Bugsy Siegel

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Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an Austrian-American gangster, popularly thought to be the impetus behind large-scale development of Las Vegas.

Early life

Benjamin Siegel was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a poor Austrian Jewish family, one of five children. As a boy, Siegel joined a street gang on Lafayette Street on the Lower East Side and first committed mainly thefts, until, with another youth named Moe Sedway, he devised his own protection racket: pushcart merchants were forced to pay him five dollars or he would incinerate their merchandise on the spot.

During adolescence, Siegel befriended Meyer Lansky, forming a small gang whose criminal activities expanded to include gambling and car theft. Siegel reputedly also worked as the gang's hit man whom Lansky would sometimes hire out to other gang bosses.

In 1930 Lansky and Siegel joined forces with Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Frank Costello. Siegel became a bootlegger and was also associated with Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia. Siegel was used for bootlegging operations in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia. During the so-called Castellammarese War in 1930-1931, they fought the gang of Joe "The Boss" Masseria; Siegel reputedly had a hand in Masseria's 1931 murder in Coney Island and later had a part in the formation of Murder, Inc. In 1932 he was arrested for gambling and bootlegging but got away with only a fine. Lansky and Siegel were briefly allied with Dutch Schultz and killed rival loan sharks Louis "Pretty" Amberg and Joseph Amberg in 1935.

California

In 1937, the East Coast mob sent Siegel to California to develop syndicate gambling rackets with Los Angeles mobster Jack Dragna. Once in LA, Siegel recruited Jewish gang boss Mickey Cohen as his lieutenant. Siegel used syndicate money to set up a national wire service to help the East Coast mob quicken their returns.

On January 28, 1929, Siegel married Esta Krakow, his childhood sweetheart and sister of hit man Whitey Krakow. Siegel eventually moved Esta and their two daughters to the West Coast. However, Siegel was the least faithful of husbands; four of his mistresses included actresses Ketti Gallian, Wendy Barrie, Marie "The Body" MacDonald, and Hollywood socialite Dorothy DiFrasso. With the aid of DiFrasso and actor friend George Raft, Siegel gained entry into Hollywood's inner circle, allegedly using his contacts to extort the movie studios. At this point in his career, Siegel started living in extravagant fashion; on his tax returns Siegel claimed to earn his living through legal gambling at the Santa Anita racetrack near Los Angeles.

Siegel soon started a torrid affair with a sharp-tongued moll and courier, Virginia Hill. Wealthy in her own right, the Alabama-born Hill owned a mansion in Beverly Hills that she had bought from Metropolitan Opera baritone Lawrence Tibbett. Siegel became a frequent guest at the Hill mansion. Later on, there were rumors that the couple had secretly married in Mexico, where Hill help Siegel establish contacts. However, Siegel's relationship with Hill did not detract Siegel from his compulsive womanizing. Hill's reaction to Siegel's infidelities is unknown, but the long-suffering Esta eventually reached her limit; in 1946, she went to Reno and divorced Siegel.

On November 22, 1939, Siegel, Whitey Krakow, and two other gang members killed Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg. Greenberg had become a police informant and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, boss of Murder, Inc., ordered his killing. Siegel was arrested and tried for the Greenberg murder. Whitey Krakow escaped prosecution because Siegel had previously murdered him. Siegel was acquitted on the Greenberg murder, but his reputation was in ruins. During the trial, the newspapers revealed Siegel's sordid past and started referring to him as "Bugsy". Siegel was not pleased with the nickname or the notoriety.

Driving back East from Los Angeles, Siegel happened to drive through the small railroad town of Las Vegas, Nevada. Legend has it that Siegel suddenly had a vision of turning Las Vegas into a gambling mecca.

Las Vegas

According to popular myth, Siegel envisioned building a large casino and hotel in the desert that would attract gamblers from around the country. His vision was fueled by the fact that gambling had been legalized in Nevada in 1931 to entertain the influx of construction workings building Hoover Dam on the Colorado River 48 km (30 miles) to the southeast. This had launched a population boom, giving the Valley's economy a significant boost during the Great Depression. In Las Vegas, at this time, gambling was concentrated in several downtown casinos along Fremont Street that catered to these workers. The famous Las Vegas Strip was just desert.

