Hall of Fame

The American Gaming Association announced the inductees for the Gaming Hall of Fame a few weeks ago. There were two somewhat curious choices, but fitting nonetheless.

John Wilhelm (top right), the head of the hospitality division of the UNITE-HERE union is one of the honorees. While Wilhelm has been a supporter of gaming, he's also been a rather bitter opponent in some cases, most recently being the 2004 month-long strike of hospitality workers in Atlantic City. In Las Vegas, he's only partially successful, mostly with organization on the Strip. His union is notably absent, however, from the Station Casinos, the Venetian and some other larger hotels in Vegas.

Wilhelm deserves the nomination, however, because of his role in the 1999 National Gaming Impact Study Commission, which was set up by anti-gaming congressmen to dig up dirt on gaming, but actually validated its benefits and downplayed its negatives. Along with other members, most notably MGM's Terry Lanni and the Nevada Resort Association President Bill Bible, Wilhelm helped keep the study on the straight and narrow and not degenerate into a moral slugfest it could have become.

The other rather curious winner is Clifford Perlman (top left), the former head of Caesars Palace. Perlman and his now-deceased brother Stuart, took over the Palace from originator Jay Sarno, who could design and build spectacular properties (he also developed Circus Circus) but could not operate them. The Perlmans were able to effectively operate the property and make it a success. But when they went to Atlantic City in 1978 to open a Caesars there, they were rejected as unsuitable for licensing because of alleged connections to organized crime. (Five years later, the Nevada Gaming Commission permitted the brothers to be licensed when the y attempted to buy the Dunes.) The New Jersey commission alleged that the brothers' success with the fast food operation, Lum's, was funded by organized crime. Lum's was originally a hot dog stand in Miami, which the Perlmans bought for $12,000 in 1956.

The honor for Clifford is more reflective of his operational ability. Sarno's Rome had not taken off as he envisioned, but when the Perlmans came in, they used sophisticated (for the time) marketing techniques that they has used at Lum's.

In an article in the Atlantic City Press in May outlines the difficulties the Perlmans faced in New Jersey.

I can recall a house directly on the beach in Longport (a fashionable beachfront town south of Atlantic City) that Clifford Perlman had built in those days. It was an incredible property that hung over the ocean.

Yes, it is possible that Perlman has some organized crime connections. But this is the gaming industry and to deny the organized crime roots of the business is to stick your head in the sand. I think the Hall of Fame should honor people like Bugsy Siegel, Mo Dalitz, Wilbur Clark, Howard Hughes and many of the founders of Las Vegas and the gaming industry we know today. Yes, their pasts were colorful and checkered, but they helped make gaming what it is today. We should not ignore them simply because they may have been "connected."