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See Also

See Also in
Notorious Lives

Albert Anastasia

Louis Buchalter

Frank Costello

Meyer Lansky

Lucky Luciano

Arnold Rothstein

Dutch Schultz

Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives

Bugsy Siegel

by Charles C. Howard

American gangster and casino owner

Cause of notoriety: A flashy and volatile gangster, Siegel helped bring organized crime to Las Vegas. His taste for celebrity and the spotlight were in large part responsible for his undoing.

Active: 1920-1947

Locale: New York, Hollywood, and Las Vegas

Early Life

Born in Brooklyn, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel (BUHG-zee SEE-guhl) was one of millions of Jewish children born into immigrant poverty during the early years of the twentieth century. Raised on the lower East Side of New York, he became involved in street gangs and fights at an early age. He quickly made friends with a small, older boy named Meyer Lansky, and the two became lifelong partners in crime. Even in his youth, Siegel was known for his white-hot temper and willingness to take violent action. The nickname “Bugsy” was slang for someone who was mentally unstable and was never used to Siegel’s face.

Criminal Career

During the 1920’s, Lansky and Siegel worked with members of the Italian Mafia gangs and for New York gambler Arnold Rothstein. They became part of Rothstein’s bootlegging operations that supplied New Yorkers with illegal alcohol during Prohibition, the brief period when the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was in effect. Lansky and Siegel teamed with young Italians such as Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello to transport and sell bootleg alcohol. After Rothstein’s death in 1928 and the organization of the five “crime families” of the New York Mafia, Siegel and Lansky continued to partner with Luciano. Siegel was rumored to be a part of a collection of Jewish and Italian hit men known as Murder, Inc. In later life, Siegel claimed to have killed twelve men, but rumors and myth have conflicted over who the victims were and how they died.

Bugsy Siegel.

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During the mid-1930’s, a reform movement swept New York in order to dissolve the older tribes and business partnerships. Thomas E. Dewey was named special prosecutor and quickly began a crackdown on organized crime. In 1935, gangster Dutch Schultz was murdered to prevent him from unleashing an all-out war against the police. In 1936, Luciano was sent to prison; he remained there for nearly forty years. Following the Prohibition era, Siegel and Lansky went their separate ways: Lansky to Florida and then Cuba and Siegel to Los Angeles.

Siegel became part of the Los Angeles scene in the late 1930’s and worked his way into bookmaking and controlling the union for film extras. He was handsome and debonair and was seen at many top nightclubs. Contrary to mob protocol, Siegel enjoyed the attention from newspapers and from gossip columnists. He was friends with film actor George Raft and quickly met a young woman named Virginia Hill, who became his permanent girlfriend despite the fact that he was married. Siegel and Hill had a volatile relationship punctuated by fights and mutual jealousies. Hill had won small acting roles in films and also had a string of other mob-connected boyfriends.

The Rise of Las Vegas

Contrary to popular myth, Siegel did not invent Las Vegas nor did he open its first major hotel. In the early 1940’s, he went to Las Vegas to supply a race wire (which provided racing information to bookmakers) to downtown bookmaking parlors. He and his partners invested in small downtown casinos during this time. In 1945, Siegel and his partners bought the El Cortez hotel and casino and sold it six months later for a good profit.

In 1946, Los Angeles publisher Billy Wilkerson was trying to open a hotel casino on Highway 91, twelve miles outside Las Vegas. Two other large hotel-casinos, the El Rancho Vegas and the Last Frontier, were already operating successfully nearby. When Wilkerson ran out of money with the project only half done, Siegel bought into the venture and soon removed Wilkerson from the project.

Siegel completed the hotel-casino using enormous amounts of mob money. The casino, named the Flamingo, was a spectacular resort. However, Siegel’s inexperience with legitimate business, his temperamental nature, and the suspicions of his investors proved a lethal combination. The Flamingo opened in December of 1946, but after a successful opening night, it quickly sank into financial instability.

Siegel closed the Flamingo in January, 1947, and reopened it two months later with fresh capital from mob associates. By then, the price of the Flamingo totaled six million dollars, and Siegel’s Mafia colleagues began to suspect his intentions. Siegel’s mental state was highly agitated and paranoid, and rumors swirled among Mafia members that Hill and Siegel had skimmed money off the project and hidden it in Switzerland. Finally, Siegel’s mob associates simply ran out of patience with his lavish spending and volatile temper. On June 20, 1947, during a stay at Hill’s Beverly Hills home, Siegel was shot several times through a window while he was sitting on a couch. One bullet famously drove clean through his left eye. Rumors about who ordered and who carried out the hit are numerous, but within hours, some of Siegel’s associates took total control of the Flamingo.

Impact

Perhaps no other gangster in history has been as romanticized as Bugsy Siegel. A feature film titled Bugsy was released in 1991 and starred Warren Beatty as Siegel; Siegel has also been portrayed in television programs and other films. Siegel was a complex and contradictory character. His vision of Las Vegas was prophetic, but he was too limited and mentally unstable to realize it. Unfamiliar with the simplest principles of legitimate business, he squandered money. Unpredictably violent, he could not form and maintain normal business relationships even with longtime criminal associates. The Flamingo would last for more than fifty years while numerous other casino-resorts grew up around it. After Siegel’s death, Las Vegas became and remained America’s leading tourist resort.

Further Reading

1 

Cohen, Rich. Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. A good book on Jewish gangster culture during the 1920’s and 1930’s, showing the milieu from which Siegel emerged and how it influenced his life.

2 

Lacey, Robert. Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life. Boston: Little, Brown, 1991. An excellent biography of Lansky, illustrating the similarities and differences between Lansky and Siegel. Details the early efforts of Siegel in Las Vegas.

3 

Smith, John L. Sharks in the Desert. Fort Lee, N.J.: Barricade, 2005. Includes stories and anecdotes about the founding and early history of Las Vegas. Not scholarly and prone to exaggeration, it nevertheless offers some good reporting.

Citation Types

MLA 9th
Howard, Charles C. "Bugsy Siegel." Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives, edited by Carl L. Bankston III, Salem Press, 2007. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLN_1536.
APA 7th
Howard, C. C. (2007). Bugsy Siegel. In C. L. Bankston III (Ed.), Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Howard, Charles C. "Bugsy Siegel." Edited by Carl L. Bankston III. Great Lives from History: Notorious Lives. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2007. Accessed September 17, 2026. online.salempress.com.