First of two parts.

In the annals of Mafia courtroom dramas, one case tends to stand above the rest, The United States v. Salerno, otherwise known as the Commission trial. This 1986 trial was full of theatrical highs and lows, and featured eight of the most prominent and feared New York mobsters of the time. They were:

• Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, 75, boss of the Genovese crime family.
• Carmine “Junior” Persico, 53, boss of the Colombo crime family.
• Anthony “Tony Ducks” Corallo, 73, boss of the Lucchese crime family.
• Gennaro Langella (Jerry Lang), 47, underboss of the Colombo family.
• Salvatore “Tom Mix” Santoro, 72, underboss of the Lucchese family.
• Christopher “Christie Tick” Furnari Sr., 62, consigliere of the Lucchese family.
• Ralph “Little Ralphie” Scopo, 57, a soldier in the Colombo family and a former union leader. 
• Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, 38, a soldier in the Bonanno crime family.

That lineup would be interesting enough on its own, but this case offered added flavor when Persico decided to act as his own attorney. Judge Richard Owen ordered attorney Frank Lopez to serve as Persico’s legal adviser during the trial. Lopez said of Persico, “He could explain the case better . . . in his own homespun style.” “Style” is something the Mafia don definitely added to the proceedings.

A little background

The FBI and U.S. attorneys for the Southern District of New York had an ambitious goal: to take down the American Mafia by prosecuting three of the top five New York crime bosses.

The trial got its nickname from the entity created by Charles “Lucky” Luciano in 1931 to oversee the Mafia’s national crime syndicate. The Commission was composed of the bosses of the five New York Mafia families, as well as representatives from other prominent crime families across the country.

Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, alleged killer of the cigar-smoking Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante, was included among the defendants to reveal to the jury the true murderous nature of the Mafia. Graphic photos of Galante’s bloodied and bullet-riddled body would be shown in court.

The original 15-count indictments were revealed in February 1985. The indictments were the product of five years of investigations, 171 court-authorized wiretaps and strategically placed bugs, and the work of more than 200 federal agents. By the time the trial started 18 months later, the indictment count had grown to 25, including charges of extortion, labor racketeering, narcotics, gambling and murder. The core mantra behind these indictments was that the Mafia Commission used “threats, violence and murder.” 

The original indictment contained nine defendants. By the time the trial started, two names had been added, but three names had to be removed – they were dead by natural causes or otherwise. The three men removed from the indictment were Paul “Big Paul” Castellano, Gambino family boss (murdered December 16, 1985); Aniello “Neil” Dellacroce, Gambino family underboss (died of cancer December 2, 1985); and Stephano “Stevie Beefs” Cannone, Bonanno family consigliere (died of natural causes September 1985).

Samuel Dawson, attorney for Salvatore Santoro, had choice words about the indictments: “The indictment includes the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. I intend to prove that Mr. Santoro did not play with matches, or have anything to do with the earthquake.”

At the bond hearing, Magistrate Michael Dollinger read the obligatory statement warning that if the defendants were to threaten any witnesses in the case, their bail would be forfeited. “Christie Tick” Furnari asked, “What witnesses?” His attorney quickly led him out.

Let the circus begin

The trial started on September 8, 1986, on the third floor of the Manhattan Federal Court. The trial was THE show to attend in New York, and spectators never left disappointed.

Before jury selection began, Salerno’s attorney, Anthony Cardinale, argued that his client clearly was unfit to stand trial. As “Fat Tony” repeatedly dabbed at his right eye with a white handkerchief, Cardinale explained that Salerno was suffering from the recent effects of surgery less than a week before. Judge Owen denied the request.

Persico claimed he was facing double jeopardy. Earlier that year he was convicted of being the Colombo family boss. That case was now in the hands of the federal appeals court. Persico contended this trial should be delayed until after the appeals court issued its ruling. Judge Owen denied his request.

Arguments were then raised that the trial needed to be delayed because the defendants could not receive a fair trial because of all the pretrial publicity. Judge Owen denied the request as well.

What is the Mafia?

Before the jury could be selected, Persico had some “directives” for Judge Owen. First, he wanted to make it absolutely clear to the judge – and to the jury – that in no way can the Mafia be presented as or construed to be a criminal entity. Obviously, according to Persico, it was the government spinning this mistruth.

Persico went further when he attempted to guide Judge Owen on how to question prospective jurors. He explained, “Not too many of these jurors have a lot of education. I don’t believe you should use this terminology questioning the jury. You should use more lay language. They don’t understand this kind of language. I should put it in less – plainer terms.” 

Judge Owen countered, “I’m accustomed to asking people questions in language that they can understand and answer.” 

Jury selection started. Prospective jurors were given a quiz to determine if they knew, or had heard, of any of about 200 past and present Mafia figures or alleged mobsters whose names may come up during the trial. The list included Al Capone, Vito Genovese and Lucky Luciano. The quiz was given, and the answers were provided. 

The jury was selected: seven women and five men.

Opening arguments

Opening arguments began on September 18, 1986. 

