- James T. McWilliams looks up and says,
My [bleep] goddamn town's on fire.
So, "Everybody Loves Ray"--
- Raymond.
- [laughs]
- Luciano is like,
We're gonna kill this guy Bugsy
'cause he's a pain in the ass.
[laughing]
Right.
- They say, Let's make a casino
that black people can come to.
It's called the Moulin Rouge.
No, every word is wrong.
[patriotic music]
♪ ♪
- Las Vegas is the most fabulous,
over-the-top, insane place.
- This place is a shared psychosis.
There's nobody here who should be here.
It's hot as balls.
- Vegas is amazing,
that we can support millions and millions of people
in the midderal--in the middle
of one of the driest climates in the entire world.
It's beautiful.
- Is that good?
- Yeah, I mean, if you're a pussy.
- To good life, health, and happiness.
- Yes. - Amen.
[plastic cracking]
- [coughs]
- Did you get cut?
- No. - Me neither.
- Hello, my name is Chris Romano,
and today we're gonna talk about James T. McWilliams.
Deal with it.
So in 1902, a Canadian guy
named James T. McWilliams hears,
Oh, they're building this [bleep] railroad
through Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.
So he says to himself,
I can go there,
buy some land in the middle,
and build a town.
He then goes, Holy [bleep], I [bleep] purchased the land.
This is amazing.
I'm gonna start selling land so I can make some money.
I'm gonna start selling land for $100 a plot.
So he starts selling $100 here, $100 there.
So then comes 1904.
He's got a town full of 2,000 people,
and this is on the west side of the tracks.
In comes [bleep]-face William Clark.
He used to be a senator from Montana.
He was very corrupt.
He was delivering bribes.
He was taking bribes.
They bri--
He bribed them to the bone.
[laughing] To the bone.
[laughter]
- To the what?
- To the bone.
To the bone!
So William Clark buys 1,800 [bleep] acres of this stuff
on the east side, the opposite side of the railroad,
where McWilliams has his property.
William Clark gets--
So Lilliam--
God damn it.
So William Clark gets flooded with requests
from so many people that want to buy plots of his land,
he realizes, Oh, [bleep], I'm an idiot.
I should just [bleep] auction this off.
I'm gonna rescind all of the properties that I've sold.
People are like, What the [bleep]?
And he goes, I'm doing an auction.
McWilliams goes, Good!
In the meantime, I'm gonna do a smear campaign.
Hey!
My town's got meat markets.
My town's got hotels.
My town's got restaurants.
My town's got meat markets.
My town's got restaurants.
And he goes, [bleep] you, that's not a smear campaign.
I'm gonna have a [bleep] gala event.
So "Everybody Loves Ray"--
- Raymond.
- [laughs]
- It's true; everybody does.
- So in 1905, May 15th,
William Clark throws this giant event.
They end up buying the land,
not for $100 but for $3,000 a plot of land.
This civic--silva--
[laughing]
This is my favorite part of it,
when you guys look like idiots
and I'm the one who knows the [bleep] most.
Okay, the west side of the tracks
is the ramshackle town.
It has really [bleep] shanty little [bleep] goddamn
little wooden shacks with tarps over the top.
The east side is thriving.
The rich people are getting rich.
The [bleep] poor people are getting poor
over on the west side.
So James T. McWilliams says, [bleep] A.
You [bleep] destroyed me.
You beat me.
You got all these [bleep] people
to move to your [bleep] west side--
I mean east side of [bleep] town.
[bleep] you.
And [bleep] west--east side,
[bleep]...
William Clark was like,
He's a [bleep] sore in my side.
That's right, yeah.
A sore in my-- a sore in my side.
Does that sound right?
- Mm-hmm.
- What happens, one mysterious night,
James T. McWilliams looks out and says,
Oh, you--[bleep].
My [bleep] God damn town's on fire.
His town has been burnt to the ground.
[bleep] William Clark's like...
[whistles]
I didn't [bleep] have anything to do with that.
Everybody knows, west side and east side,
that's what [bleep] happened.
He's a shady [bleep] rich [bleep] character
who [bleep] his way into this [bleep] town anyway.
- Oh, all right. - Shoot.
- Let's finish the story. - Oh, damn, wait.
- Oh, damn, I got a spill.
[bleep], I got a spill.
[bleep].
- What did you-- pick it up.
- [farts]
[laughter]
- James T. McWilliams is destroyed at this point.
Leaves [bleep] town.
He's like, I'm [bleep] done.
I [bleep]--I moved here from Canada,
thinking I was gonna strike it rich.
I did for a second.
[bleep]-face comes through here, William Clark,
and destroys my whole [bleep] life.