Bugsy came to Las Vegas in 1941, backed by the Chicago Outfit to establish the Trans America race wire service.

Back East, Siegel sold his fellow mobsters on the dream of building a legal gambling mecca in the Nevada desert, complete with a casino, hotel, and entertainment. The crime bosses agreed to back this venture. Siegel returned to the West Coast and began work. Siegel decided to call the new hotel and casino "The Flamingo", after his pet name for Virginia Hill.

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Bugsy Siegel's memorial in the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas near the wedding chapel

The Flamingo

Although a successful gangster, Bugsy Siegel knew very little about construction. Many of Siegel's plans were unreasonably lavish, such as his insistence that each room have its own private sewer line. Under his oversight, the construction costs ballooned from $1 million to $6 million. Siegel was also cheated by his contractors. The Del Webb company, which was in charge of construction, allegedly would haul building materials in the front gate of Flamingo work site and out the back gate without unloading. The hapless Siegel was then billed for their delivery. The Flamingo project was also hampered by building materials shortages and increased costs due to the post-World War II building boom. Nervous about the project's problems, Del Webb told Siegel that he was afraid of mob retribution. Siegel reputedly joked: "Don't worry, Del. We only kill each other."

The Flamingo problems were no joke to Mafia leaders on the East Coast. They began suspecting that Siegel was embezzling their money. These suspicions were heightened by Virginia Hill's frequent trips to Zurich, Switzerland, where they worried she was depositing mob money into Siegel's Swiss bank accounts.

In December 1946, the Flamingo problems reached crisis state. Several of Siegel's business and crime partners flew to Havana, Cuba, for a meeting with mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano. Luciano had been directing American Mafia operations from Italy after being deported from the US. However, he was making a clandestine visit to Cuba when the Flamingo meeting was called. One of the main topics for discussion at the Havana Conference was ordering a hit on Siegel (who was unaware of this meeting). Meyer Lansky, who several times owed his life to Siegel when they were young, took a stand against the hit. He begged the attendees to give Siegel a chance by waiting until after the casino opening. Luciano, who believed that Siegel could still make a profit in Las Vegas and pay back what he owed the Mafia investors, agreed to postpone the hit.

To placate his investors, Siegel opened his still-unfinished casino on the star-studded night of December 26, 1946 (although he did not have as many Hollywood celebrities with him as he had hoped). Soon the Flamingo ran dry of entertainers and customers; it closed after only two weeks in order to resume construction. The fully operational Flamingo re-opened in March of 1947. Still dissatisfied, the casino's gangster investors once again met in Havana in Spring 1947 to decide whether to "liquidate" Siegel. Luckily for Siegel, the Flamingo had just turned a profit that month. Lansky again spoke up in support of his old friend and convinced Luciano to give Siegel one last chance.

Death

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Bugsy Siegel, supposedly shot cleanly through the eye, but actually shot in the cheek and nose.

Eventually, the world collapsed around Bugsy Siegel. The Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, his pet project, failed financially. Girlfriend Virginia Hill stole the money Siegel owed the mob and fled to Paris, then Sweden. Unlike previous occasions, Meyer Lansky could no longer protect his dear friend Siegel from angry mob investors.

On the night of June 20, 1947, Siegel was home alone at the Hill Mansion at 810 N. Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, reading the Los Angeles Times near the front window. Unknown to Siegel, a mob hit-man, (allegedly Eddie Cannizzaro), was hiding outside the mansion. At 10:45 pm the gunman shot through window many times with a U.S. military M1 Carbine, killing Bugsy Siegel. One of the .30-caliber bullets smashed the bridge of Siegel's nose, the impact and pressure blowing Siegel's left eyeball out of socket. The eyeball was intact, 14 feet away from the body. Though there were no witnesses to the shooting, the physiology of the wounds suggests that the 41-year-old Siegel died instantly.

The Siegel killing went unpunished; no one was ever charged with this bloody and much-photographed mob murder (newspaper standards of the time allowed the bodies of "mob" murder victims to be photographed in ways not allowed for the deaths of "respectable" citizens).