The prosecution was intent on showing that the Commission was a criminal enterprise, and that each of the defendants was a member of the Commission, or of an entity directly under its control. Also, each of the eight men being tried had committed at least two – if not more – acts of racketeering to benefit the Commission and its goals.  The racketeering fell into three categories:

1.  The Commission directed bid-rigging (including extortion) in the New York concrete industry.
2.  The Commission organized Staten Island loansharking territories.
3. The Commission ordered the murder of Bonanno family boss Carmine Galante, along with two of his associates. 

U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoff described the Commission: “It’s kind of like a board of directors of a big criminal company.” The evidence he would present included surveillance photographs, videotapes and audio recordings. Among the witnesses were some high-ranking Mafia figures, as well as an undercover FBI agent named Joseph Pistone – known to the Bonanno family as “Donnie Brasco.”

“It’s not romantic, not like TV, the movies or books,” Chertoff told the jury. “You’ll see them fighting, back-stabbing each other. The Commission was dominated by a single principle – greed.”

Yes, there is a Mafia

The defense attorneys went into preemptive attack mode, knowing that one of the prosecution’s goals was to emphasize how the defendants were all going to deny the Mafia’s existence. In his opening statement, defense attorney Samuel Dawson said, “This case is not about whether an organization is in existence, known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra. There is – right here in New York City.” But he said there was no evidence the defendants were guilty of the racketeering charges.

Dawson turned to the jury and asked them this simple question: “Can you accept that just because a person is a member of the Mafia, that it doesn’t mean he committed the crimes charged in this case?” He paused before he reminded them that, “You each assured us that you would accept and abide by that basic point.”

“Yes, there is a Commission,” Dawson stated in a matter-of-fact way. But, he said, the Commission’s only function was to approve of new members, and to resolve conflicts between groups. The Commission was not about extorting money from the construction industry, it was only setting prices to avoid competition. “This is a bid-rigging case. An antitrust case. The government has reached for more than what the evidence shows.”

The admission to the Commission’s existence was one of the first times in history when a defense attorney disclosed this about the American Mafia.

It was attorney John Jacobs’ turn. In a unique opening, he said that, yes, his client (Ralph Scopo) did accept some labor payoffs. But, he explained, Scopo didn’t accept the payoffs for the Mafia.

Now it was Persico’s turn to make his opening statements. With his gold-rimmed glasses and black pin-striped suit, he spoke softly to the jurors in a friendly, conversational way. His strategy was to win the jury over with charm, self-abasement and empathy. The jury couldn’t possibly convict someone they liked, right?

“Guess by now you all know my name is Carmine Persico, and I’m not a lawyer. I’m a defendant,” he said with his strong Brooklyn accent. He confessed to being a “little nervous” while he flipped through his notes on a yellow legal pad. He added, “Don’t let them (the prosecutors) blind you with all the labels. Keep your eye on the issues.”

Persico then said, while he smiled and raised his hands, “Mr. Chertoff says the Mafia … is all about making money. The government wants you to believe the money went up to the Commission and the orders came down. I’d like to know where that money went. You won’t see it coming to me. They can’t try me on gossip, or rumors.” 

Persico lowered his voice and spoke with an ominous tone. “Be wary of prosecution witnesses.” He speculated that these witnesses would include murderers and drug dealers. And how were these “stellar” witnesses being paid? They were being paid, he said, with “your money and my freedom.” “They are powerful,” he emphasized as he pointed to the prosecution team. “Not me. … I’m sure after you hear all the evidence, you will acquit me.”

From their own mouths

On the first full day of the trial, the jurors were advised they would be listening to tape recordings of some of the defendants and their associates. The first set of tapes was a conversation between “Tony Ducks” Corallo and an associate, Salvatore Avellino. A bug had been hidden in Avellino’s Jaguar. 

Before the tapes were played, the prosecution presented a New York state investigator, Richard Tennien, who testified that he took part in the electronic surveillance. Persico decided Tennien was the perfect person on which to flex his cross-examination muscles.

“How long did you work on this investigation?” Persico asked in a friendly manner.

“Approximately a year,” Tennien answered.

“Did you ever hear anyone in the car describe themselves as members of organized crime?”  Persico asked.

“In that terminology, no,” Tennien replied. 

Contending that organized crime was a term invented by the government, Persico continued, “Policemen talk that way?”

“Yes,” Tennien answered, adding, “It’s just another term to describe the Mafia, La Cosa Nostra.”

Persico was determined to make a point. He asked Tennien if he himself used the term organized crime “just to make it sound more criminal?”

“No,” Tennien answered. Persico, knowing he didn’t accomplish what he had set out to do, ended his cross-examination.

The jury was instructed to put on large, black headphones, open the transcripts in front of them, and follow along. Transcripts were needed as some of the recorded conversations, at times, were difficult to understand. 

The defense instantly disputed the audibility of some of the tapes, and questioned the accuracy of the transcripts. They had to plant a seed of doubt. They knew they only had to turn one of the jurors to their side to win the case.

