|
|
|
Claudine Williams held her own against the men who ran the gambling establishments in Las Vegas.
Ms. Williams, who died May 13 at age 88, rose from jobs at back-room card tables and casinos in Louisiana and Texas to buy, build and then sell casinos to the likes of Howard Hughes and Holiday Inns Inc. She also helped found a bank and became chairwoman of Harrah's Las Vegas, one of the city's leading gambling establishments.
"She charmed them with how smart and talented she was, and she really got gaming," said Jan Jones, a former mayor of Las Vegas and current Harrah's Entertainment Inc. executive. "She wasn't afraid to go toe to toe with them either," added Ms. Jones, referring to the almost exclusively male -- and often mob-connected -- businessmen who dominated Las Vegas in the 1960s.
Wayne Newton, a.k.a. Mr. Las Vegas, considered her a surrogate mother, having known her since he was a teenager singing in Texas casinos in the 1950s. "If you asked for her opinion, be prepared for it," Mr. Newton said. "When I was negotiating to buy the Aladdin Hotel, she'd call me and say, 'Don't let the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Don't let your ego stand in the way.' "
It was perhaps typical of Ms. Williams's diplomatic aplomb that she could find something nice to say even about mobsters. "A lot of bad things did happen back in those days, but they were so glad to be operating legally, they did great things for this town," Ms. Williams told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2003.
Raised around Shreveport, La., by a single mother, Ms. Williams was by age 15 her family's sole support, and found that working as a card dealer paid better than waitressing for oil-field workers. She soon moved to Houston, where she worked in gambling halls, which though illegal were widely tolerated. Ms. Williams owned her first combination restaurant and casino before she was 21.
She formed a business partnership with Shelby Williams, a sportswriter who happened to share her last name. They were married in 1950 and went on to own and operate a number of Houston-area gambling businesses.
Congress and many states passed more-stringent antigambling laws during the 1950s, and by the early 1960s the Williamses decided, along with gambling professionals across the country, to move to Nevada, where casino gambling was legal.
She arranged for a friend to contact Benny Binion, a Las Vegas pioneer whose Glitter Gulch casino was reputedly the first to replace sawdust on the floors with carpeting.
After briefly working for Mr. Binion, Ms. Williams and her husband in 1965 purchased the Silver Slipper, a small casino that had been shut down for operating with shaved dice. It became an after-hours gathering place for celebrities and was said to offer the best odds in town. It also helped pioneer a Las Vegas institution: the 24/7 hot buffet.
A giant rotating silver slipper surmounted the roof, and it was this icon that was said to have inspired Mr. Hughes to purchase the Silver Slipper from the Williamses in 1968. He had an apartment across the street and, according to an oral history compiled by the Women's Research Institute of Nevada, the deteriorating Mr. Hughes "thought the slipper might come off and be thrown into his suite." Ms. Williams used the proceeds to build the riverboat-shaped Holiday Casino, right across the street from Caesars Palace, the glitziest casino in the city.
"They said, 'You're going to try to compete with Caesars Palace?' " she said in the oral history. "And I said, 'No, there's a lot of people that would rather be in a family-run place than over at Caesars Palace.' " The Holiday prospered.
Mr. Williams died in 1977, and Ms. Williams sold her interest to Holiday Inns in 1983, while staying on as chairman of the casino. In 1992, the name was changed to Harrah's Las Vegas and the décor switched to a carnival theme. Ms. Williams was fond of taking visitors on tours of the casino floor, calling on employees by name.
Her interests were wider than the gambling industry. In 1981, she helped found the American Bank of Commerce and chaired its board. She was also president of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, supported numerous philanthropies and was an active executive at Harrah's into her 80s.
"Listen, these are the good old days," Ms. Williams told the Reno Gazette-Journal in 2003. "I think we have the best hotels in the world in this state. Each customer -- when you enter, you're the king."
|
|