Though Siegel was actually not shot exactly through the eye (the eyeball would have been destroyed if this had been the case), the bullet-through-the-eye style of killing became popular in Mafia movies, called the "Moe Greene special" after the character Moe Greene was killed in this manner in The Godfather. Siegel was hit by many other bullets from the 15 round carbine magazine, however, including shots through his lungs. A second bullet to his head which passed through his right cheek and through the back of his neck, would almost certainly have been fatal by itself. .

Cultural references

• In 1991, the life of Bugsy Siegel was the subject of the highly accurate motion picture Bugsy, with Warren Beatty in the title role.

• Also in 1991, there was a film, Mobsters, about the early years of Bugsy Siegel, Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, and Frank Costello starring Christian Slater as Lucky and with Richard Grieco as Bugsy.

Bugsy's memorial plaque in the Bialystoker Synagogue - On the plaques above see the name Max Siegel, Bugsy's father, whose Hebrew name is "Mordechai Dovid "Bar" (son of) Beirush HaLevi" (from the Hebraic tribe of the Levites) and the one for Bugsy whose Hebrew name is "Bairush HaLevi "Bar" Mordechai Dovid HaLevi"; implying that Bugsy was named after his grandfather who predeceased his birth.

• In the Bialystoker Synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegal is memorialized by a Yartzheit (remembrance) plaque that marks his death date so mourners can say Kaddish for the anniversary of his passing. Bugsy's plaque is right below that of his father Max, who died just about two months prior to Bugsy's murder.
• In the song Do It Now by Mos Def and Busta Rhymes, Mos mentions Bugsy when he says "Hotter than Reno when discovered by Bugsy Siegal"
• The character of Moe Greene in The Godfather, who was murdered by a clean shot to the eye, was based on Siegel.

• In the show The Sopranos, Brendan Filone is also executed with a bullet clean through the eye.

• Auric Goldfinger, the villain of the Bond novel and film, personally is fond of shooting his victims exactly through the right eye, and does so with four organized crime leaders, at the end of the novel.

• In the movie Once Upon a Time in America (1984), the character of Joe Minaldi (Burt Young) is killed after being shot in the eye, similar to Siegel (the death scene was based on a postmortem photograph of Bugsy). Also, the character of Max (James Woods) reacts violently whenever someone calls him "crazy", similar to Siegel's reaction to his nickname of Bugsy. There is also a minor character named Bugsy (played by James Russo).

• Siegel was also portrayed by Harvey Keitel (who himself appeared in the Bugsy film as Mickey Cohen), in the 1973 TV movie The Virginia Hill Story and by Armand Assante in the 1991 film The Marrying Man.

• The title of the song Mr. Siegal from the album Heartattack and Vine by Tom Waits refers to Bugsy Siegel.

• Tim Powers imagined Siegel as a modern-day Fisher King in his award-winning novel Last Call.

• In the 1981 NBC mini-series, The Gangster Chronicles, Joe Penny was cast as Bugsy Siegel.

• The 1999 HBO made-for-TV movie Lansky, the character of Bugsy Siegel as an adult was played by Eric Roberts.

• In the DC Comics universe Siegel killed the young partner of the first hero called The Vigilante and was pursued by him for years; it was Vigilante who finally shot him dead.

• Rapper Beanie Sigel, government name Dwight Grant, is named after Siegel, in addition to the fact that he was born on Sigel St.

• In the Florentin area of Tel Aviv, Israel, a restaurant/bar called Bugsy is a popular restaurant and bar at night, and a cafe during the day.

• He hated the nickname, Bugsy (said to be based on the slang term "bugs", meaning "crazy", and used to describe his sometimes erratic behavior), and wouldn't allow anyone to call him that to his face. His extraordinary partying earned him the title "King of the Sunset Strip."

• There is currently an online poker site, Bugsy's Club, that is named after Siegel. The theme of the site is taken from his lifestyle.

• In the song 2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted Snoop Dogg mentions Seigel saying "But my dream is to own a fly casino, like Bugsy Siegel and do it all legal"

External links

• www.bugsysiegel.net, various information including a copy of Siegel's death certificate
• FBI files on Siegel (2,421 pages, heavily censored) From the FBI Freedom of Information Act.
• Bugsy Siegel at Find-A-Grave
• Bugsy Restaurant
• Bugsy Siegel memorial in Las Vegas