Years later...
months later...
decades later,
the county that Las Vegas is in
is not named after the guy who founded it.
It is named after the [bleep] asshole briber,
[bleep] copper baron guy.
Clark County, that's where Las Vegas is.
See, do you shake your penis when you're done?
Or do you shake your balls?
See what I do when I'm done?
- I just piss until I'm done.
- But when you're done, do you shake
your penis or your balls when you're done?
- Not neither.
- See, when I'm done, I do this.
I'm done.
[laughter]
[whistle tooting]
[cheering]
[whistle blowing]
- I want to do what you guys do.
- And you just double flip, back.
- Ah!
- Oh!
[upbeat rock music]
♪ ♪
- Vegas!
[cheering]
That's it.
We killed it.
- All right, well...
- We drank that whole bottle.
Cheers.
- Cheers, my brother.
Oh, hey.
I'm Brendon Walsh,
and today we're gonna talk about Bugsy Siegel.
- Yea-ah.
- [coughing]
All right, so there's this craps game going on.
These two Jewish kids,
Benjamin Siegel and Meyer Lansky.
A scuffle broke out, and a loose gun fell out.
Bugsy picked it up, and he's gonna shoot the guy.
Meyer Lansky's like,
The cops are coming; get out of here.
Knocks the gun out of his hand.
Got him out of the [bleep] situation.
Started a friendship right there.
And they became the Bugs-Meyer Mob.
The mob's, like, being awesome, like they were back then.
[laughs]
So they're doing murders,
and that caught the attention...
[laughing] of Lucky Luciano.
And Lucky Luciano is like,
Why don't you go out west...
[giggling]
and expand our enterprise.
So he goes out there,
makes a bunch of Hollywood friends.
He found out Billy Wilkerson
is building this resort casino on the outskirts of Vegas.
Ben Siegel's like,
Well, that would be great,
for me to be a part of that.
So him and some of his mob buddies
go to Vegas, and they're like,
Hey, we're mob guys, so hit the bricks,
or get beat up?
Either way, go on and--wait.
So [bleep] Bugsy
goes to his buddy Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano.
You know, he's like, It's gonna be called the Flamingo.
I'm buddies with all these [bleep] movie stars and [bleep].
I'll fly them out.
And they're like, All right, fine.
Here's a million bucks.
Bugsy Siegel's in charge.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
It's going way over budget.
He's a crazy bed bug, Bug-sy.
- [chuckles]
- So at this point,
Bugsy's got to go and ask for more money.
And they're like,
Let's, uh, maybe pull back
on the money-asking situation.
We also think you're stealing money,
so watch your back.
He's like, Ah!
[bleep] you, man!
Fine!
I'll go get it done.
And so after he bails, they're like,
Let's kill him.
And everyone's on board.
But Lansky steps up, and he's like,
Let's not kill this guy
and see how it all turns out
after the grand opening.
And they're like, All right, fine.
That's your boy, so...
He saved his friend twice so far in this story.
- Right.
- They have the opening December 26, 1946.
But the hotel room construction is still not done.
People couldn't stay there.
Bugsy's like,
Everybody listen up!
Now, I got planes full of movie stars
coming here tonight,
so everything's gonna get more glitzy and glamour-y
than you could even understand.
You won't even--
what are you talking about?
What?
Wait-wait-wait-wait.
What?
Oh, the planes are grounded?
It's [bleep] raining.
So the planes are grounded.
He can't all of his fancy buddies come there
for the opening.
They lose 300 grand.
So it's a bust all around.
All the mobsters, they're like,
What the [bleep] is this [bleep]?
Like, we're already kind of pissed at you.
Bugsy decides to close the Flamingo down,
finish the construction.
So Benjamin Siegel...
[laughing]
[laughter]
- Okay, so-- - All right, all right.
- I'm ten times redder than I was when we started.
- You're ten times what?
- Redder.
So, in March, he re-opens.
It starts doing okay.
It seems like things might be all right.
Siegel goes to the mob guys, and he's like,
Hey, it's a profit-turner,
positive situation.
That's great it's doing fine now,
but pay us the money back that we put into this.
He's like, I can't start paying you now,
but we'll get it together.
You know, whatever.
He bails, and they were like,
Unanimous vote!
We're gonna kill this guy Ben
that we call Bugsy,
'cause he's a pain in the ass.
And Lansky was like,
Guys...
I have no argument this time.
It's a bummer.
All right.
Go ahead.
Kill my buddy.
I can't defend him anymore.
- So Bugsy goes back to L.A.
Bugsy's sitting there reading the paper
at, like, you know, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.
And nine bullets come raining through the window.
Two hit him, but one blew his left eye ball
right out of his head.