The tape started to play. “Tony Ducks” and Avellino were discussing the problems with family members dealing in narcotics. Dealing was not approved by the Commission. How should these dealers being handled, Avellino asked. “Tony Ducks” replied, “We should kill them.”

Fat Tony identified

The oath of “omerta” – the Mafia’s code of silence – was thrown out the window when a former Cleveland Mafia underboss took the stand. Angelo Lonardo, (son of Joseph “Big Joe” Lonardo, former Cleveland family boss), was one of the highest-ranking Mafia figures to ever become a government witness. The 75-year-old Lonardo provided insights into how the Commission worked with the different family bosses outside of New York City. Lonardo’s family communicated to the Commission through Tony Salerno. He testified that Salerno was not only part of the Commission, but the boss of the Genovese crime family.

Attorney Chertoff asked Lonardo to look around the courtroom, and please tell him and the jury if he recognized any Mafia bosses that he had personally met. Stepping down from the witness stand, the older man looked the room around before his eyes became fixed on an individual sitting at the defense table. 

“Yes, I do – Tony Salerno,” Lonardo said, pointing his hand toward Salerno. Soft murmurs raced across the courtroom as all eyes darted from Lonardo to Salerno. Salerno’s only response was a slight lift of the chin and a narrowing of his piercing eyes.   

“People used to refer to him as Fat Tony,” Lonardo continued. “He’s a little thinner.”

Lonardo explained that the bosses of the five New York families controlled the entire national Mafia through the Commission.” He identified the five New York families as Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese, Colombo and Bonanno. 

“If there’s a dispute about anything,” he explained, “they get together and iron it out.” Lonardo continued, “They make all the rules and regulations – what you can do, what you can’t do.”  

And how did the feds get Lonardo to willingly testify about his former Mafia brethren? He was offered a deal. Lonardo had previously been convicted of drug charges. His sentence was “life without parole, plus 103 years.” By “cooperating,” his sentence was reduced, and he was being considered for parole.

Time to garden

Week after week, as the trial marched forward, the American public wanted more inside information and more shocking details. This was the face of America’s feared Mafia hierarchy? Agreed, they were a little rough around the edges, but that didn’t mean they were guilty. A lot of people were rough around the edges. And three of the defendants were in their 70s. Were they really running the Mafia at that age? Then again, President Ronald Reagan was 75 years old, and he was running the whole country.

Doubt had to be “planted,” and Carmine Persico was determined to be that “gardener.”

Marcy Knight is a freelance writer based in Florida.

Read Part Two: The 10-week-long Commission trial played to full courtrooms

 

The tale of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria’s assassination on April 15, 1931, is one of many gangland legends that have been told, retold and morphed over the decades. It is sometimes hard to distinguish facts from folklore. One thing is certain: We were not there, so we are never going to know precisely the who, what, when and why of this particular hit.

Fortunately we do have reports from law enforcement officers who were eyeing the mobster’s every move (though they were not as clued-in as they thought they were). We also have the accounts of newspaper reporters (albeit often overdramatized narratives). In this case, we also are privy to an insider’s account. While those close to the assassination plot and execution remained mum for life, some critical details were divulged by a man most historians seem to trust for authenticity – Nicola Gentile.

King of wine, fish and booze

Born in Menfi, Agrigento Province, Sicily, in 1886, Joe Masseria emigrated to the United States in 1903. He already had a criminal history in Sicily and quickly inserted himself into New York’s underworld. His reign of power began around 1920, and by the latter ’20s, within the region he ruled, Masseria collected payments from virtually every vendor and controlled a multitude of rackets.

Not unlike his contemporaries, Masseria embraced an old-school idealism, resisted change and always wanted a bigger piece of the pie. The so-called Castellammarese War was the product of Masseria’s angst over a newly positioned Mafioso in Brooklyn – Salvatore Maranzano, who hailed from Castellemmare de Golfo, Sicily. The street war began in 1930 and continued until Masseria’s demise in 1931.

Some historical accounts imply Masseria opposed doing business outside the clan (and this contributed to his downfall at the hands of more progressive subordinates), but that’s not entirely true. For examples, and contrary to some accounts that describe Masseria as being strongly against Jewish or Irish alliances, the facts seem to indicate he was considerably tolerant of other ethnic groups. Masseria himself had counterfeiting interests with Jews, and was aware that some of his closest aides conducted business with men of other ethnicities. One example of this is demonstrated in a widely reported 1930 Miami gambling bust, in which Masseria got pinched along with 18 other players who included not only Italians such as Lucky Luciano, but a number of Jewish gangsters as well, including Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (using the alias Harry Rosen) and Harry Brown (forever immortalized in the 1932 Chicago arrest photo of Luciano and Meyer Lansky with a couple of Al Capone’s boys).

Still, Masseria represented an outdated mindset, one that could no longer be reasoned with diplomatically. The same was true of his rival Maranzano. The ongoing tit-for-tat killing wreaked havoc not just on the streets but well into the Mafia hierarchy. This was also a time when the definition of “loyalty” became exceedingly unclear.

