1619-1-19 MIA Herald -Gambling was a safe Bet as early MIA lured tourist ❑ mh GAMBLING WAS A SAFE BET 08/03/1986
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 1986, The Miami Herald
DATE: Sunday, August 3, 1986 EDITION: FINAL
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: 1B LENGTH: 266 lines
ILLUSTRATION: photo: Miam Beach socialites spin wheel behind sign
reading 'Absolutely no currency to be used' (GAMBLING, Police
chop and burn roulette wheels (GAMBLING EQUIPMENT)
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: MARC FISHER Herald Staff Writer
MEMO: THE HEYDAY OF GAMBLING; see related stories
GAMBLING WAS A SAFE BET
AS EARLY MIAMI LURED TOURISTS
In those days, gambling was illegal. And omnipresent.
In those days, gambling was the height of class, with mass appeal, and a
free pass to operate on Miami Beach.
For more than 30 years, roughly from the start of Prohibition until the
completion of Sen. Estes Kefauver's investigation of gambling in Dade County,
South Florida engaged in a collective wink, allowing bookmaking and casinos to
flourish from downtown Miami to south Broward County, and especially in Miami
Beach.
The gambling operators were gentlemen, business people who did good for
the community, says Pat Perdue, the policeman who was in charge of putting
them in jail.
The gambling operators were thieves, racketeers who undermined the
stability of the community, says Melvin Richard, the politician who crusaded
against them.
As late as 1950, Gov. Fuller Warren, while promising to suspend any
public official accused of permitting gambling, instead spoke out against
investigations by Kefauver and the Miami Crime Commission. The governor called
the crime-fighting senator a "headline-hunting hypocrite."
Despite such disagreements, the debate over gambling was mild compared
with today's arguments. Gambling was a fact of life, a major factor in the
area's tourism economy and a boon to the vibrant nightlife of Miami Beach.
Gambling and South Florida have gone together since Henry Flagler built
tony gambling casinos alongside his hotels from Palm Beach to Miami, where the
pioneer developer opened the Seminole Club beside the old Royal Palm Hotel at
the mouth of the Miami River.
Throughout the first half of the century, illegal gambling prospered
openly in Dade County mainly because, as one-time Miami Herald columnist Jack
Kofoed wrote, "Even pious people were nudged by a conviction that a resort
city cannot survive without betting."
Within a few years after the city was born, gambling joints thrived on
Miami Avenue, in the area called the Tenderloin, a wild and wide-open cut of
what is now downtown. A Miami grand jury reported in 1923 that in much of the
city, tourists and residents alike could find "numerous slot machines,
punchboards and other gambling devices that even little children may play
without being molested. "
From the start, Dade's gambling was more than a back-alleys sideshow.
Even Miami's most honored pioneers sanctioned gambling: Games abounded in
Flagler's hotels and at the Tuttles' family home.
Miami Beach developer Carl Fisher was considered an anomaly for insisting
that casinos attracted the wrong crowd. Fisher managed to keep casinos off the
Beach for a time, but that attitude dissipated as South Florida boomed.
(Indeed, even Fisher -- or at least his mansion -- came to be part of the
gambling scene. In the '3Os, the pioneer's home became the Bath and Tennis
Club, a high society casino.)
Before long, there was the Palm Island Club, later known as the Latin
Quarter, and the Brook Club in Surfside, combination casinos and nightclubs
that offered the biggest names in entertainment: Jack Benny, Eddie Cantor,
Sophie Tucker.
•
Big Bill Dwyer's Palm Island Club set the pattern for South Florida
casinos. Opening in the late '20s over the protests of the swank island's
residents, the club was primarily a nightspot, a showcase for top-dollar stars
and semi-nude chorus girls. Of course, to pay the bills, the club had a
casino. And to keep the peace, Dwyer's boys delivered "ice" -- cold cash -- to
the police, city officials and others who might have thought about ruining
some swell's night on the town.
Ice became part of the local routine. By the late '30s, payola at the
Royal Palm in downtown Miami came to $25, 000 a week, chickenfeed compared to
the casino's nightly take of $200,000 and even an occasional $2 million.
An illegal economy
Beginning in the late 1920s, Prohibition brought to Miami Beach a
proliferation of speakeasies and casinos -- an illegal economy that quickly
found it didn't need to stay underground. Indeed, Arthur Childers, manager of
the Floridian Hotel and proprietor of its grand casino, was even elected to
the city council.
Taking advantage of the new, wide-open feel of the Beach, Al Capone,
America's Public Enemy Number One, settled comfortably on Palm Island in 1930
after a 10-month stay in a Pennsylvania prison.
Within weeks, word was out that "Scarface" Capone had bought a $25,000,
one-quarter interest in the Island Club, the casino that was his island
neighbor. Carl Fisher sent his private eye to check on Capone's activities.
The detective reported that Capone had reacted to a police raid on a
Beach casino by sending word to the sheriff that he was paying $1,000 a week
in protection and he wanted his gambling paraphernalia returned by the
following day or else someone would end up in jail. He got his wish.
