FABULOUS LAS VEGAS

EARLY VEGAS

LUCK BE A LADY TONIGHT - FRANK SINATRA

POKER

SUSAN BERMAN'S LADY LAS VEGAS - AUTHORSHIP AS LEGACY

  You may have just recently heard of a woman named SUSAN BERMAN, because a man named Robert Durst's on trial for her murder, years after it happened.  The new evidence that was revealed in a documentary called THE JINX, involves a secretly recorded confession as well as letters sent in the U.S. Mail.  Durst comes from a very wealthy New York City real estate fortune family, like Ivanka Trump, and like Ivanka's husband, Jared Kushner.  The Durst family has avoided the controversy.  Durst's money provides him the lawyers.





Reading some news articles about the trial, after having watched The Jinx, I learned that Susan Berman supposedly took a loan from Robert, who she had been good friends with since they met as students at UCLA.  She was an author who was perhaps not able to depend on her income as a writer to pay her bills.  So I wondered if she was a good writer.  I read her book LADY LAS VEGAS and thought she was an excellent, creative non-fiction author.  She managed to have a bit of her and her family's story, since her father was instrumental in the development of Las Vegas, woven through later chapters about the development of the town famous for "What goes on in Vegas, stays in Vegas." 


Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, Virginia Hill, who was the mistress of Ben Siegel, the subject of the Warren Beatty film, Bugsy, credited with building the Flamingo Hotel in the middle of nowhere, was covered in March 2013.  Well, Susan's father and associates took over the Flamingo when Siegel was gunned down in Los Angeles while Virginia was out of town.


Susan, may she be resting in peace, left Vegas as a child, after her father died young of natural but stress related cause, and then her mother had a mental breakdown and eventually commited suicide.  Because of her family's participation in Organized Crime, her murder has been blamed on the Mob, rather than Durst. Was she really a woman who knew too much for her own good?  The Susan in this book was not associated with Organized Crime herself.  On the other hand it has been claimed that because of her family background, Durst was able to confess to her that he killed his wife, Kathy, also a long missing person that there is likely a murder mystery that may involve Durst.  After she was left an orphan, her guardian became her dad's brother, her uncle with a big gambling problem.  She left Vegas and eventually lived in Los Angeles.


As an adult, gone from Vegas for 40 years, and distanced from it though the years and therapy, though with very fond memories of her childhood there as the only child and daughter of Davie Berman, credited as a builder of the town, she went back.  The part about going to the family home in a suburb that had been turned into a law office, her old playhouse in the back yard still there but used for storage, was a bit of a heartbreaker.  Always in her memory as a good time in her life, proud of the achievements that her dad had made, Vegas had changed so significantly it was hardly what she'd remembered as an insider behind "American's Neon Oasis."


There are other books by and about Susan Berman, but I thought my readers might be interested in this one because of some of the people she mentions in the book who have been mentioned here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  Besides Ben Siegel and Virginia Hill, she mentions Elvis Presley (who sang happy birthday to her), Liberace, and Howard Hughes, who bought hotels and had a mistress in each of them.  We covered Scott Thorson, who Liberace Kept, here in October 2012, and Howard Hughes's Mistress Faith Domergue in May of 2014.  (The Mistresses mentioned here do not include Faith!)


To find these people in this blog, try running a search for their names in the search feature on the sidebar.


Missy.

WHAT WAS W.A. CLARK REALLY LIKE? : BIDDING FOR DESERT LAND

 

pages 137, 139-142 
Chapter 9  LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS

"The temperature was 112 degrees on May 15, 1905, when Senator William Clark came to establish the new town site for his railroad depot.  He had  bulldozed forty acres clear of desert scrub, laid out the main streets in a grid, and announced an auction to sell numbered lots on a map.  The bidders were speculators from Los Angeles and agents for eastern investors.  Some bidders brought their own tents.  Others stayed in a tent hotel named Hotel Las Vegas.  The auction platform was erected roughly where the Plaza hotel-casino stands today in the old downtown.

The investors were bidding on twelve hundred parcels.  Each lot was 25 feet wide and 140 feet deep....  These lines on paper represented a future town with streets, stores, saloons, housing, churches, schools, electricity, plumbing, and a septic system.  In the spirit of Gilded Age speculation and the town's gambling future, Senator Clark's auction drew the speculators into a f4renzy of bidding for numbered squares on a map at grossly inflated prices...

Senator Clark had a name for being a dishonest businessman.  His unsavory reputation derived from documented accounts that he had bribed Montana state legislators to appoint him senator; the profusion of legal suits brought by former business partners who accused him, with good evidence, of cheating them out of profits; and his marriage to a teenager forty years his junior who had been a ward in his home.  Senator Clark was from Butte, Montana, and had made his first fortune in copper smelters.