Sanctioned insurrection

As is almost always the case, Masseria’s downfall was not the result of any single factor. The American organized crime system had plenty of turmoil and dissent, side deals and secretive plots going on at any given time, but the battle between Masseria and Maranzano caused concern even beyond the borders of New York. Maranzano’s war of attrition proved a successful tactic in stripping away Masseria’s strength, and the latter’s own men were ready to defect. Meetings of the Mafia’s elite tried to bring about an end to the bloodshed, but Maranzano consistently manipulated matters to his own advantage. Also at play, on the broader scale, was a natural evolutionary process: The mob was progressing and expanding. Those resistant to change generally don’t last long. Such was the case for Masseria, and, a little down road, for Maranzano as well.

In order to facilitate underworld peace, the consensus turned from diplomacy to the inevitable – one of the two bosses had to go. The final straw, according to the account of Nicola Gentile and with regard specifically to Masseria’s remaining inner circle, was a disagreement over carrying guns. Police had called Masseria in at some point and demanded the violence cease. Still clinging to idealism and holding out hope for eventual peace, Masseria responded by disarming his men. The edict was not warmly received.

“But the boys not being of the same opinion called Al Capone of Chicago, being he was the capo dei decina (Head of Ten), and he was affiliated to the borgata (family) of Joe Masseria. Secretly, they made the decision to kill him (Masseria).” This according to Gentile, vita di capomafia.

Gentile, along with Vito Genovese, Albert Anastasia, Joe Biondo, Vincent Mangano, Paul Ricca (Capone’s No. 2) and others, met often in a hotel room, planning the coup. According to some accounts, Genovese and Luciano met directly with Maranzano and came to a mutual agreement. “Do you know why you are here?” Maranzano asked. The pair nodded confirmation. “Good,” Maranzano said. “I don’t have to tell you what needs to be done.” Before Maranzano excused them, he added, “I’m looking forward to a peaceful Easter.”

After a year’s worth of chaos, collusion and consultation, they chose to depose the weaker of the two embattled bosses, Giuseppe Masseria. Getting him out in the open wasn’t going to be an easy task, but eventually the plotters lured him to a lunch in Coney Island – Nuova Villa Tammaro 2715 W. 15th Street. Masseria arrived in his armored car with two bodyguards. They were led to a table in the back, where another man was already seated. Masseria ordered light, just some bread, wine and coffee. After the foursome was served, owner Gerardo Scarpato instructed his mother-in-law to remain in the kitchen, while he casually “took a walk” from the building.

About 3 p.m., Joe the Boss, while engaged in a hand of pinochle, took four bullets to the back, and one to the head. His body slammed into the table, then to the floor. The entourage quickly exited the restaurant and entered waiting getaway vehicles. They left behind a stolen car, several guns, hats and overcoats.

Witness accounts were slim to none, while media reports added flair and the cops considered a number of theories that were perhaps close in some ways yet ultimately way off base in terms of ever achieving legal closure. The accounts echoed the same story – two men approached Masseria from behind and a series of gunshots rang out. The garments left behind did, however, provide some clues, or so the detectives hoped. Suspicion fell on a Chicago connection, also a dope racket, but everyone agreed it was “an inside job.”

Sam Pollacia, a close Masseria associate and owner of one of the leftover coats, was questioned for allegedly being present at the lunch meeting. Of course, he denied being there. Augie Pisano had been seen meeting with the restaurant’s owner, Scarpato, before the murder. Scarpato, when questioned as to why there were no waiters around, stated that everyone was off work, it was “a light day.” Cops also questioned Ciro Terranova who, according to some versions of the legend, served as one of the getaway drivers.

The aftermath

In his memoir, Gentile stated that he and Paul Ricca arrived at Nuovo Villa Tammaro just after the fact. Seeing the heavy police presence, they changed course and rushed over to Luciano’s apartment. While there, Gentile recounted, one of Maranzano’s emissaries, Vincent Troia, arrived. Luciano gave Troia a message to relay back: “Don Vincenzo, tell your compare Maranzano that we have killed Masseria – not to serve him, but for our own personal reasons. Tell him that if he should touch even the hair of even a personal enemy of ours, we will wage war to the end. Tell him that within 24 hours he must give us an affirmative answer for a meeting at a locality which we will pick out.”

As expected, Masseria’s funeral was lavish, complete with a $15,000 bronze casket. The service was held in his Manhattan penthouse apartment at 15 W. 81st Street.

In another blow to the family, several weeks later Masseria’s 19-year-old daughter, Vinitia, succumbed to illness and died. Without missing a beat, the press called it a death from a “broken heart.”

As for restaurateur Gerardo Scarpato, his future looked bleak as well. After the Masseria hit, Scarpato requested to be fingerprinted, just in case something happened. He then took his family on an extended sabbatical to Europe. He returned in June 1932 and took another step that foreshadowed impending doom. Scarpato got tattooed with his name and address on the forearm. That September, his body was found in a burlap bag inside an abandoned car.

Scarpato fell victim to an up-and-coming method of witness elimination: trussing the victim in rope in such a way that struggling brings about strangulation. Incidentally, this tactic was later fine-tuned (by adding icepick punctures) and became the calling card of Brooklyn’s kill-for-hire group Murder Inc. At the same time, investigators turned their attention to Masseria’s former adviser.