With early gambling ventures came the gangsters, starting with Capone and
friends, and then attracting New Yorkers such as Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky
and Frank Erickson.
In 1931, the state legalized pari-mutuel betting. Hialeah and Tropical
parks officially opened months later. By 1937, The Miami Herald had begun its
decades-long Know Your Neighbors feature, spotlighting mobsters in our midst.
In 1935, the state Legislature legalized slot machines and within weeks,
the one-armed bandits were everywhere on both sides of the bay -- in front of
drug stores and groceries, lining sidewalks on Flagler Street and Washington
Avenue.
In Jacksonville, one greedy operator put his slots close enough to
schools that the kids were plunging their lunch money into the machines. The
resulting outcry forced the Legislature to rescind the law at its 1937
session. End of legalized slots.
Casino gambling did not become widespread until after World War II, but
by the early '40s, "it didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to find action at a crap
table or roulette wheel, " wrote Herald columnist Jack Kofoed.
Within a few years, there were casinos every few blocks
from South Beach to Broward County. At the Deauville Casino at 67th Street,
the ground floor housed a large gambling room and a smaller restaurant, while
the upper story consisted of tiny rooms in which the staff lived.
Hallandale, today the high-rise symbol of Florida's retirement ghetto,
was once the capital of the region's open casino gambling. Casinos were the
lifeblood of the city in the '30s and '40s, providing jobs, milk and food for
the needy and donations to myriad civic causes.
The Plantation casino "was feeding about half the town, " Bryan Ingalls, a
member of one of Hallandale's pioneer families, told a historian. "Some member
of most every family was working there, either cleaning up or parking cars or
doing something. "
The city's first Policeman's Ball featured the cream of the casino
entertainment crop: Paul Whiteman, Sophie Tucker, Harry Richman and Joe E.
Lewis.
The city's casino town status started early in the Depression, when a
Chicago group headed by "Potatoes" Kaufman opened the Plantation on Hallandale
Beach Boulevard, just west of today's Diplomat Mall.
As described in Hallandale, a history by Bill McGoun, the Old Plantation
was a barn of a building, offering bingo with prizes of up to $5,000,
roulette, blackjack, dice games and horse betting.
The success of the Plantation engendered South Florida's fanciest casino,
the Colonial Inn, on Federal Highway just south of Gulfstream Park. Decorated
in red velvet, with deep carpeting and a multi-level ballroom, the Colonial
had fine food and top- name shows. The casino featured slot machines and the
usual array of table games. The Lansky brothers, Meyer and Jake, took over the
place shortly after it opened.
World War II crimped the casino trade. Like most large buildings in South
Florida, the casinos were used to house soldiers. The Colonial was home to an
Army Signal Corps unit: Enlisted men lived in the gambling room. After the
war, the casinos reopened, but business wasn't the same. Politicians, once
protectors of the casinos, began to change their tune. In 1948, the state
attorney's office closed down the Colonial. Most other casinos disappeared
soon thereafter.
But the bookmakers of the S&G Syndicate continued to operate in the open,
with no pressure from police. Like any thrivingobusiness, the syndicate had
offices, at least six of them scattered around the heart of Miami Beach,
control points for a network of, by one count, 314 bookmaking operations.
Sam Friedman and Jules Levitt ran one office in a Washington Avenue
apartment building. Another operated out of the Mercantile Bank building. In
each office, employees who had been through the S&G's bookmaking school sat
with telephones at long tables divided by boards into stalls. On the wall, a
blackboard was filled with entries and odds of all the U.S. race tracks then
running.
Miami Beach police not only failed to enforce anti-gambling laws, but
they protected the S&G from competition. When New York gambler Frank Erickson
paid the Roney Plaza Hotel $45,000 for a three-month bookie concession, Beach
police raided the place and
sent Erickson packing, returning the hotel to S&G control.
But local control of the bookie business proved to be an elusive goal. In
1949, Chicago boss Harry "The Muscle" Russell pressured the S&G to sell his
gang a share of their syndicate. Rebuffed, Russell retaliated by setting up
his own bookies, feeding a state investigation of the S&G and cutting off the
syndicate's racing news wire. Within days, he bought a one-sixth share of the
$26 million a year syndicate for the bargain price of $20,000.
Mobsters didn't have to rely on muscle to win a piece of the gambling
business. They got a little help from friends in high places. W.O. Crosby, an
aide to Gov. Warren, and William Johnston, a friend of the governor who owned
four Florida dog tracks, helped establish an ex-Capone crony in the Miami
bookmaking racket.
But the cronyism that had ruled the gambling scene for decades was about
to be smashed.
Kefauver hit town in July 1950, accompanied by another senator, a lawyer
and Downey Rice, the chief investigator.
They focused on Jimmy Sullivan, Dade's wealthy sheriff, who was raking it
in from his S&G cronies; Broward Sheriff Walter Clark, Florida Attorney
General Jim Smith's father-in-law, who was hauling in a fat share of the take
from lotteries and slot machines; and Gov. Warren, who had close ties to a
slew of mob- connected characters. Warren refused to testify before Kefauver.
