Rose Marie recalled that at the end of the show “everyone was standing and yelling.” It was “one helluva night.” Texas gambler Benny Binion, who had recently arrived in Las Vegas, remembered opening night as “the biggest whoop-do-do I ever seen.” There was a floor show featuring popular comic Jimmy Durante, the Xavier Cugat orchestra, singer Rose Marie and dancer Tommy Wonder. His mistress Virginia Hill attended each of the first three nights, with a different hair color each evening - platinum blond, jet black and then her natural red. Third, rather than the frustrated and concerned Ben Siegel as Warren Beatty portrayed him, Bugsy was actually upbeat, greeting guests wearing a black tuxedo with a pink carnation. Everybody was there.” In his article on the opening, Wally Williams wrote in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, “It appears the proprietors will have to disjoint the walls to take care of the mob.” Columnist Walter Winchell reported that in the first three nights the Flamingo attracted 28,000 people. On opening night there was a traffic jam at the entrance to the parking lot, and, according to travel writer Roland Hill, when they opened the doors “it was like the rush of olden days on to the newly opened lands of the West.” Louis Wiener Jr., Siegel’s lawyer, recalled, “You couldn’t get in with a shoehorn. Second, for the special three-night grand opening - two dedicated to residents and then the third focused on the celebrities - the Flamingo was packed. Siegel image courtesy of UCLA Special Collections Hill image courtesy of Alamy
George Jessel served as master of ceremonies and introduced Eleanor Parker, Charles Coburn, George Raft, Vivian Blaine, George Sanders, Lon McAllister and Sonny Tufts, not only to those in attendance at the Flamingo, but also to a nationwide radio broadcast that originated from Las Vegas station KENO.īenjamin “Bugsy” Siegel and Virginia Hill presided over the three grand openings, greeting celebrities and guests who lined up to enter the casino. While some of the promised big names such as William Holden, Lucille Ball and Ava Gardner did not appear, there were still recognizable Hollywood figures present on the evening of December 28. To be sure, the West Coast storms grounded flights, which kept Hollywood celebrities from participating in the first night’s activities, but that was not terribly important because the third night was the one dedicated to having celebrities.
There was heavy rain in Southern California, and six inches of snow fell on Mount Charleston, but the weather bureau at McCarran Field reported no thunderstorm and only 0.12 inches of rain for Las Vegas. First, there were no powerful thunderstorms in Las Vegas. Similarly, in Las Vegas: A Desert Paradise (1986), Las Vegas historian Ralph Roske said the opening drew “small crowds.” One sees the failure in the 1974 HBO film Virginia Hill: Mistress of the Mob, which featured Harvey Keitel as Siegel, and in novels such as The Vegas Legacy (1983) by Ovid Demaris and Sin City (2002) by Harold Robbins. While certainly influential, Bugsy is not the only source to depict the Flamingo’s opening as a disaster. Warren Beatty, who plays Siegel, announces that the Flamingo will close the following day. In the film’s portrayal of the event, there are virtually no guests, and a powerful thunderstorm strikes, knocking out the power to the casino. That certainly applies to the general view of the opening of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on December 26, 1946. Much of what Americans know about Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel comes from watching the 1991 film Bugsy. The Flamingo held its grand opening over three nights in December 1946, and, contrary of popular perception, big crowds showed up all three nights.