, and when I got out of the service I went back to my neighborhood with my Navy uniform. I had two gold stars, and someone says to me, 'Boy, it must have been tough over there for you.' And I said, 'Yeah, it was tough, tough.' And they said, 'What was the toughest?' And I said, 'Butter pecan.' "
After the war, Greene began studies to become a gym teacher. But a summer job at a resort near Milwaukee teamed him briefly with Sammy Shore, and Greene turned to comedy.
In the late 1940s, Greene was hired at the Prevue Lounge in New Orleans for two weeks and stayed three years, becoming a partner in the club.
"My club was basically like a lounge. ... That way I created everything, no matter what I'd do, I created it on the spot," Greene told me.
His breakthrough came in 1953 when he opened for actress/singer Ann Sothern at Chicago's Chez Paree nightclub. Then he was offered $1,000 a week for four weeks at the Golden Hotel in Reno, which quickly grew to an offer of $20,000 for a year.
About that time, Greene moved to California to try acting. He also married for the first time, a performer who had worked in a revue at the Stardust in Las Vegas and brought him to the Last Frontier. Greene worked the main room and the lounge at the Last Frontier and continued there when it became the New Frontier. The next stop was the Riviera, where his career "took off" in the lounge.
Greene said musician Woody Herman best described his act. "He'd say, 'You're a jazz comedian.' A jazz comedian, meaning I'd go from here to there to there."
Greene's act was about 90 percent improvisational. "The routines that I even do today I created in the lounges, never in the main room," he said.
He would talk about events of the day or his family and masterfully do impressions. Once Greene did a whole condensed musical version of "Fiddler on the Roof."
Greene never used "blue" material in his act. "In some places I was accused of it because I did double entendre. ... If you came to Las Vegas and worked that way, the people you worked for -- they'd kick you out," he recalled.
Hotel owners felt quite the opposite about Greene. In fact, the comedian actually came to the rescue once when the Tropicana got into trouble.
He had been working at the Riviera lounge, but the Tropicana's new owner, J.K. Houssels, did not want to put a stage in the bar.
"This is a true story," Greene said. "I started to leave, and then I came back and I said, 'What if I put a plywood board over the bar, that section. Would that satisfy you?' " Houssels agreed, and for 19 weeks, by himself and without a main room show, Greene kept the Tropicana going until "Folies Bergere" opened.
Greene stayed with the Tropicana for five years. "I started to get very hot. The place was getting crowded, and the people started coming in, 'cause they never had comedy like that in the lounge. I was the first comedian in the lounge," he said.
He opened the door for other lounge comedy acts such as Totie Fields and Don Rickles.
"Rickles came in because of me," Greene recalled, not boastingly. "My thing was so successful. ... Even the lounge owner of the Sahara asked me, 'Do you think I should bring (Rickles) in?' And I said, 'Yeah, bring him in.' So he brought him in. And I was hoping Rickles would do bad, you know. But Rickles didn't do bad. And my father used to leave my show to go see Rickles. I take an oath to God!"
Later, when the Riviera started to lose business, officials turned to Greene again.
Greene became one of the highest paid entertainers in the business, earning more than six figures a week, putting him in the same company as Johnny Carson and Bill Cosby.
As Greene's popularity in Las Vegas grew, he was invited to appear on variety and late night television shows. For one season, in 1962-63, he portrayed a dramatic role on the "Combat!" television series. He also performed in movies. But he remained a comic on the stage.
Greene worked with nearly every famous performer of his era: Bob Newhart, Steve Allen, Gypsy Rose Lee, Barbara McNair and Vic Damone, to name a few.
When Elvis Presley made his Las Vegas debut with Greene on April 23, 1956, at the New Frontier Hotel, he was billed as the "Atomic Powered Singer." And he bombed.
"Presley was one of the nicest human beings I've ever met. I mean, he was just the sweetest kid in the world. But he was not ready for Las Vegas," Greene recalled, noting that he advised Presley's manager, Col. Tom Parker, to change the young singer's look.
But all the fame and money could not save Greene from the darkness he felt. He tried to cope with the pressure of performing, his unhappy personal life and his compulsive emotional problems by drinking. "What's funny is that I never drank with anybody," Greene told me. "I'd go out alone. ... I was a horrible, horrible drunk -- horrible!"
I asked him if it affected his work. "Yes, it did affect my work," Greene said quietly. "As it became known about me, I started to lose a lot of respect. It got to (people saying), 'Let's go and see Shecky while he's drunk.' Well, I never worked while I was drunk and that's the truth. I'd go out and drink after. I never got on the stage drunk. I lost respect.
"The thing was, in all the time I was in Las Vegas, it became bad for me because I became a gambler, and a bad gambler," Greene added. "In all the years I played there I never won. And I became a drinker, you know. And I had two names, Shecky Greene and on a martini, 4799931, which was my police number."
Becoming serious again, Greene continued: "In Las Vegas, which was my life and my home, I was not happy. And not with Las Vegas, but with what I was doing to myself with the gambling and the drinking. After a few arrests, which were funny at the beginning, they then became more serious, you know. I begged my bosses at the time. I wanted to get out of Las Vegas at the time. I wanted to just quit. But, I was making a lot of money, and they said to me, 'As long as the asses are on the chairs.' They just didn't want to give me up."
"You gotta understand, and this is most important, throughout my whole career that I worked, I was a manic depressive. ... Then I developed panic attacks, and I worked with people who never knew it. I'd get a standing ovation, then I'd burst out crying as soon as I left the stage. I wanted to get out of show business so bad at that time. But when you're making $100,000 a week and supporting 12 bookies, and a wife -- it's difficult."
Greene finally left show business in the 1990s for nearly eight years. He stopped drinking; he had throat surgery and lost his voice for a year. He survived cancer surgery, and through it all he had his beloved wife, Marie.
His attitude and love of life now is boundless. And he enjoys entertaining. "They offered me a part in 'O,' " Greene joked. "They wanted me to be a lifeguard.
"The town really loved me, and I loved the town as far as the people," he said of his Las Vegas experience. "And we had wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people. And when we did something for charity, everybody turned out -- everybody."
Does it bother him that the town has changed from his heyday? "I gotta be very honest with you, Stevie. Times change," he said. "And about the comedy of today, if this is what the public wants, those comics -- and some of them are brilliant, hear what I tell you. ... These are different times, and different audiences. The kind of stuff I talk about goes on (and has gone on) for 2,000 years."