Like, [bleep] ten minutes later,
Lansky's associates walk into the Flamingo,
and they're like,
Hey, we got this covered now.
Bugsy's dead.
Lansky and the Flamingo
start making money hand over fist.
Mobsters from all over the country
flood into Las Vegas.
And that's the story of the Vegas strip.
What happens in Vegas sometimes follows you home,
and it gets your eye ball shot out of your head.
- That's a good moral.
- [laughing]
Right.
- Here's to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Amen.
Jim Crow, I heard you.
- No, I'm not drinking to--
You almost made me drink to Jim Crow.
[laughter]
- No, do it again, do it again, sorry.
- Tried to sneak Jim Crow in at the end.
Hello.
I'm Paul F. Tompkins.
And today we're going to talk
about the Moulin Rouge Casino in Las Vegas.
- Cheers.
- At the time,
like every--most city,
Jim Crow laws are in full effect!
Somebody like Nat "King" Cole,
He would do a show, and then he would want to go inside
with a friend of his.
It's like, Oh, we can't let you in here.
You know you're a black dude, right?
It's insane.
Like, it's insane white people stuff.
Then comes these guys.
They say, Let's make a casino
that black people can come to.
It's called the Moulin Rouge.
One of the investors is boxing great Joe Louis.
He's gonna be, like, the public face
of the Moulin Rouge.
So, like, he's--
Every once in a while, the press checks in with him.
Joe Louis is like, We're doing a nationwide search
for all of these African-American, uh...
entertainers, uh...
dealers, um, chefs.
Black people are gonna be, like, in the front of the house.
You're gonna see black people when you walk in there.
Like, really hyping it up.
The Moulin Rouge opens.
There are lines around the block,
people waiting to get in.
And they say, Oh, this is a new thing.
An integrated casino,
I've never heard of such a thing,
because I'm a racist
from the time in which I live.
Joe Louis is there.
He's greeting everybody, Hi, come on in.
Come into the Moulin Rouge.
It's French-themed.
I'm dressed as a cowboy.
Why? Who knows?
All these people, tons of people.
Everybody's excited.
People are loving it.
A 9-year-old Gregory Hines is tap-dancing.
They have this thing called the Tropi Can Can.
Joe Louis, at the end of the show, says,
We have--this is not just the opening of a casino.
We have made history here tonight.
"Life" magazine does a story on it.
After that, white celebrities are showing up.
It's, like, Frank Sinatra with Louis Armstrong.
It's Billie Holiday with Judy Garland.
Nat "King" Cole and Dean Martin.
Everybody has a good time.
Everybody!
Jack Benny!
Who--who thought Jack Benny
would have a good time there?
[hiccup-laughs]
Look, I may be--hiccup.
- [laughing]
- They're all having a [bleep] great time.
Cary Grant says to Frank Sinatra,
Hey, why are you, like-- this is a good thing, right?
Like, we have fun, right?
And Frank Sinatra says,
Absolutely, we do.
We have a great time.
[hiccups]
So the other casinos...
they're like, It's weird that a lot of people
don't care about racism,
and they're just going ahead
and having fun at the Moulin Rouge.
What can we do now?
So, like, the casinos,
they say, Look, if you want to sell liquor to us,
you don't sell liquor to the Moulin Rouge anymore.
Then the Sahara, same thing.
The Sahara says, We will not buy food from you
if you give food to the Moulin Rouge.
So, then, after 3 1/2 months,
the Moulin Rouge mysteriously has its liker--
liquor suspended.
I mean liquor license suspended.
There's--it's not hard to figure out,
if you do the math yourself.
A month later, and the Moulin Rouge is closed.
It was closed and toesed, man.
Closed and toesed.
[laughing]
[snorts]
The expression everyone knows:
"closed and toesed."
- What is going on, guys?
Come on.
- Nothing.
- [laughs]
Nothing.
- I just want you to wrap up the story.
- [sighs]
So the black folks that had been hired to work there,
of course they can't get jobs anywhere else on the strip.
Las Vegas is [bleep] up.
Five years after the Moulin Rouge has closed,
the NAACP, the mafia, the local government,
they all get together,
and they meet inside the closes--
[laughs]
And they meet inside the closed Lu-mon Rouge.
No, every word is wrong.
So the agreement they sign that day
is the Moulin Rouge Agreement,
and this says that there's no such thing as segregation
anymore in hotels in Las Vegas.
It's an historic thing.
The Moulin Rouge, it was a fun party time.
Who-gives-a-[bleep] atmosphere.
You know, you got to...
You got to have people--
Hmm.
You got to have people--
put a show on for the people.
You got to do that.
[both shouting]
- Vegas, bro. - Right.