photo courtesy of Life Magazine

Sixty years ago today (Monday, Nov. 15th) , Senator Estes Kefauver and his committee came to Las Vegas to further their investigation into organized crime.

Kefauver was a Senator from Tennessee.  In 1950, he began an investigation into organized crime.  The committee was officially known as the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce but quickly became known as the Kefauver hearings.

Kefauver and his committee (and the press) traveled around the country from Kentucky to the Mid-West to Nevada in their quest for more information on the mob.  They traveled to 14 cities and interviewed over 600 people including Frank Costello.  Costello made himself famous by refusing to allow his face to be filmed during his questioning and then staged a much-publicized walkout.

By televising the hearings at a time when Americans were just beginning to buy televisions and were entranced by the box, Kefauver brought the idea of organized crime and the mob into the homes and appliance stores of Americans around the country.  Kefauver rode that wave of popularity and ran for president twice.

By the time Kefauver and his committee rolled into Las Vegas via train, they had a list of interviewees that included Wilbur Clark and Moe Dalitz among others.  They convened in the Federal courthouse and post office.  Dalitz was quoted as telling Kefauver and his committee who criticized him for being a bootlegger, "If you hadn't have drunk it, I wouldn't have bootlegged it."

After two hours, the committee adjourned and went on a field trip to Hoover Dam. which had little or nothing to do with organized crime but is one of the great architecural marvels of the 20th Century.

The aftermath of the Kefauver hearings did have an upside for Las Vegas and Nevada.  The other cities that were involved in gambling, it was illegal there.  Here in Las Vegas (and throughout Nevada) gambling was legal.

Organized crime began to seriously look at Las Vegas as their headquarters for gambling and over the next few years that relationship grew and took on more importance than Estes Kefauver and his committee ever intended or ever realized.  It would be another 30 years before Las Vegas was able to break the mob's hold on Las Vegas.

To honor this event, the people behind the Organized Crime and Law Enforcement Museum ( better known as the Mob Museum where the hearings were held) are having a media event.  Mayor Oscar Goodman (for those who love irony, Goodman as a mob attorney defended his clients in the courthouse) and others will be in attendance.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, the Valley's largest newspaper, has announced that effective immediately Sherman Frederick, the publisher of the paper, and Thomas Mitchell, the editor of the paper, have both resigned from their positions.  General Manager Allan Fleming was let go when his position was eliminated in a new restructuring of the news room.

Frederick and Mitchell were both very vocal and used the paper in their campaign to support Sharon Angle in her bid for Harry Reid's senate seat.  Speculation is rampant that the changes at the RJ are in some ways because of their virulent support.

Frederick, who has undergone prostrate and by-pass surgery the last few months, will be a consultant and columnist for Stephens Press, the Arkansas media company that owns the RJ.

Frederick was also replaced as CEO of Stephens Media Group.  Taking that position is Chief Operating Officer Michael Ferguson.  Ferguson then promoted Bob Brown, the paper's advertising director, to the position of publisher.

There should be interesting days ahead for the paper.

For more information:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/

http://www.lvrj.com/

I have a personal piece up on The Walt Disney Family Museum's blog, Storyboard. about where I first learned about Mid-Century Modern architecture and design on a trip to Disneyland when I was only ten.

Alan Hess is quoted as well and there are some great images both from Disneyland and the New York's World Fair.

So come learn how Disney artists like Mary Blair, architects like Welton Becket and those vintage Disneyland posters captured my imagination and sparked my love of mid-century modern architecture and design;

www.wdfmuseum.squarespace.com

Enjoy!

Wanted to let everyone know that PACC is holding their annual meeting next Saturday, Nov. 13th,  at the Springs Preserve.