“As part of their investigation, New York police requested Chicago authorities to question the present head of the Sicilian organization, Lucky Luciano, intimate of Ralph Capone and now a threatening factor in New York’s underworld,” the New York Daily News reported on September 12, 1932.

The new reigning overlord, Salvatore Maranzano, would also get his day of reckoning, but that is a story for another day.

Christian Cipollini is the author of Lucky Luciano: Mysterious Tales of a Gangland Legend and Murder Inc.: Mysteries of the Mob’s Most Deadly Hit Squad.

For dedicated home brewers and beer snobs, the tale is familiar. Prohibition killed small and mid-sized breweries, and after repeal, the few breweries left — behemoths such as Anheuser-Busch and Pabst — had to do everything in their power to cut costs. This story is true, but it does not give us the whole picture. Prohibition had profound effects on beer, and some of the off-stated stories about these effects have formed a mythology that doesn’t hold up when you examine the historical record more closely.

In honor of New Beer’s Eve, which commemorates the day in 1933 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, re-legalizing beer for the first time since Prohibition took effect in 1920, let’s explore the ways Prohibition changed the American brewery landscape.

American lager and palatable brews

Before the craft beer revolution of the past few decades, the United States was most commonly associated with the bright, yellow lagers of breweries such as Budweiser, Pabst and Coors. Lagers have been the king of the brewing scene since the 1840s. Before large waves of German immigrants began settling in the United States in the 1840s and ’50s, Americans drank ale. The first wave of English settlers brought ale to the new world, a style that fermented at warmer temperatures than lagers and had a knack for filling bellies and warming bodies. Ales brew more quickly than lagers, but they don’t stand up as well to long-term storage or transport, which ultimately led to their demise in the vast American continent.

As soon as English settlers landed in North America, ale suffered from a serious of setbacks. At first it was the lack of barley, which farmers remedied. Then it was competition from rum and whiskey, which was not as easily fought. These setbacks led to experimentation with fermenting different ingredients, including corn, pumpkin and spruce. Numerous Native American cultures had some form of fermented corn beverage. Ultimately, experimentation didn’t change much, and beer became less popular than hard spirits in the American colonies.

This began to change in the middle of the 19^th century when German-Americans established breweries across the Northeast and Midwest. Americans of all ethnicities and nationalities fell hard for this clean, smooth-drinking beer. Lagers tasted fresher, traveled more easily and looked more effervescent in a glass than the old English ales.

One ingredient that led to the bright, bubbly new beers of the mid-1800s was rice. Brewers experimented with the process of adjunct brewing, making beer with grains other than barley. They first tried corn, but the results were oily. Then they tried rice, an addition that was originally heralded as an improvement. And a surprise to many today — adjunct-brewed beers were actually more expensive to make than conventional all-malt versions. Rice was not perceived as an inferior ingredient until recently.

The Midwestern brewers in particular had an interesting challenge, as explored in Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer by Maureen Ogle. They were incredibly successful in their own towns, but even Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis were relatively small in the 1850s and ’60s. In order to grow their operations, they expanded across the Midwest and as far away as Texas and California. They cornered the market on distribution and transport while brewers in New York, Philadelphia and other East Coast cities were content to serve their local populations.

The success of German-American brewers such as Joseph Schlitz, Frederick Miller, Adolphus Busch and Frederick Pabst had a number of consequences. Their lagers became the perceived standard of quality and taste. They continually reinvested in more technologically advanced machinery and were able to negotiate lucrative deals for raw materials and distribution.

In the end, the success of German-American brewers contributed to breweries’ downfall and Prohibition. As the temperance movement became more politicized around the time of World War I, anti-German sentiment reached a new high, and a lot of Prohibition propaganda focused on demonizing German-American brewers.

The end of the ‘tied system’

If modern connoisseurs walked into a late 19^th century saloon, they would be sorely disappointed by the beer selection. Almost every restaurant, hotel and saloon in the United States was part of the “tied system.” Tied houses, which are saloons owned and controlled directly by a brewery, originated in England. They arrived in the United States because of pressure from temperance advocates who saw saloon owners as unscrupulous thugs eager to turn a profit however they saw fit. Before the tied system, many saloons operated brothels or illegal casinos as well. As local law enforcement and revised ordinances cracked down on these dens of ill repute, brewers such as Schlitz and Anheuser-Busch purchased existing saloons and turned them into brand-specific beer halls.

At first temperance advocates were mildly placated because brewery-owned saloons were more likely to follow the letter of the law. But the tied system led to an increased proliferation of saloons. If Schlitz opened a public house on one corner, then Blatz, Pabst and Miller were likely to open competing operations on the other three corners. Besides increasing the accessibility of alcohol in many communities, prohibitionists complained that these tied-system saloons were operating as secret social and political societies that furthered the liquor cause and pro-immigrant sentiment.

