Book Review: Jeffrey Sussman 'Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas'

What’s with America’s continuing obsession with the Mob? Movies, books, documentaries and more movies, books and documentaries. For sure, the 1930s with its celebrity actors playing gangsters proved a distraction during the Great Depression, but real life criminals proved even more diverting.

Among writers enthralled with the history and influence of organized crime, count East Hampton author Jeffrey Sussman whose latest “dive” into the subject is “Sin City Gangsters: The Rise and Decline of the Mob in Las Vegas.” Though his narrative revisits material from his previous books, Sussman writes in an email that his is “the only history of the mob in Las Vegas, covering the period from 1945 to the present,” and that his book “explodes a number of commonly held myths” about major players.

Sussman traces his “fascination” with the Mob to his bar mitzvah when his father’s uncle Irving handed young Jeffrey a $100 bill, and his father briefly indicated that Irving “had been a bootlegger during prohibition and was indicted but never tried for the murder of Dutch Schultz in 1935,” a Jewish mobster gunned down in a Newark restroom. Sussman’s email notes other connections. A labor racketeer named Johnny Dio (Dioguardi) tried to unionize Sussman’s father’s garment factory where the workers had already voted down the lesser-paying mob offer. Dio did succeed, however, in persuading Sussman’s father to use the mob’s trucking company.

Sussman also notes that he went into therapy but that after it was completed, he became friends with his therapist “whose father was in the Mafia and ran illegal gambling in New York for Frank Costello.” The (unnamed) therapist provided “a lot of information about the Mob,” no doubt much of it about the skimming that went on mainly to pay for hookers, drugs and protection. Add in an extensive bibliography and readers have a reliable, if familiar, story — though no exploration of why the subject so fascinates in this country. Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” series and 86 episodes of “The Sopranos,” alone, testify to the public’s appetite for the subject. Even the “army of helpers” who arrived with Howard Hughes in the 1960s and took over the top two floors of the Desert Inn, were known as the “Mormon Mafia.” Crowds surged, particularly in response to Sinatra and his Rat Pack which included Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Then came Elvis.

Crime was cool. On February 14, 2012, the Mob Museum opened, on the anniversary of the 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and has been a golden cow ever since, reinforcing links between criminals and politicians, if not the FBI. At one point, Sussman notes, Joe Kennedy and the Chicago Outfit boss Sam Giancana were partners, before Sam was sharing a mistress with JFK.

An Italian friend points out, however, that only in America is the Mob romanticized and mythologized, even if Sussman doesn’t mention that “mafia” translates as swagger, boldness, bravado. It dates to 19th century when absentee landlords hired protection gangs for their property — that is, before the gangs took over. Then there was the Mafia-hating Mussolini whose fascist government drove many crime bosses to New York and eventually into military alliance with the United States against Italy and the axis powers. It’s a complicated political and economic tale, though it may contain reasons why the crime organizations in this country attracted poor and working-class immigrants, particularly Jews such as Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz (Mr. Las Vegas, whose partner at one time was Jimmy Hoffa).

Though Sussman doesn’t emphasize Jewish heritage in his exploration of the innovative entrepreneurs of today, he does credit Jay Sarno, Kirk Kerkorian, Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson (three of the four have Jewish roots) as bringing “Vegas out of the era of mob control” (when did “Las” drop off?). They made it “the gaudiest, most popular entertainment capital [in] the world.” Junk bonds ruled, theme parks for “family” of a different kind to keep the kiddies busy, and more slots and naughty entertainment to attract the tourist middle class.

For those who know about the Mob in the desert, Sussman provides a readable, reference-packed summary and update, some of it based on interviews with a few mobster relatives. He delivers some ugly facts about Sinatra as well as some apparently redeeming philanthropy by him and others. For all of us, however, the contemporary chapters would seem especially important as these present names in the news — billionaire political fundraisers and well-connected lobbyists. There’s also the matter of the nation’s increasing violence and poverty which should give pause to those lobbying for more casinos. They come with baggage and with suppressed memory that, in the end, the house always wins. And collects.