Flamingo Hotel Las Vegas

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The Flamingo Las Vegas is a hotel casino located on the famed Las Vegas Strip in Paradise, Nevada & is owned & operated by Harrah's Entertainment. The property offers a 77,000 ft² (7,200 m²) casino along with 3,626 hotel rooms. The hotel is sometimes referred to as the pink hotel due to the structure's neon pink color. The 15 acre (61,000 m²) site's architectural theme is reminiscent of the Art Deco & Streamline Moderne style of Miami & South Beach, with the central outdoor area housing an exhibit of flamingos as part of a wildlife habitat. It was the home of penguins, but they have since been moved to a Dallas zoo.

The Flamingo has a Las Vegas Monorail station at the rear of the property.

History

A Hollywood Beginning
The Flamingo site occupies 40 acres originally owned by one of Las Vegas' first settlers, Charles "Pops" Squires. Mr. Squires paid $8.75 an acre for the land. In 1944, Margaret Folsom bought the tract for $7,500 from Squires, & she then later sold it to Billy Wilkerson. Billy Wilkerson was the owner of the Hollywood Reporter as well as some very popular nightclubs in the Sunset Strip: Cafe Trocadero, Ciro's & La Rue's.

In 1945, Wilkerson purchased 33 acres on the west side of U.S. Route 91, about one mile south of the Last Frontier in preparation for his vision. Wilkerson then hired George Vernon Russell to design a hotel that was more in the European style & something other than the "sawdust joints" on Fremont Street. He planned a hotel with luxurious rooms, a spa, health club, showroom, golf course, nightclub & an upscale restaurant. Due to the high wartime materials costs, however, Wilkerson began to run into financial problems almost at once, finding himself $400,000 short & hunting for new financing.

Enter Bugsy
In late 1945, mobster Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel & his "partners" came to Las Vegas, after the fledgling resort city piqued Siegel's interest due to its legalized gambling & its off-track betting. Siegel at the time held a large interest in Trans America Wire, a racing publication.

Siegel began when he purchased The El Cortez on Fremont Street for $600,000 & later sold it for a $166,000 profit. At the same time, Siegel & his organized crime associates learned Wilkerson had run out of money on his project. They used the profits from the El Cortez sale to influence Wilkerson to accept new partners. Siegel & such partners as Frank Costello & Meyer Lansky invested $1 million in the new property, allowing Wilkerson to keep a one-third ownership stake & operational control.

Siegel took over the final phases of construction & convinced more of his underworld associates to invest in the project. The problem was, Siegel had no experience in construction or design, causing costs to mount from constant changes & gouging from construction firms & suppliers — including, it was reputed, workers who delivered by day, stole by night, & resold the next day. Siegel may actually have bought some of the same materials twice thanks to this kind of scheming.

Siegel lost patience with the rising costs, & his notorious outbursts unnerved his construction foreman. Reputedly, Siegel told him, "Don't worry — we only kill each other."

The Pink Flamingo Hotel & Casino
Siegel finally opened, as The Pink Flamingo Hotel & Casino, at a total cost of $6 million on December 26, 1946. Billed as the world's most luxurious hotel[citation needed], the 105-room property was built seven miles from Downtown Las Vegas, with a large sign built in front of the construction site announcing it was a William R. Wilkerson project, with Del Webb Construction as the prime contractor & Richard Stadelman (who later made renovations to the El Rancho Las Vegas) the architect.

Siegel named the resort after his girlfriend Virginia Hill, who loved to gamble & whose nickname was Flamingo---a nickname Siegel gave her due to her long, skinny legs . Organized crime king Lucky Luciano wrote in his memoir, however, that Siegel once owned an interest in the Hialeah race track & viewed the flamingos who populated nearby as an omen.

Siegel's Swan Song
Siegel's trouble with the Flamingo began, according to CrimeLibrary.com, when, a year after the official groundbreaking, the resort had produced no revenue & drained the resources of his mob investors. Then Meyer Lansky charged — at a major mob meeting in Cuba — that either Siegel or Hill was skimming from the resort's building budget, a charge amplified when Hill turned out to have $2.5 million & gone to Switzerland, where the skimmed money was believed going.

"There was no doubt in Meyer’s mind," Luciano recalled in his memoir, "that Bugsy had skimmed this dough from his building budget, & he was sure that Siegel was preparing to skip as well as skim, in case the roof was gonna fall in on him." Luciano & the other mob leaders in Cuba asked Lansky what to do. Torn because of long ties to Siegel, whom he considered like a brother, Lansky nevertheless agreed that someone stealing from his friends had to go — at first. Lansky persuaded the others to wait for the Flamingo's casino opening: if it was a success, Siegel could be persuaded in other ways to repay. Luciano persuaded the others to agree.