When Prohibition was repealed, tied houses were effectually outlawed. A three-tier system was established to define and separate producers, distributors and retailers. Although many states have since loosened restrictions on brewery-owned retailers — think microbrewery brewpubs — the tied system ended along with Prohibition.

Decorative, informative tap handles

Another change was the proliferation of clearly labeled tap handles. Before Prohibition, most kegs or draft faucets were fashioned with nondescript black ball-shaped knobs. A distributor or bartender might scrawl a brand name or insignia on the knob, but breweries rarely, if ever created branded tap handles. In the 19^th century, no regulations mandated clearly labeled beer taps.

Once Prohibition ended, many states realized they needed to enact new local protocols to protect consumers. In Pennsylvania, a 1935 bulletin established the following regulation, which is still enforced by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board: “. . . shall be unlawful for any retail dispenser to furnish or serve any malt or brewed beverages from any faucet, spigot or other dispensing apparatus unless the trade name of brand of the product served shall appear in full sight of the customer and in legible lettering upon such faucet, spigot or dispensing apparatus.”

In addition to new regulations, many breweries saw themselves faced with new marketplace competition for the first time. Pre-Prohibition saloons rarely served more than one brewery’s beer. Even at a higher-end hotel or restaurant, the average imbiber did not expect a cornucopia of choices. But after repeal, breweries needed to find ways to visually stand out.

Since Prohibition’s repeal, tap handles have become increasingly ornate and decorative. The first branded tap handles were simple, modified versions of the ball knobs. They would have the brand name and possibly a recognizable logo on the front face. By the 1950s, breweries were experimenting with different shapes, sizes and materials to set their taps apart, and this creative one-upmanship continues to this day.

New markets, new ads

Another area where breweries shifted their focus after Prohibition was how they advertised and who they advertised to. Breweries had become astute marketing agencies in their own right during the 19^th century, but it was not until after repeal that they focused on marketing beer as a leisure activity that could be done at home. New advertisements showed men cracking open a can — a new invention introduced in 1935 — after a long day of work. Some even showed families at picnics. By the late 1940s, Miller was directly promoting Miller High Life as the “Champagne of Bottle Beer,” with full-page color ads in women’s magazines such as Vogue and McCall’s.

Loss of diversity

Prohibition killed thousands of small breweries around the country. The breweries that were able to weather 13 dry years were those that already had diverse enough portfolios and deep enough coffers to make alternative products for diminished profits during Prohibition. According to Maureen Ogle, of the 1,300 brewers operating in 1915, no more than 100 survived Prohibition.

It is worth noting, though, that in the 1870s there were 4,000 breweries. Between the 1880s and 1910s many small and mid-sized breweries folded because of temperance pressure or consolidation with other breweries for financial reasons. Prohibition had an immediate effect on those breweries still operating in 1920, but it is not cut and dry. Corporate consolidation happened in nearly every American industry between the late 1870s and 1900. This Gilded Age phenomenon affected vertical integration, as seen in the tied system and the transportation operations that many breweries handled themselves. It also led to large monopolies and corporations. It is likely that even without the hastened death of breweries thanks to Prohibition, the United States would have continued losing smaller breweries to consolidation throughout the early 20^th century.

In the intervening decades, beer has recovered and grown exponentially. Today there are more than 7,000 breweries in the United States, an all-time high. The nation’s brewing capacity was 80 million barrels in the year after Prohibition, and consumption was less than half of that. Decreased interest in beer was due in part to the mobsters, bootleggers and moonshiners who peddled poorly brewed beer during Prohibition. Thankfully for trained brewers, it was not long before Americans remembered why they loved the stuff.

According to figures compiled by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau as well as the Brewers Association, today the United States is producing about 200 million barrels for national consumption and five billion barrels for export annually.

On April 6, raise a glass to the return of beer, and keep in mind the lasting consequences of Prohibition on our favorite fermented beverage.

 

Ninety years ago today, Nevada legalized gambling. It changed everything — eventually.

When Governor Fred Balzar signed Assembly Bill 98 on March 19, 1931, few Nevadans could have foreseen the long-term significance of what had occurred. The Las Vegas Evening Review-Journal surely didn’t, as news of the bill signing earned one short paragraph at the bottom of the front page the following day.

By contrast, United Press International correspondent Earl H. Leif had an inkling the legislation could have historic importance:

“The lid is off now, the sky is the limit, and investors can feel safe to place their money here in high-class gambling casinos, and there may be keen rivalry between Las Vegas and Reno for the title of the ‘Monte Carlo of America.’”

No doubt responding to Leif’s exuberant prognostications, the Review-Journal, in a March 21 editorial, sought to temper its readers’ expectations:

“People should not get overly excited over the effects of the new gambling bill — conditions will be very little different than they are at the present time, except that some things will be done openly that have previously been done in secret. The same resorts will do business in the same way, only somewhat more liberally and above-board.”

The newspaper’s killjoy prediction proved to be more accurate in the short run. The transformation of Las Vegas from dusty railroad town to American Monte Carlo was delayed, at least in part, by the Great Depression. While Las Vegas was doing better economically than many other communities across the country thanks to Hoover Dam construction, the banks that hadn’t gone under were not exactly handing out loans to build bigger betting palaces, especially considering that gambling was still considered a sin in wide swaths of the country.