Mark Twain, who first came to Nevada in 1861, when his brother was appointed secretary to the governor of Nevada Territory, later wrote about Senator Clark and judged him to be considerably worse than the average Gilded Age robber baron: "He is as rotten a human being as can be found anywhere under the flag; he is a shame to the American nation, and no one has helped send him to the Senate who did not know that his proper place was the penitentiary."  Although Clark County, which includes most of southern Nevada, is named for the dodgy senator, there is no statue of this Las Vegas founding father anywhere to be seen..."

UNREAL CITY is C 2014 by Judith Nies and published by Nation Books (National Institute and Perseus Books Group
*****

Missy here!  I do wonder if Anna's relationship with W.A. was what made W.A. Clark's life really worthwhile and if in it he experienced love, acceptance, and escape from business.  I suspect so.  In this author's case the comment about "marrying a teenager" certainly obscures the possibilities.

JILLIAN LAUREN : FROM NEW JERSEY TO THE SULTANS HAREM TO LITERARY SUCCESS : MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

I heard JILLIAN LAUREN speak at a literary event, and I knew that one day I would elect her to be Mistress of the Month.  She is the author of "Some Girls" and also "Pretty."

Jillian was 18 years old when she became the first American woman to become a member of the Sultan of Brunei's harem, which was comprised of about 40 women from all over the world at the time.  She was the mistress of Jefri Bolkiah and then his brother Hassanal Bolkaih, one man at a time.  She says she rose up in the ranks to be the #2 Girl.

Although Jillian now identifies herself as having then been a prostitute, she was as far from being a street walker with a pimp, or even a legal prostitute in a Nevada brothel, as can be.  She became the temporary companion to two of the richest men in the world in Brunei, the Sultan and his brother, where rich men having harems is tradition.  She was treated to plane tickets, shopping trips, and a luxury lifestyle which she became a bit addicted to, though she left out of boredom and then returned. She was not paid by the hour.  After about 18 months (with a trip back to New York in there) she came away with about $300,000 dollars.

Jillian was up for an adventure in those days.  She was self supporting in New York City, a very expensive town, and working as an escort and a stripper.  She got to the palace and realized things had changed. 

She was living in the present as she quickly assessed her surroundings which were at first a mystery to her and realized that she had an unusual opportunity and wanted to be the best that she could be.  Eventually, after being with the Sultan, he passed her onto his brother, which in that culture, is considered a compliment to the woman.

It's easy for us to imagine women of the distant past being in a harem.  The present?

By my way of thinking Jillian was one of many mistresses of two of the richest men in the world.  When you see how beautiful she is, you don't wonder why, but it took more than that.  It also took brains and daring. 

Today Jillian is married to a Rocker from the band Weezer and is a mother.  She has published her book, faced the media, and come to terms with her past.  Jillian has an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch and besides books she has published in a number of magazines. She has appeared on The View and a number of other talk shows speaking of her experiences.  She says that, while her family is upset with her, many women do relate to her experiences.

C Mistress Manifesto / Missy Rapport 2013 All Rights Reserved

BUGSY TRAILER STARING ANNETTE AND WARREN

1943 Ben Siegel came to Los Angeles - Hollywood- to take over some of the action.

A MOB HISTORIAN TELLS HIS TALE OF VIRGINIA HILL

  "They were both dynamic characters."

"THERE IS NO WIFE IN THIS SITUATION BUT THE GHOST OF HIS EX!" : OPINION BY MISSY

Dear Missy,

I'm a Filipino woman who has been in the United States since she was a teenager. When I was in my late teens I was discovered by a film director in Hollywood. Although I worked on a production with him, he retired me and kept me for a few years. Then after we ended our relationship, I met a man who owns a factory in Ventura County. I gave up any career in Hollywood and moved in with him. I love him and I live my whole life around him.

He said that he was interest in marrying me but had a bad divorce 20 years before. He has a daughter from that marriage. He said he didn't want to marry until his daughter came of age. Well, she did. He hasn't married me. I travel to Vegas with him frequently. I want for nothing, including good jewelry. Our home in Ventura is modest. No one suspects how rich he really is. THERE IS NO WIFE IN THIS SITUATION EXCEPT THE GHOST OF THE EX!

Recently I met a male friend of his who told me that I am his fifth mistress. Once a mistress presses for marriage, he breaks with her and finds another one. I'm in my late 30's. I really want a child. Should I accept the situation or press for marriage and take my chances? He is 65 and shows no signs of retiring.

Champagne Tastes, Ventura County, California ----

Dear Champagne Tastes,

I'd really like to put this one out there for opinions.

My guess is that a man who is 65 and has had several mistresses since his bad marriage broke up long ago is not someone who wants to get married - ever. He's probably thinking of his daughter and her inheritance of his estate. However, it is not fair for you to be kept out of having a career to live around him if he is not going to provide for you in case of a "divorce" or when you are old and alone, without children or any other man to take care of you. It is time to tell this man that he must provide for you because of the circumstances of your life and if he will do this, you will never press for marriage.

You should also be clear that you want a child. Whatever he does, your lawyer (not his) should create a contract that will stand up in court.Your man is aging and should be able to try on what it means to be alone in life.

Report Back In Champagne Tastes !

Missy