Lady Blackjack Dealers

We all owe it to Lefty--

http://www.insidervlv.com/flr/october98.html

Alot of good interesting reads here--

http://www.insidervlv.com/flr/index.html

 

I personally remember a female roulette dealer at the Union Plaza on my first trip, back in the mid 1970s. Not 100% sure of blackjack, tho.

The first time I played blackjack, same trip, was at the Stardust and I remember the dealer was male.

 

LV owes a lot to Lefty and a lot of the other "outfit" guys. The town would not be what it is today without them.

 

Thanks for the interesting link, gongoman. I had no idea that Frank Rosenthal's recollections were available online. I'm definetly going to look into them.

Still, I think "we owe it all to Lefty" is a bit of an overstatement.

If you want a truly enjoyable read about some real colorful "old timers," check out the book I Want To Quit Winners by Harold Smith, Jr.

He and his father Harold "Pappy" Smith founded Harold's Club in Reno in the 1930's. His recollections are fasciniting, especially about how he and Bill Harrah would occasionally cross the street and try to put each ther out of business by breaking their rival at the craps tables!

Harold tells how he employed female dealers in Reno from his earliest days there. The liberal residency requirements for the granting of divorces in Nevada brought thousands of women to the Silver State and many of them needed jobs, so Harold always had ample female dealers and managers. And during WWII the draft had called away most of the men, so nearly all the dealers in Reno were women throughout the war years, a time when gambling really took off in northern Nevada. San Francisco was the departure point for most troops stationed in the Pacific, so gambing in Reno got a real boost and the "Harold's Club or Bust" signs became a worldwide phenomenon.

Vegas was 40 years behind the curve when it comes to female staff when compared with the pioneers like Smith and Harrah, as colorful as Lefty Rosenthal may be.

Anyway, anyone interested in the history of Nevada gambling owes it to himself to read I Want To Quit Winners. Probably an inter-library loan would be the most likely route to read this long out-of-print volume.

 

True about the female dealers but there is no doubt that Lefty revolutionized the LV sports book scene.

 

It seems to me that Lefty copied what downtown was already doing.

I have "I Want To Quit Winners". My favorite story was how Harold and the other owners would get together and gamble in a street fashion of craps. They would set up a pillow at the end of the hall and throw dice into it. One guy would keep a notebook on the bets and everyone would settle up the next day.