Even in Las Vegas, there was some reluctance to fully embrace gambling. The first city ordinance outlining casino licensing fees and regulations required that “all glass doors to gambling establishments and abutting on streets or alleys must be opaque or curtained to shield the interior from view by passers-by,” according to the Review-Journal.

On April 2, 1931 — 12 days after the state legalized gambling — the Clark County Commission granted licenses to eight businesses: the Northern Club, Las Vegas Club, Boulder Club, Red Rooster nightclub, Big Four Club, Exchange Club, Rainbow Club and Meadows Casino.

Most of the licensed casinos crowded along the west end of Fremont Street. There was no vision, in those early days, that the city could attract millions of tourists by building casino resorts with showrooms, buffets, swimming pools and horse stables. That discovery would come a decade later.

Rise of the Strip

The incremental growth of the Las Vegas casino industry during the Great Depression took a dramatic turn starting in 1941. Eighty years ago this spring, Las Vegas transformed from a town to a city, from a regional curiosity to an international resort destination.

Three major developments in 1941 kicked off an unprecedented growth boom. The first of these was the construction of an Army air field.

The United States did not formally join the fight against the Axis Powers until after Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But America contributed money and materials to the Allies as early as 1940. And, figuring it was just a matter of time before we became directly involved, the military was getting ready.

In October 1940, Army Air Corps officials scouted several Southwestern desert locations for an aerial gunnery school. Las Vegas was selected because it offered large, uninhabited areas north of town, the ability to train year-round, and an inland location that reduced the likelihood of an enemy attack.

The Army began construction in March 1941. The first commanding officer, Colonel Martinus Stenseth, had his first office in the basement of the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse at 300 Stewart Avenue – the building that today houses The Mob Museum. From this temporary base of operations, Stenseth and his junior officers designed the gunnery school curriculum.

Since the base had to be constructed from scratch, it was a massive endeavor. Besides the runways, crews built 173 buildings and installed electrical lines, sewer and water systems, and the technical equipment needed for a cutting-edge military operation.

By July 1941, more than 800 enlisted men were stationed at the base, moving into the newly constructed barracks and helping to build other structures. After Pearl Harbor, the Las Vegas Army Air Field expanded dramatically. In 1942, its first full year in operation, the airfield graduated 9,117 gunners.

At its peak in 1943 and ’44, the airfield hosted more than 15,000 enlisted men and women, all of whom spent money in area stores, restaurants, theaters, bars and casinos. Senior enlisted men were allowed to live off the base with their wives, creating a pressing demand for housing. Today, that training facility is known as Nellis Air Force Base.

While the Army airfield sprouted northeast of Las Vegas, another war-related project was gearing up to the southeast. Basic Magnesium Incorporated was created to produce magnesium, a lightweight metal that, when incorporated into the structure of aircraft, increased their speed and maneuverability. Magnesium also was used in bombs, flares and tracer bullets.

The man behind the magnesium plan was Howard Eells of Cleveland. In 1936, Eells discovered rich magnesite deposits in northern Nye County. He originally wanted the magnesite to produce furnace bricks, but as war raged in Europe, he recognized the value of his discovery to America’s military.

Eells partnered with a British company to build the plant. The U.S. government invested $130 million in the project. Eells decided to locate the facility about 20 miles southeast of Las Vegas. Why there? It was close to Hoover Dam, which could provide abundant water and electricity, and not too far from Las Vegas, which had the railroad.

Construction started in September 1941. By December, more than 2,700 men were working there. The numbers soon soared, reaching a peak of 13,000 in 1942. The magnesium plant was the foundation for the city of Henderson.

The third major development was the El Rancho Vegas, which opened on April 3, 1941. It was the first hotel-casino on what eventually came to be called the Las Vegas Strip. The Western-themed resort debuted with 50 rooms, restaurants, a theater, a casino and a swimming pool.

According to a popular legend, in 1940 a California hotel builder named Thomas Hull and a friend were driving on Highway 91 toward Los Angeles when their car got a flat tire just south of the Las Vegas city limits. While the friend hitchhiked back to town to seek assistance, Hull waited beside the highway and counted the cars going by. After an hour of this, he became convinced he had found a great spot to build a hotel.

That’s a clever origin story, but it bears little resemblance to what really happened. In fact, Hull first expressed interest in building a Las Vegas hotel as early as 1938. Las Vegas business leaders Robert Griffith and Jim Cashman encouraged Hull to make the investment.

However, Hull did not secure financing for the venture until 1940 — in other words, not until news of the soon-arriving Army Air Field and magnesium plant surfaced.

Hull chose not to build within the city limits. Instead, he bought an affordable piece of land on Highway 91 south of San Francisco Street (now Sahara Avenue), just outside the city boundary. There, he was not subject to city taxes or regulations.