The splashy opening — stars present included Cuban band leader Xavier Cugat (whose band provided the music), George Jessel, George Raft, Rose Marie, & Jimmy Durante as entertainment, with guests including Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Cesar Romero, Joan Crawford, & others — was a flop. Lansky managed to persuade the mob chiefs to reprieve Siegel once more & allow the Flamingo more time. But by January 1947 Siegel had to order the resort closed until the hotel could be finished.

However, the Flamingo re-opened in March despite the hotel not being complete, & this time, the results proved different. By May, the resort reported a $250,000 profit, allowing Lansky to point out that Siegel was right about Las Vegas, after all. But it wasn't quite enough to save Siegel. On 20 June 1947, relaxing in the Hollywood bungalow he shared with Hill, who was away at the time, Siegel was shot to death. The crime was never really solved.

Life After Bugsy
Casino management changed the hotel name to The Fabulous Flamingo on March 1, 1947, & in time the Flamingo presented lavish shows & accommodations for its time, becoming well known for comfortable, air conditioned rooms, gardens, & swimming pools. Often credited for popularizing the "complete experience" as opposed to merely gambling, the Flamingo staff became known for wearing tuxedos on the job, & in 1950 the resort's Champagne Tower opened.

Kirk Kerkorian acquired the property in 1967. , making it part of Kerkorian's International Leisure Company, but the Hilton Corporation bought the resort in 1972, renaming it the Flamingo Hilton in 1974. The last of the original Flamingo Hotel structure was torn down on December 14, 1993 & the hotel's garden was built on the site.

The Flamingo's four hotel towers were built (or expanded) in 1967, 1975, 1977, 1982, 1990, & 1995.

Florence Ballard was fired from The Supremes during their engagement at the hotel in June-July of 1967.

In the 1998 spin off of Hilton's gaming operations ownership was changed to Park Place Entertainment which was renamed to Caesars Entertainment in 2004.

In September 1999 the Flamingo Hilton & its sister property in Laughlin ended their long standing relationship with Hilton Hotels. The Hilton name was removed & the property was renamed Flamingo Las Vegas. Longtime Las Vegans still refer to the casino by its former name, however.

To enhance the hotel's Caribbean theme , a Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville restaurant was opened in 2004.

In 2005 Harrah's Entertainment purchased Caesars Entertainment & the property became part of Harrah's Entertainment company.

Toni Braxton replaced Wayne Newton as the Flamingo’s new headlining act on August 3, 2006. The show, Toni Braxton: Revealed, will run through March 2007. In November 2006, the Flamingo announced Braxton’s show will be extended through August 2007.

Film history
The 1960 version of Ocean's Eleven was filmed here. Also a flashback sequence from the 2001 version of Ocean's Eleven was filmed at Flamingo. Viva Las Vegas was filmed there.

Fiction references
Hunter S. Thompson & Oscar Zeta Acosta stayed at the Flamingo while attending a seminar by the National Conference of District Attorneys on Narcotics & Dangerous Drugs held at the Dunes Hotel across the street. Several of their experiences in their room are depicted in Thompson's most famous work Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

The original Flamingo hotel & casino figures prominently in the Tim Powers novel Last Call. In the novel, the famed myth of Siegel's creation of the Flamingo was utilized as a basis for the overall supernatural plot of the novel (rather than the true historic account of his acquiring it from the original founder). The Flamingo is supposedly founded on Siegel's mythical/mystical paranoia of being pursued & killed for his Archetypal position as the "King of the West," also known mythologically as Fisher King. Supposedly the Flamingo itself was meant to be a real-life personification of the "Tower" card amongst the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck, literally "the King's Castle in the Wasteland." It is also fabled to be where Siegel kept his copy of a deck of the Lombardy Zeroth Tarot deck, a fictional deck of psychically-empowered Tarot cards also prominent to the plot of Powers' novel. Category 6: Day of Destruction, a shot of the casino can be seen along with Circus Circus, & Stardust. Siegel's penthouse & office floor did, as referenced in the novel, in fact have a secret escape-hatch complete with ladder down to a service floor where supposedly a car was always in ready to effect his getaway in the event of his being attacked in his chambers (the escape preparations of course were ultimately moot; Siegel was killed in Los Angeles at the home of his girlfriend Virginia Hill). All other references to the Flamingo in any supernatural context in the novel are not based on any known or recorded facts/events.

The Flamingo has also been referenced in animated cartoons - an episode of The Jetsons, in 1962, dealt with a trip to Las Venus & the Flamoongo casino. More recently, an episode of Kim Possible (Ron the Man) was set in Las Vegas, & while there was no direct reference to the Flamingo, the casino the characters went to was drawn to resemble the original Flamingo design.

It was also seen in the game Grand Theft Auto: San & reas as The Pink Swan.