Ann Arbor High Graduate Becomes Mr. Las Vegas

Moe Dalitz in Las Vegas publicity shot.

Morris "Moe" Dalitz was born in Boston but his family moved to Detroit where he grew up in the same Paradise Valley neighborhood with many of the original gang members who became known as the Purple Gang. In his adolescence, Moe's family moved to Ann Arbor where he completed his high school education.

 

During the Purple Gang's dominance controlling Detroit's illegal liquor business, Moe helped his father operate Campus Cleaners, a small chain of cleaners and dyers businesses in the Ann Arbor area. Moe used their fleet of laundry trucks to distribute Purple Gang liquor in Washtenaw County.

 

 

Moe became affiliated with the Little Jewish Navy--a faction of the Purples, that controlled smuggling along the Detroit Riverfront. When three of their top leaders were brutally assassinated by the Purples over an unpaid liquor debt, Moe quietly relocated to Cleveland where he continued his bootlegging operation and opened a chain of mob-protected casinos in Ohio and Kentucky. This became his life's work.

Unlike many of his associates who spent their money as soon as they made it buying fancy clothes and flashy cars, Moe maintained a low public profile by investing in legitimate businesses in Michigan. Dalitz held an executive position in the Michigan Industrial Laundry and the Colonial Laundry of Detroit where one of their illegal services was laundering gang money. Moe was also the president of Dalitz Realty Company in Wyandotte, Michigan, that specialized in selling industrial-zoned tracts of land in the Downriver area.

Dalitz served stateside in the United States Army during World War II. While still wearing the uniform, he loaned Detroit Steel $100K to save a collapsing merger with Cleveland's Reliance Steel which proved profitable. In the late 1940s, Dalitz and his underworld backers used Teamsters Union pension funds and began investing in Las Vegas. They lent front man Wilbur Clark--famous Las Vegas developer--the money to build the Desert Inn and then the Stardust casinos.

Dalitz with Bob Hope and Desi Arnez.

Moe Dalitz became a gaming pioneer and a legend of the Las Vegas Strip. His casinos were one-stop resorts catering to a new demographic changing the face of the Las Vegas Strip--working-class Midwesterners. The Desert Inn and Stardust catered to America's postwar, burgeoning middle class. Dalitz and his investors transformed Vegas from a gambling town to a vacation resort destination. Other organized crime figures took notice and began investing in Vegas opening the door to the Midwest mob's infiltration of Las Vegas, which led to skimming the casinos' gross profits "off the top."

Dalitz and other former mob figures discovered a way to sanitize their images. In the early 1950s, they formed the Paradise Development Company which built the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sunrise Hospital, the Boulevard Shopping Mall, a championship golf course, and several buildings at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. Dalitz became a philanthropic civic leader earning him the name Mr. Las Vegas.

Dalitz at Kefauver crime hearing.

Dalitz came from the rough world of the Purple Gang in Detroit and the Mayfield Road Mob in Cleveland. Despite his great success as a businessman and philanthropist in Vegas, Dalitz was never able to completely shed his associations with organized crime figures. He was called to testify before the Estes Kefauver Crime Hearings on February 27, 1951.

Senator Kefauver asked Dalitz, "We have sworn testimony that you lent Detroit Steel $100,000 for $10,000 worth of company stock. You made $230,000 from that deal, didn't you?"

"Maybe more," was his unapologetic answer. "When I cast bread upon the waters, it comes back cake."

"Mr. Dalitz, didn't you make your original fortune as a rum runner?"

"I didn't inherit any money, that's for sure," Dalitz responded sidestepping the question.

Moe with only daughter Suzanne.

Fifteen years later on August 10, 1966, Dalitz was subpoenaed to testify before the Nevada Gaming Commission about the skim and payments to underworld figures. The government was closing in on organized crime organizations who controlled the casinos behind the scenes. The underworld was looking for a way out of the casino business.

Howard Hughes

Deliverance came in the guise of Texas billionaire and movie mogul Howard Hughes. Hughes moved from Boston and rented the penthouse of the Desert Inn to live in seclusion as an eccentric hermit. In 1972, Dalitz wanted Hughes out of the suites because the holiday season was approaching and "high rollers"--important to the Desert Inn's bottom line--had annual reservations for those rooms. Hughes didn't gamble. Dalitz had intense negotiations with Hughes over the eviction. 

 

Weary of Dalitz's threats, Hughes asked him how much he wanted for the Desert Inn. Dalitz said $13,250,000. Hughes had his chief of Nevada business operations Robert Maheu write out a check and told Dalitz "Get the Hell out of my casino." The penthouse floor became Hughe's private residence while the floor beneath his penthouse suite was used for his business operations. Hughes lived there for four more years until 1976 when he was rushed to Houston, Texas in a Learjet where he died on April 5, 1976. The autopsy listed the cause of Hughes' death as kidney failure.

The Desert Inn sale marked a seismic shift in the ownership of Las Vegas Strip casinos. Corporate interests and billionaire financiers like Kirk Kerkorian were the only entities with the kind of money to buy out the mob. Groups like Bally's, MGM, and Conde Nast ushered in the postmodern corporate era in Vegas that we are familiar with today.

La Costa Resort and Spa

 

Dalitz and his backers did not get out of the resort business entirely. They moved to San Diego County in 1962 and built the La Costa Resort and Hotel for $4,250,000, which catered to wealthy Americans and aging wise guys looking to escape winter weather back East. On August 31, 1989, Moe Dalitz died in Las Vegas of congestive heart failure and kidney disease at the age of eighty-nine.

Suzanne Dalitz, her Dad, and the Vegas Mob Museum