Wesley Stout, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post magazine, showed up in Las Vegas in 1942 and wrote an article about what was happening here. The article, titled “Nevada’s New Reno,”offered an interesting take on what the Las Vegas boom meant:

“There are bigger war booms than Vegas’, but not relatively, nor any other as gaudy. There’s never been anything quite like it, and there may never be again. The population has more than doubled, exclusive of two Army camps. For the first time in Nevada, Reno and Washoe County have been shoved back into second place.”

In a matter of a year or so, Las Vegas had surpassed Reno to become the state’s premier vacation destination.

Enter the Mob

Before the 1940s, Las Vegas saw its share of thieves, schemers, killers and other ne’er-do-wells. Gunplay and robberies were not unusual in Block 16, the city’s red-light district. Bootlegger Jim Ferguson was dubbed the “King of the Tenderloin” in Las Vegas in the 1920s. But the traditional Mob took little interest in the small desert town until it became a fast-growing city.

Individual mobsters started hanging around Las Vegas as early as 1941, but the syndicate’s first significant business play was the acquisition of the El Cortez hotel-casino on Fremont Street in 1945. Meyer Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Moe Sedway and Gus Greenbaum were among the investors. But they ran the El Cortez for less than a year before selling out, because a bigger opportunity had entered their radar.

The origins of the Flamingo Hotel are no longer in dispute, but unfortunately many people still buy into the myth, so let’s briefly set the record straight once more. The original developer of the Flamingo was not Bugsy Siegel, it was a Los Angeles newspaper publisher and nightclub operator named Billy Wilkerson.

Wilkerson’s project started with the purchase of the land on which the Flamingo would stand. In March 1945, Wilkerson wrote a check for $9,500 to Margaret Folsom. This was a down payment for 33 acres on the east side of Highway 91 south of Las Vegas. He paid Folsom a total of $84,000 for the property. The Mob Museum has in its collection Wilkerson’s original down payment check.

Wilkerson started building the Flamingo in 1945 but ran out of money. Wilkerson was a problem gambler – he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars at the green-felt tables, money that could have been spent to build the Flamingo. Lacking options, Wilkerson turned to Meyer Lansky and his underworld associates to invest in and help him finish the Flamingo.

Lansky needed someone to keep an eye on their investment. Siegel, who lived in Los Angeles and had other business interests in Las Vegas, was the logical choice. Siegel started spending time on the construction site, and before long he wanted more control over the project. He and Wilkerson did not see eye to eye on how things should be done, and Wilkerson was pushed out.

Siegel was now in charge, and he spent millions more than Wilkerson had planned to make the Flamingo a modern, elegant resort. Siegel procured additional funds from his co-investors, but he faced pressure to start showing some returns on their investments.

He opened the Flamingo on December 26, 1946. It turned out to be a bad move, because the hotel rooms were not finished, and guests who might have enjoyed a couple of hours at the Flamingo had to leave to sleep at competing resorts. The Flamingo lost money, and Siegel decided to shut it down until the rooms were finished.

When the Flamingo reopened in the spring of 1947, it did much better, but Siegel’s tenure at the helm was cut short on June 20, 1947, when an assassin shot him to death in Beverly Hills, California. The case was never solved, but the conventional wisdom is that his syndicate friends saw a smoother and more prosperous future without Bugsy running the Flamingo.

The El Cortez and Flamingo were just the beginning of the Mob’s infiltration of the Las Vegas casino industry. Crime families had hidden — and sometimes not-so-hidden — interests in more than a dozen casinos that sprouted along the Strip in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. The Mob’s efforts to grow the industry were fueled in large part by low-interest loans provided by Jimmy Hoffa, who led the Teamsters Union and controlled its Central States Pension Fund.

The Mob’s heyday in Las Vegas ran from 1945 to about 1975. After that, state gaming regulators and federal agents became more aggressive in ferreting out casino skimming schemes, forcing the Mob to look for the exits.

Entrepreneurs and corporations soon took control of the Strip. With greater access to capital, they built megaresorts – sprawling hotels with thousands of rooms and numerous amenities, from luxury restaurants and giant showrooms to retail shops and convention halls.

Las Vegas today

When the coronavirus started spreading across the United States in early March of 2020, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak ordered the state’s casinos to shut down for 11 weeks. It was the first time anything like this had happened in nine decades of legal gambling. Casinos that had operated 24/7/365 for years started searching for the keys to doors that had rarely been locked.

Now, as widespread vaccinations give hope that the end of the pandemic approaches, Las Vegas tourism officials are gearing up for a resurgence of visitors. Legal gambling’s 90^th anniversary coincides with big plans for entertainment venues to reopen, conventions to return, and 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium to fill with Las Vegas Raiders fans. The 3,500-room Resorts World will debut this summer, filling a void on the north Strip, while downtown’s Circa, which brazenly opened in the midst of the pandemic, will finally see its full potential realized.

The Las Vegas casino industry in 2021 bears little resemblance to the handful of small gambling parlors that lined Fremont Street in 1931. But Las Vegas would not be what it is today were it not for the Nevada legislators who assembled in Carson City and audaciously voted to legalize gambling 90 years ago.