Among these are 1949’s The Lady Gambles with Barbara Stanwyck and the 1952 Howard Hughes film The Las Vegas Story, starring Jane Russell. Decades earlier, film noir directors used Las Vegas and its 1940s and ’50s casino culture in crime capers characteristic of that dark genre. Meyer Lansky, Benny Binion and Tony Spilotro - all at the center of projects in the early stages - played significant roles in Southern Nevada’s organized crime history.įor moviemakers, Las Vegas’ appeal at least as a partial setting did not begin in the 1970s with The Godfather’s Corleone family and its financial interest in the Nevada gambling industry. Of the many Mob movies and television shows now in the works, several are focused on underworld figures who had an impact on Las Vegas. Tony Spilotro, the Chicago Outfit’s enforcer in Las Vegas in the 1970s and 1980s, is the focus on a new movie project.