The committee aimed at politicians, the syndicate and its local helpers.
On June 21, 1951, a Miami Beach cop named Jack Raskin testified that he
worked for the S&G Syndicate for $15 a day before becoming a police officer.
Raskin said he didn't even know gambling was illegal.
When the public learned of Raskin's past and his wife's continuing
employment by the Syndicate, the Beach police department took action.
Raskin was promoted to detective.
The next month, public hearings exposed graft, corruption and mob
influences. Hotels turned out to be mob-owned. The S&G collapsed. Lansky moved
his operations to Cuba. Sheriff Sullivan was forced from his job and left to
settle his income-tax evasions with the feds. Sheriff Clark died while under
indictment for income-tax fraud.
Although the most open operations of the S&G closed down, there were
plenty of hangers-on and helpers who eluded the
commission.
Gambling kingpin Jack Friedlander waited a few years and then in 1956
planned a network of horse betting stations in bars on Collins Avenue. But the
idea dissolved after publicity about the plan.
And there was Benjamin Cohen, the lawyer for the syndicate, a patron of
the arts and world traveler who told Kefauver that yes, sir, the S&G didn't
pay any taxes on betting revenue.
"All dear friends of mine," Cohen said of the five "boys" who ran the
bookie joints.
"With the publicity and the way they are painting these boys as the worst
mobsters in the world, they have them hooked up with prostitution, which the
Lord knows they never had anything to do with that, and with narcotics. They
have them hooked with every, oh, every
Please turn to GAMBLING / 3B p
GAMBLING PROSPERED
IN DADE'S EARLY DAYS
GAMBLING / from 2B
abominable crime that you can think of. "
A few minutes later, Cohen told the committee, "It is true that they have
been law violators. Technically they may be."
Six months later, Cohen was indicted as an operator of gambling houses.
He was acquitted.
Melvin Richard, then a Miami Beach councilman and now a Miami lawyer,
confronted Cohen in the council chambers.
Richard called Cohen a liar. Cohen responded: "You little punk. I'll
throw you out that window." The chambers were on the eighth floor. A former
lifeguard allegedly grabbed Cohen and restrained him.
Upstanding reputation
Despite such outbursts, Cohen worked diligently to create an upstanding
reputation. He gave money to the temple and the Hebrew Academy named a wing
after him. He took many cases without fee. And Reader's Digest accused Cohen
of braintrusting the old S&G. The magazine said Cohen "personally paid the
ice which caused sheriffs to see no horse books."
Cohen sued the magazine for libel. He wanted $10 million. He won. The
jury gave him one dollar. He never collected.
Of course, Cohen wasn't so protective of his image as to turn down
lucrative business. He got nearly a million to represent the Riviera casino
hotel in Las Vegas. And he was Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa's personal attorney.
Other S&G survivors tried to keep their hand in the business.
As late as 1961, a raid at the Eden Roc smashed a $30,000- a-day bookie
operation, run by SSG partner Jules Levitt. Martin Dardis, then chief
investigator for the attorney general's office, led the raid. Inside three
cabanas used as headquarters for the gambling operation, agents found a
directory of every major bookmaker in South Florida.
Today, Levitt lives in South Dade, stricken by Alzheimer's disease and
unable to remember anything from his gambling days, according to his nurse.
Casino gambling in South Florida in the '60s was mainly restricted to a
hotel room here, a cabana there. The games, sometimes rigged, took place in
unmarked rooms where gamblers recruited from the hotel card rooms were invited
by a hustler.
For example, in the mid-' 60s, John "Peanuts" Tronolone ran the Bridge
Players Association Inc. , featuring craps and other casino games out of a room
above a dime store in a shopping center at Collins and 170th Street.
Tronolone, a minor figure in the S&G, had a long list of gambling convictions.
Bolita operations
In 1966, the Dade Crime Commission reported that bolita operations in the
county were completely in the hands of the syndicate.
"For the first time since the old S&G Syndicate days of 1949, the
mobsters have moved in and completely control a racket here, " said commission
director Dan Sullivan.
A year later, the Dade Grand Jury took on the $20 million a year local
bolita operation, dropping 199 indictments around town. But only 12 of the
alleged numbers operators ever went to trial and none set foot in jail.
Sheriff E. Wilson Purdy called it "an exercise In futility."
The last major gambling raid was at the Patio Bridge Club, 221 20th St. ,
Miami Beach, in 1977. Agents from Miami, Miami Beach and the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement stormed the place one night. They had a tip that
the place was a front for a Las Vegas-sized bookmaking operation, complete
with a "hit man" to collect gambling debts. All they turned up was a circle of
old men playing pinochle, maybe a little gin tummy.
By 1979, vice cops in Miami and Miami Beach could say that they knew of
no casino gambling anywhere in the county.
"We haven't had a single case involving illegal casino-type gambling in
years, " said Metro vice squad Sgt. Roy Sommerhoff.
KEYWORDS: GAMBLING HISTORY MD MB MI PROFILE MAJOR-STORY CRIME
TAG: 8602280715