The Ice House, demolished

From Corinne Escobar:

PACC members and friends, the Preservation Association will host its fall meeting at the Springs Preserve on November 13, 2010, Saturday at 11:00 am.  We will walk the trail to the Big Springs site guided by Greg Seymour, who was the archaeologist during the construction of the Springs Preserve.  The tour is free but please RSVP to me at corinneescobar@pacc.info.   I am not sure about the logistics for refreshments but we will see.  Anyone wanting to help, Please contact me! Thanks, I look forward to seeing you there, Corinne

Our buddy Dennis McBride, the Curator of History at the Nevada State Museum not only saved our Saturday programs with his canny foresight but he also wrote up this wonderful recap of all the events:

A Successful Weekend

On October 22-24, the Friends of Classic Las Vegas hosted its second annual Mid-Century Modern event. Co-sponsored this year by the Architectural and Decorative Arts Society, the El Cortez Hotel, Retro Vegas, VeryVintageVegas.com, the Metro Arts Council of Southern Nevada, and RAFI Planning, Architecture, and Urban Design, Mid Mod Marvels proved once more the enduring popularity of mid-century modern living.

The weekend started with a swank affair Friday night at the Morelli House, maybe the best known Mid-Century Modern landmark in Las Vegas, owned and restored by the Junior League. League members dressed in period clothing, provided tours of the house, and hosted a meet-and-greet reception for Mid-Century aficionados. The Nevada State Museum supplied a series of photographs of mid-century Las Vegas from the Jay Florian Mitchell Collection to round out the evening. With plenty of wine and nibbly things, the evening gave a hint of the fun yet to come.

Saturday included two panel discussions and the Las Vegas premier of the film, William Krisel, Architect, a documentary detailing the career of famed mid-century architect Bill Krisel. The Las Vegas National Golf Club on Desert Inn Road, around which Krisel and his partner, Dan Palmer, built their iconic Paradise Palms residential development, hosted Saturday’s events.

The first panel—Mid-Modern Architecture, Design, and Las Vegas--included architectural historian Alan Hess; Las Vegas architects George Tate and Robert Fielden, and Dr. Robert Tracy from UNLV’s School of Architecture. Following a slide show of mid-century architectural images from the Nevada State Museum, Tate, who has been working in Las Vegas for more than 50 years, entertained the audience with anecdotes and first-hand accounts of his work in mid-century, while Fielden, Hess, and Tracy provided historical, philosophical, and aesthetic perspectives.

The second panel of the afternoon—The Las Vegas News Bureau in the Mid-Mod Era--detailed the history of the Las Vegas News Bureau and its 60 years of promoting Las Vegas through visual media. The panel included Brian “Paco” Alvarez, curator for the News Bureau; Don Payne, former Bureau manager; and Darren Bush, Bureau photographer. Alvarez provided two slide shows of the News Bureau’s most famous and iconic images.

The film which followed the panels on Saturday—William Krisel, Architect—has been eagerly anticipated for some time. Krisel and his partner, Dan Palmer, were among the most influential architects in Mid-Century America. Palmer and Krisel were Mid-Century populists who brought the formerly elitist architecture to a mass market through construction of thousands of affordable middle-class homes. It was Krisel, more than any other architect long after he and Palmer split, who made Mid-Century Modern style and design popular.

The Mid Mod Marvels weekend wound up on Sunday with a four-hour tour of some of the finest of Las Vegas’s Mid-Century neighborhoods. After wrecking the bus on the way out of the parking lot of the Reed Whipple Cultural Center—which required everyone to debark and re-board—the tour got underway, led by architectural historian Alan Hess and Mid-Modern realtor “Uncle Jack” LeVine.

The tour passed through such 1950s-60s neighborhoods as Paradise Palms, Marycrest, Glen Heather and McNeil Estates, the Las Vegas Country Club, and the notorious Scotch 80s. Along the way there were three open house stops. While Hess put these Las Vegas neighborhoods into a historical and architectural perspective, Uncle Jack provided an entertaining monolog of intimate stories and anecdotes of the neighborhoods, of the people who lived there, and of their historical importance in the development of Las Vegas.

With two successful Mid-Century Modern cultural and educational events under their belt and with a widening circle of sponsors, we hope the Friends of Classic Las Vegas can keep up the momentum and turn these weekends into an annual event.

We hope you had a great time, too!

 Special thanks to Clay Heximer for providing the pictures.